Blogs need to be adjusted

[DesDownunder]

Please take notice that the blogs are indeed having trouble with the new upgrade for the Board's software.

Some incompatibilities with the skin and the upgrade means that the entries are not as we want them to appear.

Unfortunately the skin designer is no longer available so...we are going to have to wait for Ben to come back online to fix it all.

Hopefully it will not be too long.

[Adam Donaldson Powell]

A repeated request: while you guys are working on the "blogs" page,

could you please make a button link back to "forums"? I would greatly

appreciate it.

[TalonRider]

If you click on AD Forums in the upper left hand corner, it will take you back to the forums page.

[Adam Donaldson Powell]

If you click on AD Forums in the upper left hand corner, it will take you back to the forums page.

THANKS!

[Madrigal]

Ummm guys, I don't know if this has to do with the upgrade and blog security etc, but I'm having a crazy problem with spam on my blog. I've disabled guest comments but thought I'd give you a heads up. the entries with spam are 'sex' *hahaha, I wonder why THAT would attract spammers* and 'Pain and Suffering'.

Maddy (:

[Tanuki Racoon]

Ummm guys, I don't know if this has to do with the upgrade and blog security etc, but I'm having a crazy problem with spam on my blog. I've disabled guest comments but thought I'd give you a heads up. the entries with spam are 'sex' *hahaha, I wonder why THAT would attract spammers* and 'Pain and Suffering'.

It's got nothing to do with it. This is an old IPB issue.

You MUST disallow guest comments on blogs or you WILL get spammed. A memo was sent Some Time Ago about this as well as posted in the forums I think.

[Trab]

I don't know what the rest of you see on the Blog pages, but I can't even imagine how I could possibly tell if spam was being added to my blog section. Below you will see what I see. I don't really understand the full problem, as it involves the 'skin', but surely there are generic skins that could be put in place temporarily, until a preferred one can be modified.

[blue]

Oh. Ick. Ugh. Gaah. I have seen the new look of the Blogs and ... eww! :: is aghast ::

Guys and girls and critters and anyone in between, I will be looking at the problem. I will not know, until I've seen quite how they do it, how much is involved to get it looking all handsome again, but it is a combination of three types of elements in lots of little chunks. I hope and pray that it is self-contained for the blogs, and that it will not have side effects for the forum. In any case, I will learn a lot more about how this forum and blog software's appearance (skins/themes) are done, and that will help in the future.

Please understand, it may take some time to work through making the Blogs look good again, and I will have to do it as I can get to it, piece by piece. So if things change their looks for awhile... we're just redecorating, sprucing the place up, remodeling.

I'm a model, and you know what I mean, I do my little turn on the *catwalk*.

...

I'm too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my... oh pussy-cat!

Sorry, I couldn't help it. Besides, there were cat references. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

You'll be reassured that Dude has sent me some maybe-helpful info by courier cat which may help us. Ih hopez.

[DesDownunder]

Thanks Blue, as you can see from the posts here, the guys would like to get back as close to possible to what we had before.

We wish you the best of luck. You will earn our collective undying praise if you can at least make the blogs readable.

[blue]

Hi all,

I've mostly revised the Blogs stylesheet, so it should be much easier to read and use.

I still have some work to do on it, to finish it. I see two kinds of blocks that seem to have escaped restyling, all the borders, and text and backgrounds on some items.

If I can figure out better what goes where, it will match the forum stylesheet much more nicely.

Other good news: It doesn't seem to rely much on background images, which I would've needed to adjust.

(No, I haven't quite spent all that time on this, or I would've torn my hair out by now. Blue shaved bald? Hmm, it seems to work for EleCivil....)

[DesDownunder]

We are forever in you debt oh Blue one.

All the guys will take turns to make your hot cocoa each night for the whole of winter.

I believe some will stay to make breakfast for you.

Seriously Blue, we thank you for getting some sense back into our blogs.

I'm not sure I said that right.

[R.J.]

Hi guys!

Hi Blue!

I just want to say that the blogs look awesome!

Really awesome!

!

!

:D!

[Tanuki Racoon]

I have a complaint -- a serious one. I'm not sure if it's fixable.

In the OLD way of viewing blogs, we saw the current post and date of the post (which we see now) But we also saw the last comment date and thread. I always went and read everyone's comments too. Now I can't without manually opening each blog. Which I will not do.

Is there a way to bring back that item?

[Cole Parker]

Thanks, WBMS. (Hey, I can use your real name here because I'm complimenting you!)

I have the very same complaint, and voiced it to Des some time ago. The Blogs are much less user friendly now. I don't know that it can be fixed, but you're right, it's a very real problem, and vexatious. The Forum cover pages have the info that is no longer extant at the blogs. Bother!!!

C

[Trab]

I have mentioned it to Des, but more importantly, I went over that problem in detail with Blue, and he is going to need to go through the programming step by step and instruction by instruction to see if there is some way to 'fix' that issue. If he can't find it, he will be contacting the programmers of the software to see if there might be a fix that way. I suggested that even having something that just lists 'Last activity" would be better than just when the post was made.

[DesDownunder]

Yes, I think we all want to see the blog index format available as it was. As far as I can tell the upgrade to the basic blog code introduces the opening lines of a blogger's post as part of the index listing. It is this which Blue will try to adjust, as Trab has pointed out.

I prefer the old way of indexing the blogs as well. Being able to go directly to the latest comment was a big advantage and its removal is more of a downgrade than an upgrade. They have made it more like an ordinary web forum rather than an easily accessible index of each blog and/or the latest comments.

Why did they do this? I have no idea, but I see this kind of thing in nearly every "upgrade" to a program. Give something whilst removing something else has long been a feature of upgrades.

Just how easily Blue can adjust the code to respond to our desire to make the index the same style as the main forum index, is something we will have to wait to see. Frustrating to say the least.

[Tanuki Racoon]

Tell Blue he can't masturbate or achieve any orgasm until it's done. That'll speed it up.

[DesDownunder]

Tell Blue he can't masturbate or achieve any orgasm until it's done. That'll speed it up.

Are you sure about that?

It might be better if I promise not to sleep with him if he gets it fixed ASAP.

[blue]

Tell Blue he can't masturbate or achieve any orgasm until it's done. That'll speed it up.

Gaah!

Blue, Bluer, Bluest.

Speed up what?

-----

I don't know yet how much would be involved to restore the function you're asking about. If we are really lucky, it's flipping a switch. If not so lucky, I think I can custom-add it by examining the code that shows a single blog or else a single blog post with its comments.