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Article: Website problems due to a recent upgrade


Hi Frank - I hope you've seen samuel and mezombie's comments. They're finding it very difficult to access the forums. I hope you and the other admins can find a way that is easy for them to continue to access the forum soon. I'd hate for this lifeline to be inaccessible to anyone who needs it.

thanks so for all you all do and for trying to keep the forum trouble-free.
 
C
I have been having horrible problems with the site..and this explains it. I would like to know about the "security breach" please.

Thank you,

Ross
 
There was no security breach to this particular site; VBulletin discovered a possible security breach to their package which was included in an upgrade package we attempted to upload a day or so ago that was designed to fix some problems left over after VBulletin did their major facelift.

There have been two upgrades to that package - both are designed to fix problems not introduce - both have introduced major problems, at least for some users, unfortunately.

VBulletin personnel went in and redid the upgrade for me. There are some more things we may have to do on our end, however. They are below.

LOGGING IN: the log-in problems are vexing I know.

(1) USE WWW: They indicated that the log-in system does not work as well in VBulletin when you don’t use in www in the title of the Forum URL, ie. this one


http://www.forums.aboutmecfs.org works better than this one:


http://forums.aboutmecfs.org


Adding the www to your URL may help; please let me know if it does.

(2) CLEAR YOUR COOKIES For the Forums (OR SIMPLY CLEAR ALL YOUR COOKIES) in the browsers you use. (This worked for some people last time and worked for me this time.) Instructions how to do this for various browsers are below. If you're going to clear only the cookie for the forum be sure to look for the URL you use (the forums can be found on either forums.aboutmecfs.org or forums.phoenix-cfs.org). Be sure to restart your browser afterwards.

Internet Explorer 7 & 8

  1. Once your browser is open, select the Tools menu and click Internet Options and select the Generaltab.
  2. To delete all cookies, in the Browsing History section, click Delete....
  3. Then check the box next to Cookies.... Check the other boxes at your own discretion.
  4. Click Delete.
  5. If you wish to delete only specific cookies and keep others, instead of Step 2:
    1. Click the Settings button, then click View Files.
    2. Scroll through the list and select the cookies you want to delete.
    3. Multiple cookies can be selected by holding down the CTRL key while clicking.
    4. Press the Delete key.
    5. Press OK on any dialog boxes that appear
    FireFox 1.5

    1. Once your browser is open, select the Tools menu and click Options (may also be under Edit ->Preferences depending on your version) and select the Privacy button.
    2. Select the Cookies tab.
    3. To delete all cookies click the Delete All Cookies button.
    4. To delete specific cookies, click View Cookies and look through the list of the sites you wish to delete the cookies for, and press Remove Cookies
    Opera

    1. Once your browser is open, select the Tools menu and click Delete Private Data and click theDetails button.
    2. If you wish to keep things such as history, saved passwords, cache, etc., uncheck those items and click Delete. You may get a dialog that says "Active transfer has not been removed." if you are currently downloading a file.
    3. If you want to only delete certain cookies, click Tools and hover Advanced and click Cookies. From this screen, you can search for and select cookies to be deleted. To do so, select the select the site or the individual cookie and click Delete.
    Google Chrome

    1. Once your browser is open, press Control + Shift + Delete.
    2. Ensure that delete cookies is selected.
    3. Click clear browsing data. Alternatively you can click the spanner icon in the top left, select clear browsing data and repeat steps 2 and 3.




Please let me know how these work for you.



 
Can somebody please explain why the upgrade happened?

There is no other forum that I can go to that has the same kind of community and information. It is disturbing that if the forum goes down, then the community loses a major resource.

I am experiencing that right now.

Please tell me why.

Thanks.
 
I have noticed with the logging in problem that, at least for me, I don't look like I am logged in on the main forum page until I click on something (anything) else, and then I am logged in.

Also, there are two separate areas with this information and separate comments on each of them. Is there any way to delete one of them (and the links directing people there) and moving all the comments to one place or the other? I know you guys are knee deep in work but it would streamline this info.

Samuel and ME zombie- It seems like what they are saying is that because the upgrade was to fix security problems with this software they didn't have a choice. I really hope that the problems you are having get worked out soon. Please don't give up on us yet cause we need you here.

It seems like what is going on is that a million things happened at once, and on top of that they are super short of volunteers. I wish I could help but I don't know anything about this kind of stuff.
 
I know it would help to streamline this; I'm not sure how to do it.

Sorry about all the trouble; I think we've had the last of the major 'upgrades' for awhile and the Forum will not stay put in its nice new home - so hopefully peace will reign for quite a while.
 
What's New and New Posts completely useless. Cannot read titles on those pages. Cannot click on some parts.

Cannot edit any posts because blog this post obscures edit post.

Cannot see text in title boxes.

Posting often gets apache error and takes minutes.

PM often gets apache error and takes minutes. No certainty that it gets sent.
 
I couldn't get to the forum at all last night. Was it down for repair? I made it to the home page, but when I clicked on anything I got a message saying the site didn't exist.

Today, so far, things seem OK.

A lot of the problems I have have to do with things that cannot be fixed. The site design is visually "busy" for me; the doodads like videos require me to change my monitor settings from dim and blue to full color, and even then, they play slowly and with interruptions.

There are people with ME/CFS for whom the entire trend toward computer communication is a nightmare. I know quite a few who simply can't manage it and others who do it only because they must (like me). You won't hear from this subset for obvious reasons!

I understand why this update had to take place.

What I would like is a trend toward simplification if that is at all possible. Roger Burns used to put out a newsletter that purposely was in plain text to make it more accesssible.

I realize this probably won't happen because it may not be possible with this software and the majority of posters here love all the doodads.
 
It's a tough situation mezombie, I know. We're going to be providing different 'skins' or looks for the forum but I don't if any of them are going to address your problems.

Sorry, you're having all this trouble Samuel - have you tried any of the fixes I mentioned a couple of posts ago?
 
We ahve been through this before

Cort, there is a thread from the last failed upgrade that explains most of it in detail, including the fact that none of the workarounds that are usually suggested, including the ones you suggest, work.

This forum is not usable for me. Thanks for acknowledging that there is a problem, however. I was waiting for you to do that.
 
Lost posts, lost new threads

Hey Cort,

Hang in there! Just a heads-up that my posts & new thread from yesterday were lost. I checked they were "up" after posting, & they were fine. But when the forum went down yesterday, it seems it took them with it. Are some posts/threads still being restored?

Appreciate your efforts!:Retro smile:
 
Example of what mezombie might be talking about: hovering over perfectly normal buttons brings up menus. There is no apparent way to turn off those menus.

For me those menus are unnecessary and unreadable.

As a result, I just marked all forums read by accident. I didn't even know that that is what happened. I had to guess.

The buttons could be just simple buttons.

So even if the forum did work for me, which it doesn't because nobody ever bothered to try it with large fonts, it would still be neurologically and ergonomically bad design for people with these diseases.