Dave

I tweaked a couple of the ad settings, not sure that would have done anything directly but if it fixed things that's good!

Seems like Google took matters into its own hands with the ads, so I'll see what I can do that reign that in.

5 hours ago, studiot said:

Hi Dave.

New hardware? I know it's like new tyres on your car. Only car mechanics notice the difference but absolutely essential nevertheless.

On another tack you initially mentioned a privacy/cookie change and I am now seeing a "Privacy and Cookie settings Mangaged by Google" Would you care to tell us anything useful about this ?

As I see it there are two fronts of attack.

1.) Checkout the members as they first join. I wonder if several are made at a time from the same IP and if this could be used to suppress some ?

2.) My proposal to suppress actual posts via mod programmable keywords.

Anyway thanks for keeping things going. +1

• Yep we have some new hardware to replace an ailing hard drive with solid state drives, which are much more database-friendly and should improve access speeds.
• The privacy/cookie change is to give the option to opt into personalised advertisements. This is a change pretty much all sites are making owing to new legislation inside the EU/UK/USA.
• Indeed we are trying a bunch of things to reduce the spam!

8 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Some teething troubles. Screen scroll can freeze and cursor can disappear when responding using Quote button. This happens on Apple Mac running Safari on Monterey 12.6.4. However I seem able to use the site from my new iPad. Very odd.

Sorry to hear you're having issues! I'm also on Safari (macOS Ventura here, though). Might be worth you trying to clear your cache, since we have just updated the forum software.

The update was successful in that we were able to install some new hardware! (Which might result in a slightly snappier site.) I will need to do a bit more work this afternoon to get the forum software updated, which might have more impact in terms of the spam.

I hope you are well and having a good Easter! This is a quick note with two updates:

• GDPR and CPRA requirements now ask that we require consent for third-party cookies, which we do use to serve the advertisements that support the upkeep of the site. You will therefore be presented with a confirmation box if you live in the EU, UK or California so that we are compliant with this legislation.
• There will be some downtime for the site on Tuesday 11th April starting from around 9am UK time (presently GMT+1), and lasting for approximately 2-3 hours. This is to facilitate some much-needed software and hardware updates.

Please do let me know if in this thread if you're having any issues with the cookie notifications or have any other queries.

I've added a new plugin to try to address the recent surge in spam - we'll see if that works!

1 hour ago, Sensei said:

ps. Somewhere (e.g. user profile) it still rounds larger quantities to the nearest 100.

Yep! However if you click on this, then you should see the breakdown to exact number on the left hand side.

Hi all, sorry for the lack of response. Unfortunately upgrades in software are necessary from time to time, in order to prevent against e.g. security vulnerabilities. Inevitably these come with some changes - some nice, some not so great. I've restored your rank under your username and the reputation count should now be found as it was before. 

On 2/13/2021 at 12:22 PM, studiot said:

Still have to use the refresh to get the blighter to display.

Also the font is not longer crisp and clear on my screen. Is this an aliasing problem?

On the first point, I've added a small addition to the script to reload MathJax once content changes in-browser, so edits and quick replies should now show you the rendered math once they are submitted.

1 hour ago, Sensei said:

@Dave if you will compare computer version of the forum with mobile version of reply UI panel, you should see there are missing buttons e.g. subscript and superscript icons in mobile. Is it fixable?

Looks like they were removed from the toolbar, but I have re-added those for you now. If there are others that are desperately wanted then let me know and I can add those, too.

26 minutes ago, iNow said:

Also missing notifications, link to profile, mark site as read, etc on mobile version 

In the recent activity area where new posts appear in the search results, clicking the url for the thread title used to take users to the last post read / oldest unread post. Clicking it now takes you to post #1 on page #1 and you then have to scroll to find the unread posts (even on threads with 37 pages).

