Theme change error - fixed!

neptronix

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Hi all, so... i was playing with some of PHPBB's tools to clean up old/abandoned/unused themes, of which we had a few.
Apparently there is a bug in this tool, and instead of doing what i expected, it set everyone's theme to subsilver2.

If you want the old theme ( prosilver ) back.. here is a way to change your theme:
change-theme.gif


Also, this link directly to the control panel might work for you as well:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/ucp.php?i=165

Sorry for the hassle if you like prosilver!
 
Actually, i just found a way to restore the old theme preferences.. hang in there.. this is going to take a few hours to move files about.
 
Okay, after letting a 1.7 gigabyte text file chew up 6gb of ram on my machine and take forever to parse.. and an hour of uploading, downloading, plus a custom PHP script.. we are back in action.

39636 users.
39313 themes changed from backup table.
0 changes failed.

You guys should be right back to whatever theme you were using before. Sorry for the interruption!

If you were using some of the deprecated themes ( only about a hundred of you had this set ), then you've defaulted to subsilver2.

PS, only ~1% of you use subsilver2.. it's a good theme.. check it out using my instructions on how to change your theme.
 
I'm not sure if it's this that broke it, or something else, but there is a problem with the forum now, that I can't be certain when it started. (I reverified my display options in board preferences in the UCP; they are what they should be, and none of them could cause this even if they were wrong).

At the least, this thread:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=63142
is "broken" after the first page (probably before even page 1 ends; can't be sure).


The search index still must contain a copy, because this
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/search.php?keywords=mxus+3000&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&st=0&ch=-1&t=0&submit=Search
still sees posts from as late as May 2017 in it--but they can't be accessed or viewed except in the search above.

When clicking the links to take you to the actual post, it goes to the first page of that thread, which says there are 2 posts in it (though there are actually several visible ones just on that page), and there are no other pages or posts accessible. It should be a multipage thread covering about three years.


Something else is strange, though, because this search
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/search.php?keywords=mxus+3000&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=titleonly&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&st=0&ch=-1&t=0&submit=Search
only finds 49 posts with MXUS 3000 in the title of the post/thread (it should find more, even just based on what I see in the search by title/message text). But this could be an unrelated problem, or just another wierd thing about the PHPBB search.
 
One minute it was normal, next time it's flipped? So why did they change the layout with no warning? Later that day, back to normal. I just had figured that the site was changed due to the latest thing, THE SNART PHONE! Every other web site has changed due to the SP. I sure hope it won't happen here.

Dan
 
neptronix said:
PS, only ~1% of you use subsilver2..
Hopefully you don't remove it, too; I need it for my browser's customizations to work so I can read the forum (especially since the "minimal" or "text only" theme is now gone. :( I use(d) that one whenever I have trouble reading pages in subsilver2 due to people's formatting/etc).

Without subsilver2, I'd have to respend many hours figuring out how to recustomize whatever replacement theme there is so I can still use the forums as I do now. (when it was no longer available at the freakbikenation forum before it died, I wasn't able to read/post very often anymore; was just too hard and took too much time).
 
markz said:
I never noticed anything.

Perfect! :mrgreen:

DAND214 said:
One minute it was normal, next time it's flipped? So why did they change the layout with no warning? Later that day, back to normal. I just had figured that the site was changed due to the latest thing, THE SNART PHONE! Every other web site has changed due to the SP. I sure hope it won't happen here.

They.. you mean me? :) i do wish the effects of the settings i was playing with were properly labeled.. because that was NOT intentional.
Yes, one of the things we will be doing is updating ES so that it is smartphone compatible. Many people are using the endless sphere facebook page over this forum these days, because of our smartphone incompatibility. Even though i started the ES Facebook page a long time ago.. i don't like facebook.. and i want more people to be here..

We needed smart phone capability years ago.. i am working on correcting that, but i am not interested in pushing some 'new and improved' system that makes desktop look horrible, because it's a huge mistake to cripple the better computing device.
Currently, well over 50% of what browses the web is a smart phone. That can't be ignored.

amberwolf said:
Hopefully you don't remove it, too; I need it for my browser's customizations to work so I can read the forum (especially since the "minimal" or "text only" theme is now gone. :( I use(d) that one whenever I have trouble reading pages in subsilver2 due to people's formatting/etc).

Sorry that i had to remove the minimal/text only theme. That theme does not exist in phpbb3.2, so it was removed as part of the preparatory work so that less things get broken after the transition. This painful process will also have to happen with our modifications to the board software too, but that has to happen after the fact, not before :roll:

amberwolf said:
Without subsilver2, I'd have to respend many hours figuring out how to recustomize whatever replacement theme there is so I can still use the forums as I do now. (when it was no longer available at the freakbikenation forum before it died, I wasn't able to read/post very often anymore; was just too hard and took too much time).

