Xenforo conversion thread ( ES 2.0 )

[neptronix]

Reporting in on zeropress.

- Mobile went from a disaster, to useable but with rough edges.
- UI needs a ton of alignment/refinement work, but it's finally in a good enough state.
- Users cannot save code snippets in certain languages because our over-eager anti-XSS filter mangles them to death, need an alternate filtering mechanism for this.
- Visual history of revisions isn't perfect, but works well enough to determine who edited what, when, and where. We consider this good enough for release and will revise it.

One last final pass, some elbow grease by me, and we're done.

We could use another $750 from the forum because the project went significantly over budget. See the fundraising post for more details.

 

[neptronix]

Looks like the forum is thawing from it's winter hibernation a bit early.

 

[neptronix]

Howdy yall.

We got the preview version of our knowledgebase coming tomorrow.
This system has a lot of new code and is therefore immature.
We would like it if some members could kick the tires with us, because we know there'll be bugs we missed.

More info tomorrow!

 

[neptronix]

Sorry, pushing it forward to early next week, today was a hell ride at the shop!

 

[neptronix]

Hey yall!
Some updates.

Platform purgatory ongoing

We are still waiting on word about Xenforo 2.4.. been about 2 months since we last heard back.
The list of UI improvements i want to make keep piling up waiting for this.

One noteworthy feature in the new version of post editor that's supposedly better:



Other than that, no real killer features for us other than this editor plus some reshuffling of the user interface.


Knowledgebase preview release

Our knowledgebase software is launched; you should see a 'knowledgebase' tab if you are logged in. The password to access it is now removed. It should be visible to only logged in users for now.

This knowledgebase software is 97% complete, and needs bug hunting / kicking the tires.
If you find a bug in it, please report it in this thread: ES Knowledgebase bugs thread

It also lacks content! I've provided an outline for what i think is essential for the knowledgebase, and some empty articles ( labeled 'stub' ) as a guideline. I will be working randomly on the weekends to fill in what i know ( geared hub motors, battery cell selection, etc ), to help kick off the party.

So far, we have 2 editors signed up and are looking for more!
If you're interested in help building the knowledge, please see this thread:
Apply to be a KB Editor

Here's the current to-do list for the knowledgebase software, ordered by priority:

1. Fix any serious bugs that affect use
2. URLs that model Xenforo's + a routing mechanism to make the magic happen ( our current URLs suck! )
3. Mega CSS/HTML cleanup pass, lots of little warts to be removed in the UI
4. Better mobile mode
5. >=30% longer article names in the navigation column via smaller fonts and adjustments

More later!

 

[amberwolf]

Dunno if this is a bug in XF or a poor implementation choice, but if I try to quote this post
https://endless-sphere.com/sphere/threads/left-drive-rear-hub-sprocket-dilemmas.125745/post-1837361
by using it's reply button, it moves the text cursor to the text box but doesn't quote it. Manually selecting the post doesn't pop up the floating "reply" button to do that either.

I'm sure it's because it is *just* a quote with no other content already, possibly even because it is the same person quoting it as posted it...but it should still work for any other user to quote them in a normal reply.

(i ended up using the bbcode editor to copy/paste/edit things as needed to create a quoted version)

 

[neptronix]

Yeah, the editor leaves something to be desired. The new version of Xenforo is getting a new editor, so hopefully they've fixed that.

 

[JRP3]

(i ended up using the bbcode editor to copy/paste/edit things as needed to create a quoted version)

You can also click the quotation mark symbol in the reply window and paste the text into that.

 

[neptronix]

Checking in.
Forum continuing to thaw out. Surprised to see 60 people online a few times during early feb.

Nobody's taken initiative to put content into our knowledgebase, and we only have two applications for editor so far.
I want to put some more elbow grease in but my schedule is insane right now.

Might remove the knowledgebase tab for everyone except editors/moderators because it's currently sad to look at.

I find the forum traffic and enthusiasm level is usually peak low during the middle of winter, so asking for editors ( or anything else ) never yields good results during that time.

I'm dead serious about having an awesome knowledgebase on this site though. I'll make another call for editors about 2 months from now.

 

[amberwolf]

These might be useful for the pm side of things, since there's no way to know right now whether someone read your pm or not (difficult to make some moderation choices if you don't know if they're just ignoring you or if they haven't gotten your messages yet).

Unmaintained - [OzzModz] Conversation Read Check Mark

A simple add-on to add a check mark next to a user's name in a conversation after they've read the last post in a conversation. NOTE: Some styles change the font awesome definitions and may require using the image.

xenforo.com

Conversation Essentials

About: This add-on adds vital functions and features for viewing and managing personal conversations. Currently installed on large forums with no reported issues. This add-on is simply a must have for anyone with more than just a few...

xenforo.com

 

[neptronix]

Not a bad idea.. the plugin can fail one day and the forum won't be significantly borked, so it's safe to run even if the plugin turns out to be flaky.
On the list for the next improvement round.

