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BB. · February 2016

The Vanilla folks have released a fix to address some (all?) of the latest post pointer issues. Please post here if you see any further problems.

-Bill

westbranch · February 2016

Bill, did we lose the 'Stickies' function. I went looking for something about old batteries, and I thought it ended up as a sticky.. but it's not to be found.???

BB. · February 2016

The stickies are now called generically Announcements. And, as far as I know, they are all still there.

What where you looking for?

-Bill

JoshK · February 2016

Where is the setting for that alias by the username? For example, in inetdog's post above, his says Fizzycist.

BB. · February 2016

I don't know the answer... I have asked our support person.

It is a "rank/personalization" field that was imported from the old VBB software to our present "Vanilla" BB system. I do not see any way to edit it from my side.

-Bill

Vic · February 2016

zoneblue, others and I have wondered about this ...

Seems, that if those of us who just accepted the assigned "status name" under vbulletin, rather than changing it when it was the Forum software, then, we are forever relegated to being a "new user', regardless of how many years that we have been commenting on this Forum, or just how many posts that we have made ... but it is just what we need to accept ...

It's all good! Vic

JoshK · February 2016

It definitely is a unique field. It just seems the controls were lost somewhere along the line. It is called "AuthorTitle".

For Vic:
<span class="MItem AuthorTitle">New User</span>

BB. · February 2016

At this point--We either wipe the field out, or figure out how to use it. It is intended to connect a "rank" with xyz number of points. But it does not seem to be of much use right now.

Personally, I would probably just have the field wiped out. It probably is not worth the effort to make it a user editable field.

-Bill

JoshK · February 2016

Yea I don't know any other sites with an author title field. I would agree it could just go away.

vtmaps · February 2016

BB. said:
Personally, I would probably just have the field wiped out. It probably is not worth the effort to make it a user editable field.

But then how will anyone know that you are "Just some guy", or that I would rather be floating? --vtMaps

BB. · April 2016

Just FYI--There was a Vanilla service interruption. Seems to be up now:

Service interruption Subscribe

Monitoring - We have deployed an update that should resolve this problem. Sites have come back online.
Apr 5, 13:26 EDT

Update - We have narrowed in on the specific configuration settings that are at fault and are working hard to push updates to correct them. These settings have a wide reach so we are QCing their deployment.
Apr 5, 13:10 EDT

Identified - Our team has found an issue with our hosting provider's DNS configuration that is reducing the availability of our edge devices. We are working with them to resolve the configuration problem and restore site access for our customers. More updates as we have them.
Apr 5, 12:32 EDT

Investigating - We have detected an outage affecting our hosted customers and are investigating.
Apr 5, 12:14 EDT

-Bill

just starting · April 2016

Was down on cell phone for a few hours

BB. · April 2016

Just an FYI everyone, Scheduled downtime of our forum software next month:

Maintenance Plan
Starting at 2PM Eastern Time on May 14th, Vanilla's hosting environment will be in a maintenance window for 6 hours. During this time, all nodes in the environment will be rebooted at least once and there will be some instance downtime, which will impact customer forums. We expect the actual down time to last for approximately 45 minutes.

Justification
Vanilla is running a virtualized environment on top of the Openstack cloud operating system. Every 6 months a new version of this operating system is released. Vanilla assesses these releases and determines whether or not to upgrade based on the merits of the new features vs. the cost of performing a maintenance with downtime. We have delayed upgrading for the last 2 releases but believe that the version currently available is worth adopting.

During this maintenance period we will also be applying firmware updates to a portion of our compute nodes in order to avoid recently discovered vulnerabilities in their RAID controllers which could cause an outage in the future. This seems like an opportune moment to preemptively get those in.

We expect this OS upgrade to solve some long standing pain points for us and improve our ability to provide consistently high uptime for our customers, so we are excited to move ahead.

Thank you for your understanding!

--
Tim Gunter
Vice President, Operations

-Bill

BB. · April 2016

Folks, I and our Vanilla support person are trying some layout changes to the "Category and Discussion pages" (new comments).

Let me know if you like or not? Easy to flip between.

-Bill

JoshK · April 2016

As discussed, can we do away with the AuthorTitle and change the grey color?

BB. · April 2016

I hope that the Author/Title will "go away" shortly (hours/days).

If different, I will let everyone know (I have been really busy with family stuff and "ignoring" the forum back end stuff for a few months--I am very sorry).

Sincerely,
-Bill

BB. · April 2016

PS: The "gray color"--Can you give me an example (link, screen shot) of what the problem is (hard to read text in box, etc.)?

Otherwise, the present color scheme is (more or less) one of the default Vanilla color schemes (our support folks, at least, made the text much more readable than the default).

Otherwise, David and Rick from NAWS are working on the whole "look and feel" of both the forum and their web store--To better tie everything together--And get a less "industrial" feel.

I don't have any idea of the timeline for that (but David is very interested in moving forward quickly--The website issues/themeing delay is my fault--Again, I am very sorry for that).

