board update june 2022

[griffin]

After a couple weeks here, the site is still working... just a number of bugs to figure out (unable to post more than 4 links at a time, and some non-letter characters like dashes are showing up as question-marks which means the "character set" has changed again).

Now to catch up on all the news from the last 3 weeks...

[kovert]

some non-letter characters like dashes are showing up as question-marks which means the "character set" has changed again

Perhaps you can force the database connection itself to UTF-8 by adding something like this below the mySQL connection code:

$yourDBconnectionname -> set_charset("utf8");

Substitute $yourDBconnectionname with your connection name.

[griffin]

I will have a dig around and see what I can find.... to see if that can help.

[kovert]

Cool.

If the special characters indeed appear correctly while viewing the data directly in the database (eg in phpMyAdmin), then the above might work.

[griffin]

Is anyone else getting the "403 Forbidden" screen when trying to post something with too many links... or is it just me?

I have found that if click on the top left tab (switch editor to source mode) before I click on send, it seems to get through, but only if there is less than 4 links in the post.

[Skyfire]

Is anyone else getting the "403 Forbidden" screen when trying to post something with too many links... or is it just me?

3 URLs for me. 4th gave me the 403 error.

I'm also getting randomly logged out after submitting, and sometimes on clicking on another post too I think.

[griffin]

Investigations into the 403 error make it look like this older version of vbulletin is incompatible to the server host's ModSecurity (it is there to stop "excessive" editing of the database as a way to prevent unauthorised access and editing/deletion - kinda like when a bank puts a lock on your account if it thinks someone else is using it, some banks are more pro-active than others), so I will attempt to upgrade it to the current version some time this weekend. That requires the board to go offline during the backup and uploading process (as well as the various adjustments that are expected with the new fancy version), not to mention the expected problems that will occur (the last time I tried this, the board was offline for a few days while I tried to figure out what went wrong).
I would prefer to do it after one of the midnights when less people will be affected, but it will ultimately depend on what else I have on this weekend.

[Autocon]

Best of luck!

[griffin]

The update hasn't happened yet, as vbulletin sent out an alert just before I was about to do it, for an urgent update for version 5, which said that it required require some significant uploading of files (kinda like a second upgrade within one day)... so I want to see if I can get the updated version to upload without having to "upgrade" twice in a day.

[griffin]

Still got so much on at the moment, so I still haven't finished fixing up the server host for this messageboard... but now I have to let people know that the image files for this site (which are hosted on a different, cheaper host), is having an internal upgrade this week (nothing to do with me), so during the next few days there might be some issues with images or missing images on this site (any image file from the "toycollectors' domain).