Phun Tech Issues

It was suggested that we create a thread to gather tech issues together. And, as the thread grows, it might serve as a nice reference to solve some common problems.

If your problem is directly related to Phun, or you need help using a Phun feature, use this thread. If your problem deals with another site or it's something general, use the Tech Issues thread in The Lounge.

So, feel free to post your Phun tech issues here. In addition to describing your problem, please post any relevant details such as: what you were doing at the time, what you expected and what ultimately happened instead, URL, browser/OS/software version numbers, error codes, screenshots, etc. It helps to know as many details as possible.

And, if you are the type of person that can solve such problems, please keep an eye on this thread (maybe subscribe to it) and help out when you can.

Also, keep in mind that not all these problems can be solved. Sometimes it might be that the people helping out here won't have access to fix or see what exactly is happening server-side. And, sometimes what you perceive as a problem is actually a setting or feature that's there for a reason (ex. various limits or throttles for the sake of performance). But, at least it will be documented and maybe some things can be fixed.

 

Green Bastard has displayed his acumen and insight concerning vB related issues in the Forum Issues thread. We appreciate his help and encourage folks to bring those issues here for Green Bastard and others to analyse and address.

 

I can only agree with Scribes. And in addition to that i Think it is useful in the long run if people with the "knowhow", and have new fresh eyes to look at the proplems are needed in some cases. Things can easily become stuck in the same patterns when you only see the same solutions too problems that eventually stays as problems when the solutions are wrong.

 

is there a particular reason why threads look unread to me while I was the last one to post in it? Like in this photo:

 

Happens to me too.

 

Not sure off hand, but a few questions:

Which Thread/Forum Read Marking Type is being used? (requires somebody with Admin CP access). I found a couple threads [1][2] where other people have had the same problem when using "Inactivity/Cookie" option. But, that option would also put the least stress on the server since the others save read threads in the db. So, it might be worth the performance trade-off. No idea without testing, though.

As for what's happening on the user side:

1. Is it happening every time you post, or only now and then?
2. If it's happening persistently, try clearing your cookies for Phun and see if that fixes it. That's not a great solution, but might be more of clue as to why it's happening.
3. What browser (and version #) are you using?

 

every now and then
Firefox 24.0

 

Since this question seems like it may become common, I'm going to leave an answer here for reference sake. You can check out the full thread, but the gist is that you are probably using some kind of browser add-on/extension (Adblock, NoScript, etc) that is blocking JavaScript that Phun needs for the thanks button to work without a page reload. So, just make sure that you add Phun.org to the whitelist of sites allowed to load JS.

 

I can't upload either a profile pic or an avatar. Doesn't matter if the dimensions are acceptable. Doesn't matter if the file size is acceptable. Doesn't matter if it's from my computer or a URL. I just keep getting the same message. Unable to save image.

 

I've experienced several glitches today as well. I'm wondering if something is wrong with the database. Here's one thing I encountered;

This is more phun related than phun specific, but it's indicative of another problem I encountered today...



What you're seeing is a link I posted on facebook to the Kimberly Garner thread in CP: http://forum.phun.org/showthread.php?t=1163650

When you post a link on facebook a thumbnail related to the link appears automatically in the post, but what appeared in that post is totally unrelated. This experience is a first for me, and I've posted hundreds of links on facebook. Why a thumbnail from a post in SVF would show up is anyone's guess.

Of the myriad links I and others have posted today on facebook, that is the only one of it's kind. I think something in our database is screwy. Curious. :33:


I tried to replicate it but could not. Just the one link.

 

Somebody (from Phun, not you Fergus) should probably check if any directory permissions got changed accidentally during the upgrade and make sure that any user upload folders have write permissions. Also, there an upload test (ACP > Maintenance > Diagnostics > Upload) that would narrow down whether it's broken for everybody or just some.

 

My best guess is that the thumbnail is from what was at thread number 1163650 before the database rolled back and Facebook has it cached.

 

Thanks for the speedy help. Just my luck I'd register just after a database upgrade.

 

Except that I posted that link today. I'm not overly concerned about it, but I did find it curious especially since it appears to be a unique case. I'm just wondering what other funky little glitches are going to crop up.

Failed software upgrade and retro backup. It was an interesting 48 hours to say the least.

 

What I mean is that Facebook probably had the thumb (or the entire old page) cached from the previous thread before you even posted yours. And, when you posted, Facebook saw the url and realized that it had already processed it (maybe somebody else posted the old thread). So, it used what it already had cached instead of fetching the page again and looking for a featured image because it has no idea that the page would be different now.

The advantage is that if a bunch of people post the same link, Facebook doesn't have to find a featured image for each person, they just do it once and save a list of urls with matching images (and whatever else).

It has nothing to do with Phun, it's on Facebook's end ... other than the fact that the urls for those 48 hours of lost threads will now point to completely different content because the thread numbers are getting reused.

 

Oh, I see what you're saying. I wonder who posted the old thread? Wasn't me. :33:

Facebook is not fond of porn. I wonder how long before phun urls are banned.

 

just curious if there have been some sort of change in the last couple of days, since now when I click the thanks button the page jumps to the top and down to the thanked post again.. it's rather annoying, I think I will stop to thank posts if this keeps happeneing

 

No changes as far as we know.

 

It sounds like what's happening is that the page is actually reloading (the jump to the top). This is what happens by default when the JavaScript for the "thanks" button plugin doesn't work. By default it's just a regular link that when clicked sends a message to the server to add your "thanks". Then it loads the page you were just on which is causing that jump. When the JavaScript does work, it sends that message to the server in the background without reloading the page.

As for what's causing the JavaScript not to work, a likely culprit in the past has been ad/script blocking extensions (AdBlock Plus, NoScript). If you are using anything like that, make sure that Phun.org is whitelisted so the JS is allowed to load.

If that's not it, maybe we can figure it out. I'd start by clearing your cache. You can do that for just Phun usually by holding shift when you refresh the page (Ctrl+Shift+R). Or, clear the cache for all sites usually by hitting something like Ctrl+Shift+Delete and then making sure only the cache box is ticked. That should apply to Firefox and Chrome at least, I can't remember if IE is the same.