Scott =)

2 hours ago, VintageComics said:

I continue to get Errors every time I use the search function for Private Messages. It's happened multiple times.

When I 'resend' the information it works the 2nd time.

 

Hey Vintage - PM search worked for me with my account. I only have a couple hundred private messages, though.

I'm guessing that performance / errors are directly related to how many private messages you have (and possibly how far back they go, and how many people are included on them, etc). I'm betting that bigger inbox = slower search and increased likelihood of errors.

Just to confirm - I'm assuming you have many, many thousands of private messages, and they probably go all the way back to your join date, and many of them probably have lots of other people included. Does that sound right? Feel free to PM me the answers if you'd prefer.

Once I understand your situation a little better, I'll raise the issue to the boards vendor and see if they have any advice.

Thanks,

Scott

50 minutes ago, comicdonna said:

I just got a bunch of notifications from last Friday.  How's the fix coming, @Scott =)?

The fix went live a couple minutes before your post 

There are a LOT of notifications and other background processes queued up... I'm guessing it will be a day or so before it's fully caught up on everything.

On 11/22/2019 at 9:13 AM, VintageComics said:

Scott, appreciate the reply but this new thread has very little to do with the current problem and is about long standing issues on the new forum software that haven't been resolved.

There seem to be a lot of people who voice the same complaints and would like solutions to the following problems (copied from my fist post):

1) when I get a PM notification and click on it, my PM opens to the 1st page of the PM string and not the newest message. Highly irritating and it really is unacceptable. Is there any sort of solution for this that I've missed?

2) when I am doing searches I often get a time out and an error and have to retry. I would say this happens at least once every 5-10 searches. Anybody else? Another thing that is unacceptable.

3) Once I read / seen a post that I've been notified about, the notification from the Notifications bell at the top of the screen should remove the notification. It doesn't. I have to go up there and check the notifications redundantly to make it go away.

4) They've changed the PM search function and now older messages don't show up in my searches (since the change)

 

Hi Vintage!

1) I don't experience this problem when using the envelope icon at the top right of the site . When you click that envelope and then right click one of the messages and choose "Copy link address" in your browser, what URL does it give you? It gives me a URL ending in ?latest=1, and that means when I click the message it automatically brings me to the last message in the conversation. This is true for me regardless of whether I've read the conversation already. 

I see that if I go to https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/messenger/ and click one of the messages in the left panel, it brings me to the first message in the conversation. I don't see any options for you to change how this behaves, and I don't see any way for me to customize how it works as an admin either. The boards host (Invision) would need to create that option.

2) I'm not seeing this issue either. If this happens to you frequently, it could be helpful to know what search parameters you're entering and what specific error you're seeing. Feel free to PM me screenshots next time it happens.

3) I see what you mean. This would be nice, but it's not a feature of the chat boards currently. The boards host (Invision) would need to build it.

4) I was able to search for a message from 2010 successfully. How old is "older"? And do you have a huge inbox? It would be extremely helpful if you could PM me a screenshot of an example message in your inbox along with the failing search terms you're using to try to search for it.

Scott

Hi everyone,

There's an error in the admin tools that has been interfering with background processing tasks for several days. This is why view counts/notifications/etc have been unreliable lately. I'm guessing it's causing other issues too.

We're working to get it resolved as quickly as possible, but it may take a few more days. Thanks for your patience!

Getting it fixed won't solve everything that's been mentioned in this thread, but it's a good start 

Scott

This is fixed!

From this point forward, name changes should appear via the link on the profile page (seen in the screenshot above)

Hi there!

It should be fixed already.

Are you still seeing this problem? If so, can you tell me which submission # you're searching for and/or share a screenshot?

Hi everyone! Here's a quick update:

The boards host has been making updates to our setup, without necessarily notifying us ahead of time . Some of the changes they've made have led to periods of unavailability, but it looks like we're OK for now.

One change triggered all posts to be re-indexed. This is a good thing long term, but re-indexing posts takes time. It typically runs for several days.

The boards host may be making additional updates from now through Sunday. I'm working to get a better understanding of impact and exact timeframe.

---

We're also going to be updating the Boards to version 4.4.0 soon. It's supposed to improve performance among other benefits... including a fix for display name history

As with any boards upgrade, there may be unintended impacts. Upgrading PMG to 4.4.0 is already underway, and we're working to find issues and get them fixed. After that, we'll upgrade NGC... and then CGC. Upgrading PMG/NGC first helps us minimize the impact on this bigger community.

Thank you for your patience, and sorry for any inconveniences you've been experiencing lately.

Scott

We have a fix for this, and we're working on getting it applied.

Hopefully it'll be ready in the next week or so.

Thanks for the heads up!

Scott

8 minutes ago, BlowUpTheMoon said:

@Scott =) Why are all of these links broken? 

Those links are 14 years old, and it looks the URLs aren't handled by redirects.

The "typical" URL format for old boards links is something like this:

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=9712605

One thing you can try when encountering old broken links is pulling the "number" out of the old URL and substituting it into the URL above. For example:

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=322791

It's hard for me to tell if that brings you to the "correct" place. If that brings you to the wrong place/thread, I'm not sure what else can be done 

Hey!

Thanks for the heads up - I'll look into this and ask the vendor what's going on.

I noticed that the online user count has been quite a bit higher than usual lately, which is probably contributing.

I'll keep you posted.

The links in the OPs have been corrected.

Hey bababooey!

I'll see what I can do to get the links fixed.

Thanks for mentioning it and happy Thanksgiving!

Scott

On 11/11/2018 at 8:54 AM, oakman29 said:

How can you tell when someone has you on Ignore?