On mobile, Mark Site as Read is available if you click on the three lines at the top-right corner of the toolbar. This also shows your profile information if you need to edit it. Not sure about the recent activity; can't see an obvious setting for that within the control panel, but perhaps this is just a bug and can be fixed in a later release.

Thanks for the notes @iNow, I’m sure other will find that useful!

Hello all -- I hope you are doing well in these odd times and keeping safe.

This morning I've applied an update to our forum software, which obviously brings a few visual updates and changes in comparison to the older version. This was necessary to ensure we stay up to date with the latest security features and patches. However, from a functionality perspective, I believe this will mostly remain unchanged.

Please do let us know in this thread if you have any issues with the site, and I'll continue to monitor the site for problems.

Seems as thought I spoke too soon; another power outage hit just now. Hopefully that is it for now, fingers crossed...

Yep unfortunately down for about an hour. The power went out at our hosting facility and when it turned back on, the server didn’t automatically boot. Should all be back to normal now!

Apologies for today's downtime. This was due to a power outage at our hosts. All should now be up again and good to go,  but let us know of any issues you encounter.

Apologies from myself also - we will try to put in place some measures to ensure this doesn't recur. None of your posts, threads, etc will have been lost in this process. Thanks for your patience and look forward to once more hosting your discussions!

HTTPS is now enabled, so you should see a padlock icon next to the address bar. Do let me know if you see any problems!

As you might be able to tell, with all the server woes this never happened! With the new version of IPS installed and running smoothly, I will be trying to get HTTPS support enabled tomorrow. I'll be updating once it's enabled. 

Sorry for the short notice but wanted to take the opportunity to replace a faulty drive -- unfortunately took a bit longer than expected!

Apologies for the slightly extended downtime this morning, but the server is now back up and running. Do let me know if you see any issues!

Just a quick note to say happy holidays from me and all the other staff at SFN -- I sincerely hope you're all having a great break.

I'm also going to take the opportunity to replace a failed drive whilst traffic to the site is a bit lower due to the holiday period, so there will be a short amount of downtime tomorrow at around 10:00am GMT (UTC+0).

So things look like they have improved quite a bit over the last few hours. Looking at our server load averages for the last 12 hours, it's been quite clear that the load has reduced and SFN feels a lot more responsive. We'll see how we can do in relation to the 'bad gateway' issue over the next few days.

Okay all, I have changed another couple of IPB-specific options. Initial observations are encouraging (disk I/O has been reduced considerably), so let's see if this performs any better...

Both Cap'n and I have been looking over this in the last few days. It looks to me like there is some kind of database issue, specifically with the InnoDB format that's now required by the forum software. This seems to be a lot more write-heavy, for some reason, and it's causing PHP processes to hang, which consequently run out and give the bad gateway error. I'm looking into why this is the case.

I've tweaked a few more parameters tonight, let me know if you are all getting slowness still.

As you might be aware, websites are increasingly turning towards secure HTTP (HTTPS) in order to increase security and safeguard user privacy. Browsers such as Google Chrome are placing increasingly stringent requirements on non-secure websites, so we have been investigating switching to HTTPS by default.

At SFN, we're planning to trial this from next weekend. Since our forum software only supports one protocol or the other, we are planning to switch over to HTTPS next weekend. From your perspective you should see very little difference, asides from a nice green padlock symbol on your browser bar. However it's also possible that, for a short while, you might see some warnings about certificates being insecure, or mixed-content warnings, whilst we complete the transition.

We'll post again here to let you know once HTTPS has been enabled.

9 minutes ago, TakenItSeriously said:

Are you saying that these forums are no longer a private venture? That was the whole reason I chose to post here over the stack exchange conglomerate. Are you saying that science forums are now a property of another company like stack exchange?

Just to clarify and allay your concerns on this point: this is not the case at all. (Nor was it Capn's point.) SFN is operating in exactly the same manner today as it did yesterday and for the preceding decade, i.e. entirely independently. We've simply updated our forum software, and Invision is the company that provides the software.