Forum Maintenance Announcements

[The Dark Tangent]

Here we will make announcements about the maintenance of the forums.

When there are updates or technical bug fixes we will track them here instead of filling the other threads.

[number6]

Upgrade of forum software completed today, Jan 10, 2020.

Changes/Features:
* Emoji, Emoticons, "Smileys" : Vendor in working to migrate their presentation from images into UTF8_MB4 Unicode characters instead of images. What this should do is result in a significantly smaller amount of data being used to send 4byte chars instead of images, and save processing time in clients not having to process the image as an image. Draw-backs: screen-readers may present different data to an end-user using a screen-reader. Instead of it letting them know about an image, possibly with an alt-tag, it may let them know hex-values, or something else. Let us know if this causes you problems. Our custom smiles are still images.
* DRAG-AND-DROP upload: below the space where you can type your message, you should see a rectangle with 2 submit buttons "Upload Attachments" and "Upload from URL" . If you drag an allowed attachment (like an image such as a JPEG ending in ,jpg or a PNG ending in .png, etc.) from your device, and hover over the rectangle that also includes those 2 submit buttons, it should change to indicate "drop files here to upload." You can drop files there for people to download later. There is a limit to the size of each attachment, type allowed, and max count per post. If you want to have your image appear as part of the text you are typing, use the "add image" method described here For Desktop Browser or For Mobile Devices running iPhone or Android and the DEF CON Forums App
* More modern password hashing algorithm should now be supported. TO take advantage of this, you just need to change your password.
* Many bugs fixed

I have tested:
* Email from forums being sent
* New topic creation
* Reply to new topic (post)
* Comment to reply
* Blog
* PM
* Uploading images/attachments to a post
* More

Please let us know if you encounter problems with using forums. Reply here. if not possible, try the "Contact Us" link to send us email.

[The Dark Tangent]

The latest update to the forums software redoes the way announcement and notice banners are displayed. I'll be working on implementing the changes and adding some new banners to make things look nicer and create a more custom look.

If you are running a a DEF CON Group and want custom art for your section just ask.

[The Dark Tangent]

We are getting ready to disable http/1.0 support for the forums, about 11% of traffic. Our suspicion is it is mostly old crawlers and bots, as no modern browsers or proxies default to 1.0.

If you experience any issues please let us know!

[number6]

We are getting ready to disable http/1.0 support for the forums, about 11% of traffic. Our suspicion is it is mostly old crawlers and bots, as no modern browsers or proxies default to 1.0.

If you experience any issues please let us know!

This is now live. HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2.0 should both work, but for now, HTTP/1.0 won't.

[number6]

Forum Maintenance again tonight, starting around 6pm pacific time.
Best estimate for down-time is less than 2 hours, but because unpredictable problems are unpredictable, it may take longer.
Thanks!

[number6]

Forum maintenance completed. Upgraded to a new version. Many bugs fixed. Most significant feature with upgrade is better support for UTF8.

[The Dark Tangent]

Heads up!

I am experimenting with the way we display the header art at the top of forums, so there will be a few random changes as it gets worked out.

I am trying to configure so each area in forums, like groups or election security, can have a more custom feel by having their own art.

This is on the road to a redesign of how defcongroups.org and the forums tie together.

[number6]

Changes made to web server configuration, which may cause problems , even though we have not found any.
Changes have been made to styles for forums which should only impact moderator and admin content and not break other content, and more.
If you encounter problems, please let us know here, or if you can't post, email us at forum@defcon.org and only if that email is broken, then as a last resort, email defconforums@gmail.com

[number6]

Some forum headers have been altered, or displaced.
We have tested many forum functions which still seem to work.
If you encounter a forum function which seems broken, please let us know!

[number6]

One of the recent header changed broke login. Ooops! Sorry about that.
(Existing logins continued to work fine.)
Changed headers to be less restrictive and allow login to work.
Please let us know if you see issues with new headers.
Thanks!

[number6]

Another issue after it was reported: in Some Chrome and all Chromium I tested, the "preview" button for a post did nothing, and the color of the text in box you type your replies contained black text on dark gray background. Both of these appear to be fixed. Please let me know if you see any other issues.

[number6]

Forum maintenance completed.
Running through some basic tests to see if I can find anything broken.
Please let us know of any issues you find.
Expecting to return to service at 9pm pacific time.

[number6]

Comment here.

[number6]

A bug was reported on creation of events which was broken as a result of security headers directing browsers to block xml communications between clients that support it and the server. DIagnosed, and fixed the header. This lead to another bug where event calendar for selecting a date had CSS issues making the font color close to the same as the background color, making it mostly unusable. This was also fixed. A few other security issues have been fixed.

A new item: we configure forums to host all javascript from the forums itself to avoid metadata data mining by google and facebook. Even with this, the "Facebook Like" image/link appears to include a request for clients to download JavaScript from facebook.com .
The good news is Jeff publishes headers to direct browsers to only download Javascript referenced by forums to client from forums and not from facebook, so most browsers may show an "error" when the browser has the debugger enabled and the facebook image/link appears near a post or thread, but failure in browsers to load that JavaScript and run it does not appear to break anything on the forums.

Please let us know if you see other issues with the forums.

Thanks!

[The Dark Tangent]

Forums have been updated! New features and fixes:

Blogs
The grid view has been added to the Blog Listing. This works similarly to the grid view on Groups. In addition to this, sorting functionality has been added to the Blog Listing.

The display of notices in the page header has been improved. The Notifications link is now a drop-down menu that lists the number of each type of notification. This list will also include Reported/Flagged and Unapproved posts for moderation purposes. When the user also has vBulletin Messenger active, this list will update automatically between page loads.


JavaScript
Several JavaScript files have been extensively refactored in order to provide updated and more concise code. During the refactor, deprecated code may have been removed. If you experience issues after installing this version, you should refresh the browser cache to make sure that all files are updated properly. If the issues persist, please let us know by filing a bug report.

Additional Resolved Issues

• Pagination for Social Group member lists have been fixed.
• Users can now select multiple emoji in the editor without having to reopen the panel for each one.
• The online/offline status icon has returned to the post bit.
• Resolved an issue that could cause publish dates on edited articles to advance by one month.
• Resolved an issue that prevented the merging of Photo Gallery posts.
• Improved date handling for non-English languages.
• The system now shows a proper error page if the user doesn't have permission to download an attachment.
• Private and Invisible Channels will no longer be displayed in search results. Private channels are channels the user does not have permission to view. Invisible Channels are those with a display order of 0.
• An option was added to the search module in order to filter Unapproved Posts from the results.
• The layout of all Message Center pages has been updated so they work better in Responsive mode.
• Resolved an issue so vBulletin Cloud administrators should no longer receive "Invalid Node ID" when accessing the Page Manager within Site Builder.
• Improved caching of phrases within local storage.