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Problems, Issues, and Questions with Invision Upgrade to IPB 4.1.10


DonRocks

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Hello everyone, 

Please use this thread as a central repository for reporting the undoubtedly numerous questions, issues, concerns, problems, bugs, etc. that you will have after this significant upgrade to Invision's latest version. The version we had been using on our previous host, Dreamhost, was so old that all "Advanced Support" had been discontinued awhile back, and *all* support was going to be discontinued in another month or so - I didn't even realize this, which is yet another reason why I'm happy we went back to using Invision as our host, as well as the providers of our forum software (these are two entirely separate things, but if Invision hosts the website, it makes things easier on them when it comes to fixing bugs, etc.) I am going to point out this thread to their support staff, and they may be monitoring it, so please be as descriptive and informative as possible.. 

This version, 4.1.10, has *many* new features, and all the settings I had changed have been reset back to the default settings. I knew this would happen in advance, and had no problem with it because there weren't that many non-default settings we've been using. For example, I chose to display the maximum number of posts allowable per page (50), and notice that this has been reset to 25, which I assume is the default. 

Also, a "Carriage Return" will now automatically create a double-space, which is *great* in between paragraphs, but is a feature that must be used judiciously, i.e., don't use it at all unless you really *want* to double space. I am going to ask everyone to double space after a box of quoted text (which is the normal case when replying to someone's post), and also between paragraphs, while single spacing between lines within any given paragraph (like this three-line paragraph right here).

So I can better keep track of things, please report things using as much detail (screenshots, description (e.g., is the problem repeatable every time), etc. using the "one issue per post" format - this will help me to mentally keep track of problems, and will minimize the chances of missing things. Again, unless it's merely a question, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to include as much detail as you possibly can (but also, don't assume I'm an idiot - you don't need to spend 20 minutes reporting an issue that is easily understood - I can *always* reply by asking for my detail and clarification).

Thank you, and please feel free to ask as many questions as you like. I understand that people (myself included) are resistant to change, and this certainly qualifies as "being a change," but I'm certain that once things become familiar, the new features will be so beneficial that they'll outweigh any issues we now have, and are likely to continue having for days if not weeks.

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13 minutes ago, Bart said:

Very glad you're back!!!

Is the "unread posts" button the same as the "new content" button on the old system?  I'm assuming it is, but there's no new content to test it out on yet.

Beats the heck out of me. Believe me, my learning curve is starting at about the same level yours is. I *think* it is, but there are many more options in this version.

All of those unprintable black diamonds, btw, including in the "Lettres de Mon Moulin" blog, are GONE! It took me over two years to get rid of those.

There's going to be a lot of things for me to change. Just a few minutes ago, for example, I discovered that we had a "reputation system" for members set, and I don't want that - everything is set to what the Invision defaults are, and I deviate from a lot of those - I don't want posts, for example, to be "ranked." If  you see a setting you object to, please bring it up here - it's quite possibly because I haven't even seen it yet.

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3 minutes ago, lion said:

Congratulations on getting up and running again!

Good to have you back, lion. I have a big learning curve ahead of me - like the rest of you, my initial impression is that I don't really love the way the system looks, but I suppose I'll get used to it - one day we'll have some funding, and the content is really all that will matter, and the content is still here.

The good news is that there's a *lot* of new features, both from the administrator end, and from the individual members' end.

 

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Don, glad to have you and DR.com back again!  From what you've said so far upthread, can I assume that the current configuration is the way it's going to look going forward?  You're not going to be able to tweak some things and have it looking like it used to?  I ask only because I was really attached to the previous functionality and this new look is a bit jarring.  

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The new look is most likely here to stay (I didn't even know there *was* a new look until last week). However, the functionality can probably be changed to whatever members want it to be. I, for one, am used to seeing members signed on at the bottom of the screen, and am wondering if there's a way to reincorporate that (right now, there's a tab you can click on top). That, and about fifty other things.

