Forum Improvements

And I just got this message again I'm afraid:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, you@example.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Thanks Tej. Back from holiday now, so just looking at this issue. I've performed another "tweak" to the settings... let me know if you see this error again.

Hi Mike - I was wondering if the forum is slowed down because of the use of [img] links? Some other astrophoto forums where I post do not allow it.

See for e.g. http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/misc.php?do=showrules

6. Images and Attachments
When attaching images or displaying images in your posts, please keep the size to 100k. The dimensions aren't restricted as a thumbnail will be shown. If you want to show an image larger than this, upload it to some webspace and provide a link, warning how large the image is.
Do not hotlink to images stored on other websites. That is, do not use the [ IMG] tag to display inline images in your post. It adds to their bandwidth, and it gives users no choice in loading the image, which can slow down page loads.

and how it looks like this: http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=49

I do not know if this helps in our case as I understand from Mark that they may have a different software?

If embedded images are the culprit, I'd be happy to help and replace all my posts with links to external site.  I think I posted a fair few mostly in the earlier days of the forum as I haven't been getting much astrophotography done in the last month or so.

Can we be allowed to edit out past posts or is there a reason for not allowing it?  Sometimes I have posted in haste with some terrible grammatical errors which I wish I could have corrected.  Not a big deal though

Welcome back btw, Mike, hope you had a good one.

I doubt that embedded images are an issue. The problems we are seeing are primarily down to server performance and PHP issues. We seem to be gradually overcoming these problems with various tweaks... certainly I've seen performance improvements in recent days and weeks.

Just keep me informed of any further issues that you may come across. I'm quite certain that we can get the website to optimal performance.

... and thanks, Tej... yes, we had a great time on holiday.

Can we be allowed to edit out past posts or is there a reason for not allowing it?

Tej, I've increased the amount of time that you have to edit a post to 300 minutes (it was set to 5 minutes), so this should give you sufficient time to edit your post.

Let me know if you have a problem.

Mike, I'm not sure if its because I use Chrome but from day one, I could never quote or reply to any post.  The Quote or reply buttons just dont work for me at all.  I would have tested on Explorer and Firefox but...stupidly, I cant remember my password to login! My password has always been saved in Chrome.

Which leads me to another little point.  If I type the password wrong 2-3 times, I am blocked from signing in from any computer at the same IP address for a few hours :(...but fair enough.  However, the option for "lost your password" works as far as sending an email link but that email link to reset password does not work.  You might want to have a look at that for silly people like me who forgets their password 😉

Hmmm... that's all rather odd, Tej. It may be a Chrome issue, but I've not noticed it previously.

As regards logging on, you should get 5 attempts to log-on. If unsuccessful, the site locks your IP address for 5 minutes... certainly not hours.

I've just tried the "lost your password" link, and the site sends me a new password directly.

All very peculiar. I can't seem to replicate any of your errors.

Sorry about the hours exaggeration...I probably tried a few times within the five minutes (which is a long time in my warped up brain clock)  then tried again later in a few hours giving me that perception it was hours, sorry.

The password reset link I got gives me this message on the Flamsteed site:  I do get a thrill when it says it maybe swallowed by a black hole though 🙂

404 Not found It looks like this page either doesn't exist, has been moved or has been swallowed by a black hole. Try searching for something, or use the menu at the top of the page to find what you were looking for

Ah...wait...I think Chrome is the problem, as the link works in Internet Explorer.  Now that I can change my password, I'll try out my quote/reply issue on other computers on Chrome to see if its just my Chrome browser is all buggy or if there is a general Chrome-Flamsteed issue.

Hey both - I couldn't quote as well for 2-3 days, but it is working fine now. I use Chrome.

I couldn’t quote as well for 2-3 days, but it is working fine now

Yes, this was a bug in bbPress, which was fixed by an update.

Hi Mike

I'm sorry to report that the page loading has not improved.  I am still getting long delays and "Internal server error" messages.  There are times where I wanted to post something but gave up through impatience for which I am sorry for, considering the patience we need in stargazing!

While page loading delays make a lovely characteristic complement to the nature of our hobby in waiting for clear skies, I fear it would be a put off  to those with fast paced expectancies on the internet 🙂

report back any problems

I'm going to run a couple of experiments so there will be a lot of edits to this post.
'Quote' and 'Reply' don't seem to work on a PC running Internet Explorer when using 'Visual' tab, but are okay with 'text'

‘Quote’ and ‘Reply’ don’t seem to work on a PC

Same problem on a Blackberry - but Visual works better on a Blackberry from a typing point of view: automatically caps beginning of sentences, etc.

<table style="background: black; border: currentColor; border-collapse: collapse; mso-table-layout-alt: fixed; mso-border-alt: none black 0cm; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm; mso-border-insideh: 0cm none black; mso-border-insidev: 0cm none black;" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm; border: 0px black; width: 0cm; background-color: transparent; mso-border-alt: none black 0cm; mso-diagonal-down: 0cm none black; mso-diagonal-up: 0cm none black;" valign="top" width="0">
<table style="background: black; border: currentColor; border-collapse: collapse; mso-table-layout-alt: fixed; mso-border-alt: none black 0cm; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm; mso-border-insideh: 0cm none black; mso-border-insidev: 0cm none black;" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm; border: 0px black; width: 0cm; background-color: transparent; mso-border-alt: none black 0cm; mso-diagonal-down: 0cm none black; mso-diagonal-up: 0cm none black;" valign="top" width="0">
<table style="background: black; border: currentColor; border-collapse: collapse; mso-table-layout-alt: fixed; mso-border-alt: none black 0cm; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm; mso-border-insideh: 0cm none black; mso-border-insidev: 0cm none black;" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm; border: 0px black; width: 0cm; background-color: transparent; mso-border-alt: none black 0cm; mso-diagonal-down: 0cm none black; mso-diagonal-up: 0cm none black;" valign="top" width="0">
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">This is a test to see what happens when you copy and paste from Word.</span> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Okay, so now we know what happens when you copy and paste from a simple Word doc when using the 'Visual' tab!

EDIT Note that I added the bold and underlining afterwards to highlight the one line I wrote in Word.

EDIT: Okay, so the underlining - ctrl+u - didn't work at all.