Updating we will go...

[doc]

Ok, what this isn't right now is pretty.

What it IS is an upgrade to the lastest version of the software.

There will be testing required. Please post any oddities, or email them to me at webmaven@aphelion-webzine.com.

If your password doesn't work, try using the password recovery link first. If that doesnt' work, email me.

I'm choosing to flip this over now rather than after I get it prettied up because the spam problem has been so bad. Consider the entire thing "Under construction."

Oh yeah, we should have a new issue up soon. Stay tuned.

[doc]

Also, if you made a post between 7am this morning and now, you might want to repost it. It likely did not get carried over in the conversion.

[Lester Curtis]

Well, when all else fails . . .

This scared me a little when I saw it . . . I knew what it meant right away, but whatever page I landed on is utter chaos . . . then I logged in and it cleared up.

Not bad so far, then.

[doc]

My immediate reaction is negative. These ancient eyeballs don't do well with light blue on white. I did much better with the dark background. I suppose I'll get used to it, but the prior format was much easier to read.

gino

It's not going to stay this way. This is just the default skin. It probably won't look entirely like the old one, as I don't think that skin is available for phpBB v3, but I'll get something similar in terms of general colour palette.

[doc]

Well, now. How does that look?

[Lester Curtis]

Are we gonna be able to choose a different skin? Few things hurt my eyes like trying to read white fonts against a dark background . . .

[doc]

I will try and get an alternative in. Getting it to integrate properly with the rest of the site is the tricky bit, but I think I have a good handle on it now.

[doc]

Are we gonna be able to choose a different skin? Few things hurt my eyes like trying to read white fonts against a dark background . . .

I've modified the "prosilver" theme to work within the Aphelion framework and changed the settings to allow user override. I plan to look for a better light/contrast theme that will look better, but for now, you can use that if it's easier.

[Lester Curtis]

Wow, all coming back bit by bit -- thanks for all the hard work, everyone!

[kailhofer]

Well, I see I'll have to completely fix all the links on the entire Flash Index. *Sigh* Are there any more formatting commands to be added, like alignment of text and the like? At least then I'll know how much I have to fix in all the stories.

Hmm... Dare I hope that I will finally rise above the "Master Critic" level?

[Robert_Moriyama]

Well, I see I'll have to completely fix all the links on the entire Flash Index. *Sigh* Are there any more formatting commands to be added, like alignment of text and the like? At least then I'll know how much I have to fix in all the stories.

Hmm... Dare I hope that I will finally rise above the "Master Critic" level?

If the editors names are in red, yours should be too!

Near as I can tell, only Doc and now yours occasionally truthily are shown in red, because that color indicates 'Administrator' status (for the Forum).

[kailhofer]

My name in green would be ok, too. No, actually, all I was hoping for was a "Flash Editor" like Robert's "Short Stories Editor" under the avatar. It has been a couple of years now.

BTW, I notice the 'prosilver' loads much faster than the other skin.

[Robert_Moriyama]

Nate now shows up as "Flash Fiction Editor", and is in the "Editors" group, but I'll be dipped if I can figure out how to change the color of his userid when it is displayed on his posts...

RM

Correction: Had to set the display color for the Editors group to green, then make Editors the default group for Nate, McCamy, Iain, and Dan. (I left myself and Doc (Rob) with default group Administrators because I'm not sure if it would screw up our Administrative abilities to have something else as default group....)

[kailhofer]

Nate now shows up as "Flash Fiction Editor", and is in the "Editors" group, but I'll be dipped if I can figure out how to change the color of his userid when it is displayed on his posts...

Thanks. The green was really just a joke, since I saw on the bottom of the front page that was the color of 'global moderator', whatever that is.

[doc]

My name in green would be ok, too. No, actually, all I was hoping for was a "Flash Editor" like Robert's "Short Stories Editor" under the avatar. It has been a couple of years now.

Which reminds me that I never did get a proper button in the sidebar either. *makes a note for the weekend*

BTW, I notice the 'prosilver' loads much faster than the other skin.

Yeah, but it looks terrible. *grin* (And honestly, they both load reasonably quickly on my PC, so mileage obviously will vary. (Do they say "Your kilometreage may vary" in Canada and Europe? (And why do I use so many parentheses? (Is it because I'm insecure?))))

[doc]

BTW, browser tip for people with difficulty reading on the screen (in any page, not just here):

Ctrl-+ will increase the font size of the page. (Ctrl-- decreases it, and Ctrl-0 resets it to "normal"). You can apply this multiple times until you find a font size you are comfortable with.

[Robert_Moriyama]

Unfortunately, we have already had one new spammer. Presumably it was a deliberate act by a human (well, sub-human), unless somebody out there has figured out how to have a bot run very, very smart Optical Character Recognition routines on the Captcha image, or hack in to read what the clear-text version is. On the plus side, this new version of phBB makes it much easier to clean up any mess that a spambot may make.

[Lester Curtis]

I'm blocked too, but only from the March forum . . . it says I'm not authorized. everything else seems normal.

[doc]

Try it now.

It's the scotch, I'm telling you.

[Robert_Moriyama]

If you check the bottom of the Forum page, you will see that the number of members has decreased by several hundred. That is due to the "Prune" function available to Administrators. I have used (and possibly abused) the wildcard-selection functions to do mass deletes and bans on e-mail domains and usernames that seem to generate the most (mainly inactive) members and spam posts. My apologies to any legitimate lurkers who may have been clobbered in the process (e.g., "Benny", who started the "Hello, I'm New Here" topic, but who is no longer with us...). Apologies also to any readers in Poland who had or who have e-mail domains ending in ".pl" -- I couldn't find any active members with that domain, but lots of past spam in what looked like Polish, so...

There were some usernames that, with trailing multi-digit numbers, occurred dozens or even hundreds of times in the Member list. They are gone, and banned. Likewise e-mail addresses like ...@katonoma.com, ...@thebestmoneymakingtips.info, etc. (Sadly, there is no way to tell if a @gmail.com address belongs to a legitimate-but-silent member or not.)

Aphelion, we stand on guard for thee (to crib a line from the Canadian national anthem).