Hello

[spider]

Hello.

Not been here for ages (probably near a year ) although I've had so little 'free' time up until recently I shamefully neglected to post or visit here , I was very busy for a few months as an IT tech support bod for a forum software company, however that ended a couple of months ago, and I'm doing a spot of job hunting.

Inserts seasonal smilie as appropriate:



I'll try to be around a bit more these days although I'm currently battling the DWP (since they changed their !"£!"£!" minds about paying me on the 23rd! A nice present from them, especially as they said I missed an appointment, the fact they did not tell me they had arranged one had one does not seem to enter into their minds) *sigh* but I only have dial up internet usually and the modern web does not work very well with dial up.

Anyone missed me ?

[CitroJim]

Anyone missed me ?

Yes!

A very warm welcome back Andy It really is good to see you...

[spider]

Thanks Jim.

I'll try to stay around a bit more. Hope you (and everyone reading this actually) had a reasonable / good Christmas etc.

I only have DialUp at the moment so its a little slow to say the least.

[CitroJim]

I do hope you'll stay around Andy, your contributions to this forum have been very valuable.

Christmas was very good but then you know that from Facebook

Hope the old dial-up can soon be replaced by a faster connection... I didn't even realise dial-up was still possible these days...

The sound of those modem tones are a source of nostalgia these days, consigned to audible history along with the sound of radio teletype and morse code...

All three sounds are very firmly imprinted in my brain and I can still recognise them anywhere and still read the latter if it's not too fast...

[spider]

Thank you. I try. I guess time in the dealership burned certain facts permanently into memory. that and a general interest in things.

I still hear (and use I'll admit emulation wise at least) audio data for my emulators. I do actually sometimes like the noise.

Oh its quite possible but FB is not easy. I've had to force the browser to serve the mobile version only otherwise its five minutes to load the page, now its about a minute.

FCF is quite reasonable on D.U although its mainly sites that are plastered with excess images or external resources (cdn's etc) as dialup is too slow, I think of this as it not being able to multitask so when it has to load resources from a cdn or suchlike its effectively stopping to do that then returning to where it was in the first place ie the page to load. , It makes sense in my head. Once you get over about 128K or 256K (so ISDN or low low ADSL speed) it does not matter.

Thanks though. I'll have to manage for the moment.

[CitroJim]

Andy, it's good to know the forum is usable on dial-up It's one thing I've never thought about testing

What sort of speeds are you achieving on the modem?

I have plans to eventually migrate the forum to phpBB V3.1.x and have a test forum up and running V3.1.2. I'd really appreciate it if you could give it a test from tour dial-up and see how it performs...

This is the URL: http://www.xantiav6.co.uk:8808/forum/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks Andy!

[spider]

No problem.

Speeds vary (when its not dropping the line) its apparently 45.2Kbps (for younger readers this is bits not bytes!) , a 15mb download last week took about 2 hours although it was not the most fast download by any means, seems generally downloading is about 4kbps dropping to 2kbps if you browse at the same time.

The speed is about the same as here, the first page load takes up to 20 seconds then its relatively quick once the browser has cached the main css etc. Browsing is not a big issue to be honest here. I see its using the older style although neither that or our custom one here are 'image or css heavy' which is the main killer.

To be 100% its more modern software that causes issues with an excess of css and fancy things, aka typekit etc as it takes time to 'go get' them. Moreso if the software has an external (or complicated) editor as once you go to post / reply its then got to get all that stuff as well.

phpbb is one of the older (nothing wrong with that) designs really, you could say the same about IPB2 vs IPB3 (soon to be V4, I have it) and VB3 vs 4 and 5.

I doubt you'll have *any* issues with an incremental upgrade at all though, unless you have manual template / file edits to re-perform afterwards.

Summary is no dial up user should really have any problem here. If you wanted another comparison my other (and only really live useful one) site (jswmm.co.uk) takes about a minute to load the initial page.

Unsure if I've missed anything. I could do a tracert if you like to see how slow it is really. ?

[myglaren]

^^ Try reading The Independent Takes ages to download then refreshes everything when you're halfway down the page - and that is with Adblock+ enabled to reduce it to manageable levels.

[evilally]

Welcome back Andy, doesn't seem like a year. We've all missed Andy talking about himself in the third person.

