Important Known Forum Issues and Work-arounds (March 2019)

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Tunnel King

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Good day, Terrarians,

Recently some issues have cropped up in the forum software. Our current site is built on a version of Xenforo that is critically out of date, and we are working to resolve that. Some critical software packages related to our server no longer support our older version

Some of these issues will give error messages that seem to indicate that user permissions have been removed for the desired action - this is not the case. These issues affect all staff and development as well, with the same messages. Please do not make a new account to attempt to avoid these issues, as all accounts are affected.

In the meantime, here is a list of issues we know about (and temporary work-arounds that we know of):
  1. Uploading a file/image to a thread post or conversation post gives permission error (work-around available)
  2. Permalinks for individual posts now point to the first post in the thread (work-around available)
  3. The 'Previous Names' tab on profiles stopped working (gives permission error)
  4. Radio button selections for threads in sections that support them no longer appear or are no longer editable (partial work-around available)
  5. We can no longer update our front page with news. This includes removing older news articles and feature banners.
  6. Embedding media (videos) from some sites does not work. Sites that are known to work are: YouTube, Daily Motion, and Vimeo work. Gfycat works, though I've seen some older embeds not play until I modified the embed encoding. Facebook, Metacafe and LiveLeak do not work at all.
  7. When creating a private conversation, the first post and all subsequent posts are automatically 'liked'.
  8. The 'Start a Conversation' link underneath post avatars has stopped working. (Now disabled.) You can still start one by going to the person's profile page, click on their Information tab, and start a conversation from there (in the Interact section), or from their member card.
There may be other features that have stopped working, please report them here in this thread as you find them.

*** NOTE ****

The recent changes with Wiki image links are not related to this forum. We realize that some references to images there are now broken. Content authors will have to resolve these changes themselves.


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What are we doing to address these issues going forward?

The first step we have taken (and completed) is the removal of the Social Group feature. This addon/plugin has had no support or updates from the author (or the company he sold the rights to) in over three years. We attempted to do a normal update of the base forum software in March 2016 (three years ago), and the Social Group feature prevented that from being successful. Since that time, we have been able to do a few critical security updates and patch a couple of features, but we are at a point where an update is mandatory. While Social Groups were not directly causing these other issues, having them was blocking our ability to upgrade to resolve them.

Re-Logic is close to identifying someone to research our options and perform the updates. @Skiphs had been the person to perform maintenance and upgrades of the forum software and server, until he left Re-Logic in June 2018. Since then, there has not been a person with the access/knowledge to take us forward with this. Hopefully this will be resolved soon.
 
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Uploading a file/image to a thread post or conversation post gives permission error

Symptom: when making/editing a thread post, clicking on the 'Upload a File' button gives this error:

upload file error.png


Workaround: This is not actually an issue with your forum permissions.

You can use drag-and-drop or copy/paste to attach a file.

Drag and Drop method (Windows/MacOS) Linux?
  1. Open an Explorer-type window on your computer and navigate to the folder containing the image/file you want to post
  2. Select the image/file
  3. Drag the selected image/file to the body of your post. The body window will turn gray (at least for me it does) to indicate you are pointing to the right place
  4. Once you release the mouse button, the file will be uploaded as an attachment.
  5. For images - place the editing cursor at the desired location with the body of your post, then choose either 'Thumbnail' or 'Full Image' to insert it
Copy/paste method (all devices)
  1. Open an Explorer-type window on your computer and navigate to the folder containing the image/file you want to post
  2. Select and copy the image/file to the clipboard
  3. Place the editing cursor at the desired location with the body of your post
  4. Paste the clipboard contents to that location.
You may also choose to upload your images/files to an external server (such as imgur) and embed the image using the IMG BBcode tags.
 
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Permalinks for individual posts now point to the first post in the thread

Symptom: This refers to the numbered post link at the lower right of each post:

permalink.png


That link used to be a permanent link to the post, which could be copy/pasted into other posts. Now it only links to the thread itself and will always refer to the first post in the thread.

Work-around: The permalink can be easily obtained from the Edit/Report/Like links for the post. Simply copy/paste those links, and remove the 'edit'/'report'/'like' part from the URL.

Example: the 'Like' link for this post looks like

Code:
https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?posts/1724880/like

Edit that to look like this, and you've got the permalink.

Code:
https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?posts/1724880/
 
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Radio button selections for threads in sections that support them no longer appear or are no longer editable

Symptom: Some forum sections have extra custom fields associated with them. For example, Terraria Drawings, Paintings and Pixel Art threads have a Status field that can be used to indicate whether the author is accepting requests. Currently, that information is only visible on the list of threads in that section. It used to be visible as part of the first post in each thread as well; that no longer seems to be the case. Also, the thread author could modify these fields via the 'Edit Custom Fields' option in the Thread Tools menu. That apparently now links to the forum front page.

Example:
edit custom fields.png


Partial work-around: if you add 'edit-custom-fields' to the thread URL in the navigation bar, you will be given a chance to change the values (only if you are the thread/post author).

(h/t to member @Xenophil for both the screenshot and the work-around)
 
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Also, I Don't really now if it's a bug but clicking on "new alerts" and then on the alert can sometimes work erratically (cannot open in new window unless I click the forum's link, sometimes links to last forum's post although this isn't the post the alert linked…)
I really hope you'll find your way around.
 
By the way, Pressing the “start a conversation” button doesn’t work, as far as I know. Is there a reason for this, or is it another unheard of bug?
 
By the way, Pressing the “start a conversation” button doesn’t work, as far as I know. Is there a reason for this, or is it another unheard of bug?
Good find, we'll add it to the list.

You can always go to the person's profile, click the Information tab, and Start a Conversation from there. That still works.

eta: I disabled the add-on that provided that extra link
 
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Adding on to what Tunnel King has said, if you click on their avatar you should see a "start conversation" button that still works. At least for me. So you should have two different ways to still start conversations. Choose whichever is easiest for you.

Seemingly it's only the start conversation button that appears under the ribbons that doesn't function as it should.
 
R-I-P-start-a-convo-button.png

Rest in peace start a convo button, press f to pay respects

In all seriousness, this was intended, right?
 
Not bad, but when I first went on the forum today it said I had 280 notifications. Fixed itself after 2 secs, so I wouldn’t worry about.
There was a spambot that posted >200 messages in Crossroads, if you watch that section then unfortunately you got an alert for all of those.
 
On my iPad Mini 1, I cannot post on threads due to the text field and javascript being absent.
 
Yikes!! Hope you all can fix this! I’ll report any bugs I find, I’ve found no new ones besides the ones already found so far.
 
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