frostfire
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Posts posted by frostfire
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14 minutes ago, BigusDicus said:
Whew! Figuring things out can be a challenge for the dyslectic! I shall muddle through.
One thing I am noticing upper left hand corner is it says the site is not secure? Maybe the old one was the same and I just did not notice?
The old site had a button something like "View new" where you could see a listing of everything new regardless of topics, etc.? Is the same thing on this site somewhere too?
The secure thing will be fixed soon. Am waiting for the background processes to finish before I enforce the SSL change.
For the other, try this: Activity --> Unread Content
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If I understand what you mean...
Mouse over the Activity tab at the top... and choose Unread Content. that shows things you have not yet read.
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UPDATE: The email issue has been resolved. The contact form now works properly.
Important: I know at least 2 people sent contact form requests that were not received, and 3 others used the forgot password link and did not receive their emails. Due to the nature of the system I do not know who these people were and I cannot resend that info. Hopefully whoever you are you are reading this and will try again now :)
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UPDATE: Email is still having some minor issues.
This means the CONTACT FORM and the FORGOT PASSWORD links may not work correctly.
if you are a member and having any issues that require our notice, like you cannot log in, feel free to email me directly at flbbar@gmail.com, at least until I get this sorted out.
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UPDATE: Email is now back up and working.
For the time being, until I can get a count of the number of emails we send out daily, I am using sendgrid for email service, to ensure that they all get out ok. Its free for 40k emails for the first month, then 100 per day (for free). If we go over the 100 per day (very likely), ill have to either change up or pay a monthly fee. Will see how it goes.
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UPDATE: Tapatalk has now been fixed and should be working properly.
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First kinda major issue has arisen.
Tapatalk is not working. I have identified the problem, but its not one I can fix. I have opened a support ticket from tapatalk and anticipate a speedy solution.
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1 minute ago, Chang_paarp said:
That is exactly why I posted. I also noticed nothing new but your announcements. I figured you would like something from a member who had logged in.
Now can we have that "to the top" button please for the lazy sods like me? ?
After the background process complete I will figure out how to turn all that on. To be honest I don't want to mess with any non-critical change at all while they are ongoing.
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Thanks for posting. Seeing a whole lot of IP activity but nobody posting was making me nervous lol. I can't tell how many of the 20+ "online users" are google bots. Most are guests. But if you can log in and post, then I think its safe to say its working :)
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One more update: EMAIL will not be working today. I know that its not working, and I am purposely not fixing it yet. I will do that either later today or tomorrow.
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Hi Guys,
The upgrade process has been successful. It was started at 3am Thai time, and it is now 6:13am as I write this. The forum is up and seems to be working fine, and as soon as I submit this post (and assuming it works - this is the last test), I will be redirecting all old traffic to this new forum post, so you will see it first if you are visiting from the old URL.
So, first off. The new URL. I have changed the forums URL to https://forums.pattayatalk.com (it used to be pattayatalk.com/forums). This change comes with some drawbacks, mostly involving google and content already indexed, but the advantages of having it greatly outweigh the negatives. The largest of these allows me to host the forums on a Linux server, which is very fast and good at hosting php forums, and the front end website (not yet completed) that will be visible at pattayatalk.com on a windows server, which allows me to develop a rich website in a language I am more familiar with.
Second. The new logo. I paid a Pakistani guy for this logo upgrade... but I have had a mixed review on it. I am totally open to changing it, and its been suggested by Keyman that we ask you guys if one of you is a graphic artist, if you want to give the creation of a new logo a shot. If you can and feel like giving it a go, please do! We will have a public poll on logo entries (including this current one) and let you guys decide which to keep.
Third, please note: it can take up to a week for the upgrade process to fully finish processing old posts. Until that process is done, posts may have messed up quote markers, bad or poorly formatted photos, or other issues that make them look wrong in some way. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do to speed this process up. I was able to run it manually on the test server which took 3 days, but doing that here now with a live forum would result in speed issues that are just not worth it in the end. The process works by processing approx. 50 items every time someone visits the forum. (provided that one group of 50 is not currently running when that visit starts). There are about 3 million items to process, so obviously this will take some time. Be patient ?
