Tad Williams' Message Board

Aan`allein · 2008-01-16 21:15:38

Welcome to the new board. Shadowmarch is dead. Long live Shadowmarch!

As you'll probably have noticed already, posts made on the old Shadowmarch message board after December the 21st haven't made it over to this new message board. (As a consequence, your postcounts are back to being the same as they were on that date.) This was unfortunately unavoidable, as a lengthy migration and conversion process was needed to get the old-style UBB board content to show up all shiny here in the new PunBB board. However, to balance the loss of three and a half weeks of posts, I've managed to dig up a couple of previously lost posts, namely all those made during the earliest years of Shadowmarch, up to a couple of months before the Great Conflagration.

One other thing to notice is that where on Shadowmarch you had a username with which you logged in, and a display name which you could change at will, this new board doesn't have that distinction. You thus unfortunately can't change your name anymore, and the name which shows with all your posts is your username. Quite a few people used to have rather different display names than their usernames, and preferred to have their display name become their username. I've already made these changes for a couple of dozen of the most active posters who had such distinct display names; some due to making an educated guess, most after being asked.
If you're someone I didn't contact for this, but you'd like your username changed anyway, you can contact either me or strangeshe to make this change for you. (Note: we're not going to constantly change usernames for people; only now right after the conversion.)
lian and Captain Roberto Fruitbat: I made the change for you as an educated guess, but I haven't heard back on that from you on the PM telling you about this. If you read this after finding you can't login, that's why. Use the username as it shows at the beginning of this paragraph. (Captain: really sorry to lose the T. - but usernames here just weren't long enough. :/)

New members who can finally join the forum for real: welcome. On behalf of all of us: sorry to have kept you waiting so long.

Anyway, that should be all. Have fun exploring the new site and new features of the board. See you in the Mint!

strangeshe · 2008-01-17 15:28:08

Aan, you rock so hard!!!

Thank you so much for all your hard work to make sure we were as comfortable in our new digs as possible.

Smarch on, Dude!!

Genisis X · 2008-01-17 20:42:07

Awesome stuff guys.

Three cheers for the Aanimal and all that. Its all new and shiney. Almost makes me want to find something to break... :P

-X

mabinogi · 2008-01-17 21:54:12

Error sighting - "Unable to insert search results" when I went to the index - it went away with a reload.

Dunno if that was 'cause someone was doing something at the time, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

mabinogi · 2008-01-17 21:58:06

Just got it again when going to the new posts screen (http://www.tadwilliams.com:9080/bbs/sea … n=show_new)

Exact error is:

An error was encountered
Error: Unable to insert search results.

Like last time it was transient - a second attempt was OK.

Last edited by mabinogi (2008-01-17 21:59:00)

mabinogi · 2008-01-17 23:05:28

I'm assuming when it finally goes truly live, that it'll be on port 80?

My work proxy doesn't like non port 80 http, unfortunately.

Sahi · 2008-01-18 01:45:15

We've got seven years worth of our old messages, I don't think many of us will complain of the three weeks that we lost. After all, we lost a lot more during the terrible conflagration!

Did you know that you just forced me to write a new chapter for the history? ;)

Aan`allein · 2008-01-18 02:20:56

mabinogi wrote:
I'm assuming when it finally goes truly live, that it'll be on port 80?

Unfortunately no. :( The main website is on port 80, and that's ASP.NET on IIS, while this forum is PHP on Apache. We did mention the non-standard port would catch some people at work (including myself at my current project, I suspect), but... :/

Although! I didn't know as much about the current server setup at that point as I do now. There might be a way with the DNS setup. I'll have that looked into, but it could be a couple of weeks before anything is known for certain.

mabinogi · 2008-01-18 02:31:45

IIS doesn't have a proxy module similar to apache's mod_proxy for handling that sort of thing?

Aan`allein · 2008-01-18 02:36:03

I don't know - I don't do the server administration (really only came on board to do the forum conversion, because I kept begging long enough that really, this was possible), and I know nothing about IIS configuration. Despite that, I somehow received enough access to look around, so I've been able to make some basic suggestions on how to make some fixes - but anything more complex than "change this exact setting here" could be problematic.

mabinogi · 2008-01-18 02:40:39

Fair enough.

I hope something can be worked out though - it'd be a pity to have achieved so much - particularly with the successful conversion, only to have something like that spoil things...

Ren · 2008-01-18 05:30:23

Heres a question....how come I can't see any of the forumn topics ont he very first page?
All the fields are blank...I got here via active topics...I can't even find the mint! *cry*

Aan`allein · 2008-01-18 05:38:50

mabinogi wrote:
Just got it again when going to the new posts screen (http://www.tadwilliams.com:9080/bbs/sea … n=show_new)

Exact error is:

An error was encountered
Error: Unable to insert search results.
Like last time it was transient - a second attempt was OK.

Gaah, I just got this, too. I'll look into it. I suspect I might have missed one of the tables when fixing up mismatched character sets.

Ren wrote:
Heres a question....how come I can't see any of the forumn topics ont he very first page?
All the fields are blank...I got here via active topics...I can't even find the mint! *cry*

Uhm... I have no idea what you're seeing. Could you make a screenshot and upload it to imageshack.us or somesuch place for me to see?

Ren · 2008-01-18 05:41:49

Actually I figured it out, i can see it in Firefox, but not IE...thats your fault isn't it Aan?...8)
I'll get the shot and send it anyway...hang on

Crud i can't get to any image load sites, aan can you PM me your email and I'll send you the file?

Last edited by Ren (2008-01-18 05:45:22)

Aan`allein · 2008-01-18 05:47:37

Ren wrote:
Actually I figured it out, i can see it in Firefox, but not IE...thats your fault isn't it Aan?...8)

Uhm... *blinks blinks*
It _shouldn't_ be. But... wow.
How come no one noticed that during testing?