-Bill

JoshK · April 2016

BB. said:

PS: The "gray color"--Can you give me an example (link, screen shot) of what the problem is (hard to read text in box, etc.)?
-Bill

Problem here

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lj0cvxx8bo2313s/grey.jpg?dl=1
and here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1mp4aprpm4pdvgp/grey2.jpg?dl=1

BB. · April 2016

First Link. The light gray means all read, and the dark gray means new comments to read:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6024911/uploads/editor/k3/tszgzi3i75rd.png

Second Link: Is this a question of hard to read--Or you don't like the light gray and want something different (different shade/color or no shading at all)?

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6024911/uploads/editor/yd/sprkrrmf533n.png

-Bill

JoshK · April 2016

It looks like cold grey on this screen. That's all

Perhaps a nice light, warm color scheme instead?

BB. · April 2016

This was just the "default" color scheme for the software... David and Rick from NAWS are working with their web designers to have a nice/integrated theme for the forum and website.

When this project be done--I have no idea--But David is working hard to move everything towards completion.

-Bill

JoshK · April 2016

Alright, thanks.

Vic · April 2016

Glad to see that the current version of the Forum software includes the Author of the Thread, seen while looking at all of the Threads in a Topic (or whatever they are called now).

And, BB Bill, Thank You very much for all that you do for this Forum, and all that you have done in the past!

Vic

BB. · April 2016

You are very welcome Vic.

Matthew, our vanilla support person, has been very helpful with some of these issues I have not had the time and energy to dig into.

Threads are now discussions. And posts are now comments in the Vanilla forum software.

-Bill

westbranch · April 2016

Bill, there is an old problem coming back again, this thread does not want to go past the picture when I return to it a day later,. http://forum.solar-electric.com/discussion/350585/rotating-batteries-in-a-battery-bank#latest

Vic · April 2016

WOW !!! !!!!! ! ! ! We can now Delete our own demented or erroneous Posts!! Thanks !!!

Vic

BB. · April 2016

Hi forum members... Just to let you know what has been happening lately.

Our support person from Vanilla has been helping me with updating some capabilities in Vanilla. Where we are now:

As Vic noticed, users can now delete their old comments (aka posts) that are less than 1 week old. Note, this may not work for Comments that are the first in a thread (send me a message, and I can delete/edit as needed).
I have asked Vanilla about WesBranch's "last" comment positioning problem. Problem a day or two ago for me, but does not reproduce for me tonight... Post a link here if happens again.
The "new comments/discussion" page now has both original and last poster's User Name. I think this is working for everyone (note, on "mobile view", old format does not display this option--Have to "request desktop" site on browser if you want "full" New Discussion display.
Private Messages that you receive can not be sent to your email address. Click on your Profile/Notification Preferences to edit:
http://forum.solar-electric.com/profile/preferences/
A few people here probably have maiboxes with large numbers of emails from the VBB import to Vanilla. For the present time, there is no USER handy way to empty your inbox. If you would like your old messages purged, please send me a PM (or post here), and Matthew (from Vanilla) will purge your mail box.
Old users that may get caught in the Spam Filter (with lost of links/pictures)... Matthew has updated the forum rules so that members with any more than a hand full of posts will not get caught in the spam filter (have their posts delayed until I can "approve" the posts and "verify" the user).

There are two major pending issues at this point:

First is the "theme" for the forum. NAWS is working with the web site and forum develpers to have a "nice" updated color scheme in the future. I do not know what the schedule is (I do not work at NAWS).
Second is Comment (aka post) Numbering. Working with Matthew/Vanilla understand what they can do and how much it will cost... Will update when I know more.

And a few requests that have no timeline/action plan (for ~2016--at this time):

Improved Text Editor--I have requested one, but not on this year's development calendar (at this time). I think that there is an HTML editor available for folks to use--But it is not pretty or easy for non-HTML tag users.
"Digest" emails (one email per day that has summary/all of that day's comments in it)--Vanilla has many requests, but not on 2016 calendar (at this time).
"Flag" a discussion (thread) when "I" have posted to it (in New Discussion page)--Requested, but not on present development plan.

And lastly--A few people have asked me via Private Messaging technical questions. I will get to them, but it may take a few days.

HOWEVER, please feel free to post any and all technical questions directly to the forum. We have a wide variety of user experiences here--And you will get quicker and probably better answers than if I only see/answer them via PMs.

All questions are welcome!

Thank you folks for all of your help on the forum. You guys have been great!

Sincerely,
-Bill "moderator" B.

Mountain Don · May 2016

Today when I click on "Mark All Viewed" at the top of the Recent Discussions page, nothing happens. It used to do as advertised... mark all topics as viewed so the recent discussions list would come back with nothing highlighted as unread.

westbranch · May 2016

Don, I noticed it being Verrrrrry slow today on 'clearing' the unread ones...hth

westbranch · May 2016

OOOPS spoke too soooooooon ,as soon as I scrolled down there are a whole lot of threads I cleared days ago

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