I am going to wait until those background processes completely finish before turning on other new features, and I will create a new post describing each of those as I turn them on. The exception to that wait is the new SSL certificate. That is active already, but not enforced. So you can manually browse to https://forums.pattayatalk.com for a secure session. I will enforce HTTPS traffic exclusively after the background processes complete. (HTTPS does take more server processing time to process, and slightly slows down downloads).
So... so far it appears my months long practice sessions worked pretty well. I am happy with the outcome, so far. I was able to take the process from 12 hours (first attempt), to 3 hours, and with 100% of the errors and issues (there were over 200 of them), handled by my scripts during the upgrade. So we should be good to go.
Let me know what you think, and I will update again once the background processes are completed. As I understand it the more traffic we have the faster that will go ?
Frosty
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As an idea, how about having a forum competition to design a new logo? Saves you having to pay someone and a bit of fun for those of an artistic bent!
By the way, I'm in the Frosty school of drawing, so unfortunately I wont be entering!!
KM
I would be all for that. Will take it up after the upgrade. Doing the initial file transfer now. Once its done, I will have to shut down this website and do it again, updating only changed files (one of the steps I am doing to speed up the transfer process, since doing a full file transfer takes almost 3 hours).
I expect this site to go down in a hour or less.
Hopefully we will be back up before the sun :)
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Good points all.
I do not know what Pete's original intention was, but considering the nature of the forums I strongly suspect it was not intended to portray talking. in any case, for the immediate time being its what we have to work with, until I pay another designer to give it another go. I am terrible with graphic design. give me a good coding issue and I can fix it no problem... but I'm, afraid my stick figures are not recognizable as stick figures when it comes to drawing of any kind lol.
I am prepping the servers for the upgrade now. I plan to start it in the next couple hours.
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i can ask... but I can't just use one from a google search. Thats illegal :)
Most likely the one the guy I hired used is illegal too, but purchasing it from him gives me legal cover lol.
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Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Can't decide which looks better on the site tho. The colored one may be "too much"... but the white one makes the mouth look over-colored. Thoughts anyone?
The white background one will look like this (had to screenshot it from the test forum, since this page has a white background and you cant see it here)
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Another note to self: When hiring a random barely-english-speaking guy from fiverr.com to redo your logo, make sure you are very explicit with what you want.
Sent him our current logo. Told him to make it almost exactly the same, just updated to be more modern and with a color scheme to fit the new forums, and I provided him a link to the test forums to see the colors there. The test forums were at ptalk.servingtulsa.com (which is now down, obviously). Here is the logo I got back lol. Lets hope round 2 goes better. Asked him to add shading and perhaps change the colors a bit. Its too... well... too something. I'm not a graphic artist.
Oh, and I asked him to get the fucking name right. Idiot.
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The time is come... Pattayatalk is getting a facelift. Or maybe beer goggles. Or both.
I will be taking the current site down at some point on Saturday Dec 15 (no set time - just after I wake up), and I will be doing the upgrade to the latest forum software.
I expect the downtime to be less than 6 hours, and with any luck only about 2-3. If any unexpected issues arise during the transition, I will cancel the upgrade and re-activate this website.
After the upgrade, the URL for the forums will change slightly, but going to either www.pattayatalk.com or www.pattayatalk.com/forums will automatically forward you to the new URL. I do not want to give out the new URL just yet because I do not want any traffic at all hitting it until I know the upgrade worked, but I can tell you that the URL will be on the pattayatalk.com domain and will be just as easy (if not easier) to remember... Immediately after the upgrade the web page that is currently at www.pattayatalk.com (the FLB Bar one), will be gone - but the new website may not be in place yet. Eventually there will be a landing page there for the pattayatalk forums that will include some information, a memorial page for Martin and various other links and services for expats and tourists alike. That website is in development now, but I doubt I will finish it by Saturday, so I will simply forward all that traffic directly to the forums.
If you try to visit any pattayatalk.com domain URL while the upgrade is happening, you will see a blank website with a simple warning saying that the website is down for maintenance. Once the site goes live, you can refresh the page to be forwarded to the new forums (hopefully).
