meh, Im not picky. Your idea seems like it will generally solve the problem, though it seems like a somewhat messy way of doing so. Not that I have much of a right to complain, however. I cannot script.
Bittersweet Candy Bowl
Archived Forum
“Souppy’s To Do List” (What We Want)
Comment ID #4780
Comment ID #4782
Seems like a more usable solution to me. If there were two tables, checking the forum would require reading the top of the first “topics” one, then scrolling down, finding the top of the “comments” one, reading the top of it, then deciding where to click. It might also create confusion with the Post Topic form as to where topics will be posted “into”. I see a number of issues with it that add complexity and difficulty to a process that is currently quite radically simplified.
Comment ID #4823
the first solution sounded just fine if you ask me. There’s really no need to make it any more advanced then a check-box =/
Comment ID #5054
I was coming to talk about the comics threads but people beat me to it. Anyway, I agree with the option to check. The only problem I see is if you want to post in the comments also. Would I have to check and uncheck every time?
Comment ID #5056
If it matters to anyone, I figured out a shortcoming in the double posting checker and patched it. We should have less double posts now.
I don’t entirely understand what you mean, Pronkat. Can you elaborate?
Comment ID #5058
Well, you said that if I wanted to not see the comments on each comic in the forum main page, then I’d check “Hide/Show Comments”. But if I wanted to post a comment in the home page when a new update comes through, how would having checked the option affect it?
Comment ID #5067
Ah. The (hypothetical) toggle would only modify the forum thread list. I’ll try and make the label straightforward.
Comment ID #5095
Ah, that would work. I think that’s much better than having two boards
Comment ID #5265
SuitCase! What if instead of putting in a toggle button for comments, you just separated the comments from the forums entirely? Then you would have one page that lists discussions, debates, etc. and a second page for comments (besides, the comments always struck me as something entirely different from the forum topics) If you link both the forum proper and the comments index to the main page, you wouldn’t need to invent anything new, basically just copypasta the comments into a separate page with the same formatting as the current forum page! That solves the two tables problem nicely and might be less work than the toggle button!
Comment ID #5304
*bump*
Comment ID #5327
Oh… that was already suggested wasn’t it…oops!
Comment ID #5354
Part of the problem is, who would read the comments page? Part of the point I suppose is to get readers engaged with older chapters. I think it would kinda keep people more “on topic”, or at least make the forum more relevant to the comic. I think the toggle is what I’ll implement, but you’ll have to wait another two or three days as I don’t have the time right now.
Comment ID #5568
Groovy!
Comment ID #5644
I have just one thing to add… then again, it might have been listed and I just missed it.
Some form of permanence to our user names might be nice. The log in from the old forum basically ensured no user name duplicates. And I am most distressed to find someone else is now posting using the Jay name, and butchering grammar, spelling, punctuation, and good taste.
I will have to change my default user name now.
Comment ID #5658
@TheNinja - they need to seperate the forums into groups all together, like seperte all kinds of threads (website, comic,exc) that would make the loading of the forums faster right? at least for me i get lag and the occasional disconnect from loading the forums and my internet rocks.
the forum is the biggest thing that i can see, other than the website taking too long to load and the browser stopping because the site is not responding.
Comment ID #5664
Yes, that is problematic. Heaven forfen if we do get an objectivist Southerner with an ass fetish on thr board, too.
I don’t really think I want to implement “tripcodes” or user registration just yet, though. Instead, I think you should stick to a new name and rely on a cookie-based think I’m going to implement where the last name you use gets autofilled along with the answer to the maths question.
Of course, it’d be nice if New Jay picked another name, but I don’t know how to contact him.
Comment ID #5981
Don’t worry about it. I’m a big boy, I can take the change. Hence forth I am Jay The First. The alternative would have been to add a sig, but I don’t want to have to retype a sig every time I post.
I just wish the person who took over Jay would have at least learned how to use a spell/grammar check on a word program and then copy/pasted his posts. *shudder*
Comment ID #5988
I dont know if this has been mentioned yet, but perhaps a “Bio” page on Team BCB… Im honestly interested in knowing more about the fine people who deliver me such fun
Comment ID #6000
Huh. That’s interesting. I suppose that could be done—but did you read the history bit in Extras? It kinda goes into that.
Anyway, I’ve finished writing all about procedural aspects of property cases and Soviet legal theorists and the constitutionality of emissions regulation, so I can get back to writing buggy PHP code for you all.
