FirstLoveMovies

mimzy,

I didn't see anything in phpBB's docs about being able to "reclaim" old user names. Are these accounts marked inactive, by any chance? As a "what if?" scenario, have you tried deactivating then reactivating your old account and trying to log in with it again? There might be a flag that would reset when an account is edited that would allow access to it again. Perhaps moving them from the 'Old site" group to the 'Registered users' group might also be needed. It might be worth a try. After all, there had to be a reason they could be imported and right now they're just taking up space (and maybe preventing message linking problems).

I don't know how this would affect duplicated nicknames or whether other security changes would have to be made... or whether it's worth your trouble. I know it would be a royal pain to edit all the records, but for the top 20 or 30 users, it wouldn't be too bad. Personally, I think any of the user accounts that have never posted a message should probably be deleted anyway - they've never contributed anything, there shouldn't be any linking issues, and they can always create a new logon.
[Code] You might want to edit the root page - it's not experimental now and some of the admin team seems to have abdicated. If nothing else, you might want to explain about the security certificate (which my Linux says doesn't match this address so you might want to generate a new certificate).

I don't know what meta tags you're using - maybe if you have a cached page from the old board you can see what was being used there. The right meta tags can make us more visible to the search engines. We're going to be competing with ''ourselves' for a long time until the old site finally drops off the search engines.

The next comment is NOT a complaint - it's truly unimportant and merely a personal preference.
I liked the colors and layout of the old board. The current default style is pretty bland. I know phpBB v3x can't use styles from v2x and editing styles looks to be a real PITA, but if you want, I'll take a shot at creating a style similar to the old FLM that you can make available as a choice.

Feel free to tell me to piss off - I won't be offended and I don't want to stick my nose in where it's not wanted.

there is an option to change the theme,i'm seeing silvery pages now.

starfish21 wrote:there is an option to change the theme,i'm seeing silvery pages now.

There are hundreds of themes available on the phpBB site and it's fairly simple for mimzy to install whichever one(s) he wants, but none come very close to the old FLM, and different options don't appear in some of them or are in different places, or the icons are very cryptic. I went back to the FLM style because it was hard to tell if a forum had new messages in the prosilver style. I've just never liked the washed-out pale blue style in any program I've used.

Looking at phpBB some more, I don't know whether I even want to jack with it because it'd mean setting up yet another PC along with Linux, Apache, a SQL database, and other stuff just to test out the screen layouts. I have 2 PC's and 2 laptops running right now just in this room, and another 3 in other rooms, not to mention a server, a NAS, a couple printers... you get the idea. I do computer work all day long - anything after hours is supposed to be recreational.

Phuzzy4242 wrote:I didn't see anything in phpBB's docs about being able to "reclaim" old user names. Are these accounts marked inactive, by any chance? As a "what if?" scenario, have you tried deactivating then reactivating your old account and trying to log in with it again? There might be a flag that would reset when an account is edited that would allow access to it again. Perhaps moving them from the 'Old site" group to the 'Registered users' group might also be needed. It might be worth a try. After all, there had to be a reason they could be imported and right now they're just taking up space (and maybe preventing message linking problems).

I set up the group "Old site" deliberately. The issue with usernames is that I don't have any passwords, e-mails or other data of the old site that is not visible to a regular user. I could set passwords of all former FLM members to "12345" or similar -- then everybody would be able to log in using their old nicknames, but I think there would be a small security problem...

Therefore I ask all users to re-register. If somebody is using a nick that is not belonging to him, he cannot at least edit/delete "his" old posts. Additionally, we have an nice overview of users who have found their way back:

https://www.first-loves.com/forums/m ... =group&g=2

After the majority of users have re-joined, we could merge old and new accounts, so everybody would get back their old posts and original registration dates.

Phuzzy4242 wrote:I don't know how this would affect duplicated nicknames or whether other security changes would have to be made... or whether it's worth your trouble. I know it would be a royal pain to edit all the records, but for the top 20 or 30 users, it wouldn't be too bad. Personally, I think any of the user accounts that have never posted a message should probably be deleted anyway - they've never contributed anything, there shouldn't be any linking issues, and they can always create a new logon.

