Site Outage - 5/23/16

Forum info, updates, discussion. If you have a request for something you want to see on the forum, feel free to bring it up here.
User avatar
ST_Lawson
Site Admin
Posts: 8247
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2014 1:15 pm
Location: Macomb, IL
Contact:

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to be updating the back-end software for the forum at the end of this month. This is the first time I've updated it since we installed the new site, so I'm not sure exactly how it'll go. Hopefully we'll only be down for a short bit, but it's possible we could be down for a few hours or maybe even a couple of days. Usually that timeframe is pretty slow for Leatherneck athletics, so hopefully there won't be much news or discussion going on at that point.

So, if you stop by the site on May 23rd and the forum is down/won't load, that's what's going on.

Let me know if you have any questions.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin
Western Illinois University Alum/Fan/Employee
Member of the Marching Leathernecks - 1996-2000
User avatar
ST_Lawson
Site Admin
Posts: 8247
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2014 1:15 pm
Location: Macomb, IL
Contact:

Reminder, going to be doing some updating of the site early next week. Might be down for a while...hopefully less than an hour, but it's possible it could be a few hours or so.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin
Western Illinois University Alum/Fan/Employee
Member of the Marching Leathernecks - 1996-2000
User avatar
Tere North
Posts: 1146
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2014 10:59 pm

Scott,

Any change you can make it so a message appears when trying to access that says site is down for maintenance.

~tere
User avatar
ST_Lawson
Site Admin
Posts: 8247
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2014 1:15 pm
Location: Macomb, IL
Contact:

Tere North wrote:Scott,

Any change you can make it so a message appears when trying to access that says site is down for maintenance.

~tere
Maybe, I'll see what I can do. There might be a "maintenance mode" that it can go into while updating...we'll see.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin
Western Illinois University Alum/Fan/Employee
Member of the Marching Leathernecks - 1996-2000
User avatar
ST_Lawson
Site Admin
Posts: 8247
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2014 1:15 pm
Location: Macomb, IL
Contact:

In case you couldn't already tell, I've updated the backend of the site, although it's going to take a bit for me to get the style and everything set up again. It does appear to be working correctly, however...just doesn't look the way it did for now. It will though.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin
Western Illinois University Alum/Fan/Employee
Member of the Marching Leathernecks - 1996-2000
User avatar
ST_Lawson
Site Admin
Posts: 8247
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2014 1:15 pm
Location: Macomb, IL
Contact:

Quick update - as most of you can see, the site looks a bit different. Once I upgraded the site, I realized that the template that I'd used is incompatible with the new site software. So, I suppose it's time for a refresh of the site's look, eh? Anyway, I've implemented a template that I think I like the basic idea of and I'm working on the tweaks and stuff to make it fit our style. So, it's possible that some bits will look a little odd for a while until I get everything cleaned up.

But, at least the basic functionality of the site is working correctly (as near as I can tell), so that's something.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin
Western Illinois University Alum/Fan/Employee
Member of the Marching Leathernecks - 1996-2000
User avatar
sealhall74
Posts: 5770
Joined: Fri Apr 18, 2014 1:18 pm
Location: Wherever, Windblows

Maybe it's just me, but the site seems to display and work better on my cell phone now. No more tiny fonts to squint at. :D :D :D
Embrace the pace of the race.
User avatar
ST_Lawson
Site Admin
Posts: 8247
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2014 1:15 pm
Location: Macomb, IL
Contact:

sealhall74 wrote:Maybe it's just me, but the site seems to display and work better on my cell phone now. No more tiny fonts to squint at. :D :D :D
That's good. I think that the new theme that I'm using handles mobile a lot better than the older one did. Hopefully it works for you. Still a work-in-progress, but it's getting there.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin
Western Illinois University Alum/Fan/Employee
Member of the Marching Leathernecks - 1996-2000
User avatar
Tere North
Posts: 1146
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2014 10:59 pm

In general I like the new look. It seems fresher and cleaner. However, I don't see an easy way to note which are new posts I haven't read. It seems like before you finished there was a "unread posts" link, but not now. In the old format before the recent update, the unread ones were bold, but I'm not noticing that either.
User avatar
ST_Lawson
Site Admin
Posts: 8247
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2014 1:15 pm
Location: Macomb, IL
Contact:

Tere North wrote:In general I like the new look. It seems fresher and cleaner. However, I don't see an easy way to note which are new posts I haven't read. It seems like before you finished there was a "unread posts" link, but not now. In the old format before the recent update, the unread ones were bold, but I'm not noticing that either.
There's actually a couple of ways to see that information, depending on how you use the site. I believe that both require you to log in first (so the system knows which posts you, specifically, have and have not read), so I'd check that first.

One way is in the top right corner of the page, you should see some tabs that look something like this:
Image
And the "Unread Posts" tab should show you only the posts you haven't read.

Alternately, in the listing of the topics, you should see something like this:
Image
The ones with the Rocky Head logo are ones with unread posts, and the ones with the pawprint logo are ones you have read (or marked as "read"). Clicking on the Rocky Head should take you to the page with unread posts. Also, if you look next to the title of the topic, you should see a small peachish rectangle and an arrow in the corner, that link should also take you to the first unread post. I'm not sure what exactly is the difference between the two links yet, but I'll play around with it to figure it out.

Hopefully one of those options will work for you. If people would rather have the icons look different or something, please let me know and I'll change them to make them more visible or whatever.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin
Western Illinois University Alum/Fan/Employee
Member of the Marching Leathernecks - 1996-2000
Post Reply