Message Board Upgrade Planned/Completed/Problems

Just a little warning/notice: This weekend, some evening, I plan to attempt to upgrade the message board software to the current version and will try to start/finish it one of these weekend nights, maybe tonight, Saturday, or Sunday night, maybe at around midnight EAST COAST USA time.

As with all changes, the look and feel will be a bit different and we'll all have to muddle through, getting used to it all over again. There's no avoiding this, I'm afraid. BUT, with "change" often comes improvements, added features, new looks, etcetera, and this is what I like to continue doing with MadridMan.com.

I know. I know. JUST when you were STARTING to learn how to make all the smiley faces, right!? Hehehe.. Believe me, with the new software, you'll only need to CLICK your different smiley faces into place (I believe) so it should be easier than it is now. We'll see, right? hehee.. If I don't like it, I'll go back to this version. Cross your fingers!

A NOTICE screen will be placed on the WELCOME page saying the board is DOWN for upgrades and to try back again in a few hours.

Thanks for your patience!! I'll follow up in this thread if I have any further announcements.

Saludos, MadridMan

[ 04-15-2001: Message edited by: MadridMan ]

any chance that with the upgrade that the messages in a thread could be sorted with the most recent posting listed first...you do a good job with the bb and I appreciate the work that it takes... its just that I don't want to have to scan through the messages if I can't use the sort feature you have for 1,2, days etc.... thank you for your efforts I am deligent about telling others of the great website......

Good luck with the task, MM. I hope our withdrawl won't be too long or painful!!
Happy St. Paddy's everyone-

Oh yeah! Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! I'd forgotten (not Irish). jlawson, I could sort the postings "newests posting first and so on..", and this is quicker for return members. But for new visitors it wouldn't be a logical order to start threads at the top and then have to read backwards.

I suggest the following: On the front page of the message board there's a link under the MadridMan's Spain Message Board "balloon" that says "Click Here To View Today's Active Topics (all public forums)" that will show the threads in forums which have new postings for the day. This won't help you with 1-2 day old NEW postings, of course. In this case, you may simply go to the particular thread and, instead of scolling down just hit your END key and you'll go to the bottom instantly and then you can work your way up through the recent postings.

Imagine the new visitor and he/she arrives to read the threads which only have 2 or 3 postings. Wouldn't it seem odd to, logically, start at the top (newbies never see the dates of posting) and read down/backward?

NOTE: jlawson, something that may help you and others like you... or maybe not! Under the "menu" under the red text of "MadridMan's Message Board" you'll find the links to "profile | register | preferences | faq | search" (my favorite is this last one. hehehe..) If you click on the PREFERENCES link you can change the way the forum threads are listed. In "DEFAULT TOPIC VIEW", click the pulldown menu and change it from whatever it says (probably "Show topics from last 30 days) to "Show topics from last 2 days" and then your default will be set as this and you'll see ONLY threads which have activity in the last two days. You'll still have to hit END or scroll to the bottom of those threads you're following, but it may help keep organized.

About the message board upgrade, I'm going to try to do it tonight. If it doesn't work, I may need "professional help" (hehehe..) in which case it would probably take place sometime Monday or Tuesday. Thanks!

Saludos, MadridMan

[This message has been edited by MadridMan (edited 03-17-2001).]

Okay everyone. Tomorrow night (Wednesday) at about 9pm Eastern USA time I will make a serious attempt at UPGRADING the message board software. It should (we'll see, eh?) only take a couple of hours and the board will be DOWN for that period of time. Thanks for your patience!! Hope we all like the new version! I don't think I can change it back to the old version if we don't.

Saludos, MadridMan

Another reminder for all who haven't seen this before. Tonight at 9pm East Coast USA will be when I shut down the message board for the attempted upgrade. You'll all, HOPEFULLY, wake up tomorrow to a NEW LOOK and feel to MadridMan's Spain Message Board. Don't stress!!!!

We'll be sending you coffee all night long.

UPDATE: The Message Board will be shutting down in 30 minutes, 9pm Eastern USA time.

Thanks Wolfgang81, but I'm thinking this is going to be easier than had originally thought. I may be eating my words in 30 minutes. hehehe.. Later!

ARRRGH!!!!!! Another delay. I need some clarification on a couple of points. It seems that upon upgrading the software all the URLs to threads will be somehow changed. Gotta look into this as some of the threads have been indexed on search engines. If I don't get this resolved tomorrow this will have to wait until the weekend.

Hey MadridMan - is there anything some of us tech/web savvy members/participants can do to help you out? Just let us know.

Tomas

------------------
"Salud, amor y pesetas - y tiempo para gozarlos" http://home.att.net/~t.macentee

You're keeping me in suspense! mmhhh?? Wonder if you'll have it done by the time I get back from Madrid?? just teasing you ... good luck

The suspense is killing me too!