I want to ask, though, has anyone noticed the site being particularly slow? It’s hard to tell as Australian internet can be pretty poor at times, but those of you in the US (West coast particularly) should get really quick load times without issue. But I can’t be sure, and I did see a comment somewhere about pages loading slowly.
So any reports on what is slow would be appreciated, whether it’s reliably slow, and whether it seems like it’s complicated pages like the forums (an code efficiency problem) or simply download times for the comic page images (a bandwidth problem).
Comment ID #6034
I’ve spotted some trouble. Slow loading. Page cannot be found errors after posting replys. I don’t know if it’s just on my end, but yeah, trouble.
Comment ID #6039
its fucking ridiculously slow
Comment ID #6041
Yes, I have noticed that this site in particular is occasionally loading slowly, to the point where I sometimes get timeout errors. Other times the site loads just fine. It’s hit and miss.
I also get a 404 error whenever I post a comment. It posts, obviously, so whatever.
Comment ID #6043
I’m sorry, 403 “forbidden” error.
Comment ID #6045
Yeah I get that same 403 error upon posting, only a minor nuisance seeing how it still posts, but the site seems to load fine for me aside from that. Either that or I get distracted and don’t notice the site loading slow.
Comment ID #6051
But right now it’s super fast! Everything loads fast. For those saying “it’s slow”, where? Everywhere? Just in the forum? Just when posting?
The post script is a really tough one for the server to execute, so I can imagine it might be the problem. But I’ve posted a few times and it seems fast..?
403 errors sound bizarre to me. Any more info on that, does it happen every time and do comments sometimes fail when you post them?
Comment ID #6052
This page reloads instantly and the posting process took no time at all.
Comment ID #6070
Like I said, the site slowness seems to be random; I had just assumed those were times you were fiddling with the site code, or something.
The 403 error comes up every time I post, since the first time I posted. Instead of reloading the page after hitting the post button, or whatever it’s SUPPOSED to do, I get redirected to the error page.
I didn’t bring it up before because I didn’t really give a damn…but since you asked, there ya go. It’s probably just that this laptop sucks.
Comment ID #6073
I have had problems on other computers (they were bad computers, but still) where the most recent post box either was a post behind, or sometimes I couldnt see a post that was suppose to be their for a few minutes.
I dont use those comps often, but I was just kinda confused.
Comment ID #6076
That’s fascinating. What browser and OS do you use? Are there any factors that might mean that happens to you?
Submitting to post something leads to the script calling header(“Location: “.$_SERVER[‘HTTP_REFERER’].”#post&rdquo
; which should send you right back to the page you submitted from, jumped down to the bottom. If yours is getting hung up I’d be curious to know what page you see, if it’s just a bland Apache 403 error or a pretty one I wrote, or what.
I have never seen this, and I’m sorry that you’re having the problem. I suspect it’s a weird browser behaviour I just never saw.
Comment ID #6087
Bittersweet Candy Bowl
It’s one of yours, with the cute little black…ducky?
“40 3 Forbidden Error!
This script may not be loaded directly. You may have hit reload at the wrong time. Try going back and resubmitting your comment.
Sorry for the inconvenience! —Your site admin, SuitCase (Email link)
If you want to find yourself again, you can go to the Bittersweet Candy Bowl homepage, or maybe the comic archives.”
Latest Firefox…I think…Windows 7…ew…and I can only imagine it’s something to do with not keeping history or cookies.
And I wouldn’t fret over it. I’m too apathetic ‘bout my net browsin’ to really care.
Comment ID #6088
I think I know how to fix that. Let me try later.
Comment ID #6648
Quacksalver and ToastyJester, I can’t replicate this. I can’t quite work it out. Are you hitting the refresh button somewhere through posting? If not, do you have some kind of security software running that blocks the referrer data my script depends upon?
As a bug fixing measure, I put a thing at the end of the error page you’re getting which should tell you what page referred you. I’d appreciate it if you copied and pasted the result—if I’m right, it should come up blank for you.
In other news, I made the forum work much nicer on the iPhone\iPod touch. Not sure how many of you here do that, but hopefully it’ll be of help to those who are using the forum and were getting frustrated with how it taxes Safari in long threads.
Comment ID #6655
It’s probably the referrer data. I can’t view anything on Keenspace, and their troubleshooting page seems to indicate it’s a referrer problem, though their suggestions didn’t help any.