Heh.

I'll look into it!

*fears he accidentally triggered guillotine or somesuch with the one CSS change he had baytech make to the forum*

(No need for a screenshot; I see it in IE as well.)

Ren · 2008-01-18 05:55:14

Riiight mr.Firefox, you didn't know....8)
(just kidding!)

yay! I found a bug!...8)

Glad to help!

Aan`allein · 2008-01-18 06:09:37

Aan`allein wrote:
Uhm... *blinks blinks*
It _shouldn't_ be. But... wow.
How come no one noticed that during testing?

Heh.

I'll look into it!

*fears he accidentally triggered guillotine or somesuch with the one CSS change he had baytech make to the forum*

Ok, definitely not my fault. Baytech changed some CSS in an attempt to make the layout of the forum page look slightly nicer in modern browsers (at least everythign gecko, and I assume also IE7), and triggered one of the incountable IE6 bugs.
I can't believe they didn't test in IE6, though. WTF? (It's fine when I do it, of course, for I can do no wrong ;) - but they're being paid to work on this site!) Worse, they're making these changes straight in the HTML, rather than in the CSS. Maintenanability is flying straight out of the window. GAAAH!

I emailed them - but of course they're still asleep there, so it's going to be a couple of hours till a fix. I might try to see if I can fix myself, but this looks like a tricky one, and I don't know what all they changed...

mabinogi · 2008-01-18 06:10:45

Ren wrote:
Riiight mr.Firefox, you didn't know....8)
(just kidding!)

yay! I found a bug!...8)

Glad to help!

upgrade to IE 7 ya lazy bum :P it works fine there...hehe.

hmmm, also, if you go to just http://tadwilliams.com you get an unstyled version of the old tadwilliams.com.
Classic virtual host config problem...

mabinogi · 2008-01-18 06:13:30

Aan`allein wrote:
Baytech changed some CSS in an attempt to make the layout of the forum page look slightly nicer in modern browsers (at least everythign gecko, and I assume also IE7), and triggered one of the incountable IE6 bugs.

The indenting of some board names, that looked like a float issue? (as I notice that's not happening anymore - and floats are one of IE6s (many) Achilles' Heels)

Aan`allein · 2008-01-18 06:13:36

mabinogi wrote:
hmmm, also, if you go to just http://tadwilliams.com you get an unstyled version of the old tadwilliams.com.
Classic virtual host config problem...

Hmm, that doesn't happen to me, and from what I know of the setup, that shouldn't be possible to happen. Could there be a badly configured (caching) proxy between you and the site?

Aan`allein · 2008-01-18 06:15:14

mabinogi wrote:
The indenting of some board names, that looked like a float issue? (as I notice that's not happening anymore - and floats are one of IE6s (many) Achilles' Heels)

Yeah, exactly. I think it's peekaboo, or maybe guillotine, or whichever one - I never keep those bugs straight.
Can't quite figure out where to apply hasLayout to fix it, though. :/

mabinogi · 2008-01-18 06:16:45

Aan`allein wrote:
mabinogi wrote:
hmmm, also, if you go to just http://tadwilliams.com you get an unstyled version of the old tadwilliams.com.
Classic virtual host config problem...
Hmm, that doesn't happen to me, and from what I know of the setup, that shouldn't be possible to happen. Could there be a badly configured (caching) proxy between you and the site?

Could very well be, my ISP uses a transparent proxy (*stab*) which has a tendency to cache things beyond what's technically correct (*double stab*).

hmmm, just did another shift-reload and it worked this time. So it was probably definitely the proxy.

Ren · 2008-01-18 06:34:18

mabinogi wrote:
upgrade to IE 7 ya lazy bum :P it works fine there...hehe...

I'm at work, I dun have a lot of control over what version of a prog I use...8P

Aan`allein · 2008-01-18 06:41:32

Okay Ren, you should be able to see the forum links again now.
I've only slapped on a really dirty bandaid fix here, with all kinds of nasty consequences (I really hope no one here uses a larger font-size than default), and it should be removed in favour of a real solution later today, once baytech wakes up.

Magpie · 2008-01-18 06:43:49

ah. That's better. (Had the same problem)

Tad Williams

Tad Williams' Message Board

#1 2008-01-16 21:15:38

Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#2 2008-01-17 15:28:08

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#3 2008-01-17 20:42:07

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#4 2008-01-17 21:54:12

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#5 2008-01-17 21:58:06

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#6 2008-01-17 23:05:28

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#7 2008-01-18 01:45:15

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#8 2008-01-18 02:20:56

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

mabinogi wrote:

#9 2008-01-18 02:31:45

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#10 2008-01-18 02:36:03

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#11 2008-01-18 02:40:39

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#12 2008-01-18 05:30:23

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#13 2008-01-18 05:38:50

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

mabinogi wrote:

Ren wrote:

#14 2008-01-18 05:41:49

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#15 2008-01-18 05:47:37

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

Ren wrote:

#16 2008-01-18 05:55:14

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#17 2008-01-18 06:09:37

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

Aan`allein wrote:

#18 2008-01-18 06:10:45

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

Ren wrote:

#19 2008-01-18 06:13:30

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

Aan`allein wrote:

#20 2008-01-18 06:13:36

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

mabinogi wrote:

#21 2008-01-18 06:15:14

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

mabinogi wrote:

#22 2008-01-18 06:16:45

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

Aan`allein wrote:

mabinogi wrote:

#23 2008-01-18 06:34:18

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

mabinogi wrote:

#24 2008-01-18 06:41:32

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

#25 2008-01-18 06:43:49

Re: Notes on the migration from Shadowmarch to here.

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