Welcome to the New Forum Software! Post Questions and Problems Here

jaredyates

jaredyates

4-Place Kit Builder
Staff member
Welcome, as you can see, we have switched the software running the forum.

Why change?
Unfortunately, our old software was no longer being supported. We were in the process of beta-testing the update when some unscrupulous folks found a vulnerability in the old software. This expedited the change.

I don't like it!
Sorry about that... but I'm not a developer and we have to deal with off-the-shelf products. The good news is that this software, generally, has much more diverse features and settings. If there is anything specific you don't like, please reply below! Maybe it is something we can fix. We'll learn together.

I really like it!
If you find a new feature of the forum especially useful, please post about it so that others can take advantage as well!

Change your password
The vulnerability in the old software may have enabled attackers to download hashed passwords. They would not have a way to view the original text of your password, but just to be sure, all users should be forced into a password change.

My preference would have been to have a little more public discussion about the new software before the cutover, but our timeline became expedited due to the vulnerability of the old software, combined with no available security patch to fix it.
 
An additional feature add to this new release is 2-factor authentication via Passkey and/or TOTP. After you change your password as suggested (highly recommended), consider adding a Passkey to further secure your account. If you're privacy and security conscious, you'll likely know what these are and how to use them.

If you're an uber-nerd like me, you will also welcome the addition of TOTP (Timed, One-Time Passcodes) and Backup Codes. Keep you credentials and our community safe!

1785249906267.png
 
Last edited:
I had to revert to a backup before importing to the new software, so as a result we lost a few hours of activity. I have sent email messages to the folks who registered and posted during that time, as best as I can tell. If you posted or registered during that time and see that your content is missing, please don't take it personally- it wasn't censorship. If you need help recovering the old post please let me know and I'll help.
 
Looking good. So glad I don’t have to learn Turkish to participate.

Passkeys for the win.

Jared: Good on you for keeping current backups and a successful restore. It’s not a trivial process and is stressful to boot. Thank you for your efforts.

Edit: The new search is awesome. I hated the old google search wrapper.
 
In the old software I could see easily if I had read something or not because it changed from bold font to normal font. Is that feature gone now? Thanks for your dedication and the upkeep of this forum!
 
Read state isn’t portable between the old and new environments. So if that’s what you’re seeing, then you’ll probably just need to click the Read All button and start a fresh baseline.

If you read it, and then used the back button and went back to the post list and find it isn’t marked read (I’ve experienced that myself), that’s a browser cache issue. I found refreshing the page revealed that I had read the post.

Perhaps there is a cache setting in the software that can be tweaked to minimize this.
 
Let me know what you see after you revisit something you've read. This might be a setting we need to tweak.
tmcloed68@gmail.com said:
In the old software I could see easily if I had read something or not because it changed from bold font to normal font. Is that feature gone now? Thanks for your dedication and the upkeep of this forum!
Click to expand...
 
My experience was select an unread post, read the post, the back-button to the previous page. It was still showing unread because of cached content. Refreshing the page then showed it as read.

You had the last site wired nicely. Best cache control I’ve experienced. 😊
 
Chris In Wisconsin said:
Read state isn’t portable between the old and new environments. So if that’s what you’re seeing, then you’ll probably just need to click the Read All button and start a fresh baseline.

If you read it, and then used the back button and went back to the post list and find it isn’t marked read (I’ve experienced that myself), that’s a browser cache issue. I found refreshing the page revealed that I had read the post.

Perhaps there is a cache setting in the software that can be tweaked to minimize this.
Click to expand...
This worked. Clicked read all and then started a new baseline. Thanks
 
Chris In Wisconsin said:
My experience was select an unread post, read the post, the back-button to the previous page. It was still showing unread because of cached content. Refreshing the page then showed it as read.

You had the last site wired nicely. Best cache control I’ve experienced. 😊
Click to expand...
It doesn't look like we can fix this. The best alternatives are to use the breadcrumbs or refresh after you press back.
 
Thank you Jared for your continued and long-running support for our community.

I know this stuff is time consuming and not straightforward, so I really appreciate all you do for us!
 
If I recall correctly, the old forum had a world map with locations of builders/owners. Am I misremembering, and if not, will something like that be migrated here?
 
I second and third the comments of thanks to Jared for all he continues to do for the Bearhawk community!
 
I agree, great work! i would get bounced off in the middle of making posts previously. This is no longer happening.
 
Not a complaint but a suggestion if possible. Since the new software seems to show many more posts per page and it attempts to preload all the images on that page, it has to be eating up bandwidth to download every image, plus it makes the page jump around as the images are loaded. Is there a "lazy loading" option that would load the images on demand? Ie-when you scroll down? Just a thought
 
predragvasic said:
If I recall correctly, the old forum had a world map with locations of builders/owners. Am I misremembering, and if not, will something like that be migrated here?
Click to expand...
The map link should now show as a link at the top of the page, under the header image, where it says "Home" "Forums" "what's new" "members" etc. Please let me know if you don't see it!
 
Mark Dickens said:
Not a complaint but a suggestion if possible. Since the new software seems to show many more posts per page and it attempts to preload all the images on that page, it has to be eating up bandwidth to download every image, plus it makes the page jump around as the images are loaded. Is there a "lazy loading" option that would load the images on demand? Ie-when you scroll down? Just a thought
Click to expand...
Hi Mark this one is a little more tricky and I have been reading up and learning about it some. Xenforo doesn't seem to have a per-user option for how many posts load per page. There have been feature requests for this for many years but the developers have declined to add the feature, citing problems with certain link structures. For example, if there is a link to the 22nd post on the 3rd page, then if the number of posts per page is variable, that link breaks. I'm not sure how often that link structure is used in our forum but that's one reason they cite.

There is a global/sitewide setting for how many posts should load per page, which is currently set quite large. This reflects my own preference, which I understand is not necessarily a universal preference, and perhaps we can talk more about that as a community.

Regarding the lazy loading, the forum software passes along a lazy loading attribute to images. For example:
Code: 
<img src="/data/attachments/1/1359-b08236a20e246b25531e35ae055564cf.jpg?hash=8H0aONnd4L" srcset="/data/attachments/1/2x/1359-b08236a20e246b25531e35ae055564cf.jpg?hash=8H0aONnd4L 2x" alt="2013-03-20 21.11.15.jpg" width="201" height="150" loading="lazy">

This attribute should be forcing lazy loading, but I just tried visiting a single post at the end of a long page via the "latest activity" link and definitely see what you mean. I will investigate more.
 
Last edited:
I think I have a theory about the problem. There are two different kinds of images that are displayed in posts. We have thumbnails, and full-size inline images. When a thumbnail is specified, its dimensions are coded in the page, so your browser "saves space" for it. Even if the image isn't loaded yet, it knows how big of a spot to keep open, and this prevents the page from jumping around as the images fully load.

The other case comes when the creator adds the full-size image inline, instead of the thumbnail. Currently, the software is not properly reserving space for that image, because the dimensions are not being coded correctly. Well, the dimensions are in the code, but somehow they aren't getting honored in the browser.

I have just updated a setting on the back end to specify a maximum attachment size of 2048 pixels for height and width, so if I understand that setting correctly, the software should be sizing the images correctly for all new threads. The bad news is that I have not yet found a way to do this retroactively, and it will only apply to new uploads going forward.

I'm going to keep working on it. Thank you very much for bringing up the pain points Mark, it's only through these kinds of flags that we can make the forum better!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top