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New Forums will be changing (again)

Dan_Millsip

Paddler
Joined
Mar 8, 2005
Messages
9,299
Location
Beautiful BC
Hi everyone,

It's been a difficult past three weeks with the migration of the forums to the new server software and it's not over yet. When we imported the database into the new forum software a lot of the images that were previously in discussions did not transfer properly due to errors with the import process. As WestCoastPaddler is based on images, this is a big concern to us.

Part of the issue is the hosting company that we use (for the last 12 years) have their security set up in a way that is very limiting. We've decided to move to a new server hosting company that allows us more freedom in our site setup.

The issue that we have with doing this is that we'll lose any posts that were made in the past three weeks. There are a few other influences that won't allow us to make the move for the next two weeks.

So... you can continue to post here but do so with the knowledge that posts made in the past three weeks and posts made in the next coming weeks will be lost when we move to the new server.


We realize that this is a major pain in the caboose and we apologize for the inconvenience but there's no other way at this point that we can attempt to repair the lost image issue without making these changes.

We hope you'll bear with us during this transition.
 
Dan,
I know you and Dave have been beating yourselves up about this transition - and have done repeated dry runs only to find more issues along the way. Keep up your spirits, and with luck everything will work out in the end.

There's a wealth of good information on this site that would be a shame to be lost, so everything you can do to bring it back will be worth it in the end: a gap of a few weeks will only be a hiccup in a few months.
-mick
 
I would like to thank you Dan and others who are working very hard to keep this special forum up and running. Please know that your efforts are appreciated very much.

Lila
 
Thanks Dan!

In the long run, better to keep the archived stuff (lots of knowledge there), and unfortunately lose the stuff from the last few weeks. (including this post!)
 
Image uploading test deleted. It looks like only full-size images can be placed inline in posts. Thumbnails cannot be placed inline.

But full-size images are too big to go inline. They take up most of the screen and look terrible. In the old style of WCP, inline images consisted of a smaller image inside a box, with the option of placing a text caption in the box with the smaller image, and clicking the box would reveal the full-size image.

Dan, any luck on stabilizing a new home for the forum?

Alex
 
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Hi everyone, in the next week or so (probably September 9) we'll be shutting down the forums for approximately 24 hours to make the move to the new server.

We'll then be temporarily reverting back to the old forum software while we properly prepare the site for the new forum software (that we're currently using).

It's a bit of a pain to do all this but doing it this way will allow us to not lose anything that has been posted since the forum changeover -- nothing that has been posted in the past several weeks will be lost. All the photos that were not working after the changeover will display correctly. You can now post your trip reports again knowing that they will transfer over with the upcoming changes.

The Paddling Locations and Boat Building galleries will also be reinstated.

Our apologies for all this -- we had to make some hasty decisions due to server upgrades that were forced on us, unfortunately some of those decisions didn't go as well as we'd have liked.
 
Dan,

Thank you for all your work. Please post when all these changes are done. Of course there will be continuing modifications/updates but once this major update is finished maybe things will settle back to a near "normal".

I can imagine all the additional work you've put in to bring the past forward - not loose anything from before. But I'll wait until the dust has settled before adding photos and such.

I see the Upload File button but not an area that has my past photos. Later on I'll click all the buttons, visit pages, and read posts to get a sense of any new methods.
 
Thanks Dan, your efforts and your communication to the paddling community is very much appreciated.:)
 
Another image test deleted.

There appears to be no way to resize the images uploaded to posts. Your only options are to include a "thumbnail" of the uploaded image, which results in an error, or to include a "full-size" of the uploaded image.

Using the "full-size" option results in an image that is resized to fill the entire width of the post box. If the image itself is wider than the post box, you can click on the image after it is included in the post to see its true full size in a pop-up window that displays its true size.

But one thing you cannot do with "full-size" is present the uploaded image at a width that is less than the width of the post box. Every image will be presented wall-to-wall in the post box; there appears to be no IMAGE WIDTH=50% or other similar tag that would present the image at less than the width of the post box.

I wish there was a way to present uploaded images at a width less than the width of the post box. When every image in a post takes up the entire width of the post, the result is so messy that the post is unreadable. The idea of clicking the image to reveal its true size in a pop-up window is good, but is there no way to present the clickable image at a smaller size?

Here is a tutorial page in which the author uses BBCode to accomplish exactly this effect: resizing an image to be small in a post so that the post is readable, while giving users the ability to click on the image if they want to see it in its true size: https://www.bbcode.org/examples/?id=10

I have tried to duplicate this effect using the current forum software without success. EIn the old WCP forum, the forum software resized images to a reasonable default that was less than the width of the post box, but still big enough to be viewable (i.e., not a thumbnail). The new software seems to think we want everything to be as huge as possible or tiny little thumbnails, nothing in between.

Alex
 
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Alex, we'll be reverting back to the old forums and then will work out all the bugs (such as the one you're mentioning) before implementing this new software. You shouldn't have this issue by the time we're done.
 
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