Test post a-go-go!
Comment ID #6658
Bittersweet Candy Bowl
403 Forbidden Error!
This script may not be loaded directly. You may have hit reload at the wrong time. Try going back and resubmitting your comment. The page that referred you here is:
Sorry for the inconvenience! —Your site admin, SuitCase (Email link)
If you want to find yourself again, you can go to the Bittersweet Candy Bowl homepage, or maybe the comic archives.
There ya go. And you seem to be right about it being blank. I really hope this isn’t just something stupid I’m doing.
Comment ID #6682
Yeah it’s rather slow at times. But I always thought it was my shitty ISP (rue the day someone created Digi Web!). And then at other times it loads and reloads no problem. Oh yeah, the ISP company sometimes puts us on Dial-up speed when we use the bandwith. I haven’t tried the forums at those times yet, but comic updates come pretty slow…
Comment ID #6940
I will fix that issue later—I should be able to get around depending on the referrer. I think that’s what’s causing you issues.
I have no idea about site speed issues. I still haven’t seen them, so I can’t do much about that.
I have, however, finally made it possible to view only the most recent bunch of topics. Check out the forum index pages. I chose not to do a checkbox, but this works more or less as well.
Is this an acceptable solution, or do you want me to make it remember your preference as well? You can always just bookmark the new topics-only index, but I can also do a cookie based thing if it’s worth the investment of time.
Comment ID #7004
OK, so this has been bugging me for a bit now, and I only just now figured out what it was specifically…
The top bar background on current-chapter comic pages isn’t the right color. It’s not dark enough. It’s too close to the color of the current-page-progress bar. This is not the case with pages in previous chapters.
Previous chapters:
Current chapter:
Don’t think I haven’t noticed how the top bar reflects current position within the archives and the bar beneath it indicates location within a chapter! I think it might be helpful to point out this feature on the New Reader page.
Comment ID #7020
Greatly appreciate that. I fixed it now, though it took a bit of guessing to find the right colour to use.
This is something I’ve fought with for a while. Getting that progress bar actually took a ton of work and as far as I know you’re the first person to have said that they’ve noticed it, but way back in the day when I was designing this site on paper it was something I thought could be useful as a kind of subtle, subconscious cue that people would intuitively notice as they were reading the whole archive, even if it seemed obscure to someone just reading various pages.
Did those of you who read the whole archive on the new site ever notice it?
Comment ID #7094
WELL I’M GLAD YOU ALL LIKE THE NEW TOPICS-ONLY FILTER.
Comment ID #7096
Oh this topic only filter SuitCase.
THIS TOPIC ONLY FILTER.
It has gotten rid of so much of my frustration. Ah how I enjoy it~
Comment ID #7113
About time, those comment threads were getting annoying =D
Comment ID #7120
And hey look, the site remembers your name and doesn’t make you type 7 every time now. Try posting with your name and a valid answer to the maths question, and it should stick to you on every future visit.
Comment ID #7124
OH NO SUITCASE!
You gave away the answer to the math question D=
Comment ID #7127
Shit.
Comment ID #7146
I like the iPod version of the forums. 
Comment ID #7216
Okay, sorry for that testravaganza. Unfortunately when modifying the post box thing I have to be super thorough in testing it. I cleaned up my mess now.
What I did was make the post comment button disable itself after you click it, in order to reduce double posts by mistake. I also changed the method of redirection after you post—Quacksalver and ToastyJester, do you still have issues with a 403 error or blank screen when posting?
Comment ID #7246
The topics-only filter, I must make love to it…IT BECKONS TO ME IN THE VOICE OF GEORGE TAKEI.
Sibilance….Sibilance
Comment ID #7247
CAPCOM is go, Flight.
Comment ID #7345
Finally got to see what the filter feels like. I had to wait since six this morn! It’s pretty awesome by the way mate. And the fact that the boxes remember me is cool too. I just wondered, if I were to use another computer one time, say a mate’s for example, would my name be recorded there as well or does it do it on the computer you use most frequently?
Head back to the forum index.
Comment ID #4775
I am considering a check box titled “Show Page Comments”, which defaults to being on, but if you turn it off, it makes all the page comments disappear and it remembers your preference for next time. Would this be a suitable solution? I’m not a fan of having two separate tables to browse through, I feel like it’d be confusing.
SuitCase April 16, 2010, 9:23 AM EST.