My guess (and it's only a guess) is that this may be like when Facebook underwent radical changes, and started looking like Twitter. People were on fire, but then slowly got acclimated to the changes, and now can't even remember what the old Facebook looked like. But the difference here is that I have nothing to do with this! I don't like it either, but the good thing is that there has been no loss of functionality - only a gain. So there will be a lot more new features in this version. I guess this is sort of like "Invision 2.0."

There will come a day when I pay a designer to design and implement an interface that doesn't look like this, but that's going to cost me a fair amount of money - still, I'm going to do it. It's just a matter of when, and how. Until then, we have 11 years-worth of content, and additional functionality, so there has actually been a net *gain* despite it being extremely unsettling to look at.

I've also noticed that some titles with apostrophes in them didn't get converted correctly - I have a problem ticket in with Invision, and that will be fixed quickly, I'm sure. Things like that will be no problem, and settings (number of posts per page, etc.) will also be no problem. I might even let some members go through the administrator settings, study them, and make recommendations to me. This is the problem when one person (who doesn't know what the hell he's doing) does everything - if something changes beyond his control, *everyone* gets hosed. But I'm still hopeful that despite the *looks* of this new version, it's going to be a big improvement - everything that was here before, is still here (I think).

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On mobile, is it possible to compress the page a bit so you don't have to do a lot of scrolling to get to the forum you want? Perhaps by cutting down on each forum's description? The older version was superior in that regard.

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52 minutes ago, Deac said:

On mobile, is it possible to compress the page a bit so you don't have to do a lot of scrolling to get to the forum you want? Perhaps by cutting down on each forum's description? The older version was superior in that regard.

I will ask Invision. I don't use mobile much on this website because I have to type so much, but I will ask.

---

ETA - Okay, the problem ticket has been submitted.

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Just now, DonRocks said:

I will ask Invision. I don't use mobile much on this website because I have to type so much, but I will ask.

 

Thanks. I just pulled it up on my phone, and, for example, the Baltimore restaurant forum description takes up the near entirety of my screen -- iPhone 6S with default text size.

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18 minutes ago, Deac said:

 

Thanks. I just pulled it up on my phone, and, for example, the Baltimore restaurant forum description takes up the near entirety of my screen -- iPhone 6S with default text size.

I also can't edit your post - I was going to try and remove the leading spaces, but I don't have the option, so I submitted that as a problem also. (As Administrator, I should be able to Edit anything.)

There sure seems to be a *lot* of white space in this version, and I may have to "unpin" some pinned topics. 

But when I read an article on washingtonpost.com, for example, this one:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-and-trump-hope-ny-primary-cements-their-front-runner-status/2016/04/19/0122daa4-061a-11e6-b283-e79d81c63c1b_story.html

there's a lot of white space there, too. Maybe that's "the way things are" now? I don't like it - it's a waste of space and forces users to scroll.

I can already tell this will be going on for days, probably weeks, and will slowly taper off, but there's no other choice. People will be repulsed by the new look, and not want to participate, and I can only hope that they'll trickle back in. 

I have company this week, but beginning next Monday, I'm going to be putting a full-court press on this website. Even this week, I'm on it, and I'm going to stay with this until people are happy.

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50 minutes ago, Deac said:

Thanks. I just pulled it up on my phone, and, for example, the Baltimore restaurant forum description takes up the near entirety of my screen -- iPhone 6S with default text size.

Deac, this was the reply:

Hello, I'm sorry there isn't an option for this, in IPS4 the site uses the same theme for mobile and for desktop, it will auto adjust to different screen sizes as well though.

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Reported to Invision: Chinese Characters not resolving properly in a thread title. If you go to the thread, and look up at the top of the screen, you can see the characters are fine in the URL, but merely aren't being translated properly for display. (For ease of reference, once problems like this get solved, I will Edit the post, and say so down at the bottom.)

 

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On 4/19/2016 at 1:44 PM, Deac said:

Thanks. I just pulled it up on my phone, and, for example, the Baltimore restaurant forum description takes up the near entirety of my screen -- iPhone 6S with default text size.