I have bad news for you, then. Our 2 candidates for a forum upgrade are phpbb3.2 or vanilla forums. In either case, the themes are going to have dramatically different html tags.

You are an important member here and i will see what can be done to accommodate you after the upgrade. Maybe i have to make you a custom theme variant. We'll talk when the time comes.
 
From Forum hickup?
marty said:
I like this forum software. I have looked at other forums and this type is easier for me to navigate and figure out. Looking at black text on a light blue background. Can change that here > User Control Panel > Board preferences > Edit global settings > My board style: See drop down with 5 choices. Think prosilver is default. I like Prosilver!

My vote is for phpBB forum software. https://www.phpbb.com/

Discourse https://www.discourse.org/
and
Vanilla Forums https://vanillaforums.com/en/

Looked at the web sites. vanillaforums.com has caused my internet radio to stop playing. Got a slow internet connection. phpBB is best! If it's not broke. Don't fix it.

This is bringing back memories of the 2011 episode when we had the last "transition". Remember then there was talk of moving to different forum software.
My vote is for phpBB forum software. https://www.phpbb.com/
 
marty said:
From Forum hickup?
My vote is for phpBB forum software. https://www.phpbb.com/

I am currently working on a vanilla forums tester and a phpbb3.2 tester.

We tried out discourse already.. it's so dramatically different from phpbb and there isn't an easy way to hack it to act more like phpbb :/
Pretty sure there'd be a revolt if the forum went that way :lol:

We'll talk about this on another thread when the time comes.
 
I dont really know whats going on because I have no clue what you guys are talking about :lol:
For all those working on the problem and trying to make the forum better, thats a good thing.
Programming I never liked so those who do it for fun and those who do it for no pay; Now thats gotta be commended.
I kinda prefer the current style, but I have been to other forums like Pirate4x4, CalgaryJeepAssociation, Toms Hardware, Linus Tech Tips and there are just so many different "feels" and features. I guess what I am getting at is change is good and I will take a moment to list a few features in other forums that I liked.

- Instant Chat - At the top of the main page. Calgary Jeep Assocation and Pirate4x4 has that feature.
- Instant Notifications - When someone tags a user or quotes your statement. Linus Tech Tips has that feature.

Thats about all I can think of. I have noticed there are not much spammers anymore which is good.

Other then that, its good the way it is.
 
Since there hasn't been any reply about the thread problem that seems to have started about the same time as the theme change, I tested if a reply would bring back the MXUS v1/2/3 thread, but it doesn't.

Link to reply:

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=63142&p=1297064#p1297064

Clicking that link should take me to my test reply on that thread, but instead it takes me to the first page of the thread, and it will not display any other pages of it, nor any other posts in it.

But if you search for posts with that thread title, they *do* show up in the search results, so the posts are not gone--something is just wrong with the thread itself.

Perhaps a moderator could do a "copy topic" or "duplicate topic" on it and see if the new copy works properly?
 
Amberwolf.. that thread and another thread got nuked and i fixed both of them by doing surgery on the database.
The reason for it's disappearance is unfortunately unknown, and some database values will always be corrupt on that thread because their previous values are not recoverable, and i imagine they will be overwritten and corrected when we upgrade.

This happened before the theme problem and is not related.
 
neptronix said:
Amberwolf.. that thread and another thread got nuked and i fixed both of them by doing surgery on the database.
The reason for it's disappearance is unfortunately unknown, and some database values will always be corrupt on that thread because their previous values are not recoverable, and i imagine they will be overwritten and corrected when we upgrade.

This happened before the theme problem and is not related.
Ah; I never quite know what to expect from complex programs; I see corruption in unrelated data fairly frequently in my audio/MIDI editing programs, sometimes even leading to unrecoverable versions of files, just by changing a setting in a (buggy) audio plugin inside a host editing software, sometimes MIDI data (not even a related type or on any related track) disappears or becomes corrupted.

I guess if the copy topic/thread didn't fix it, then we'll have to wait and see.

But I would expect that if a database migration would fix it, the copy topic/thread should do it too? (not that I understand fully how it works under the hood, but I'd expect similar processes to create similar results).
 
Some people are still posting to the thread. But cant view it by clicking on the title as shown, or searching user that just posted doesnt work either to get into the thread and see most current posts.

MXUS thread issues.jpg
 
No, you can't get into the thread itself, but you can read the whole posts by doing a search that shows all characters of the posts, rather than the first 300/etc.
 
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