Post Your Thoughts On The New Website

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
I just saw a problem with your adblocker detection...

I do have AdBlock Plus installed on my Chrome Browser... but I have ad blocking on RC Help disabled... Today, I started getting the popup notice asking me to disable my adblocker software despite my having RC Help whitelisted. Since this just started happening today and since you've been running the new forum software for a bit, I assume something changed recently causing this behavior
 

Tony

Staff member
Nothing should have changed. I know I have not done anything with the detector since I installed it. I as well have the same adblock installed on chrome and I'm not seeing any kind of issue (hence why I made it bright pink lmao). I will keep my eyes open. Is this happening constantly?
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
FYI.... Just returned in case you needed more info... the issue isn't happening this time. I left and came back in about 3 times and nothing...
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
This evening was the first time it happened.... and just like now, I left and came back several times. Since I also usually start on the New Posts page, I also tried just going to the forum home page ( when it was happening ) and it did it there also.... now nothing, perhaps it was just a hiccup on the forum or my browser ...

I'll keep an eye out also
 

Tony

Staff member
I have to ask, you are sure your sign in the top right is green? And that is the one that I'm trying to get rid of. But that thing is buried into a crapton of code and I'm having a hard time finding it.
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
And to confuse things more... this test I get this one... I'll answer your question in a moment, we've got different adblockers apparentlyAdBlock.jpg
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
Ok... I've got ...

Adblock Plus
1.12.4


The toolbar icon is a small stop sign, it's red if enabled and grayed out if it isn't .... here is a screen shot of some of the toolbar options ( there are more options in the extensions area. I like this one because it also has some malware website blocking that I can enable and several other options ...

AdBlockImg.jpg
 

Tony

Staff member
Ah, I'm running AdBlock 3.8.6 and I'm not getting that. I just turned on my auto refresh and set it to ever .5 seconds and it never came up for me. I wonder if anyone else is having this issue...
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
A couple of thoughts....

The majority of the time, I come to RC Help from another website and usually I do have the adblocker enabled on those sites. Perhaps it takes a moment for the adblocker to recognize and then disable. It didn't happen on any of my tests when I came from another site that was also whitelisted.

I've also been closing, opening a blocked site and then coming to RCH to test recently.... it happened more often than not but it wasn't consistent. Currently, it hasn't been happening again.

While I've posted two versions of the notice.... there were two others I've seen also... like there are more than one way it notifies you or prehaps several adblock detectors ????
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
I switched to the one you have installed ( it's by a different company/author ) .... and I'll try it for a while. If something new happens, I'll post up on it.
 

Tony

Staff member
The option I use on this one is Do not run on pages on this domain. I want to remove the thing but every how and then you get to a site that has 500 ads on a single page and you can't find any of the info you are looking for.

Then there are the sites that if you have an ad blocker (again, the sites with massive amounts of ads) and you turn it on, they lock you out of the pages. I will never be that site. Slightly annoying with pink banners is fine, but locking someone out of the forum because they dont' want to see ads is just not okay with me.
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
I'm laying odds that the adblocker I was using ( and still haven't ruled out until I test this other one more ) was just being slow to disable, it makes sense... but it's just a guess still.


I have no problems with ads per se.... just the ones like you mentioned which over use them and have more ads than content

The size of the first one I saw here tonight... would have likely been overlooked had it been anything other than pink... lmao
 

Tony

Staff member
Just to keep you all updated on what is going on, today was an "insult to injury" kind of day.

Last night, after over 8 straight hours of working on the new article system, the developer of the software went completely sideways on me. And when someone gets sideways, I get sideways right back. Let's just say, this didn't end very well. But, I thought what the hell, I will keep pressing on. So lets get down to the issues as of right now. Oh, and remember 'why' I created this site? So that people that are completely new to the hobby can ask questions without being called every name under the sun? Just an FYI, that is what happened to me last night when I was asking HIM questions about HIS software. THAT is what set him off. Me asking him a simple question... It's pushing me to become a developer... But I will never be that smart unfortunately...

Anyway...

While I was setting the articles section up I noticed that every single article that I was putting in there was showing up on the index page (this is what set him off). I told him what it was doing with it posting all articles on one page regardless of settings or what category I had placed it in, it was always showing up on the main page. This is where he went sideways after 8+ hours of work. No resolution, no 'this is how you do it', nothing! Just him going off on me like I was a red headed step child.

Fine.... If that is the way you are going to be, I will just dig a little deeper into your software and figure it out for myself. Because lets face it, this site needs an article section...

So I wake up today and start doing a little more work. There is absolutely NO WAY to keep ALL of the articles from showing up on the main page. I thought it was something that I did so I decided to just delete the add on from the site but that is when I found out that it MODIFIES the original threads that were promoted to an article! It takes all of the text that was in the original thread and puts it into a quote, which was set to a default setting of 5 characters. That means if this post that you are reading right now was one of the promoted articles, the quote would contain "Ju..." and THAT'S IT!!! The 5 characters INCLUDES the 3 periods!!! And there were MULTIPLE threads like this. Oh yea, fire was coming out of my head on this one.