@Deac have you tried the "Show condensed view" button at the top right of the Unread content page (http://www.donrockwell.com/index.php?/discover/unread/)? The "Show expanded view" button is a square & the "Show condensed view" button is a square with a line on the left & bottom.

  dr-screencap-expandcollapse.jpg

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1 hour ago, curls said:

@Deac have you tried the "Show condensed view" button at the top right of the Unread content page (http://www.donrockwell.com/index.php?/discover/unread/)? The "Show expanded view" button is a square & the "Show condensed view" button is a square with a line on the left & bottom.

  dr-screencap-expandcollapse.jpg

Thank you, this helps at least! Any idea if the site will retain this preference or if we will have to click on it each time? I really hope the former.

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1 hour ago, Choirgirl21 said:

Thank you, this helps at least! Any idea if the site will retain this preference or if we will have to click on it each time? I really hope the former.

It retains the preference for me. Hope it does for you too!

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3 hours ago, Bart said:

In the body of Metier thread the name of the restaurant is displayed like this Métier, but in the subject line, it is displayed correctly with all the accent marks.

I have this reported as a problem ticket with Invision, so am purposely not fixing them manually (yet).

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It appears there is no way to turn off notifications.  Even if someone has selected not to follow anything automatically, under "Method to use for content I follow automatically," the option for receiving "A notification when new content is posted" is turned on by default and does not seem to be something that can be turned off.  (There is no way not to have an option selected in that section.)

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7 minutes ago, Pat said:

It appears there is no way to turn off notifications.  Even if someone has selected not to follow anything automatically, under "Method to use for content I follow automatically," the option for receiving "A notification when new content is posted" is turned on by default and does not seem to be something that can be turned off.  (There is no way not to have an option selected in that section.)

It could be because you're Membership Director.

Have you tried reviewing Pat -> Account Settings -> Notification Settings, and examining that entire page before clicking "Save?"

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11 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

It could be because you're Membership Director.

Have you tried reviewing Pat -> Account Settings -> Notification Settings, and examining that entire page before clicking "Save?"

As Membership Director, I've noticed it in other people's accounts as well ^_^. There doesn't seem to be any way not to have something selected in that section.  The other parts of the notification settings are boxes.  These are circles and one must be marked.  That wouldn't be a problem, except that it's being activated with nothing selected in the previous section (for content to follow automatically).  I have no automatic notifications set but I'm getting one every time I am quoted.

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4 minutes ago, Pat said:

As Membership Director, I've noticed it in other people's accounts as well ^_^. There doesn't seem to be any way not to have something selected in that section.  The other parts of the notification settings are boxes.  These are circles and one must be marked.  That wouldn't be a problem, except that it's being activated with nothing selected in the previous section (for content to follow automatically).  I have no automatic notifications set but I'm getting one every time I am quoted.

There will be a solution; right now, some pretty tragic news has come out.

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8 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

There will be a solution; right now, some pretty tragic news has come out.

Very sad news.  I went into my detailed notification settings and found that some things got changed from what they were (apparently default, from the new software), and that seems to account for the problem I was having.  I wouldn't have thought they overrode the other settings, but apparently they did.

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When on my phone and I click on a link in an email to take me to the thread, there is no way to get to the top of the page. For instance, when I go to the Capella Hotel post, it takes me to the last post. But if I start to scroll to get to the top, there appears to be no delineation of pages and the scrolling keeps going...and going...and going...I assume until I would reach the first post. I was looking for a "scroll to top" arrow or something, to no avail.

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2 hours ago, squidsdc said:

When on my phone and I click on a link in an email to take me to the thread, there is no way to get to the top of the page. For instance, when I go to the Capella Hotel post, it takes me to the last post. But if I start to scroll to get to the top, there appears to be no delineation of pages and the scrolling keeps going...and going...and going...I assume until I would reach the first post. I was looking for a "scroll to top" arrow or something, to no avail.

I can probably find you one. I set the number of posts per page to 100 - it used to be 50, but it can be anything you want.

This is a result of me never using the website on mobile phones; I didn't even think of this, but I can change the number in a matter of seconds.

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6 hours ago, DonRocks said:

I can probably find you one. I set the number of posts per page to 100 - it used to be 50, but it can be anything you want.

This is a result of me never using the website on mobile phones; I didn't even think of this, but I can change the number in a matter of seconds.

