Debugging and Suggestions for new SCOUTER.com

[moosetracker]

Well, my activity has gone way, way down. Even after purging my cache in Firefox. When I log in, I can see there is current activity, but when I try to go to one of those topics, I CAN'T SEE anything recent. For example. In this topic the most recent post I'm allowed to see today was posted back on 2/5 (#30 by Eagle69). Makes it difficult to participate.

The numbering of pages is always off.. May be off by 1 page or many pages.. To see the real amount of pages chenge the page number to say 2 (even if thread only shows 1 page.) Then the true number of pages will show up and you can then reset the page number to the last page of the thread.. This is the quickest way I can find the missing pages. Someone else may have a better suggestion.

[Faith]

That's the same thing I've been doing, moosetracker. It's the only way I can get to the next page on any thread over a page long. Just wish the threads would stay put!

[5yearscouter]

It might be easier for Terry[or someone else] to just to start a new scouter.com forum after testing that things work, and keep the old threads on this forum as a back up searchable resource, but lock all the threads so they can't be posted in. Heck it seems like they are already locked down and nobody can post in them, eh?

I get a little bit of info at the meritbadge.net forums but not the activity level and info level of what has been here, and certainly no debate.

 

I'm not sure where else is good, so many have moved to facebook and I don't facebook. I waste enough time on the internet without it.

 

[BadenP]

When are you going to get the membership status thing straightened out Terry??? I and many senior members are still being listed as junior members why is that???

 

Secondly with all these older topics still being posted on the site it is a real hassle navigating through the mass and maze of information. Just curious is all because of the old adage "newer is always better" doesn't seem to apply here, and that many regular old time posters seem to have disappeared from the forum. alltogether.

[Faith]

5yearscouter, I think that's a great idea but as far as sentimental value, some people would not go for that. I agree with you about Facebook. I work on Facebook all day long (sometimes nights too), the last place I want to go to chat afterwards is yet again, Facebook

 

BadenP, I believe both issues you listed are part of this big fiasco that appeared when they updated. I've noticed it all since day one, I keep seeing that it is on vBulletin's end (and very likely is) but there's gotta be a faster fix for it (and I say that from experience from when I was a moderator for Zynga and modded their forums for two years.) Every time we'd have an like this, our tech people had it sorted in no time.

[qwazse]

When are you going to get the membership status thing straightened out Terry??? I and many senior members are still being listed as junior members why is that???

 

Secondly with all these older topics still being posted on the site it is a real hassle navigating through the mass and maze of information. Just curious is all because of the old adage "newer is always better" doesn't seem to apply here, and that many regular old time posters seem to have disappeared from the forum. alltogether.

Aw, BP, you're just jealous! Besides, didn't you say "good-bye" to the lot of us earlier this year? What kind of respect do you think you deserve after breaking our hearts like that?

Anyway, being tagged a senior member isn't solving any problems. Still can't post new topics.

I agree with you, going back to the old format would be fine with me -- even if it did come with banner ads?

[qwazse]

When are you going to get the membership status thing straightened out Terry??? I and many senior members are still being listed as junior members why is that???

 

Secondly with all these older topics still being posted on the site it is a real hassle navigating through the mass and maze of information. Just curious is all because of the old adage "newer is always better" doesn't seem to apply here, and that many regular old time posters seem to have disappeared from the forum. alltogether.

Aw, BP, you're just jealous! Besides, didn't you say "good-bye" to the lot of us earlier this year? What kind of respect do you think you deserve after breaking our hearts like that?

Anyway, being tagged a senior member isn't solving any problems. Still can't post new topics.

I agree with you, going back to the old format would be fine with me -- even if it did come with banner ads?

[TSS_Chris]

At this point I'm iffy to even post questions here anymore. I know its all part of the 'glitching' but I am very irked that the past 2-3 weeks posts have poofed. I'm sure they'll return sometime or another (well, maybe) but it's almost impossible to post anything without the chance of it disappearing shortly after. I have searched and searched and have yet to find another scouting forum online that didn't belong to a specific area (I love this one but have no idea if it'll be fixed or not.)

@Faith: I haven't found any other good forums. I'm a fan of Stack Exchange for my Q&A needs. There is a "Scouting" proposal in the works that needs followers. If enough frustrated users headed over there, I'm sure that could progress to the beta phase fairly quickly. The Scouting site is here: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/48967/scouting?referrer=eKJibTP9TwZtNFqZvCsdgA2. (Read the FAQ if you've never used SE before.

 

Personally, I had been trying to register since December, but wasn't able to. I finally got registered last month, and now I appear to be gone.