Thankfully I was able to go into the AMS, select ALL of the articles (since they were ALL on the SAME FRIGGIN PAGE!!!) and I was able to send them from the AMS back to a forum I created that is out of sight. And this worked, but now, we have duplicate threads... We have the modified ones in the Articles Node (the forum section with all of the old articles, over 200 of them) AND they are also in the new section I created.

I decided that maybe, just maybe "I" was the cause of all of these issues and maybe I should start over. So I went into the database tables and HOLY CRAP, there were 25 tables for AMS alone!!! I had already uninstalled it from the forum, and now, I am deleting the tables associated with it so that I can reinstall it. Tables dropped AND IT DELETES THE ORIGINAL THREADS!!!!!!!! This craptastic software actually MOVED the original threads from being associated with the forum database TO THEIR DATABASE!!! Very glad I made a backup of all of this crap!!!

Whatever, I have saved the threads from getting deleted so lets reinstall all of this to see if I did something wrong (lets face it, most of the time it's my fault, just ask my wife...). So the files are on the server, I install the .xml file and go in and set the permissions so that I could see it and edit it. Done. There was already one category on there so just to see if it would put everything BACK on the home page, I created another category and I pushed one article into each of the categories. This time though, I unchecked the box for it to modify the existing threads (this is a good and a bad thing. Good thing is it doesn't modify the original thread. Bad thing is now it's not associated with the article).

And even still with COMPLETELY DEFAULT SETTINGS, both of the articles showed up on the index page!!! He blamed this issue on ME when it was HIS coding that caused it. It was at this point that I decided to just say screw it, I reverted the articles back into threads, uninstalled it and went to the database to delete the 25 tables.... Well, I had a hard time finding the tables because there were not 25 tables, there was ONLY ONE FRIGGIN TABLE this time.

Needless to say, that software is way over complicated for what it does. It had some great options that would have done great here on the site, but everything about it is made to where you have to know a LOT about how everything works on the back end just to use it.

So now we are back to step 1, we have no article system and the forum REALLY needs one. Man I wish I could take this file and ACTUALLY BURN IT!!!! Hitting delete on this POS just isn't enough...

There you go guys, that is what I was doing ALL day yesterday as well as most of the day today. And it was all for NOTHING. Starting back at step 1 again....
So I took a chance and purchased another article management software from another vendor. This one is more simplistic in every way and thought maybe simple would be better. So I downloaded it and installed it. The install went fine and the product seems to be okay for what we need.

First thing I do is create an article in the new system, and it works. Even a place to upload an article image for a thumbnail. So I decide to try the Promote To Article feature which is what this site MUST have. I select a thread, click promote to article, a popup comes up, I select a category, click submit, the page refreshes and that's it. No article. I check on the history of the thread and it clearly tried to create an article since it says "Promoted to article on this date", but there is no article.

Since I can't just wait for a company to get off their butt to fix what is a huge bug with their software, I tell them to just return my money and I will move on. I get a reply this morning that they will not return my money and that the software is what it is. Fine, this one was cheap and I will not be ordering anything else from them.

I just can't seem to catch a damn break on this article management crap. I have tried for the last 3-4 days to get something on this site and everything has bitten me in the ass. There has to come a time when I just have to accept the fact that this site may never have an article section again... Then there is the other side of me (the OCD side) that has to have it because that is where the most important static content is kept. Damn you OCD!!!
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
Tony, for what it's worth, since I switched to the other adblocker you were using, I haven't seen the adblocker detected popup...

An upside, it also seems to load websites a bit faster... On the downside, the settings ( which sites are blocked etc ) aren't synced between my computers and I have to make those changes on each system.
 

Tony

Staff member
Found a little issue when you mouse over your name in the drop down box. It was only showing a single row which I just flat don't like. It's supposed to be two rows. So had to do a little coding to get it fixed and now the dual rows are back. below are pictures of the before and after.

Before, very long
zuser3.png

After, nice and purdy!
zuser4.png

It's a small detail but it makes a huge difference to me lol. Just thought I would update you all.
 

Dennis H

Member
I have started a 0 tolerance policy in the chat. If you post something that you surely know you are not supposed to, you are banned from the chat. The live stream yesterday had a member asking for his friend if they were banned because they could not post a comment. After that persons comment, you damn right they are banned. I will be adding more moderators to it even if we are not showing it on the video.

Tony, this is the only policy to have, "0" tolerance. And let it be clearly known. I have seen post where the site let the post stand, and membership started slowly going down. Keep it clean, professional, and on subject, the site will be a winner.

JMO, Dennis
 

Tony

Staff member
This is the way I'm doing it on the chat, here on the forum i have a little more control than I do over there. I can setup a lot of different filters here on teh site, and unfortunately a lot of good filters on youtube are still in the Alpha stage and being tested. Unfortunately I was not one of the ones selected to test them because I would have been glad to. We will get there, it's just taking time. But I do know what you mean. I try to keep a clean forum and thanks to the awesome members on here, I think we have done a hell of a job doing just that.
 
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