Craig

Great news! I tested the plan, it didn't work, however I did fail back to my 3 hour option that resulted in a server migration that has completed successfully! So, here we are on the forum, on a freshly installed server, minus my disk space issue. I've got 3 spare hours at the weekend now! Craig

Greetings all, Due to an error on my part during the server migration that took place back in February, I’m required to perform a task that will take the forum offline for a few hours. For transparency, the error was ignoring an alert with regards to a Cronjob that was not working on the forum; as a result, the forum database grew and consumed a large portion of diskspace. The Cronjob was subsequently fixed, however due to the way in which the SQL DB works out of the box on Linux, the disk space cannot be reclaimed, this in turn has lead to automated backups failing. To reclaim the disk space and allow the automated backups to complete successfully, I am required to delete all SQL DB’s on the server, uninstall SQL, then perform a SQL install and recover the DB’s (I am able to perform manual backups of the SQL DB’s). All very simple on paper and should be completed within 30 minutes. However, I’m going to plan for this not going according to plan, so please allow 3 hours of downtime with a website that doesn’t look all too nice, and maybe results in a timeout. Rest assured, any outage will be due to my work, and I’ll be actively working on it! I won’t give any times for when I’ll commence work, that will be dictated by the amount of homebrew consumed the day before! Craig

Greetings fellow forum members! That very long privacy policy that you were required to accept prior to gaining access to the forum covers Windows Forum in regard to GDPR. GDPR is an exceptionally tricky subject, I certainly don’t understand it, and I don’t have a team of lawyers to assist me, so my only choice to rely upon the software vendor to get it right and see what other communities are doing. So in that regards, the privacy policy that has just plastered itself over your monitor is it! Yes, we send emails, however GDPR does not cover the type of email you receive as part of notifications, these are technically subscription based, which are wholly managed by you and we have no control over (you can manage your notification preferences here: https://www.windowsforum.org/notifications/options/ . We do have a bulk email system, that has not been used since December 2006. If it were to be used in the future, everyone will be opted out by default. With regards to pruning the member base, GDPR does not require this, and I currently have no intention to delete members. Craig

Good evening! An unplanned but much needed server migration has just been completed. Hopefully the extra RAM will give the forum room to breathe! Craig

Good morning everyone! I updated the theme software yesterday; the update included a number of bug fixes. I'm hoping one of the fixes has resolved the issue with the problematic posting of images. Following the update, I did perform a test by copying and pasting content from another site which included text and several images, that appeared to work, however I'm not sure if that was a problem to start with! Therefore, can I ask that you all spam away within this topic, utilising every available method of posting content, and we shall get to the bottom of the issue. Craig

Morning, SQL table had crashed, repaired it. Appears to be working, and has resolved the unread posts link.

Good day! Normal service has resumed

I ceased the gallery module subscription a number of years ago; at the time gallery was not being used, or at least it was not being used as frequently as it once was. That combined with the ever increasing costs of the subscription to keep it, the decision was made to let it go. If demand rises for the reintroduction, I will review it!

Awesome, looks like we have a new error code on submitting a post! Investigating!

Afternoon, The corrupt table has been recreated. Access to your profile, activity etc has been restored. Due to the content of the table being lost, "unread content" will only populate with new items created from midday today.

Morning folks, The issues being experienced with the forum are as a result of a corrupted table in the SQL backed. The table is responsible for search, or anything that relies upon it, this is why you'll see an error when accessing items such as "all activity" or "unread content". I'm not entirely sure which other functions are impacted by this fault, so if you see error code EX144, that will be a result of this issue. In the grand scheme of things I don't believe the table stores any critical data, so the fix will hopefully be an easy one, however I will wait for Invision to assist with the fix as I don't want to do something that may cause more damage. I'm investigating the spam problem; when we upgraded to the latest forum software nearly a year ago, we switched from a 3rd party spam system to one built into the forum itself. It may be I need to simply change some settings, or the spammers are beating the detection algorithms, or maybe the software is just no good and I'll need to look for an alternative. So for the time being, please sit tight and sigh when error code EX144 appears! Craig

Maybe Irene has a touch sensitive screen...

Evening, Two possible scenarios for this error: The client OS has not been updated in some time and does not have root certificates for the required CA. Solution, update the OS or manually download the root CA. Content on the page viewed was being hot-linked from a source external to Windows Forum. As of Sunday, a feature was enabled which will attempt to cache external content locally on Windows Forum. Scenario 2 is more likely. I've made your connection to Windows Forum secure, however some external content is being correctly identified as unsecure. Invision have implemented a feature which will attempt to cache any external content locally on our server, so this will go some way to reduce the amount of errors, however it wont be until all websites have adopted SSL that we will see the error go away entirely. Craig

I've altered it so users can login with either their display name, or email address. No longer appears to be an option for username.