vBulletin Q's

[kozmic]

I've been using the UBB for a while now and all was great until I had my first problem....I'm not too sure how they stay in business with the way they treat their paying customers. The only other entities that I've ever had to put up with this kind of customer support from, was the phone and cable companies.....but at least we have options, and I'm glad I've found this one! I just have one question:

Does the [b]vB[/b] have the same issues as the UBB related to the [i]supposed[/i] Microsoft IE5 (according to the UBB staff) "no-cache" problem? I've been dealing with this issue for about three months and my users and I are at our wits end with this one....this is one of the reasons I am switching, along with the fact that InfoPop just raised their renewal fee by ~300% all the while moving to bigger and better offices.

After reading up on MySQL based boards, I feel that this is the way I should go, but just wanted to be sure this will "fix" my users' IE5 non-refreshing blues :). The only other concern I had was being able to migrate my existing UBB threads into the new board, but I see from other posts here that I should have no problems doing that.

Thanks!

[Edited by kozmic on 05-25-2000 at 02:06 PM]

[kozmic]

Ok maybe one more.....

Approximate space required for the initial install?

[werehere]

Yes I have not had that problem with my forum at all since the move from the UBB.

[kozmic]

actually I seem to be having this problem here.....:(

While on the main forums page (here - vB's site), I refresh to see the new post bulbs lite up. If I refresh again, they stay lit. This is the same issue my IE5 users are seeing at my site (UBB). I've never seen this at my site while using Netscape Comm 4.7 on NT 4.0, but I [b]do[/b] see it here - what tha?

Also.....do the cookies actually work? I have to enter my user ID and pass every post.....that could get quite annoying.....

Yes, I even tried to "log in" at the bottom for both of the above issues.....I'm not trying to be a pain, it's just that my users are very nit-picky about these things as I'm sure yours are too.....thanks!

[werehere]

Well the cookies (lightbulb question) are set to expire at an admin determined interval, or after a browser session. SO your refreshing will not effect it.


[quote]
Also.....do the cookies actually work? I have to enter my user ID and pass every post.....that could get quite annoying..... [/quote]

Yes, this is a beta version of the forum running on this site, the login works flawlessly on the stable release.:)

[kozmic]

So you're saying the a cookie handles the new post icons? With users that hit my main page looking for only new posts every few minutes/half hour....they might get upset if they have to shut down their browser everytime to see if there are new ones or log out and log back in....esp. if they are waiting for a response to a thread they just started.....I saw the "see new posts" link, but I think you know where I'm going with this.....what would happen if I set the expire to like 4 sec.? Is that 4 sec. from when the cooklie was created or 4 sec. after it's been used?

[WebStyles]

Kozmic,

If you set it to 4 seconds, your visitors would never see any new posts. The time set is when the new checks are marked as read, new posts are shown regardless of the time limit.

[kozmic]

Ok....maybe I wasn't very clear? Let me try again....

Up until three months ago (using the UBB), you could goto my site, and bulbs would light for the new posts. If you refreshed the page, the *lit* bulbs would go away (unless a new post was made between the time you first viewed the main page and the time you refreshed it - in which case the bulb would still light for the forum that those new posts where made in).

See, there are generally two types of readers (regarding the refresh stuff), one that views a thread, then hits back to either view another thread or to get back to the main forums page (in this case the above would apply as the reader would then need to "refresh" to see where any new posts were).....then there's the reader that just clicks the link to the main forums page again to get back, rather than clicking the "back" button (In this case the reader still needs to be able to find new posts without shutting down the browser - so, the above still applies).

If what you say about the *lit* bulbs going away after you shut down the browser and bring it back up (I haven't tried yet but will), that's at least a small bit better than the UBB as they *never* go away for some of my users (and yes, believe me, they've tried *all* client-end browser cache settings).

Anyway....what I'm getting from this is that you *have* to shut down the browser session and re-open to get new "new post in this forum" *lit* bulbs? I don't see how this could be acceptable to anyone? Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.....please.....I really like what I've seen so far about the vB, but if it's not going to fix the issue I'm having I'll have to keep looking elsewhere....thanks!

BTW: I'm also going to go check out the other sites running vB (again) in a moment, to check for this problem specifically, as I didn't seem to catch it the first time.

[Edited by kozmic on 05-25-2000 at 03:33 PM]

[WebStyles]

[quote]Anyway....what I'm getting from this is that you *have* to shut down the browser session and re-open to get new "new post in this forum" *lit* bulbs? I don't see how this could be acceptable to anyone? Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.....please.....I really like what I've seen so far about the vB, but if it's not going to fix the issue I'm having I'll have to keep looking elsewhere....thanks![/quote]

Read my post again. If there is a new post in any forum, it will show up as new regardless if you shut your browser or not.

[kozmic]

ok....so the *lit* bulbs on the main forums page of the vB are only related to the thread itself? And they have nothing to do with the individual reader? Wow, this is completely different than the UBB. With the UBB, the *lit* bulbs indicate new posts since the last time the [i]specific reader that's seeing the the them[/i], visited (or refreshed) the main page. If I hadn't visited for a week I might get all the bulbs lit, whereas another user that visited an hour ago might get two maybe (only the forums that had new posts since [i]they[/i] visited)....do you follow?

[kozmic]

Feel free to test what I'm saying here: [url]http://www.modularmustang.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro[/url]

- Or if you're using IE5 you may wish to try one of these (some have the issue I've been talking about, some do not - again, partly the reason I'm looking around):

[url]http://www.corral.net/Forums/[/url]
[url]http://forums.stangnet.com/[/url]
[url]http://www.ls1.com/ls1forum/ls1_forum_main.htm[/url]

Just refresh a few times to get to where there are no bulbs lit, then wait a few minutes and refresh again (hopefully someone will post in the time, and you should get a lit bulb back), then refresh again and it should go away.....this is what I'm talking about....;)

(they should all work right with Netscape, but possibly not with IE5 - though they [i]did[/i] work with IE5 three months ago)

Just having more and more bulbs lighting up as new posts are made are not acceptable in a situation where users a [i]constantly[/i] checking for new posts and responses.....all my bulbs would be lit - always.....what the purpose of having the bulbs light? (I can see, however, on a very slow site (very few posts/day) wouldn't mind this)

[Edited by kozmic on 05-25-2000 at 04:00 PM]

[WebStyles]

I know what you are talking about, I ran a UBB for quite some time. The cookies on vBulletin work almost the same as UBB, except, instead of "expiring" after you refresh a few times, they expire after a set amount of time.

[quote] ok....so the *lit* bulbs on the main forums page of the vB are only related to the thread itself? And they have nothing to do with the individual reader?[/quote]

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. The lit bulbs are directly related to the last time the viewer visited.

[kozmic]

well...I'll look into it some more tomorrow, but as for right now......all the bulbs that were lit earlier (when I first arrived at this site) are still lit.....even some that have had zero new posts since I first saw the bulb was on.....something's amiss...take care and thanks for putting up with my questions!

[Brian]

I think it has to time out. IE it might be set for ten minutes?? I have same problem and think its just set to long (dont have the problem on my vbulettin just here)

[Morgo]

Kozmic - I had this problem too. However, after reading a few of the older threads it seems that its a cookie problem due to the admin demo. If you go to the admin demo and log out, then come back here and login...that should hopefully solve your problem. It did for me :D