Foggy's Progress - a record of improvements to the forum

[Foggy]

OMG, I finally caught up with the forum, I've read every post, except maybe I skimmed some of the long ones.

Now I'm gonna do Musical Asskicking for a couple hours, then I have some chores and honeydews, then next I will work on the smilies. You have to put them in one by one, and decide which ones should be on the post editing page and which ones you have to click "More Smilies" to see them. So it's going to take a few hours to get them right.

Then some other refinements, like hiding the Sportsball forum from people who don't want to see the sportsball threads and restoring the usergroups like Grumpy People and Gadflies and so forth.

It's still Infrastructure Week on Born Again Fogbow!

[Foggy]

!	Message from: Foggy
	I added the extension "External links open in new window (or tab, as the case may be). You can change the setting in User Control Panel --> Board Preferences (at the bottom of the page).

[Foggy]

Oh, man ... long day, I can't concentrate enough to get the smilies right. I'll have to do it mañana. I got some headway today, and fended off at least 40 more Russian spammers.

It's still INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK.

[Foggy]

Well, I just spent an hour trying to upload smilies, but they're not working for me. I have submitted a request for support with the phpBB support team. I'll keep working on this.

[Foggy]

I have a sudden major project I must do for ol' Wifehorn and her elk. My presence here will be spotty for a week or so.

Still no word on what is preventing me from working on the smilies. phpBB support hasn't responded, but I'll check again soon.

[Foggy]

Changed the setting for number of posts on a page from 10 to 25. Removed the small-text "time the post was last edited" thingy.

[Foggy]

!	Message from: Foggy
	Announcing two more board styles - Carbon and Graand New. Apparently, only a few board styles have been authorized for this version of phpBB.

[Foggy]

OK, some good news.

I managed to add a few smilies. By creating a *.pak file, with the following info:

filename (of the smilie), width, height, whether to display it on the posting page (1 for yes, 0 for no), name of the emotion, smilie code

... each one surrounded by single quotation marks, followed by a comma, and the whole thing ends with a blank line.

If I mess any of that up, it will screw up the smilies. So I have a ton of work to get them all back, but it can be done. I'll work on that as I get time over the next few days, and then we'll have all our smilies back, yay.

[Foggy]

OK, slowly but surely I'm bringing the smilies back. Then I'll try to put them in some sort of logical order.

Taking a break, might do more tonight or tomorrow. They're a lot of work!

[Foggy]

Added some more smilies; gotta go help an old lady neighbor fix her computer and cell phone. More later.

I had forgotten I had over 200 smilies. I can't use all of them, but most ...

[Foggy]

OK, I have most of the smilies in, but not in the best order. I'll work on that tomorrow.

Now it's time to ZOOM.

[Foggy]

Oops, I enabled Post Numbers but I didn't configure the extension to actually show the post numbers. I think I corrected that this morning.

[Foggy]

Probably missed a few things I've done since the last time I posted here, but anyway ...

Today I added two new board styles - Clean Silver, which is supposed to be great for those who use their phones to access the forum, and Orange BBEs, which is orange. Yeah.

They still need customization, like logos and Active Topics links and stuff, so look for them to improve, further on down the road.

To change board styles, go to User Control Panel --> Board Preferences --> My board style, and check out the alternatives. You can even suggest a new board style if you find one at https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/styles-2/3.3

NOTE: Do not suggest a board style unless it's already compliant with phpbb version 3.3.5, which is what we're running (the latest).

And I'm looking at an extension called Scheduled Maintenance, although everybody knows I do scheduled maintenance at 6:00 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday mornings, if I get up and actually do it. Also I have a backup program at my new hosting company which is sworn to protect my database so I never have another disaster. I'm almost over the last one. Gimme another century or so, I'll probably forget all about it. We're doing pretty good today, and tomorrow is a new year.

[Foggy]

Oh yeah, and I unlocked the topic so y'all can make suggestions and crab at me and stuff.

[bill_g]

No complaints or suggestions. Just a hearty thank you.

[Foggy]

You know you are far more than welcome.

OK, Scheduled Maintenance works, I'll probably set that up for Saturday nights warning about Sunday morning maintenance. At this point, our database is still so small that it doesn't take a lot of time to make backups, but we'll grow as the '20s roll on down the road.

[Volkonski]

No complaints or suggestions. Just a hearty thank you.

[RVInit]

No complaints or suggestions. Just a hearty thank you.

the bestest Dick Tater, ever.

[AndyinPA]

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

All hail the Fogmeister for his mighty 2021 Fogbow deeds!

[Lansdowne]

No complaints or suggestions. Just a hearty thank you.

Not sure if it is a complaint/suggestion, but I won't regard the restoration of Fogbow as complete as long as I regularly see

Ron DeSantis
<<..>>in Biden Administration

That is obscene even to me as a British person.

(and there are a few others in that section that could be moved elsewhere)

[Foggy]

Good plan, thanks.

That happened because back in February people were creating new topics before I figured out how I wanted to organize them. But yeah, time to reshuffle.

[Foggy]

Oh man, mass reorganization in progress, this will take a while but I think it will be an improvement. You have no idea how much it pleases me to move Boobert and Empty Gee and Matt Gaetz into my new forum, Worst of the Right-Wing Pieholes.

[Uninformed]

[Foggy]

Updated the Advanced BBCodes extension, all extensions are now fully updated.