[Rick_in_CA]

I'm going to echo the calls here to dump vBulletin 5 and either try vBulletin 4 (which I believe Terry got with the vB5 beta), or try a different software entirely.

 

Do any of the users here have experience with other packages that can give recommendations to Terry? Has anyone any experience with migrating a vBulletin site to one of these packages? How about rolling a vB5 site back to vB4 (does vBulletin provide support for that? Or do they just say sorry, restore to the backup)?

 

Unfortunately, I have no experience with vBulletin or other forum software as anything other than a user.

 

Remember, this is a labor of love by Terry, and I think we should give him any help we can.

[Faith]

At this point I'm iffy to even post questions here anymore. I know its all part of the 'glitching' but I am very irked that the past 2-3 weeks posts have poofed. I'm sure they'll return sometime or another (well, maybe) but it's almost impossible to post anything without the chance of it disappearing shortly after. I have searched and searched and have yet to find another scouting forum online that didn't belong to a specific area (I love this one but have no idea if it'll be fixed or not.)

I also have tried to register for months now. I am unfamiliar with SE but will read the FAQ and check it out.

 

 

[TSS_Chris]

I'm going to echo the calls here to dump vBulletin 5 and either try vBulletin 4 (which I believe Terry got with the vB5 beta), or try a different software entirely.

 

Do any of the users here have experience with other packages that can give recommendations to Terry? Has anyone any experience with migrating a vBulletin site to one of these packages? How about rolling a vB5 site back to vB4 (does vBulletin provide support for that? Or do they just say sorry, restore to the backup)?

 

Unfortunately, I have no experience with vBulletin or other forum software as anything other than a user.

 

Remember, this is a labor of love by Terry, and I think we should give him any help we can.

@Rick & @Terry: I just Googled "vBulletin issues", and there are pages of complaints about vBulletin since their buyout several years ago. It appears that the first release by the new owners, vB 4, is also really buggy. The original owners have gone on to form XenForo because of these issues. There is also a decent discussion of different alternatives at Webmasters.SE of other alternatives.

[5yearscouter]

A update from Terry about what he's tried and what he's beating his head against the wall over, and what we could do to help would go a long ways toward getting him the help he needs. But the quiet is deafening.

 

[topshot]

It seems clear Terry (or someone else) restored from a backup so a couple weeks of posts are now gone. I'd mentioned here that vBulletin has screwed the pooch with this release for sure. It seems many of these issues existed in beta several months ago and haven't gotten fixed yet so I wouldn't look for a solution from the vendor anytime soon. No, they don't support downgrading. Your only option is restoring from a backup using the old version. I assume Terry went direct from whatever he was using to vB5 so here we are. From my quick searching on the vB support forums, it didn't seem like anyone had written any converters to move to a different forum platform, but I didn't check other vendors to if someone there had done so. Hmmm... let me go check phpBB, which is what I use.... Nope, there is a converter for vB3 or vB4 but not the newly released vB5, which is quite different.

 

Personally, I'd go back to the pre-change backup, lose all the posts since then (early Feb?), and start all over with a different product.

[Rick_in_CA]

Personally' date=' I'd go back to the pre-change backup, lose all the posts since then (early Feb?), and start all over with a different product.[/quote']

 

I agree. The few threads that Terry wants to keep (such as "Sad news...OldGreyEagle has passed away") can be hand preserved and manually reentered (probably as a single post). Loosing over a month of posts would suck, but it is preferable to continuing with the current crippled software. And the old pre-vB5 forum can be migrated to the new platform so we don't loose the history (which is actually quite valuable - lots of wisdom there).

 

Actually the bad software has kept the volume of posts down, so we wouldn't be loosing that much.

 

[Scouter99]

When I click on OPEN DISCUSSION - Program it doesn't show me all the posts in this instead it opens a new session of the main board' date=' the others I tried (Advancement, Patrol, Working With Kids, Camping, etc) all show me alll the posts in the thread. I am using Firefox.[/quote']

 

It's been a month since this post, and I don't know if any action was taken, but I can't open the Program subforum, either. Here is a screenshot of what I get when I click on it:

 

 

Individual threads in the forum also appear bugged. I can see on the main forum that the latest post is from 3/17/2013 by Larry Green:

 

 

But when I click the link to the thread, it is only 1 page long and the last post displayed is from 2011:

 

 

I've never understood your choice of forum software (or USSSP's, which is even worse). There are great free forum softwares that are ready-to-go; I use SMF for gaming clans, and I've never once in 4 years needed to de-bug anything. Almost every big forum I visit uses Invision's pay forum (IPB), which is excellent. The only positive about this upgrade has been that after 4 years of failed attempts (and ignored emails) with your old version, I was finally able to register an account with this revamp.