Customer complaint [message #22239] |
Sun, 23 January 2005 14:06 |
ThomasKirk
Messages: 1 Registered: January 2005 Location: St. Paul, MN
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Junior Member |
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I'm not a programmer, I'm a regular poster on the Star Tribune discussion forum which uses FUDforum 2.3.8, as well as other discussion groups.
The FUDforum 2.3.8 is the suckiest software I have ever seen anywhere. It INSISTS on describing me as being female in the profile section and using WebTV, it only lets me see other people's usernames, not their real name, it doesn't display my tag line to me, but it does to others. It won't let me edit my tag line which has a typo in it, or make any other corrections or changes to my profile. Clint, the sysop says there's NOTHING HE CAN DO TO FIX IT.
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Re: Customer complaint [message #22252 is a reply to message #22240] |
Mon, 24 January 2005 15:32 |
Ilia
Messages: 13241 Registered: January 2002
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Senior Member Administrator Core Developer |
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That forum uses fairly dated version and has been very heavily customized. The bugs in that forum hardly reflect on FUDforum in general. If you see a bug on that forum contact the operators and ask them to fix it.
FUDforum Core Developer
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Re: Customer complaint [message #22351 is a reply to message #22252] |
Sat, 29 January 2005 17:35 |
ThomasL
Messages: 1 Registered: January 2005 Location: Minnesota
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Junior Member |
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FUDforum Core Developer: "That forum uses fairly dated version and has been very heavily customized."
In view of the heavy customization and the nature of the bugs (please read list below), what steps would you advise to upgrade without causing the loss or corruption of the data (posts, profiles, member list, etc.), or must the sysop sacrifice all the data and do a clean installation? The last upgrade caused more problems than it fixed, such as the loss of all the posts for one subtopic.
Like Kirk above, I too am a member of the Minneapolis Star Tribune FUDforum and not privy to the overall extent of the problems. In addition to the inconsistencies between members that he experienced, the bugs I've encountered have been cumulative and seemingly random, as follows (in the approximate order of their first appearance, with the most recent on top):
* FUDforum repeatedly does not accept username/password. This has happened to four other members that I know of, including the sysop's spouse. For the past month I've been unable to log in.
* After re-registering, FUDforum does not accept new username, although the new username appears on the members list. This has happened to three other members that I know of, including the sysop's spouse.
* When reading posts without logging in, FUDforum frequently delivers a blank page (nothing downloaded) when I click on the main forum page, on "Last posting," or on any of the page-number or page-name links. Blank pages now exceed normal pages, and I've gotten as many as 10 blank pages in succession.
* In the members list (in order by join date), there is a missing block of usernames (p.316, between the join dates of Thu, 01 January 1970 and Wed, 29 December 2004).
* Searching for some valid usernames with join dates in the missing block returns "NO SUCH USER." However, searching for other valid usernames in the missing block is successful.
* Some multi-page topics have no page-number links. From time to time, the links alternately reappear, disappear, etc. When they reappear, they may not show the correct page numbers.
* On multi-page topics, an up arrow to the previous page may be missing on the first post on the last page.
* Frequently, the table width exceeds the width of the screen slightly, so that the horizontal cell borders do not connect with the left vertical border, and scrolling right is necessary to read the ends of the lines of text.
* Once all table & cell borders disappeared for several successive days.
* Once I got two identical, successive pages in "Today's posts."
* A few times I received the error message: UNABLE TO WRITE TO SQL LOG FILE.
Note1: My list is associated only with my use of the topic Faith & Values at:
http://online.startribune.com/forum/index.php
Scroll down to Talk Index and click on Loose Talk Too => Faith and Values
Note2: This is my first post here. On the Star Trib FUDforum, I could log in using session cookies only. I don't like the fact that on this version I have to accept all cookies. What is the reason for that?
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Re: Customer complaint [message #22352 is a reply to message #22351] |
Sat, 29 January 2005 18:41 |
Ilia
Messages: 13241 Registered: January 2002
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Senior Member Administrator Core Developer |
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The nature of the customization on that forum is difficult to determine just by looking @ the generated pages. I suspect in addition to the layout changes big changes in the underlying code have been performed as well and as such standard upgrade procedure may not be applicable.
The standard upgrade script will upgrade any forum version released in the past 2 years or so to the latest release without data loss, that much is guaranteed. But on a heavily modified forum such as Star Tribune where the code and possibly the database structure has been altered it may need to be modified.
Basically, one possible step is to make a backup of the forum, try performing the stock upgrade and seeing if that will work. If it does not you'd always have backups to revert to.
FUDforum Core Developer
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