I used to have the number of posts per page set high for my laptop, but I believe the old version had a sort of freeze frame at the top when I brought it up on my iPhone so you could always go to the home page or bring up settings or bring up a different topic. And not have to scroll endlessly to do so. Isn't there a "mobile" version so it won't behave the same on both? (I thought that was a big reason for upgrading)

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I cannot seem to upload picture files. I have 3 pictures, all of which are under 2MB, that I tried to upload to a post in the Kinship thread. Even if I tried to just upload one of these sub-2MB files, it keeps telling me that I am only allowed to upload 2MB. Which is what I am trying to do. ARGH!

Also, that limit is pretty darn low. If you do a post with, say, 10 pictures, even if you dumb them down to 2MB each, that is still 20MB. This limit should be lifted, IMHO, in conjunction with fixing the ability to upload images.

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10 hours ago, DonRocks said:

I can probably find you one. I set the number of posts per page to 100 - it used to be 50, but it can be anything you want.

This is a result of me never using the website on mobile phones; I didn't even think of this, but I can change the number in a matter of seconds.

Here's one vote for going back to 50 posts per page.

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Can the system be setup to take you to the first unread post instead of always starting at the top of the page? I think it used to work like this before the upgrade. Then if you left the number of posts per page at 100, we wouldn't have to scroll so much to get to the last thing we read.

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6 hours ago, squidsdc said:

I used to have the number of posts per page set high for my laptop, but I believe the old version had a sort of freeze frame at the top when I brought it up on my iPhone so you could always go to the home page or bring up settings or bring up a different topic. And not have to scroll endlessly to do so. Isn't there a "mobile" version so it won't behave the same on both? (I thought that was a big reason for upgrading)

Scroll up for the answer. (Sorry!)

3 hours ago, Pool Boy said:

I cannot seem to upload picture files. I have 3 pictures, all of which are under 2MB, that I tried to upload to a post in the Kinship thread. Even if I tried to just upload one of these sub-2MB files, it keeps telling me that I am only allowed to upload 2MB. Which is what I am trying to do. ARGH!

Also, that limit is pretty darn low. If you do a post with, say, 10 pictures, even if you dumb them down to 2MB each, that is still 20MB. This limit should be lifted, IMHO, in conjunction with fixing the ability to upload images.

I can change this setting, and will do so.

2 hours ago, curls said:

Can the system be setup to take you to the first unread post instead of always starting at the top of the page? I think it used to work like this before the upgrade. Then if you left the number of posts per page at 100, we wouldn't have to scroll so much to get to the last thing we read.

I don't know - I'll ask Invision. 

In fact, I gave them the URL to this post, and asked for directions to set all three things (squids, I'm afraid there's now only one version for both mobile and desktop - for me, that's better, for them, that's probably better, but no change can possibly please everyone).

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5 hours ago, curls said:

Can the system be setup to take you to the first unread post instead of always starting at the top of the page? I think it used to work like this before the upgrade. Then if you left the number of posts per page at 100, we wouldn't have to scroll so much to get to the last thing we read.

It would appear if you click on the "X hours ago" (or whatever the time since the last post has been) thingee in the lower left corner, instead of the thread title, it does take you to the most recent post, which is probably fairly close to your first unread one most of the time???

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10 hours ago, MC Horoscope said:

Just wondering. I tried to attach a photo saved to Google Drive from my Motorola cell phone/tip calculator machine with the Anamadroid operating system and apparently the file was too large. How would I post photos? Thanks!

I asked Invision about how to set the maximum size and types of attachments allowed - they'll get back to me in the next day.

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On 4/20/2016 at 3:24 PM, curls said:

It retains the preference for me. Hope it does for you too!

Indeed it does, thanks.

I will admit, the change was a shock at first, but having ironed a few things like this, as in all other things like sudden Facebook changes I am adjusting. :)

FYI, I was having the same issue with uploading photos. I ended up uploading to Photobucket and including links, which allowed me to post the photos without issue, but could not post them as attachments despite them being within the size guidelines. I know you've already submitted a ticket for this Don.

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