DeeperBlue.net Forums Being Upgraded

[sanso]

[quote=Stephan Whelan;625363]I can't replicate this problem. Is it still happening? Does it happen on every thread?
Yes and Yes.
One example would be the link below. It says it points to the first new post in the 10k-users thread, but leaves me with an empty page:

http://forums.deeperblue.net/deeperb...-new-post.html

HTH,

Sanso

P.S.: Am willing to do more de-bugging, can read http

[Stephan Whelan]

Sanso,


I've clicked on that link you gave and it works fine from my end but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem

Can you post screen shots, as well as details of what web browser and o/s you are using. Finally keep an eye on the browser url bar and let me know if anything happens.

[sanso]

Okay, first, here's a windoshot attached. I stretched it a bit, so the whole url is shown. I just hope this is still readable - doesn't the forum scale down to 1024 px ?

I tried this on a debian/sarge workstation and a win2k-box at work (both behind a firewall) and my home-lappy running ubuntu edgy (no firewall there). On both GNU/linux machines, firefox is my default browser on the wintendo-box I'm forced to use IE (version 6.0.2800.1106CO).

The addressbar doesn't do anything but show me the url I entered. The browser tells me it's 'done' immediately (AFAICT)

HTH,

Sanso

[trux]

Sanso, the "go-to-1st-unread-post" links are in fact HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) redirects to the real URL, that is then generated for each user individually (depending on his/her last visit of that thread). In this case it points to the following URL (the last number after the # would differ at each user):

DeeperBlue.net Forums Hit Historic 10,000 Members

If it does not work, it means your browser does not follow HTTP 30* redirects - most likely you have used high security settings in your browser. Just look through the settings, you will surely find it.

As for the forum software, Stephan, I'd recommend adding a clickable link into the body of the HTTP redirect. The body is currently empty, which is common at 301 redirects, but as you can see it can be useful in case user's browser does not continue to the new redirected location automatically. Not sure though if you can edit the template of that page. If not, I'd suggest contacting the developers of vBulletin and proposing the solution to them (feel free to give the credits to me for reporting it ) - it is certainly a serious problems and not only for Sanso.

[Stephan Whelan]

We actually utilise two products here - vBulletin and vbSEO. vBulletin provides the base functionality whilst vbSEO provides another product layer on top to aid us in making the forums as widely available via search engines, other forums, blogs and social bookmarking sites.

It does seem that the native redirection in the vBulletin software uses 301 redirects as well as extensive usage in the vbSEO product. Unfortunately i'm not sure that either vendor is likely to change their product behaviour at this present time. I can present to them the potential change but as with all software companies features and bugs are addressed based on customer requirements and how many customers require it.

If this is an issue reported by a larger percentage of DB forum users i'll consider taking it up with the vendors.

[trux]

Originally Posted by Stephan Whelan

... Unfortunately i'm not sure that either vendor is likely to change their product behaviour at this present time.

The behaviour does not need to be changed. It can remain identical as it is now, just adding a human clickable link to the HTML body of the redirect. The change is trivial - all what is needed is copying the code placing the HTTP header string "Location:" and the URL into the HTML body. If you have the PHP source code, you can do it easily yourself with just the very rudimentary knowledge of coding in PHP. Simply search for the strings "Location:" and "301" in the directory containing the PHP source files - that should bring up the concerned file rather quickly. Then add a HTML body including an A anchor link with the same code for the URL as used in the HTTP Location directive.

[sanso]

Hmmpf, trux,

sounds reasonable, but I can't see a 301 in the http headers.. I just get a 200 OK.
These are the headers I see using firefox' HTTP-headers plugin. I can also go deeper and use the wireshark if You want me to

Edit: Did use the wireshark. Same result. can't see a redirect anywhere.

---%<---
http://forums.deeperblue.net/deeperb...-new-post.html

GET /deeperblue-net-announcements/67868-deeperblue-net-forums-hit-historic-10-000-members-new-post.html HTTP/1.1
Host: forums.deeperblue.net
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060830 Firefox/1.5.0.7 (Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.7-2)
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: DeeperBlue.net Forums Being Upgraded
Cookie: <You don't need to know >

HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
Connection: Keep-Alive
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2007 15:35:01 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9
X-Pingback: http://forums.deeperblue.net/vbseo-xmlrpc/
Expires: 0
Cache-Control: private, post-check=0, pre-check=0, max-age=0
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Length: 20
Content-Encoding: gzip
---%<---

HTH,

Sanso

[trux]

Originally Posted by sanso

sounds reasonable, but I can't see a 301 in the http headers.. I just get a 200 OK.

You probably do not look at the right place, use improper tool for reading the headers, or there is something else interacting and showing you already the redirected header, or screwing it up. There definitely are HTTP 301 redirects:

GET /deeperblue-net-announcements/67868-deeperblue-net-forums-hit-historic-10-000-members-new-post.html HTTP/1.1
Host: forums.deeperblue.net
 
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2007 15:45:23 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9
X-Pingback: http://forums.deeperblue.net/vbseo-xmlrpc/
Set-Cookie: dbforumssessionhash=XXXXXXXXXXX; path=/; domain=.deeperblue.net; HttpOnly
Set-Cookie: dbforumslastvisit=1167839123; expires=Thu, 03-Jan-2008 15:45:23 GMT; path=/; domain=.deeperblue.net
Set-Cookie: dbforumslastactivity=0; expires=Thu, 03-Jan-2008 15:45:23 GMT; path=/; domain=.deeperblue.net
Expires: 0
Cache-Control: private, post-check=0, pre-check=0, max-age=0
Pragma: no-cache
Location: DeeperBlue.net Forums Hit Historic 10,000 Members
Content-Length: 0
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

[sanso]

Originally Posted by trux

... or there is something else interacting and showing you already the redirected header, or screwing it up. There definitely are HTTP 301 redirects: ...

...

Okay, must be the crappy firewall at work then. Will look when I have time at home.

Cheers for looking into this.

Sanso

P.S.: Thanks for showing me how to paste code

[sanso]

Hi Stephan, trux,

I found new info on the problem I have with ...-new-post.html urls:

1. Those links, including the one used for testing in this thread, also work for me when I set the display mode to linear but will not work if in hybrid or threaded mode.
This might explain why You guys are happily reading all new-posts while I couldn't.

2. I can also confirm that redirects work properly on all my machines. Other sites use plenty of those and I have no problem. This points to a not-browser-related issue.

HTH,

sanso

[sanso]

A smaller thing I just noticed:

The hint for the supporter program is also shown for current supporters - this seems to be a bit of a waste of screen real-estate

[Stephan Whelan]

Originally Posted by sanso

Hi Stephan, trux,

I found new info on the problem I have with ...-new-post.html urls:

1. Those links, including the one used for testing in this thread, also work for me when I set the display mode to linear but will not work if in hybrid or threaded mode.
This might explain why You guys are happily reading all new-posts while I couldn't.

2. I can also confirm that redirects work properly on all my machines. Other sites use plenty of those and I have no problem. This points to a not-browser-related issue.

HTH,

sanso

Thanks Sanso - this has been logged with the vendor. I will keep you updated on the progress of the issue.

[SurfnSpear]

Just had to go back into my profile and reselect 'supporter' status. Seems the upgrade defaulted me back to 'registered user' with no blue highlighted name.

Cheers

[Stephan Whelan]

Just to let people know that we've rolled out a new feature - the ArticleBot. This bot will post Articles from the main site in the same vein as the NewsBot does for News.

Apologies as it first cycles through the existing articles and posts to the relevant forums.