Issues with New Forum

Hello, Forno Bravo Community Forum Members!

We are NetGain and we provide Forno Bravo with web development and design services. The feedback you have all provided is greatly appreciated and has made it much easier to target the specific issues with the community forum. As you can see, we have already been able to knock off a couple of issues such as the red on gray links, illegible dropdown, and mobile pinch zoom. While a group of us were addressing these issues, a team of us was tackling the user photo problems but before we address the photo issues, we would first like to explain why we upgraded the forum to vBulletin 5.

The main reason we collectively decided to upgrade from vBulletin 3 to vBulletin 5 was because we felt that Forno Bravo needed a newer, faster and better server to be able to handle all the new technologies and future technologies that they plan to implement into their website. Unfortunately, for vBulletin 3, the new server came installed with PHP 5.5, which is incompatible with vBulletin 3. This incompatibility allowed us to research other options, but everything we found pointed to vBulletin 5. Although there were no reported threats we could find, we felt that the upgrade would also be eliminating any security vulnerabilities with vBulletin 3 or vBulletin 4. Like any upgrade, it was suspected that the user interface would be different. Unfortunately, we did not expect some of the issues that occurred. A perfect example is the missing photos.

We understand the frustration that came from the missing photos during the upgrade process, but we greatly appreciate your patience while we figured out a solution. This was by far one of the strangest and most difficult issues we’ve encountered and it required our team of experts to figure it out. While we wished it would have been as easy as moving files from one server to another, unfortunately, there was a lot more to it than that including database mapping.

The first of the photo issues was the lost images from the “PhotoPlog” which was incompatible with vBulletin 5. We spent hours researching how to move the images from the PhotoPlog to vBulletin 5. We tried to contact the developers of the plugin to see if they were releasing an update for vBulletin 5 but never received a response. Then we contacted vBulletin support to see if there was a gallery feature in vBulletin 5. They told us there was no such feature. Luckily after lots of back and forth with vBulletin support, they sent us a link to a small forum post with a similar issue. Like being handed flour for pizza dough, we were still a long way from cooking the whole pizza. After hours of additional research and putting the script together one ingredient at a time, we were able to restore the PhotoPlog photos.

The next photo issue that arose was that the user albums were missing. We assumed it was a similar issue to the PhotoPlog, so we started our script from there. But once we started analyzing the database, we noticed that during the upgrade process, vBulletin 5 tried to complete this migration on its own. Unfortunately, it failed and we had to finish the process. The tricky part was figuring out what was in the database and what was missing. After more hours of putting our heads together, we finally were able to resolve the issue and restore the user photos.

If you would like to read an in-depth description of how we restored the photos please click the following link.

The whole NetGain team would like to again say thank you to each and every member of the Forno Bravo Community Forum for all of your patience during this process. We are committed to improving the Forno Bravo Community Forum and making it the best it can be.

NetGain

[moderator]

Hey, everyone! Thanks again for letting the Forno Bravo team know about the issues each of you has been having with the community forum. Very much appreciated. If you are still having any problems, regardless how small or big, please post in this thread.

[admin]

Hi Dave, Thanks for providing the pages with the video link issues. I've added these to our punch list of fixes to point the links to the appropriate video on the Forno Bravo youtube channel.

Mitch

[Dave T]

Is there not some way you can search all the pages on your site using whatever site building tool you use - to find links to the old video folder? There should be.

And again - the links on this page aren't links - they don't connect to anything:
https://www.fornobravo.com/wood-fire...bread-at-home/

Same with this page:
https://www.fornobravo.com/wood-fire...as-your-pizza/

[admin]

The videos are all posted on our youtube channel and most links will point you there: https://www.youtube.com/user/fornobravo/videos (also under Resources as Joe pointed out). Thanks for pointing out the links in the ebooks, we will be updating those links.

Mitch

[Gulf]

Dave,
Go to Forno Bravo's Home Page and select the Resources Tab on the far right at the top of the page. There is a Video link there. They all seem to work for me from there.

[Dave T]

I'm not talking about threads, I'm talking about pages on the site. The hearth bread link is on page 25 of the pizza making ebook. I don't remember where the other links were. Again, it seems like ALL video links on your site are broken. Would it be an option to move the video links back to where they were? Otherwise maybe you can use whatever site building tool you use to find links to the old video folder.

[admin]

Thanks, Dave - can you give me the links to the threads where the video links are posted? I just need to change the links to go to the youtube channel videos.

[Dave T]

Here's one:
www.fornobravo.com/video/hearth_bread.html

Another:
www.fornobravo.com/video/hearth_bread.html

Another:
https://www.fornobravo.com/pizza-ove...e_shaping2.mov

I. Poking around the site, I can't find any video links that ~do~ work. Is the video gallery folder gone?

Also, none of the links on the right side of this page work:
https://www.fornobravo.com/wood-fire...as-your-pizza/

They are not even links, but should be.

I've seen other issues with the site, but that seems like enough for now. You guys have your hands full!

[admin]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for bringing these issues to our attention! Can you send me the video links?

Mitch

[Dave T]

Another issue - the video links seem to be broken. I just tried two - the one for making hearth bread, and the other for shaping a baguette. Both led to the broken link page.

[Dave T]

Hi!

I'm a new member of the forum. The main issue I'm having is that I don't get email notifications of new posts to threads I'm subscribed to.

Less important is that the main forums screen is formatted at half width on my iPad.

- Dave

[admin]

Hello Forum Members,

As the team continues to work on the improvements, we have some updates to share:

The images in Albums have all been restored
The gallery functionality In albums and posts that contain multiple images is now working so that the images now stack

More to come! Thank you for your patience -

Mitch

[cobblerdave]

G'day Mitch
Thanks for the prompt reply.
Still finding the same thing,lose the pinch and zoom when logged in and I've tried it on another phone with the same result
Regards dave

[admin]

Hi Dave,

Thank you for taking the time to post your comments. To jump more than one page at a time from the top of the page, you can click in the page number box, type in the page number you want to jump to and hit enter (both desktop and iphone). I believe your second post is in regards to iphone? I will look into the timeout issue and losing posts. The desktop forum has an auto-save feature; if you're typing a response and leave that page or logout, when you return to that page, you'll have a message to restore or discard what you were typing. You can copy/paste images on the desktop version, but it does look like the iphone currently pastes the link to the image. As long as you are logged in, your profile name will show up in the login area at the very top of the page. I've been testing your issues on my iphone under my personal login and I don't have any issues with pinch zoom both logged in and logged out. Is anyone else experiencing the zoom issue? No updates.

Mitch