Questions about the New Forum Software

[AW Admin]

I can't post in my Linkedin thread but I can post elsewhere. Tried twice and tried quoting someone to no avail. It's only in that one thread so far.

Using my older Mac. Not due to character limits. And not posting rapidly.

But I was able to post using my new Mac.

That strikes me as a local to you and your old Mac issue.

The first thing to do is to clear your cache and cookies on the old mac.
Log off of AW (Make sure you know your password).
Clear your browser cache and delete AW cookies.
Completely quit your browser, including closing all tabs and windows.
Reopen your browser, and log back on to AW.

 

[bleep]

Hi! Thanks so much for the new forum venue! It rocks; as many have said, it now works at a normal speed, which is such a relief.

This is a tiny thing, not sure if it's on someone's list, etc., but the main forum page never finishes loading; it just keeps on loading, loading, loading. So, viewed items aren't refreshed (not shown as viewed), and other minor effects like that.

Is this a known thing? Others getting this? I see the same thing on two different browsers, but that was the farthest I dug.

Keep up the awesome work!

 

[AW Admin]

What do you mean by the "main forum page"? URL please?

 

[bleep]

What do you mean by the "main forum page"? URL please?

Oh shoot; sorry for not seeing your reply until now. I was referring to this one: https://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php

 

[bleep]

What do you mean by the "main forum page"? URL please?

Oh but also, in the intervening time, I realized that what I said above,

viewed items aren't refreshed (not shown as viewed)

Is not true. Everywhere items are shown as viewed when everything inside them have been viewed, and this is consistent. It's just that at that url, for me at least, the page eternally loads.

 

[bleep]

Oh but also, in the intervening time, I realized that what I said above,

Is not true. Everywhere items are shown as viewed when everything inside them have been viewed, and this is consistent. It's just that at that url, for me at least, the page eternally loads.

Oh and also, I just found out that that particular page eventually stops loading, it just takes a really long time (15 mins?). And I see other pages also taking a long time, often stumbling over amazon ad processes of some kind.

 

[AW Admin]

Oh and also, I just found out that that particular page eventually stops loading, it just takes a really long time (15 mins?). And I see other pages also taking a long time, often stumbling over amazon ad processes of some kind.

I suspect that may be due to software on your end, security software or ad blocker. There are Amazon affiliate links on the site, in some posts, and in lots of sigs.

 

[bleep]

I suspect that may be due to software on your end, security software or ad blocker. There are Amazon affiliate links on the site, in some posts, and in lots of sigs.

Thanks, I'll check it out!

 

[VeryBigBeard]

I've been away for a while. Very nice to have the forums back. Thanks for all the hard work, and I quite like the new software.

I'm having a similar issue as Pasty described here, also in SFF SYW. Same messages.

Running Firefox 88.0 on Windows 10. Haven't tried other browsers yet, but will if you like.

I'm having some trouble posting. I was doing a crit in QLH and I kept getting this error every time I tried to preview or post:

Oops! We ran into some problems. Please try again later. More error details may be in the browser console.

So I copied my crit, discarded the draft, cleared my cache, signed out, and closed my browser. After I re-opened my browser and logged in again, I was able to paste my crit and post. But it lost all the coloured text (my in-line comments were in red). So I tried to edit my post, but I got that same error.

Here is the post: https://absolutewrite.com/forums/in...tasy-new-version-post-55.347341/post-10676187

And here's the error entry in my browser console: 20:37:09.816 XHRPOSThttps://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php?posts/10676187/edit[HTTP/3 403 Forbidden 168ms]

I hate to bother you with this, because I know you're very busy, but I'm stumped. Thanks in advance for your help!

ETA: I'm getting the same error when I try to preview/post this message now! I'll clear everything and try again.

I got about 25K characters of my post in on the first refresh, the rest was simply cut off. I had to clear the cache again to post the remaining 5K. At no point would it accept smilies.

As one of the more, uh, verbose residents, I realize I may have to work with the length limit, that's fine. I understand there's a lot going on.

Thanks!

 

[AW Admin]

I've been away for a while. Very nice to have the forums back. Thanks for all the hard work, and I quite like the new software.

I'm having a similar issue as Pasty described here, also in SFF SYW. Same messages.

Running Firefox 88.0 on Windows 10. Haven't tried other browsers yet, but will if you like.

I got about 25K characters of my post in on the first refresh, the rest was simply cut off. I had to clear the cache again to post the remaining 5K. At no point would it accept smilies.

As one of the more, uh, verbose residents, I realize I may have to work with the length limit, that's fine. I understand there's a lot going on.

Thanks!

Again, there is a post limit of 15k characters, and the total characters includes formatting codes.

 

[VeryBigBeard]

Again, there is a post limit of 15k characters, and the total characters includes formatting codes.

Thanks. When I checked here, I figured that's what it was. I was just a bit surprised it allowed so much of my post, though I did cut out most of the code, so that's probably why. When I did the second, much shorter post, it still wouldn't accept it without my clearing the cache again--is that because I had the first post saved as a draft?

Just trying to figure out what the best way to crit. I often open a number of SYW posts in tabs and work through them in the course of a day, so I'd like to avoid closing them all too often. I can adapt, though, and force myself to be more concise, too. Is the plan still to slowly raise the character limit in the future?

