The old version of UBB.threads relied on an old PHP version, which has been removed from the server because of security issues. This required us to upgrade to a newer version of UBB.threads. The new version has a number of significant differences from the old. I've tried to keep FineTunedMac looking as much like it did before as possible, but there are bound to be some quirks and rough spots over the next few days. If you notice anything broken, let me know and I'll try to fix it.

Thanks, tacit.

Is the new "Like" button functional, and what happened to the old "Report" button?

Update: Yep! The "Like" button works, but FTM has always eschewed that avenue.

The "Report" function seems to have been removed from this version of UBB.threads.

Nice to learn that spam and other abuses are no longer issues.

I don't know how others may feel, but I"d like to see "Add this thread to my Followed Threads" NOT checked by default.

The Image Tag doesn't allow me to enter a title for my image.

This image - https://imgur.com/x1HCxDP - shows a rendering glitch in post #55086 (in the dongle thread to which you replied).

Thanks for this. I'm heading out, so not able to explore a lot right now but, from the bit I've done this morning, I like the navigational changes and the fresh look.

So does this put us over the top to PHP 7.X now?

....never mind - I just read the info that comes at the bottom of the page! PHP 7.3.15.....

The really good news is how nice the response times have cleaned up with the upgrade.

Is it PHP: 7.3.15 or is it 7.7.4 like so: "Powered by UBB.threadsâ„¢ PHP Forum Software 7.7.4 (Release build 20200307)?"

As I recall, it was 7.5.8 before the update.

Do you really find response times faster? It seems to me that they're consistent with what they've been since the delays disappeared.

More: I'd sure like to see the "Index" button back at the bottom of the posts page.

7.7.4 refers to the current version of the UBB Forum software running on the server (which is utilizing PHP version 7.3.15)....

Confusing! Thanks for the clarification.

More: Yeah, response time is snappier.

Missing feature: I can still see who's on my Friend List, but I can no longer see whose lists I'm on.

I like the "Hop to…" feature to move to another forum; no more "Go" button.

On the page that shows all of the forums, and maybe it's just old habits die hard, I would like to see alternating color banding. It makes it easier to see the different forums and also the data (reading across) for any one forum.

Sounds like you may need to change your style selection.

OK, that gives me the color and separations I was looking for. But the default color here is blue-ish, which—at least for me in the past—was the color of everything when I was no longer signed in (after 30 days). Once signed in, the default color was yellow-ish. Really, how many adjustments do you expect me to make?

The yellowish style is "ubbthreads stock."

I use the blue "ubbthreads finetunedmac," and I"ve never seen "stock" other than when I was trying out the different styles.

Just found it by clicking on my screen name > View Profile above my avatar.

I'm not sure if that's possible or not. The UBB.threads people did some pretty deep changes with this version, and there's a lot of stuff under the hood that's now totally different.


Huh, weird.

I ran into a similar situation that I believe is in UBB and beyond our ability to fix other than submitting a problem report.

Given the code:
It renders as
change the code to
and it renders correctly as:


FWIW The UBBT77 style fits nicely with Big Sur's more "open" look IMO

A few spiffy new forum titles/descriptions to go along with the spiffy new default style would also fit nicely.

(UBBT77 doesn't work well with the resolution of my 16" screen.)

And so it is. When I ran through all the options previously this seemed different. I hesitate to say it did not look like this. But now it does. Thanks.

Followup: on the Forums page, the listing of all forums, this "stock" format does not have the alternating shading and grid lines like the "finetunedmac" format, which might be why I passed it over. Within the forum itself, it does appear as in days of old.

How do we "Notify" now that the button is gone (which doesn't make the least little bit of sense)?

Is that the "Contact Us" button at the bottom right of the page?

Not really...other than in the absence of a better alternative.

Maybe it's "Forum Help," but it returns an error:

Click the disclosure arrow at the far right of the title bar of the post you want to report; it reveals a menu including Copy Link to Clipboard, Email Post, and Report Post.

Thanks. You've always been the best reader around here.

Small point, compared to some of the other observations, but I really like that the "Back to the top" button remains fixed - rather than having to be at the bottom of the page.

I just tried it for the first time ever, and it's slower than command-up arrow, which I've always used. (It also requires mousing, which I hate.)

Since we're on small points, the narrower Threads and Posts columns on the Forums page are disconcerting, but the numbers being top justified, not centered as they used to be, really puts me off.

And I just noticed that the FTM icon no longer appears in my tab header; it's been replaced by the UBB icon. And FTM has been updated with "Forums powered by UBB.threads" on the Forums page.

And I just noticed that my time pref had changed, and I had to change it back.

Nightmare! Until I realized that the drop-down is in time zone order and located "New York" at the appropriate hour of day.

I have the FTM icon in the tab header. I'm using ubbthreads finetunedmac as the format.

I've got the box checked as shown in the top screenshot - here - and I"m seeing the bottom shot.

I haven't changed my settings in forever.

If you click to highlight the full URL, it may then reveal the FTM icon.....at least that's how mine is working with Safari v13.1.2 in Catalina 10.15.6 ----

Just went back into my preferences and checked the same box as you showed in your screen shot and the FTM icon showed up in my tab as expected.

Same OS and version of Safari, and after toggling the pref off, shutting down/starting up, and toggling the pref back on I still see this.