Is dial up cost effective with the likes of talktalk etc doing almost free ADSL? I thought it was tough times when I downgraded my 152mb to 100mb last month

[CitroJim]

That's quick Steve

phpbb is one of the older (nothing wrong with that) designs really, you could say the same about IPB2 vs IPB3 (soon to be V4, I have it) and VB3 vs 4 and 5.

I doubt you'll have *any* issues with an incremental upgrade at all though, unless you have manual template / file edits to re-perform afterwards.

phpBB 3.1.x is completely new Andy, or so we're told, and as different from the 3.0.12 we're running at present as is possible to be. The code has been rewritten from scratch. There is no straight upgrade path, it's a case of flatten the old and build up the new from scratch. The existing database and some config files are used to kick it off but the end product is completely new and fresh... A change to 3.1 takes hours and hours... My test instance took all night to convert the database....

[spider]

Welcome back Andy, doesn't seem like a year. We've all missed Andy talking about himself in the third person.

Is dial up cost effective with the likes of talktalk etc doing almost free ADSL? I thought it was tough times when I downgraded my 152mb to 100mb last month

Thanks! , I know I do the 'third person' thing (others have mentioned it) but its seems normal to me to do that sometimes.

Cost effective ? No, although using an 0844 its 1p/min off-peak unfortunately it likes to drop the line. This despite trying several modems, cables and ISP's. It does vary though sometimes you can stay on for an hour other times you are thrown off every few minutes.

Its simply a matter of cost, I did not have any finances for ADSL as they cut me off (I missed a couple of payments) although things should improve in the next month or so, unfortunately the DWP changed their minds about something so it put things on hold otherwise I may of taken up the BT "free" offer. I'd not personally want to use T.T as I had so much fun with it at mothers a few years ago, they were blaming BT and BT were blaming TT for the issue.

phpbb is one of the older (nothing wrong with that) designs really, you could say the same about IPB2 vs IPB3 (soon to be V4, I have it) and VB3 vs 4 and 5.

I doubt you'll have *any* issues with an incremental upgrade at all though, unless you have manual template / file edits to re-perform afterwards.

phpBB 3.1.x is completely new Andy, or so we're told, and as different from the 3.0.12 we're running at present as is possible to be. The code has been rewritten from scratch. There is no straight upgrade path, it's a case of flatten the old and build up the new from scratch. The existing database and some config files are used to kick it off but the end product is completely new and fresh... A change to 3.1 takes hours and hours... My test instance took all night to convert the database....[/quote]

Should be easy enough, save your uploads (if you are using attachments) and your config file and delete* the rest, then upload afresh and run upgrader

I seem to remember looking at 3.1 but I could be wrong, I think it looked about the same. I may dl it over the weekend for another look.

* I never do that I always move them to a temp dir then zap them afterwards.

Will the style survive ? Or has the template logic changed too much ?

[CitroJim]

Will the style survive ? Or has the template logic changed too much ?

No, it's now totally different which is why the test forum has a very different feel about it...

[spider]

Will the style survive ? Or has the template logic changed too much ?

No, it's now totally different which is why the test forum has a very different feel about it...

OK.

I'd noticed you were using one of the stock styles for it (from memory it offered that one and the other one that looks like phpbb2 'subsilver' if I remember correctly) , I'd *assumed* you simply had not imported the style but if its too different as you say then I see why.

I know what you mean as template logic etc changes so 'force feeding' it may work in a vague fashion but there'd be too many small annoying issues to do this.

[CitroJim]

Yes, the style on the test board is the (almost) default ProSilver. I've modded it a bit to have the avatars on the left as by default they're on the right for reasons known only to phpBB...

There is a V3.1.x version of the we_universal style the production board is currently using Andy but it's still at RC stage and rather flawed...

Most of the V3.1.x MODs (now called Extensions) are still in either Beta or RC so not really usable on a production board. I'm really not sure why phpBB released V3.1.x before a fair cohort of Extensions and styles were available for it. I can't imagine there's many boards out there running a bog-standard un-modded versions of phpBB... Not serious ones anyway...

[spider]

Its usually the same everywhere though. Mod and style authors may start preliminary work but until a 'final' is out they may not want to go too far as things such as template or source code changes could mean they have wasted a bit of time.

Having said that its not the first 3.1 release so they should of about caught up by now.

Typically with new (major) versions I find that most boards wait a few months then upgrade simply so that early 'public' bugs are zapped and third party authors have everything in order.

Surprised things have not caught up yet. I've not looked how long the 3.1.x series has been out though.