Hi, everybody.
I just want to kinda give a run-down of where things are at with the forum update and maybe clear up some confusion/questions that I've seen. I tried to knock out as much as I could over the weekend, but there's still really a lot that needs to be done here, so it's still very much a work in progress.
First, the MTC Enhancement Script: This was a script that was made by
@Kadauchi a few years ago that put certain options in the thread tools at the top of the page, like the ability to show only HIT posts, hide masters HITs, play alerts when HITs posted, etc. He is working on getting this updated for us, but he has his own stuff to deal with as well, so it could be a few days. Just try to be patient. I also want to point out that this script was not a contributor-only thing and it will continue to be available to everybody once it's updated. Also, it was not related to the live thread update options that were also in the thread tools. Those were a separate thing.
Live update: The addon that we used to use for automatically showing new posts was never updated for the newer XenForo versions, so I had to find something else that can do the same thing. Unfortunately, the only alternative that I could find doesn't really offer much in the way of customization. It's sorta just an on or off thing that only staff can set for people. I'm not crazy about how it works and I can certainly understand why some people might not be happy with not being able to turn off the post jump. When things get a little more settled I'm going to look into a way to disable this for the people that have donated, but don't want it. That could be a week or two off, though. In the meantime, if you don't want the page constantly jumping to new posts, just scroll up a bit. It will only jump to new posts if you're towards the bottom of the page.
Some scripts/extensions have been affected by the update and aren't working as they should. The main ones that I'm aware of are MTS' ability to export HITs directly to the forum and the Panda Crazy helper buttons that show up on HIT posts. Those are things that are going to need to be taken care of by their developers (I'm sorry
@Kadauchi and
@Johnnyrs!!
) so it's not something that I can give an ETA on.
Keyword alerts: We're currently without a keyword alert addon. The developer had said back in February that they were putting updating it on hold, so I was going to shop around for an alternative. But I just came across a post by them from back in April saying that they were working on an update and hope to have a beta version out soon. That was almost two months ago, so I'm not sure how soon is "soon", but I've decided to just wait on that instead.
The default font: I'm aware that it's kinda small and I'm not that happy with it. I'm considering changing the default, but it's going to require a bit of work because these themes were really designed around this very specific font size. I'll have to edit a lot of the CSS to make sure things display properly if I increase the default, so it's not something I'm going to have time for right away. For now, you can change it in your preferences if it's bothering you.
The reaction smilies: I've had a lot of requests for new reaction smilies, but I'm a little hesitant to add any more. We already have seven of them and I don't want to clutter the forum by adding a bunch more. I've also noticed an issue with the "Reactions received" page where if you have a lot it will take ages to load and seems to put a lot of stress on the server. I'm trying to find a solution to that, but I've so far come up with nothing, so I don't want to jump right in to adding a bunch more data that needs to be parsed on that page.
This update has also caused some issues with the server. I'm not sure if it's just much more of a resource hog than the older XenForo was or if there's something else going on, but our server load has increased by a lot since this update went live on Saturday, and we're getting a lot of random load spikes that have been creating some instability with the server. To try to minimize this, I've disabled some addons until I can figure out what's going on. One in particular that people have asked about is the addon that provides the ability to set more posts per page. I just want to kinda limit the amount of data that people are pulling from the database on each page load for the time being, but I do plan on re-enabling that addon at some point. This is my top priority right now, so everything else is kinda being put on the back burner until I can get this sorted out.
That's about all I can think of for now. Apologies if this has inconvenienced you all in any way, but I assure you I'm working as hard as I can on getting things back to normal here. I really appreciate the patience you've all shown while I deal with this stuff. Also, I just want to remind everybody that if you have questions about anything, or want to report something that you don't think is working right, please, please, please mention it in the
Forum issues/feature requests thread. I can't always go through all of the work thread pages looking for complaints or questions about things, so that thread is there to make sure that I not only see the issues that you're having, but also so that I don't forget about them.
Thank you, everybody.
, but it only works with one s.