 

[neptronix]

Not much to report on here.

Xenforo 2.4 still stalled, so further construction on site still stalled.

Forum traffic continues to rise as expected with seasonal trends.

Decided to keep the knowledgebase link up because recently we got another contributor signed up who has some good ideas. And A-DamW appears to be doing warmups, so..

 

[neptronix]

Still waiting for this new Xenforo. I check every week. They have two weeks to hit their stated release date and we don't have an alpha yet so i think they will be late on it and continue to hold me up.

No ES KB entries from the community yet, but i'm leaving the tab on the site to irritate myself into throwing content in it. So far it's working, i added an article early in the week.

Our KB software is at v1.5 and i will be working w/Kahuna to produce v1.75 sometime around summer and send the improved version back to ES.

This new version will be mostly prep for an open source release + give it the ability to attach to other software.
What's relevant for ES:
- article comment notification ( turns out we need this )
- URLs need to be actual paths instead of PHP queries ( bad for SEO )
- More interface cleanup
- ? nobody has kicked the tires and reported any bugs yet so i'm sure there are some

I have a pretty good plan for ES 2.4 brewing and i think if we don't get Xenforo 2.4 in a few months, we'll do an interim version of this plan around summer that doesn't include visual design improvements.

 

[neptronix]

No news about site improvements here. Still awaiting Xenforo 2.4 and working on zeropress in the background.

Had a gang of bots arrive today, OpenAI's GPT bot, Bingbot, and one that refused to identify itself, ignore the universal instructions in robots.txt and absolutely hammer 8 cores. If i wasn't temporarily running double CPU, this could have easily crashed the site. This makes the sysadmin mad.



I consider ignoring robots.txt a crime for all companies except Google and have enforced the law with several new handcrafted rules. As you can see by the end of the graph, they are working.



We had a few min of interruption while i was at the controls, but ES gets a clean bill of health as of now.

 

[neptronix]

Follow up on the search engine blackout issue from ~7 months ago.
It appears that the site has completely recovered since i applied the fix.
By my own experiences, i also see ES recommended more often.

More objective findings? Google Search console says:



Glad to see our systems in good condition ahead of the summer traffic rush.
Happy riding and hope you enjoy the site.

 

[neptronix]

Another bot attack thwarted, had to restart the server.
Was a block of servers from oracle corporation just rapidly smacking a weak point for reasons unknown.

( 2 day graph, top line is 100% CPU )

Threat neutralized.

Have a good weekend yall

 

[A-DamW]

Man, you are on it Nep!

 

[neptronix]

Looks like we're not the only one..

 

[marty]

AI is something new. Like a new baby trying to learn everything there is to know. If you don't let the baby learn. It will grow up to be a stupid adult.

 

[neptronix]

AI is something new. Like a new baby trying to learn everything there is to know. If you don't let the baby learn. It will grow up to be a stupid adult.

They can follow the rules stated by robots.txt ( a decades old universal standard ), be honest about who they are, and successfully lift all ~200gb of the data in as little as 2 weeks, or they can get banned.


Turns out there was another head of the hydra last night. Consumed 2 hours knocking out a AI scraper network with around 100 IP addresses. They came back while i was sleeping with more IP addresses caught in the trap.

I have long been negative on using third party services, but we may adopt cloudflare's AI scraper labyrinth system if this continues to ramp up.

 

[harrisonpatm]

Hey @neptronix , if you have a minute, can you explain/dumb down robots.txt for me and others? What's going on, with bots scraping content on us and Wiki, and what does that have to do with robots.txt?

 

[neptronix]

https://endless-sphere.com/robots.txt
wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt

It's a set of rules for what can be scraped and how fast it can go.

The problem we have is that there's an increasing amount of bots ignoring that rule. In addition, not identifying themselves properly. I suspect that many of these bots are AI content ingesters.

You either deal with the rulebreakers, shut the website down, or see your hosting bill skyrocket when enough of them are active at any given time. Spring - summer is when web scrapers are most active.

 

[JRP3]

Spring - summer is when web scrapers are most active.

Who knew bots had seasons?

 

[amberwolf]

and some people and places have seasonal bot allergies to go with them.

 

[neptronix]

Checking in!
Looks like the server work i did is holding the tide of bots back. Cyber terror level downgraded from code yellow to code green.


I suspect the Xenforo team is coming around the bend with their big release. They are talking about new features at a faster rate. I would estimate they're at the 'the last 10% takes 90% of the time' phase. My best guess is we get it within a month.

On our end, we're near the last 10% of the internal upgrade to our knowledgebase engine and moving on to add a few small features for ES, then after that, for ES purposes, we're done with the software ( until people start actually using it and we find that ES needs more features ).


My best guess is that we get started on:
[WIP] ES v2.4 feature list / planning
In 1-2 months.

Anyway, happy building and riding season, yall! enjoy the forum ^_^