I am sorry that the board was disrupted for 3 weeks. The short story is that we had to update the version of phpBB we run here, which was no small task and beyond my competence. We had to hire technicians to do the update. This was funded by one of our members, who has contributed much to the board over the years and shall remain nameless. Although I hope he’ll come along here and raise his hand, or allow me to say who he is!
Not to get into the weeds, but the technicians duplicated the site to a staging area where they did the update. Immediately after they duplicated the live site, the live site began to behave badly. Most of you probably encountered the messages that this and that post didn’t exist. The tech support people, understandably, claimed that they had done nothing to the live site other than duplicate it and they maintained that the sudden dysfunction was coincidental. And, in fact, the cloned version of the site operated properly when the live one didn’t. None of us had the technical ability to dispute their claim, other than to point out that this seemed and awfully coincidental coincidence.
Ultimately, we saw that we were going to have to accept their recommendation that we copy over the snapshot of the working database they took on, I think, March 25 or so. (That was my birthday. Another weird “coincidence.” It was also Elton John’s and Arethra Franklin’s birthday which, honestly, I really do think IS a coincidence.) We knew that meant that we’d lose all activity on the board since March 25. We could, I suppose, have gone back and forth with tech support, but we were eager to be done with it and get the board operating again.
We also heard from tech support that many users might be required to provide a new password when trying to log-in again. I’d be interested in knowing if that was the case for you folks.
Anyway, I am sorry for the inconvenience and I hope you can continue to enjoy the board. It’s now more than 20 years old!
Thanks for everything that you have done for us mere mortals, & a big thankyou to (s)he who can’t be named, yes there were some troubles, but that always happens when major upgrades are undertaken, (though why they should have lost data is something else), but here we are enjoying it again.
Re passwords, I just logged back in OK.
(There seems to be something funny with the bit at the right hand side where our names appear…)
Great to hear that the site is fully working again: I am relatively new here but I have found lots of useful information in threads of the past, especially in the Flute forum. Thanks to all people who contributed to this.
As for the password, I had no issues with it, too.
I logged in OK. I want to ask where to donate to the forum. I’ve benefited tremendously since joining and need to help with maintaining the forum for the future. There used to be donate link up top of forum but I never trusted using it. Thank you Dale, moderators, and everyone involved with keeping the forum alive.
Just a couple of questions, for now. Did the “techs” offer you a copy of the database that has been running over the period of the disruption? If not, will they give you a copy of their customer’s data that they are holding?
That’s very thoughtful of you. Historically, the Google ads banner has brought in enough revenue to offset the expense. Because I own several other websites (none of the others bring in income–just outgo!) all the costs for keeping them on the web (hosting, etc.) are combined, so I’m never quite sure whether I can say that the Google revenue offsets the costs for the forum itself. Doesn’t matter. I founded the forum long ago with something in mind other than making money!
I’ll check with our recent benefactor. He may have a fave charity or wouldn’t mind someone chipping in for the expense he took on.
Yeah, that had nothing to do with C&F itself; that was for contributing to issues like world hunger (indeed, IIRC it was labeled “Hungersite”). It was free (not sure how that works), and I wish we still had it. I always felt that it was an indicator of C&F’s overall ethos.
If any donation link in support of C&F Forums becomes available please post. I do feel obligated not that I’m loaded but pandemic 2020 entire year saved my spending urges.
Thank you. But as Dale already mentioned above, you’ll be pleased to know that C&F gets very sufficient financial support from the banner ads, and IIRC the quite small excess goes to a charity; trust me, this is not a money-making arrangement. But thankfully neither is it a drain, but an easy equilibrium. And that’s as we’re satisfied to have it. We’ve long been firm in our commitment that the membership not be (or feel) financially obligated, so that’s why we go that route.
The aesthetics of having banner ads is another matter, but sometimes you dance with the devil.
I have one small issue. It may be stylistic, a holdover from the previous design layout, just a broken link. . . .On the top right hand corner is a small box labelled ¨Search¨. Often this is obscured by the banner ads. It is ´dead´. When I go to the menu from ´Quick Links´ I get a functioning search link. Should the ´dead´ Search box be removed? Or the link restored?
It’s not dead, at least not for me. It does make a strong case for reducing the banner ad size, though. Until we get around to that, you’ll see two icons there: a magnifying glass, and a gear-shaped thingy. The first is a clicky for general searches, and the gear clicky is for advanced searches (it’s basically the same as our previously accustomed search page layout). Click either of those, and they open a page that lets you type in what you’re looking for - and as I mentioned, they’re working for me. Give it a try, and if it’s still not working for you, let us know.
Interesting. I wonder if it’s a browser issue? The banner ads are large on my screen, but don’t obscure anything, and both search routes work for me. With the old version of the software, already some things were not working properly on Internet Explorer (or, in some cases, Edge, strangely) but worked perfectly well using Google Chrome.
Well, I can confirm, that my issue appears to reflect some peculiarity of one of my systems/browsers. I have two Chromebooks. One is older, and is running ´stock, out of the box, Chrome OS. This one has no issues. The newer one is 2-1 tablet/Chromebook hybrid, which appears to be running a form of Chrome OS/Android.The 2-1 tablet is my go to as it allows me to free-hand draw in Chinese characters.
Ah, well, no worries. The ´Quick Links´ box menu allows me to access the the ´Search´ function.
Sorry if someone has mentioned it (or if it’s only me). I’m not getting the column headers on the forum pages. They are there, dark blue, on the board index. Tried three browsers and two different systems. That said, to me, the dark blue is rather strong on the eye so I can manage without them.
Has it always been that the edit box for a new post wraps at the same point as the displayed page and preview? I think before it was different so repeated words across the line ends (apparently it’s a common thing, not just me) were more obvious in the preview.
It’s not just you, and that’s another issue that should be addressed. C&F doesn’t have to have a wow factor, but it deserves to be spiffy, not shabby: it reflects our commitment to the members.
I’m afraid you’ll have to word this more clearly; I have no way of knowing what you mean.
I get it. The thing is, if you made a post, in the old or new system, you could then click the edit button and edit it. In the old system, the text would wrap so that a different number of words would appear on each line. This meant that repeated word errors, not so obvious in the original post, would show up clearly when you clicked the edit button. If the text wraps to the same line length and number of lines, that doesn’t happen.
Having said all of which, I would think that there’s probably nothing to be done about it, except … when I post, my spell-checker/grammar checker flags up repeated words. Is that any use, David?
Bob 
