Major Grid Sage Forums Update

[Kyzrati]

For better or worse, the forums have undergone a rather significant update! Not something I wanted to suddenly spend so many hours doing, a complete reinstall followed by updating all settings and mods, but a recent server PHP update made it necessary...

Unfortunately as a result the cool old GSF forum theme we've been using for the past decade is no longer compatible, so I've found a serviceable replacement and done a few edits, though not sure how much further I'll go with editing it for better quality aside from addressing any issues that pop up. We'll see about that.

On the good side, updating did streamline a number of things on the backend as well as provide some important benefits:

• Effective e-mail notifications are probably back?! The emailing had become unreliable a while back, and as of the past week even new registration emails weren't going out, but it seems to be in working order after a proper update. You may want to check your notification settings if you prefer email notification, in case something got reset there, but I believe those settings probably carried over fine.
• Better performance! Not that it was super slow earlier, but it's always nice to be able to take advantage of performance improvements.

We did also lose mouseover-based spoiler tagging, replaced instead by a collapsable spoiler tag, but I guess the latter style does have its advantages as well.

spoiler example

REDACTED! But while you're here, the Protoforge is coming to Cogmind Beta 15, a top-secret heavily defended facility deep in the Research branches...

[close]

And the original automated "drop a YouTube link in a post to directly embed it" behavior is now instead an explicit BBCode tag, so to embed a video you can use this new syntax:

Code Select Expand

[youtube]ID_HERE[/youtube]e.g. just...

Code Select Expand

[youtube]3b11EA6XW3w[/youtube]
Most other forum functionality should be the same, and working smootly, but if you see something off or have other observations, feel free to let me know.

Edit: One issue since brought to my attention that I didn't realize was the need for members to re-agree to the privacy policy after the update. It's the same standard policy as before, but I was originally using a mod to adhere to GDPR, whereas now that functionality is integrated into the forums itself, which needs to collect the proper data as the mod was a separate thing.

Edit 2: Another issue/bug in the SMF forum code which apparently hasn't been addressed after two years of reports is that upgrading the forums to the new alert system apparently did NOT properly migrate email notifications. So if you have/had email alerts set up, not only are those disabled by default and switched to regular in-forum alerts, even if you go back and change your notification settings to provide emails as well, this does not apply to any specific boards or threads previously set to that behavior. So to get proper email alerts on older content, or specific boards, you will need to actually go into your notification list and set those anew for each source, or do so from the threads/boards in question. Pretty annoying, and surprisingly never fixed :/. Probably not a huge deal for most people who just want alerts on owned threads or some major boards, although in my case with hundreds of notification threads it's a bigger impact xD

Tomorrow I'll be streaming Cogmind at the normal time, resuming my Serflord run which is currently in progress... Here was last week, just to see an actual embed in action here

[R-26 Lightspeed]

We did also lose mouseover-based spoiler tagging, replaced instead by a collapsable spoiler tag, but I guess the latter style does have its advantages as well.

I thought it was already a collapsable spoiler tag?

Either way, the new spoiler tags don't seem collapsable on my end. They're replaced by a message : "Sorry but you are not allowed to view spoiler contents." (even my own spoiler tags are displayed this way.)

This is true whether i'm logged on or not. I can still see the contents by quoting the post containing them, thankfully.
If the new spoiler tags are permission-based, would it possible to set them to require none? I do like being able to see posts without having to log on.

[Kyzrati]

Yeah I fixed the spoiler tag thing, was reported on Discord a bit ago as well. I didn't realize the new mod required manually setting permissions for spoilers--thought they'd be accessible by default xD (I was able to see them myself so didn't know they weren't working as desired at the time, and no it doesn't require logging in)

[R-26 Lightspeed]

That's great, thanks!

[Kyzrati]

You're welcome, and thanks for your support, R-26

[N.W.L]

Dang, it's a shame, I liked the old style. Anyway nice to have the forums back. And nice little lore drop there, I approve the vagueness as being Kyzrati certified over spoiler content.

[Kyzrati]

Agreed, I was quite fond of the old one, too! New one's not that bad and I will at admit it's at least nice to mix it up, although thematically speaking the older one was more suitable. Ideally I'd similarly spend more time to get it a lot closer to my ideal, but back then was before Cogmind even released, got too much other stuff to do these days by comparison

I do overall like the improved functionality of this latest version.

[N.W.L]

It will stay forever in the halls of memory, never to be tarnished... Oh no, i just realized that now the wiki will have to be red xD that's definitely not happening. Well I have said my goodbye old forum, hello red tinge.

[N.W.L]

I wasn't going to say more, but your description says that you are a patron,  which the implications of I find hilarious

[Kyzrati]

Wiki? It's just one page linking to other stuff and stays the same of course

Overall though the site in general, and blog, all remain the same, and are relatively consistent, just the forums which are different, although technically this is quite common on the internet, for forums to be of a somewhat different theme. It's simply easier to maintain.

I wasn't going to say more, but your description says that you are a patron,  which the implications of I find hilarious

Is this a reply to some quickly deleted comment? Not sure what it's referring to.

[N.W.L]

Is this a reply to some quickly deleted comment? Not sure what it's referring to.

You description says that you are a patron  ok I'm not going to explain this and hopefully this dies with the little bit of my pride left

[Kyzrati]

Ah that's called a "signature" on forums, rather than a description, and it is indeed just a link to, you know, my stuff

[R-26 Lightspeed]

New (minor) issue: I can't find a way to attach files to a post when making a "quick reply". Adding attachments seems to require clicking the "preview" button.

[Kyzrati]

That's not a new issue, and is intended behavior--that's what a "quick reply" means in SMF (it's always been that way), it's not a fully-featured reply functionality, hence the "quick." "Preview" actually brings you to the full Reply interface, hence you can add attachments there, but if doing such is your intent, in the first place you should be using the regular Reply option at the bottom of a thread, rather than Quick Reply.

[Kyzrati]

New issue, updated in OP as well:

Another issue/bug in the SMF forum code which apparently hasn't been addressed after two years of reports is that upgrading the forums to the new alert system apparently did NOT properly migrate email notifications. So if you have/had email alerts set up, not only are those disabled by default and switched to regular in-forum alerts, even if you go back and change your notification settings to provide emails as well, this does not apply to any specific boards or threads previously set to that behavior. So to get proper email alerts on older content, or specific boards, you will need to actually go into your notification list and set those anew for each source, or do so from the threads/boards in question. Pretty annoying, and surprisingly never fixed :/. Probably not a huge deal for most people who just want alerts on owned threads or some major boards, although in my case with hundreds of notification threads it's a bigger impact xD