3:30 AM EDT, Sun, May 23rd, and FTM is back up and running, but our avatars have disappeared, and I've so far been unable to restore mine via My Stuff>Edit Profile.

Is there some new procedure, or do I just have to wait it out?

(I also noticed some garbled characters in joemike's sig.)

Response time so far is like lightning!

Edit: I just noticed that offset time has changed by an hour, a result of the new servers' location, I assume, so everybody will have to change their pref.

The problem with the avatars has now been fixed. The time zone setting will be fixed shortly.

I think the time zone problem has now been solved as well.

Yep! My avatar has been resurrected.

It has, but now I've got to change my change.

By the way... I forgot to mention that I didn't seen any red numbers, in either the Forums Index or the FineTunedMac Community Index, indicating your responses to my post.

Well, that transition seems relatively seamless – although I did have to reenter my time zone preference.

Ain't that a lot of posting icons? People could get stalled by the plethora of choices before actually getting down to content.

I don't know yet if this is temporary, but when I go to a thread that I have visited previously (with a new reply), I get to the first post in the thread, not the new one.

The time stamps are out of whack. I think I've got one reason pinpointed but there's something else going on too...tacit and I will get that sorted.

I fixed the posting icons.

So far I'm seeing accurate red numbers on both the main Forum List and in individual forums, and when there is a new reply I'm correctly being taken to it. Jon, are you seeing red numbers for new posts?

Me too.
I had posted a comment to that effect (but then edited it out).
I also notice that, if I remain within FTM, the parenthetical red number remains, even after accessing the thread; but if I leave and return, it has disappeared.

I noticed that too, but it seems that 'regular' keyboard characters like the bullet in my sig now display properly in the forums (and not just in Edit Prefs preview only) when entered from the keyboard (Option-8) without having to resort to unicode (like 2022, which now reads like •).

UBB.threads overwrites some files during upgrades, defaulting the CHARSET to iso-8859-1. I changed it to UTF-8, which I believe is the setting we had before the server move and upgrade to UBBT 7.5.5, and JMB's sig looks right to me again.

Still waiting to see the jump into hyperspace, re latest unread posts in each thread.

The bullet in mine reverted to a question mark, so I'll experiment to reinstate it...

UPDATE: it turns out that simply entering that bullet again (Option-8) did the trick.

Accessing this thread was very slow. I didn't time it but it seemed to be longer than a minute. I hope that this is just an anomaly.

I'm still experiencing erratic behavior as respects red numbers...

I just clicked to the Lounge and saw that two threads had red numbers, but on clicking back to the Lounge index after looking at one of them the red number had disappeared from the other.

I am seeing the initial connection to the forums (which I have as the home page in iCab) take place much faster.

I concur with MMT3, browsing feels much teh snappy now.

/posted from my iPad.

From the back end (server side), database queries are on the order of 5 times faster now, or more. I'm also seeing much better server response overall. There are still a few minor issues left to clean up, because the software upgrade overwrote some of the customizations I'd made, but all in all things look like they're back up and running normally again.

I've run into a coupl'a slow loads, but overall, FTM has been as zippy as all get-out.

Thanks for your efforts!

I notice that with multipage threads checking new posts (red numbers) gets one to the latest page, but still no jump to most recent unread posts.

Same for me.

I am seeing somewhat the reverse. When I enter a forum I see the red parenthetical numbers for possibly multiple topics. When I select a topic to read and return to the forum via the "Index" button, the red numbers have disappeared from all the other topics that I have yet to read.

Also, when entering the topic, I do not jump to the most recent unread posting, but go to the first one.

Neither of the above behaviors existed for me before the server switch.

I've noticed (on both old and new servers) that by selecting a thread and having it open in a new window or new tab, one doesn't get red-number deletions.
On the other hand, it's as though access isn't recognized at all, since the accessed thread retains the red number in the original window/tab.
Not exactly the best solution, but at least the threads with new posts are retained with red numbers.

I'm seeing this as well.....but at least the response times are much improved.

I'm encountering both of Ira's issues, but it's great to get nowhere faster than I used to get somewhere.

I'm seeing the new-post indicators in a forum (red numbers and yellow folders) vanishing when they shouldn't as well. And it looks like my luck ran out with the jump to first unread reply, as that isn't working for me anymore.

Downside is even though I can now reproduce both problems, I don't know how to fix them. I tried another account in a different browser, logging out/in, deleting FTM cookies, and various ways of navigating from a thread to its forum, but not surprisingly none of those user-side actions made any difference.

I've got a query into the UBBT folks in hopes there's something tacit or I can do from the admin side to fix both problems.


Yep, that's the way it's meant to work. The original window/tab won't change until you reload it.

PS: To anyone who's tried to email me at FTM since the server move, sorry about the bounce! Mail's working again now...

On advice from the UBBT developer I changed the default time offset. It will be take some time and new posts to see if this fixes the problems...keep your fingers crossed!

Two questions:

1) Jon, Dr. G, Artie, Ira, MacManiac, and anyone else who was seeing red numbers disappear on topics with unread posts and/or found the jump-to-first-new-reply not working, any change in either since I adjusted the time offset yesterday morning?