I already deleted all users with 0 posts. The remaining few users of old site that have 0 posts are those that had posts in locked threads (graveyard) only. I can bypass phpBB and use SQL directly, so modifying large number of users is not a problem.

Phuzzy4242 wrote:[Code] You might want to edit the root page - it's not experimental now and some of the admin team seems to have abdicated.

Yeah, the root page is indeed getting obsolete. Eventually I want to get rid of it and redirect to /forums/ (the info should be posted there).

Phuzzy4242 wrote:If nothing else, you might want to explain about the security certificate (which my Linux says doesn't match this address so you might want to generate a new certificate).

Which browser do you use? With Firefox 3.6 I only get a warning about "self-signed" certificate. Hostname of FLM certificate is "*.first-loves.com.ua", which does match http://www.first-loves.com.ua. Some older browsers (not supporting "RFC 4366") may use my default https certificate, which is a different one. Not a big issue, though.

Phuzzy4242 wrote:I don't know what meta tags you're using - maybe if you have a cached page from the old board you can see what was being used there. The right meta tags can make us more visible to the search engines. We're going to be competing with ''ourselves' for a long time until the old site finally drops off the search engines.

I don't think meta tags are much used nowadays, because many sites add arbitrary tags just to get higher ranks in search engines. As far as I can see, Google is already busy indexing our new site. It just takes some time.

Phuzzy4242 wrote:The next comment is NOT a complaint - it's truly unimportant and merely a personal preference.
I liked the colors and layout of the old board. The current default style is pretty bland. I know phpBB v3x can't use styles from v2x and editing styles looks to be a real PITA, but if you want, I'll take a shot at creating a style similar to the old FLM that you can make available as a choice.

Creating a new style from scratch is a huge work. The current default style is just a slightly modified version of "ColorizeIt" by Artodia (http://www.artodia.com/). It's my personal preference

If you really want to create another phpBB3 style, I would gladly install it. In this case I should probably send you the current FLM style and prosilver with the FLM Search extension.

In any case the new site won't look identical to the old site. The old site was based on PHP-Nuke.

BTW, if you want, and other admins agree, I would add you to our admin team. I think another guy with technical expertise is needed, especially if FLL won't show up.

mimzy wrote:After the majority of users have re-joined, we could merge old and new accounts, so everybody would get back their old posts and original registration dates.

Resetting all old passwords to 12345 would NOT be a good idea. Perhaps merge ID's on a case-by-case basis after someone sends you a PM. You could then reset their old ID's password. It would still be hard to verify identities except for the regulars.

mimzy wrote:Which browser do you use? With Firefox 3.6 I only get a warning about "self-signed" certificate. Hostname of FLM certificate is "*.first-loves.com.ua", which does match http://www.first-loves.com.ua. Some older browsers (not supporting "RFC 4366") may use my default https certificate, which is a different one. Not a big issue, though.

In Windows I use Firefox 5 and sometimes Opera 11.5 and Internet Exploder 8, and Firefox in Ubuntu Linux. Linux Firefox said the addresses don't match. It still works but sometimes I have to accept it again after each boot.

mimzy wrote:Creating a new style from scratch is a huge work. The current default style is just a slightly modified version of "ColorizeIt" by Artodia (http://www.artodia.com/). It's my personal preference

If you really want to create another phpBB3 style, I would gladly install it. In this case I should probably send you the current FLM style and prosilver with the FLM Search extension.

In any case the new site won't look identical to the old site. The old site was based on PHP-Nuke.

BTW, if you want, and other admins agree, I would add you to our admin team. I think another guy with technical expertise is needed, especially if FLL won't show up.

I hadn't planned to create anything from scratch but to modify one of the similar styles downloaded from phpBB.com. After thinking about it, I really don't want to go to all the trouble of setting up another Linux web server along with phpBB. The only way to do the kind of mods needed is to change and test, change and test, and I've already got too many boxes running and not enough time for RL sometimes. I can live with the colors - like I said, it wasn't a complaint.

I don't think I'm even-tempered enough to be admin. If you actually need the help and nobody else steps up to do it - and everyone agrees they want me - okay, but there are members who have better people skills than me. Any technical knowledge I have doesn't have to be "bought" with an admin slot - if I can help, I will.