JEFF!!! What happened?

What happened to the forum?

I can't log on, nothing seems to happen when I try to.
Layout changed (to the worse I think)

On purpose or have something gone wrong?

I can now see that you are working with something in the admin panel so I guess you now it has changed. I'll know soon enough.

Regardless... With the version in use right now I could see that ALL of the "FRICKING GUESTS" are inktomi bots searching trough the pages.
It would be interesting if you could stop them from showing up or perhaps stop them getting into and searching the forum altogether. Otherwise they'll eat up a lot of your bandwith making the site slower (not that it is slow now but...)

I hope you get it working again soon

ErikG

I'm stupid!
You had that "bot stopper" before didn't you, since now we have 200+ guests on the forum...

ErikG

[Jeff]

Sorry Erik - you should be able to login now. The upgrade was a little more time consuming than I had planned, but hopefully everything is almost back to normal (except for the templates).

The Bots are a love hate relationship - being listed in search engines definitely helps new people find our site. On the other hand, 200 spiders on at once tends to affect the load on the server quite a bit.

And then another topic you touched on - software upgrades. I was rather attached to the old forum templates too, but I think I'll wait a week to give everything a chance to settle before beginning to clean up the new ones.

[ErikG]

Jeff re. the spiders... is there a way toat least hide their presence for us?
I think a few users will be somewhat disturbed to see 200+ guests on the board. I know we as users can see how many of each there is but it would be good to have them hidden I think.

The templates does look a bit "un-boatdesign.net'ish" IMHO
Is this a final release os vBulletin 3?

[ErikG]

I just need to see how th thredad style looks like so I insert this here...

[Jeff]

It's RC2 with the final expected within a week or so.

I'll see if I can hide the spiders tommorrow. There are a couple glitches with cookies if you visit forums.boatdesign.net and gallery.boatdesign.net instead of boatdesign.net/forums and boatdesign.net/gallery which hopefully I'll be able to work out as well sooner rather than later, and a glitch with the members list.

--progress... can't live with it, can't live without it...

[ErikG]

Originally Posted by ErikG

I just need to see how th thredad style looks like so I insert this here...

Hey the threaded function is ok if I use the hybrid setting. Now I just need to figure out how to navigate new msgs in this new style...

[ErikG]

Originally Posted by Jeff

It's RC2 with the final expected within a week or so.

I'll see if I can hide the spiders tommorrow. There are a couple glitches with cookies if you visit forums.boatdesign.net and gallery.boatdesign.net instead of boatdesign.net/forums and boatdesign.net/gallery which hopefully I'll be able to work out as well sooner rather than later, and a glitch with the members list.

--progress... can't live with it, can't live without it...

Progress--- I hear ya

[Jeff]

I'm also trying to see if I can get used to some of the new features - I still find myself reading linear like always, and I hate to make people click the little reply icon before using the quick rely to make threaded work as that somewhat defeats the purpose of the quick reply...

[ErikG]

Originally Posted by Jeff

I'm also trying to see if I can get used to some of the new features - I still find myself reading linear like always, and I hate to make people click the little reply icon before using the quick rely to make threaded work as that somewhat defeats the purpose of the quick reply...

I always use the BIG REPLY button dunno why, always did I guess...

On IE 5 the pages seem to stop loading at around 50% and never finishes but the page itself seems ok... Weird
Also at the moment it seems slower than it used to...

But when using the hybrid style I can't see which message that is the new one, bugger...

[Jeff]

Also at the moment it seems slower than it used to...

I was wondering the same and I'm not sure yet - in theory the new version is supposed to be faster (aren't they always?) In practice it seems about the same to me right now. The layout has also gone from plain html to css and the default templates seem to load less-incrementally than the old but that's something that can be worked on.

On a positive note, many of the redirects are now removed, and another feature I like is that the emails (if you use email notification for new replies/subscribe to the thread) contain the message instead of just "someone has replied" so you can see if it's interesting before taking the time to open the thread.

[Corpus Skipper]

Auntie Em! Auntie Em!

[Corpus Skipper]

the pages seem to stop loading at around 50% and never finishes but the page itself seems ok

I'm getting the same thing Jeff. Darnit, just got used to the old one! Progress, hmph. Now where's that @!#& Victrola?

[Jeff]

Are you also using IE 5.0?