"Hope we all like the new version! I don't think I can change it back to the old version if we don't."

Isn't there a saying along the lines of .......If it ain't broke, don't fix it? Oh dear, MM.....don't panic!!

I know. I know. But you know how it is. Newer versions come more features. I've seen the new version recently and it does look a bit... well.. busier. But I get one free upgrade to the newer version and that year is about to expire. "Gotta keep up with the Jones' you know." hehe..

I'll give it another shot tonight at 9pm.

Saludos, MadridMan

OOOOoookay. It'll have to wait. SORRY!! I'm SO busy with other things (I know, "WHAT could be MORE important than the message board!??"). The time will come....

OKAY!!!! Seems the upgrade will take place sometime today (Thursday), possibly even before you read this. Hope it "works" for everyone and remember, it will take a little time to get used to it. CROSS YOUR FINGERS!!!

Saludos, MadridMan

Again, it seems today's the day!!! Prepare for an "outage" sometime today.

Since there will be an outage today, it will give me an excuse to do something else. My roomate is starting to worry about me, I'm addicted to this sight. But, good work on the site, and good luck on the upgrade!

tell me about it. I used to check this site once a day. Now, I check it when I get up, before I leave for work, when I get back from work, and before I go to bed. Madrid and Madrid Man is taking over my life!!!

Mabella, I can recommend a good therapist if you start to have dreams about MadridMan's Spain Message Board. hehehe...

An attempt was made for the upgrade yesterday and hopefully it will happen today (I'm now getting professional help. hehehe.. I mean for the upgrade!!). Have a nice weekend everyone!!!

Saludos, MadridMan

Oh my gosh, MM, what a face lift!!!I'm impressed!

Pretty cool , eh? hehee.. I'm liking it too. Pretty busy-looking, but yes, full-featured. Thanks, laduque! You're the first to notice, I think. It took place at about 6:15pm (eastern USA time) tonight, about an hour ago.

HOPE YOU ALL LIKE IT (because there's no goin' back! hehehe... )

Yes,
This is pretty cool, I especially like how you can see what the most recent post was without actually going into the particular forum! Good work!!!!

good going, though I almost had a heartattack when I was on & was switching forums & the screen turned black & white and said, `an error has occurred'
Especially since my server had been down since saturday & I was starting to go through Madridman withdrawal.

Hey!! howcome I can't rate myself?? hehe

Hi Madridman

Nice move. The new look BB is very good. Nice to see that you finally finished it.

Well done.

David

Hey, MM, I love the new look, and it's great to be able to see at a glance where everyone's from. The only thing I can complain about is the "number of posts" statistic...I don't want to know how many I have posted/how much time I have spent NOT working on my dissertation! Eek!

Seriously, it's a great upgrade--you're an inspiration for webmasters everywhere!
Tara

Wow!

Great new look! It was a pleasant surprise for me this morning (at work!) I love the message icons' new look - they are so cute... but of course, that's a typical girlie thing to say.... oh well!!! :p

The board looks great Madridman! Good job!

Very impressive! I was also relieved to see you got the thing up and running so quickly! I was starting to panic when I tried to log on and found the "no funciona" message...this site has become a serious addiction!

Well done, MM! Better than we expected and we all breathe a sigh of relief!

Incidentally, if you are member number two..........???

FINALLY!!!! Enjoy, everyone. A.F., MadridMan (me! ) is #2 and I'm also #1 as "Administrator" to edit the postings. Seems the clock is off/early by an hour though... let's see if I can adjust that. Have fun!!

¡Espectáculo, estupendo, fabuloso, fantástico y que bueno!

[B]MM,[B]

Congrats! The look and feel of the boards is great! We haven't lost any of the pizzazz[I] that was here, but seemed to have gained speed, and several options that are kind of neat.

[I]Wolf

Madridman I hope you are still monitoring this topic....Before your update I was able to access your message board on my iMac at school, now all I get is HTML computerspeak. My students (all very elitist IBM fans who scorn Macs) said this often happens on apples.....At home I have an ancient Gateway and other than I grow old waiting for things to delete or boot or appear on it, I have no problem with the message board. At first I thought the message board was being blocked, as my school prohibits chats/message boards but the tech people said I would get a big black 'access denied' screen if that were the case....so whatup with the cookie speak? Gracias por compartirme la sabiadura suya....

Perfecta, please forgive me for jumping in here when you asked MM about this, but I just want you to know that you're not alone! A number of us have the same problem - the new version of the board works on our pcs, and not on our macs. It seems the problem is with macs running Internet Explorer - the new version won't work on it. It WILL work if you access it through Netscape Navigator (which I hate, but that's what I'm using now while I type this up on my iMac)!

MM knows about the problem, and it apparently can be fixed, so no te preocupes, you'll see it again! (and I'll get to wipe Navigator - yugh - off my computer again!)