 

[PastyAlien]

I'm having a similar issue as Pasty described here, also in SFF SYW. Same messages.

Maybe try avoiding coloured text--that always gives me an error, so now I crit in bold. Also, try this:

I don't know if this will help with troubleshooting, but maybe it will help critters get their crits to post. I can often get around the error by copying my crit, deleting it, deleting the draft, pasting my crit back, and then posting.

 

[AW Admin]

Is the plan still to slowly raise the character limit in the future?

Yes. I'm watching to see how it affects members.

I can't tell people not to use smartphones, and long posts are a problem for them, especially.

At the same time, we really don't want people to post huge excerpts for crit; it's not fair to critters.

 

[VeryBigBeard]

Maybe try avoiding coloured text--that always gives me an error, so now I crit in bold. Also, try this:

Thanks Pasty. I'll give that a shot. I really like that we have access to hex codes now for colours. I can see myself getting way too much use out of that. But one step at a time.

Yes. I'm watching to see how it affects members.

I can't tell people not to use smartphones, and long posts are a problem for them, especially.

At the same time, we really don't want people to post huge excerpts for crit; it's not fair to critters.

All fair. I mostly do crits and I mostly do them on my desktop. More people really should post short stuff in SYW just to get mechanics down. But that's especially true for the newer writers, who are the least likely to realize it.

I find I usually leave the shorter, mechanical crits to others, mostly because I don't check for posts that often so others usually get there first. If there's a piece that interests me--either because I like the material or because I think I can help the OP in some specific way--I tend to want to go into more depth. If I don't like the material, I usually just don't critique as I'm less likely to be helpful and I find I get a bit snippy if I do too many short, mechanical crits in a row.

Thanks for the info, and once again for getting the site back and more stable. Much appreciated.

 

[PastyAlien]

Thanks Pasty. I'll give that a shot. I really like that we have access to hex codes now for colours. I can see myself getting way too much use out of that. But one step at a time.

Hope it works for you! I noticed the color codes as well. In fact, I may have kinda sorta played around with replacing the dull reds available on the palette with my old friend rgb(255,0,0).

 

[VeryBigBeard]

Hope it works for you! I noticed the color codes as well. In fact, I may have kinda sorta played around with replacing the dull reds available on the palette with my old friend rgb(255,0,0).

My beloved red pen!

I just got a query crit to post using your suggestion to delete the draft. Even that only worked after I removed the #post-XXXXXXX at the end of the URL and refreshed the page without it. Couldn't load any new elements on the page or navigate to a different page. It feels like something with the post auto-save might be mis-firing, but that's very much a guess and it could also be that I have some setting wrong on my end. I have my ad-blockers disabled for AW, but it's possible something is breaking something else in there. I will take a look.

Sorry to be a pain, AW Admin. Please don't feel any obligation to go out of your way on my behalf. I understand that it's a process and takes time.

 

[AW Admin]

I had raised the post character limit to 20k characters and forgotten I had already raised it; I just checked.

To be clear about what that means.

This is 22 characters.
This is 30 characters.
This is 61 characters.

Spaces are characters, as are punctuation marks.

Colors and bold are more characters because the tags that set them use more characters.

 

[VeryBigBeard]

I had raised the post character limit to 20k characters and forgotten I had already raised it; I just checked.

That's great, and thank-you.

To be clear about what that means.

This is 22 characters.
This is 30 characters.
This is 61 characters.

Spaces are characters, as are punctuation marks.

Colors and bold are more characters because the tags that set them use more characters.

I know. It does add up fast.

I often posted on the old forum with the BB codes on anyway. I've used mark-up enough and it was usually easier to do multi-quote crits that way. I'll try to stick to that with the new software, though I will miss the nifty return breaks. Those are fun.

When I checked it with codes on, the query post was about 7,800 characters, so theoretically well within the limit. I didn't change or remove any formatting when I tried again. Just pasted the same marked-up text into the page and that worked. Any reason why is beyond my limited comprehension, unfortunately.

 

[AW Admin]

I will keep paying attention, and trying to get things working better all around.

 

[VeryBigBeard]

No worries. It actually works pretty great already. A lot of things are a lot smoother.

I very much appreciate all the hard work transferring and maintaining all the history.

 

[PraiseRao]

Did the forum just get an update? Things seem slightly different.

 

[AW Admin]

Did the forum just get an update? Things seem slightly different.

Please see this post

 

[Layla Nahar]

Hi, I looked through the thread and the FAQs & didn't see this - but - the posts are showing up as narrow columns (eg not expanding to the right to fill the page). My old brain has a hard time keeping information in my head with this setup Is there some way to see wider, shorter, as opposed to the current narrow and tall format?

& thank you for the forums

 

[Silenia]

Hi, I looked through the thread and the FAQs & didn't see this - but - the posts are showing up as narrow columns (eg not expanding to the right to fill the page). My old brain has a hard time keeping information in my head with this setup Is there some way to see wider, shorter, as opposed to the current narrow and tall format?

& thank you for the forums

Bottom of the page, left-hand side, just above the About Absolute Write/Quick Navigation/User Menu section, there's a tiny little button with two diagonal arrows. Clicking this toggles width.

 

[Layla Nahar]

hmmm. I didn't see a button like that - but - I clicked that 'AW Drift' and chose 'Xenforo'; when I resized the text flowed all the way to the right side.