Forum Upgrade

[Q Valerius]

The forum should be up and down from the posted time for about a 24 hour stretch, so hopefully everything should be working and fully updated by 24 July 2006 at 0400 GMT.

[Q Valerius]

Hopefully, everything was completely updated. If anyone sees any more errors, report them to either the aediles, PM them to me, or post them here. I'll be online for the next several hours and be awaking early in the morning (GMT -6 here).

in optima pace,

Scerio

[Aldus Marius]

Salvete omnes!

Yes, it's true: We upgraded the Board.

As many of you have read in the Comitia-->Aediles thread, I've never really had the tools to fend off invasions of Spammers and other delights. Too, perhaps some of you have used some other features of the Board that were clunky when they worked at all. I haven't the skill to improve things on my own. Fortunately, Q Valerius Scerio (quondam Senator et Conciliaris) has volunteered his knowledge of all things PHP (see his reply to General-->SVR Site Outage) to assist Tiberius Draco and myself in getting us the best Forum Board we can.

The upgrade took place over the weekend and went smoothly. It's just the sort of improvement I like: The Board still looks and feels the same, but some things work a little differently, in good ways. Among the enhancements:

-- Now, when you reply to a private message (PM), the original message shows underneath the 'Compose' window...just like replying to a thread.

-- Polls now automatically have an option for a 'Null Vote'. At press time we were still getting this one to work, but it should eliminate the concerns voiced by several of you about our polls lacking an 'Abstineo' option.

-- Registration is the same (we did not go for the 'visual authentication' I've discussed a couple of times, though that is still an option).

-- The Search function is supposed to be more powerful and easier to use. (I haven't road-tested it yet.)

-- Admins now have a Userlist with checkboxes so they can delete, promote, grant accesses to, ban, or otherwise do things for several members at once. (This is the feature that's going to save my wrists.)

These are the changes I've noticed so far; I'm still exploring. Quintus Scerio should be able to give particulars to anyone who asks. He is one of the more approachable people in the technical field! So go, check it out, see how you like it and if it fits. Feel free to post questions here, or you may PM myself, Scerio or Tibi Draco, if something about the new arrangement isn't working for you.

Profundas et multibus gratias ago, mi Scerio; if nobody stops me, I'm going to start calling you Restitutor Fori!

In amicitia et fide,

[Q Valerius]

There's also been some security holes which I patched up neatly. This board could have been hacked very easily, and unfortunately, it still can, although it would be 100 times as hard to.

The null vote option, unfortunately, won't show up in the poll results, but it won't ask you for a vote anymore. It's sort of like a permanent "View Results" button. And right now the author of the code isn't responding to my questions, so I may just scrap it altogether and go back to the normal way of adding "Abstineo" to each poll.

There's a couple of more updates I need to finish, including working the search again, and messing around with cookies, in particular, keeping track of users who's been on in the past 24 hours, and keeping them logged in for 15 minutes instead of 5. That should be better for seeing who gets on and when, making it easier to contact each other.

Any questions, problems, or complaints, as Marius has said, should go to either me, Aldus Marius, or Tiberius Dionysius.

Thanks for bearing along, everyone.

Quintus Valerius