I am also going to hire a graphic artist to re-design our pattayatalk logo. I will use the same exact theme, but update it a bit for a more modern look. Until that is done, the new forum will not have a logo, but instead just say "pattayatalk.com".
Will keep this notice up for the next couple days as an advert, so it will be very visible.
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Yes, very easy.
I suggest you complete the registration process and become a standard member of the forum. You will see much more content, including stuff you will want to know before moving here.
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Ok guys.
Todays update went much better and faster than the others, mostly because I am pre-empting all the errors now with a script that I run before and during the transfer process that kills the errors at the root.
Total time for this latest upgrade was only 3.5 hours. Not bad considering the file transfer alone takes almost 2 hours.
Now the fun part. I need some of you to try to break it. I am going to make a post in the secure section (this is in the open section) with the URL for the test site. What want from you guys is to take a look, make a test post. Look shit up. Try to break it, or just give me feedback on the look of the ugly ass default skin. Ill make that post in a few minutes in the Members Bar.
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Hmm. Good ideas. New forum title? Lets revisit that idea once I get us moved.
And on that note, I am in the middle right now of the last test-transfer. I know I have done a lot of these, but each time I have found new issues... so ill continue to do them until all of the issues are solved during the process (and not discovered for the first time). With any luck this one will do the trick, and if so I will leave the test site up tomorrow for the mods to play with for a day or 3, then do the move for real. ITs very close now... I suspect all issues will be fixed by my scripts this run. I hope. lol.
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Likely lack of testing. I've spent well over 100 hours on this already... And I am pretty good with this kind of stuff. I can only imagine how someone without a 30+ year history in IT would handle it.Sure hope the system here is more stable than what I see over at PA after their upgrade. They're still struggling with issues that bring down their forum almost every week. Just tried to log on now and get an Internal Server Error. Not sure if it's inadequate hardware or an incompetent forum admin.
I am trying to make sure i preempt most if not all of the issues that will come up so that hopefully there won't be any lol.
As far as hardware goes that won't be an issue. The server it's on is empty and has way more resources than any single website could ever use.
Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
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From what I've seen of the "new" version on other sites, I much prefer the "old." It is isn't broke, don't fix it.
:)
Its never quite that simple is it?
Support was stopped on this version almost 2 years ago, and there are 32 known script attacks that this version is open to. 12 of those have been noted in US-CERT notifications. Furthermore, we have had almost 1000 fake registrations per week over the last several months. My own scripts are killing most, but not all, of those. Its just a matter of time before someone successfully kills our site with one of the script attacks, and then we will all wish I had updated it.
On top of all that, the server this is on right now is not set up properly. Martin did all the setup himself, and while he was fair with linux, he was not a security expert.
We really do not have much of a choice in the end. We have to upgrade. I know not everyone will be happy with the result, but there is nothing I can do about that.
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Good luck with the changes. The site is pretty much identical to when I joined in 2007 so some changes are well overdue. Can members have any say on the format of the new look site? Perhaps the addition of some new sections? I for one would like to see a section dedicated to Bangkok.
once we get moved, absolutely.
When we first switch over, we will be on a stock template. No customization at all, but with the same forums and sections you can see today. After the move, I am open to any changes that make sense.
Will also be buying an SSL certificate which is something martin never had. that will allow people who chose to the ability to log in via facebook, google, etc.
I will also be trying to find a global chat app of some sort that will let us have a live chat feature for anyone who is online. That will happen fairly quickly after the move.
Also ill be redesigning the landing page, and adding a memorial page for Martin... and likely a few other things.
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Just a thought ... for the new skin, perhaps an old picture of MM, one in his younger days, either overlaid or popped into a frame. There's at least one here somewhere.
Sort of a silent but lasting reminder/memorial
Once I get the website moved to the new server (that is part of the upgrade process), there will be a new website going up that will include something for Martin. The current landing page at www.pattayatalk.com is way out of date, but a technical issue is stopping me from updating it where it is right now... another of the reasons we need this update :)
Pattayatalk.com Board Upgrade Notice - Saturday December 15
in == Announcements ==
Posted
Ya we will be experimenting with it and other logos as soon as the background processes are done. Should be late tomorrow, or early the next day.