2) Has anyone not experienced those two problems since the move and upgrade?

1). I am still seeing this.

I find that if I click on the "Last Post" column link to get to the last post, then it works as expected. if I click on the category link, and click the thread title, then I lose the red numbers, and am not taken to the first unread post.

Same thing for me, Roger.

Idem.

Still have the incorrect jumping problem (unexpected nuisance). Have not had more than one thread recently with red numbers, so I can't check that problem.

I've seen no change, cyn.

Another issue, which I just discovered. I went to search a forum for a particular thread which I started several months ago. I selected "active in the last 6 months" and clicked Change. There were several pages listed but the last page had the timeframe changed to "active in the last month". Specifically, I tried this with the OS 10.6 forum and the Applications forum. I was unable to find the thread that I wanted so I resorted to brute force by looking at all my posts. The thread in question was this one. I was using it to give advice to someone at the TechSurvivors forum.

Seems to be a bug all right.

As a workaround, you could go to My Stuff -> Edit Preferences and change the value for Total topics to to show per page to, say, 50, which in this case is sufficient to allow all threads active in the past six months to be displayed on a single page.

Good workaround. It does exactly what you said.

I got the same funkiness when clicking any of the page numbers (not only the last page). I don't know if all these problems are related but I'm going to open a support ticket so the UBBT experts can take a look and hopefully get this stuff straightened out. Tried to do it tonight but ran into a little glitch...if it's not one thing it's another!

BTW, Jon, was your brute force method selecting Posts in the My Stuff menu and clicking through pages to find that thread? If so, here's a shortcut: on the first "All posts made by jchuzi" page, click the Topics Created link above the Post Time column.

Search might have worked too.

> [...] click the Topics Created link above the Post Time column.

I use this technique so rarely that I never noticed Topics Created. Thanks for the tip, Cyn.

Yeah, ok, it's discussed here (delete my other thread if you like) but, there's no response as to whether it can or will be fixed... Is this an unknown??

I managed to get the UBBT support ticket open after all (the one I had trouble with in the wee hours). I can't imagine the UBBT developer won't be able to fix the problems (those noted here as well as a few others) but I suppose it's a possibility.

Roger, I just noticed your edit:

Yeah, the link in the Last Post column is to a specific post (the URL ends with a post #) and AFAICT those type of links (in a user's post list or search results or wherever) take us to the right place. It's when we go to a forum and click the subject of a thread that has unread replies (URL ends with &gonew=1#UNREAD) that we get taken to the top of the thread instead of the first unread reply.

Sorry for the long delay in responding, but I've been a bit out of access range....

Just got back on today and am still seeing the challenge with being taken to the first post in a thread with new entries instead of the newest post in that thread.

I should be back in the US in about three weeks.....

EDIT: .....and now a new symptom.....after entering this post, I went back to the forums home page and found ALL but this forum showing new entries! I'll try a logout and cookie toss to see if it makes any positive change and then report back.

Logging out of the FTM forums then tossing the FTM cookies in Safari, then closing / restarting Safari and logging back into the FTM forums has resolved ALL of the "interesting" issues that I've experienced since the UBBT upgrade.

My guess is that there was a slight format difference in the data contained in the earlier UBBT cookies that only partially updated when using the newer UBBT software......and thus the anomalies. Clearing the cookies that were a legacy from the previous UBBT software and getting fresh ones written by the current UBBT software seems to be the answer.

All appears well now.

Something different here, just noticed it yesterday:
When i post (like right now), the "emoticon menu" (i.e., with the smiley face) is blank.

[i have to type them from memory: , etc.]

Running Ad Subtract, which (as I posted here) apparently does the same thing as your "floppymoose" userContent.css file, also results in a blank emoticon menu.

When I want to use an emoticon in a post I must either turn AdSubtract off or, as you do, type from memory.

Hope this helps both you and cyn. (Typed from memory!)

all seems to be working as it should today! yay!

MM, it wasn't a cookies thing (I tried clearing mine early in my search for a cause/solution). You've just got remarkable timing: Rick (UBBT dev) found and fixed the apparent cause of our problems right before you posted. And I do mean right before...he was updating the support ticket while you were posting. I'm pretty sure the new post indicators you saw on the main Forum List were a temporary side effect.

I'm going through my list and everything I've checked so far is working properly again.

Anyone still seeing any of the previously reported problems, or any new ones?

Artie, thanks for the info about the ad blockers. Nice to know the emoticon menu isn't something else that's broken.

Everything seems to be working.

Not sure what all "everything" refers to, but I can confirm that jumping to the last read post now works, and there is no longer an issue with the red unread post numbers being properly retained between readings of posts.

Ah-ha, thanks Artie. [...this thread slipped my mind, sorry for the late reply.]

Sure.

The benefit is well worth the annoyance.

It just occurred to me that you might be interested in knowing that I've trashed both AdSubtract and SafariBlock in favor of AdBlock for Safari (extension); beyond having given me back my smilies, it's capabilities exceed those of the other two combined. (I've finally gotten rid of the seven pre-CNET MacFixIt headline boxes on VT's listing page! )

(Still need ClickToFlash, though.)