You can't.

Even as an admin, I'm not aware of any way to see a list of everyone who is ignoring someone. 

Hi Kav!

I'm sorry you're having a bad experience with the login process. Here are a couple quick troubleshooting questions:

1. Are you selecting the "Remember Me" checkbox when logging in?
2. Are you using Incognito mode in Chrome?
3. Are you using "Private" mode in iOS / Safari?

If your answer to #2 or #3 is YES, you won't remain logged in even if you checked "Remember me".

Hope this helps.

Scott

I've updated Last Reply to be the default sorting option!

I was hoping more people would vote on this, but oh well. We can always change it back if necessary...

Thanks to everyone who voted!

I realized that blocking rover is no longer necessary, so I removed it from the special words list.

Old instances of the word rover will still be filtered out (it does a permanent replace, rather than filtering it at display time), but you should be free to use it moving forward.

Looks like that word is on the special words list, due to how it’s used in eBay affiliate links!

Nope! I created it on the 26th but it was hidden until about 10 minutes ago.

I was waiting for a bug in the "Last Reply" sorting to be fixed before publishing it 

You can vote on sorting for the new journals here: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/440344-journal-sorting/

That seems unlikely.

I think a more likely outcome would be for us to create a new forum section, not branded as "CGC Journals", but otherwise similar to the old section. 

We could set it up to allow new threads to be created, and we could migrate threads from the old journals section there too if authors requested it.

We would just need to come up with a name for it... 

Thanks for the feedback everyone. A couple tweaks have been made already based on your comments:

1. "By Author" has been removed from the main menu. Analytics showed it was being clicked/used significantly less frequently than "Latest Entries", and you can still access the "By Author" view by using this toggle:
2. "Latest Entries" in the main menu has been renamed to "All Journals". Hopefully this makes it easier to understand the purpose of each option under "Journals" in the main menu.
3. The tooltips seen in the image above have been clarified (ex: "Organize by Author").

Other changes are still in progress:

1. I asked the boards vendor to look into the sorting issue with journals in the sidebar. There seems to be a caching issue causing it to be sorted incorrectly sometimes, and actions like making edits to an existing journal may also be affecting the sorting in unwanted ways.
2. We DO have the ability to make "Last Reply" the default sort option instead of "Start Date", which would reduce 4 clicks to 2 clicks. But there are a couple issues with "Last Reply" sorting that I'd like to get fixed before considering making it the default.

----

I also want to clarify the situation of certain old journal entries not being migrated, such as the ones by oldmilwaukee6er and Hepcat. I touched on this in the original announcement thread, but I'll explain it in more detail this time.

The Journals feature was originally introduced on Collectors Society over 10 years ago. After several years, a feature was added that allowed authors to cross post Collectors Society journal entries to the Chat Boards so that others could reply. Some authors took advantage of that feature, and many didn't.

We never intended to allow journal entries to be created directly in the Journals section on the Chat Boards (bypassing Collectors Society), but a broken setting made it possible for an unknown period of time. Hepcat's thread is one example of a journal entry that was created directly on the Chat Boards, and so is the thread by oldmilwaukee6er quoted above. Not many threads were created like this.

The boards vendor was supposed to migrate all existing journal entries to the new journals area as we transitioned to the new Chat Boards in early 2017. Anticipating that migration, we removed the journals features from the CS site. Unfortunately, the boards vendor strung us along about the migration for months, and then ultimately said they wouldn't do it. The result was that every journal entry originally created on Collectors Society and not cross-posted to the Chat Boards was missing. That's almost 1300 journal entries, not even including coin/note entries. Those of you who only use the Chat Boards might not have noticed anything was wrong, but the missing entries were a big deal to Collectors Society users. Getting those journal entries back online was one of the main goals of our recent migration.

Earlier this year, we reached out to the boards vendor again to explain our disappointment at that situation and figure out a resolution. They eventually agreed to migrate our old Collectors Society journal database into the new journals area, but wouldn't help with any of the following:

1. Migrating journals that were created directly on the Chat Boards into the new journal area (this is why that Hepcat/oldmilwaukee journals aren't listed in the new journals area).
2. Migrating replies from old journal entries into the new journal area (they only agreed to add a link to the old thread).
3. Migrating CS journal entries into the old journals area on the chat boards.

In an ideal world, we would have done some of those things ourselves since the boards vendor wasn't willing to help. Unfortunately, that's not possible because we don't have access to the Chat Boards database. We rely on the vendor for data / migration oriented tasks 

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/blogs/?view=grid

On that page, Journals are sorted on "Start Date" by default. You can adjust that sorting by using the "Sort By" menu, as seen in the image below:

I've heard feedback from some members that they'd prefer "Last Reply" to be the default sort instead of "Start Date".

Please use this poll to vote for your preference! Whichever option gets more votes will be made the default option.

Thanks,
Scott

No, tnerb's journals are alive and well.

Here are all of tnerb's journals in the new format: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/blogs/blog/40-in-the-dark/

If you want to see his journals in the old format / section, you can:

1. Flip through the pages of the old journals section and look for his name
2. Use the search function 

Heads up: we've made a couple design tweaks to this page: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/blogs/?view=grid

The biggest change is the addition of the "Sort By" dropdown towards the top. This should make it easier to find popular journal entries or sort by "Last Reply" instead of "Start Date" if you'd prefer.

"Start Date" is still the default sort for now.

We've also tweaked font sizes and made other minor adjustments to make the page more readable and usable on different size devices.

It looks like you already know this, but yes that account is a real CGC account.