The only thought that comes to mind on this difference would be to suggest the possibility of a stuck cache entry....the web Icon for UBB is stuck in your cache. How long has it been since you used the Develop pulldown menu to empty the Safari cache? I know that this might not be a preferred action in that it will also clear out all stored logins as well.

Alternatively, have you tried logging in to FTM while using your test account instead of your normal computer login account?

Another hidden until you see it option is found at the beginning of any thread, left-hand side, where it says "Thread Options". The little bookmark icon will turn on/off the feature of following the thread; just in case you forgot to uncheck the following default option.

Thanks for that! Much easier than editing my Follow List.

And still easier: A followed thread shows an icon in the particular forum's thread listing, and clicking on it gives you a "stop following" option.

I hit command-option-E (as per Develop) multiple times a day (because of a grievous fault in Cookie), and it hasn't solved the problem.

Thanks to your clear thinking, though, I just did a safe boot to take advantage of its additional cache clearing functionality, and the UBB icon was replaced by the FTM icon until I restarted.

I'm not running anything that affects Safari, so I'm at a loss as to what to try next.

More: I've got a vague recollection of the same thing having happened once before, but I haven't got the foggiest idea of how it was corrected.

This is a stab in the dark, but is it possible that one or more extensions could be the source of this issue?

Thanks, but without much hope I disabled my extensions and was rewarded with no joy.

When I open a new FTM window I see this, but when I click on either "forum," "login," or "register" the FTM icon changes to the UBB icon.

If I click on "contact," the FTM icon stays put.

A safe boot does not clear all caches. One that is not cleared and could be involved in your problem is the DNS cache. Offhand I don't know of a utility that flushes the DNS cache but the command line used to be

By this I meant logging into a pristine Admin account.....

....this doesn't quite do the same thing as suggested above.....

Inquiring minds want to know....

You can clear the DNS cache with Onyx. Select the Maintenance tab, then select Options in Cleaning.

Thanks, but no joy.

Logging in to my test user account is a giant PIA, so I tried the safe boot first.

Granted that a safe boot isn't the same as logging in to a test account, but the situation's having been corrected in safe mode means that the problem is not in my user account, and that I need to start playing with startup items (which is more trouble than I care to go through for such an innocuous problem).

Under any circumstances, though, I logged in to my test account to confirm my diagnosis, and the problem persisted.

More experimentation reveals the new UBB goes nuts with nested lists scattering things all over the place. 🤬

Clicking on Forum Help yields

See post #55850 above.

Maybe tacit needs to be notified directly.

Update: I reported it via the tech@ email link as per cyn.

That's an actual bug in UBB.threads. I've fixed the bug (help now works properly) and as soon as I'm done here I'm off to the UBB.threads forum to notify them.

Since you're here, I've been wondering if it was your doing or some unknown factor working when FTM's insanely slow loading magically stopped back in May?

That was me. The insanely slow loading wasn't just a FTM issue, it was affecting all my sites. I had my Web hosting guys do a major upgrade to my database servers and everything sped up tremendously.

A big part of the problem was a different site I run that lives on the same server as FTM, and started getting crazy traffic--more than 9,000 unique visitors/day. It caused everything to grind to a shuddering stop until I upgraded.

A side benefit of the upgrade is FTM now has way more resources than it used to, so (knock wood) that should never happen again.

Many thanks for taking care of that; it was like an early, wonderful Xmas present.

This is a lingering issue not related to the upgrade but when there are nested quotes a dark line appears across the last line of text in the last quote as seen in this screenshot

Here's the same post as I see it.

(Why is your sidebar wider than mine?)

More: I've never seen that line.

You have the same grey line, just displaced one notch further down the page. In either case, it shouldn't be there and to the best of my knowledge FTM is the only place I have ever seen it.


🤷‍♂️ Safari 13.1.2 vs Safari 14.0? 🤷‍♂️
🤷‍♂️ MacOS 10.15 vs. MacOS 11.0 🤷‍♂️
🤷‍♂️ Different System font 🤷‍♂️
🤷‍♂️ kharma 🤷‍♂️


I have seen it off and on for a good while. 😢

In your screenshot I see a "printer smudge" overlaying a line of text, but what you're saying is the same thing in my screenshot is actually a scroll-bar.

A screenshot of how my screenshot looks on your end may be helpful.

(My sidebar question arose because FTM's appearance on my screen has changed dramatically since the upgrade, the sidebar being only one aspect of it.)

Just as with the pre-upgrade, I had to log in again after several weeks of staying logged in. Apparently, this bug has not been quashed.

I don't remember when it began, but we've got to log in every 30 days under any circumstances.

Are you being prompted more often than that?

The FTM login is contained in two cookies that have a lifespan of 30 days. One is your ID the other your hashed password. Unless you login (actually enter your ID & PW) again within that span of time the cookies are automatically deleted.

The correct command is apparently all on one line, but it didn't help.

It seems to me that I had the same problem after either a MFIF or FTM update years ago, and clearing the DNS cache turned the trick that time.

Working backwards from my safe boot, during which my problem didn't manifest itself, my only startup item that affects Safari is SessionRestore, and I've tried every which way to work around it if it's indeed the culprit, but with no joy.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