Important: Forum Troubleshooting

Chaissos: That was a great link you posted. Did you test it? Apparently not. I tend to trust my own judgement when it comes to IT matters, or talk to people I know.

Here’s the link you posted:

Vanilla

Similarly,
the current forum was not tested before the go live date. It’s free?
Are you familiar with the phrase “time is money”? Open source most
emphatically does not mean free, and if a piece of software needs 500
plugins, I want to know what’s wrong with the basic package.

There are other cheaper better open source bulletin board solutions available.

Oh, wait! Turns out it’s not free after all!

"

  • Forum hosting is free with advertising, which can be removed for a fee.
  • Forum is hosted at a subdomain of Vanillaforums.com – custom subdomain is available for a fee."
If negative comments were not appropriate this thread would be unnecessary, wouldn’t it?

Thread title: “Forum Troubleshooting” <— what I used to call “pre-rollout testing”.

You’re right. I didn’t test it. I did that from memory, but I’ve fixed it for you.

Can’t speak to the advertising bit, but if you look at the very bottom of this page, you’ll see the link to Corsis, and the little text right underneath it that tells us they’re hosting it “generously”, which to me implies, free.

You can’t test everything, for every option, every time. Can’t be done. There are so many different options of browsers and OS’s out there, it’s almost impossible to account for every one.

The vast majority of problems seem to be with IE. I only remember one comment about Firefox, none about Chrome, one about Safari, and the rest are all IE. That’s NO WONDER, since Microsoft has never followed the approved W3 HTML standards, now have they? So you test a few versions, and fix the problems that show up. That seems pretty normal to me, and how most very large enterprises end up running, too, since it’s difficult (not impossible, just difficult) to keep everything at exactly the same patch level.

Anybody Else Get This When They "Post Comment" ?

Windows Intrernet Explorer

! Stop Running This Script ?

A script on this page is causing your web browser to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer might become unresponsive.

Yes No

If I tell it "No" then it just comes back with the same message. If I tell it "Yes" then it posts the comment and locks the thing up until I go to Task Manager and stop it from running.

CSA

No, I don’t get that message, CSA.

Edited to add:
This is an edit!!
Yay!
The peasants rejoice!

It’s because the product advertised as being cross-browser really isn’t.

Just for the record, I’m using a Mac PowerBook, powerPC version, 10.4, Safari. When I have a problem, it seems to be a universal one that you guys fix in short order so far.



Edit: It seems that I can edit too.

Hi -

Thanks for all your replies. I got an update from the developers at Vanilla. They've determined that there's a script conflict with the cars.com box that's on the right hand side of the page. That conflict is causing the WYSIWYG issue on a specific subset of browsers and versions. The debugging efforts are currently underway, with folks from Vanilla and cars.com working on it.

I'll keep you posted if there's any news, but thank you for your patience.

ad-block plus FTW?

I’m curious if there’s problems for me…

Edit… this is an edit.

Interesting - when I click edit, I can see my text above with the html around it, then the window condenses to the user-friendly edit box.

Running Firefox 4.0.1 on WinXP Pro SP3

Cdaquila,

I ran into an interesting problem yesterday. I don't have the exact times, so the logs would be very unruly to scan through, at best.

I was talking to a guy I work with (enterprise network, behind a proxy) and he came to your site. Never been there before, so there was no cache on the system, no cookie, or anything else deterministic. As he started looking for a certain post I wanted him to read, I noticed he was logged in...as ME! This really is pretty much not cool.

Then, after going home, I was going to post the information on his brake issue, since my corporate connection is so "wonderful" I can't be sure of anything there, and I was logged out. I thought that was weird.

Now, my work connection is using a proxy, which is fairly normal for large organizations, so I don't know if that has an impact...it shouldn't.

Ask them to verify cookie settings, at least enough to make sure your site is unique. I don't know what else to check, but there's no reason for someone else to go to the site and be logged on as me.

Thanks for your support,
Chase

I noticed something else that cropped up recently using the mobile app.

With the old forum on my smartphone, it would rapidly refresh something like a half dozen times while displaying a thread. I was viewing it as a normal web page as the prior version did not have a specific mobile app.

That disappeared with the new forum software. Yay!

But now it’s back in a slightly different form on vanilla forum as well. I see a header rapidly flash multiple times every time a thread is accessed. It’s too fast to see what’s going on other than something is refreshing multiple times as the thread is displayed. Very distracting and annoying.

CSA, I was getting that message on IE6. Recently upgraded to IE8 and it doesn’t seem to give me the script error anymore. What version are you running?

Decided to weigh in this afternoon and apparently something has been fixed. Posting is back to normal at this point anyway.

Still going to backflag the IT people for a comeback? :slight_smile:

Looks like the new fancy editing has been turned off. For now, at least. Once they get the script issues sorted out, it will most likely come back. I’m cool with either way, really, as long as that script issue is fixed.

Chase

Chaissos: never being afraid to ask the stupid question, let me ask: how do you know “he” was logged in as “you” and how did you verify that “you” were not logged in as “you”? Am I right in thinking that you were each at a different machine at the same time?

He was logged in, on the machine he normally uses ('his" machine). I have never logged onto that machine, and never signed into any website from that machine, on any account. I was logged into the machine I normally use, and signed into this website.

The only common denominator was the proxy we were using. It’s something called “Bluecoat”, and one thing I found out they do is not only proxy all traffic, but they even proxy secure traffic. They open and read the secure traffic, and create a new secure connection to the website. I think it’s pretty creepy, so I don’t do things like money management from work…ever. I don’t even log onto e-mail outside the corporate network, none of that stuff. In fact, my credit union won’t even allow me to log in (I tried and that’s when I found out the above) because the data packet has been intercepted and tampered with.

Chase

cdaquila

I can now edit, once again.
As that great statesman, Dan Quayle, famously said–I am a happy camper!

Thank you for tweaking the system.

Chaissos: so you saw your name on his screen? Sounds like the cookies aren’t just stored on your machine, if they’re even there at all. I just now read up on Bluecoat and ADN’s and this is not my area, but that’s the simplest explanation. True or not, I’m not sure.

Hi,


As you’ve seen, the text-formatting buttons (aka the WYSIWYG editor) have been disabled. Like I mentioned above, there has been a whole lot of trouble untangling the coding conflicts between the forum software and the cars.com box on the side of the screen.

Basically, we decided to turn off the feature because it was causing some havoc for the IE users. The debugging timeline couldn’t be quantified, and we didn’t think it fair to let the glitches continue in the absence of some idea when it would be fixed.

The good news: the very popular Preview function is back, and you can still use HTML tags to format your text. I hereby link to the estimable Mr. Chase Chaissos’ handy-dandy HTML tagging guide for those who are less conversant in the coding arts:

http://community.cartalk.com/discussion/comment/2872533#Comment_2872533

TwinTurbo, still having mobile app problems? The rapid-refresh issue is annoying, but is it impeding your ability to use the site?

Chase, I will pass on this information. Thank you for clarifying in further posts. It’s disconcerting to hear.

Again, thanks to everybody for your patience and data. Feedback is always welcome.

Carolyn

Oh, VDC: I noticed that since the WYSIWYG editor was turned off, the most recently updated thread gets bumped to the top. Coincidence? I think not.