[ 04-11-2001: Message edited by: Diana ]

Hi Y'all!! You may be asking yourself "where's so-and-so" a little more in the next few days. It seems the new and improved message board software isn't allowing Macintosh users view it!!! Can you believe that?? (Maybe the software was written by some Microsoft people?? hehehe...)

So, I have SEVERAL emails in to the company and am waiting for a reply. Will let you know what's happening as soon as I do. Have already gotten emails from a number of you with pleas of "OH MY GOD! MY LIFE IS COMING TO AN END BECAUSE I CANNOT ACCESS THE MESSAGE BOARD!!" (hehehe.. I'm exaggerating a little), but am doing what I can and HOPE to have it resolved by the end of this coming weekend. SO SORRY (really, I'm SO VERY SORRY) this has happened. Thank you for your patience.

By the way, has anyone tried accessing the message board on a Mac using Netscape??? It seems clear from the feedback that it certainly cannot be viewed through Microsoft's Explorer browser.

Saludos, MadridMan

Yes, MadridMan, I had the Message Board working on a Mac using Netscape, after it had not worked when I used the Explorer.

Could it be maybe that the HTML code generated by the UBB is not fully compliant with the HTML standard?.

Check it with the W3C Consortium Validator .

Yipee! I'm at school on my new blueberry iMac and the message board works on netscape but still NO to internet explorer......

GREAT NEWS! It seems the software company can install a patch to allow it to be seen by Macs using Microsoft's Explorer browser. Hopefully they'll get it done by the end of Monday or Tuesday. Thanks very much for your patience! In the meantime, Mac users should, if they can, view the message board with Netscape.

Saludos, MadridMan

UPDATE: For those Mac users who are viewing this now using Netscape , good for you. I just got an email from the BB makers and they say:

I'm not so sure how easily #1 can be accomplished (I have this question posed to them and am waiting for a reply).

As for #2, you can upgrade your Mac's Internet Explorer browser to version 5.0, Macintosh Edition, (about 7mb) @ http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/ie/ie50.asp .

I know #2 will take time, especially with older Mac's slower modems, but you'll browse the internet better on the whole. I'm putting a link to this download site on my opening page (but doubt anyone will notice. hehehe...).

Thanks for your patience! Feedback appreciated.

Saludos, MadridMan

I've been using the new IE 5 for macs for a while now (yup, it's great), but I can't see the board with it. I took another look at the thread on infopop's message board about this problem, and it seems newer systems work. For example, someone using IE 5 with OS 9.1 can see the new boards. My mac has a slightly older OS. It seems the change of masterCharset is working for everyone, though. There's supposed to be an announcement with a link to instructions on how to do it in their forum. Good luck, MM! And thanks for all your hard work!

Wow, Diana! I'm impressed you looked so deeply into this matter. Well, having said that, all I can suggest is to ask you to use/download the free Netscape for Macintosh. (I really can't believe I'm directing people towards Netscape as I've been trying to stear them AWAY from it for years! hehehe...)

Saludos, MadridMan

Hello Group. I wish I was happier this sad day.

No. No one died (thank God). I didn't lose my job (but sometimes I.... ). I wasn't turned down for a residency visa. And my madrileña ladyfriend didn't turn down my proposal again (because I haven'd asked in years as I already know the answer).

With MUCH feedback from Macintosh users (mainly Spanish teachers, other teachers, and students) accesing from from school, work, or home, I looked into getting the newly discovered/available version of the message board. I was all ready to do it too.

My annual "Members Access" expired 2 months ago and I knew of this Mac/Internet Explorer problem then, but there was no way to "FIX" the problem then according to Infopop, the creators of the software.

NOW they tell me that the Macintosh BUG fix is available, making the message board accessible to ALL Macintosh users and thereby ALL MadridMan Message Board members, current and future.

They say I can purchase a NEW annual membership to the "Members Access" portion and then an upgrade to the newest (accessible to everyone) version 6.04x, but it will cost $200 ($100 for Members Access and $100 for the upgrade).

I was SO angry to be told this since I made it PAINFULLY clear during the last months of my Members Access license that my Macintosh users could NOT access MadridMan's Message Board, but at that time they had no answers. NOW, conveniently, there IS a fix and my annual Members Access has expired.

I'm SO sorry for essentially locking out so many current and future users to this active and (arguably, I suppose) best soley Spain-focused message board on the internet, but I really cannot afford the upgrade. Okay, sure, I could afford it, but with "strain/stress" and too much money has gone into this as it is and guess (read: HOPE!) a small minority of users, potential and current, are accessing from Macintosh computers.

I ONLY WISH is that they would have had a FULLY functional message board version for all operating systems at the time the software version upgrade was available 2 months ago. I feel burned, angry, and "spent" in more ways than one.

Enough ranting and raving. It usually never does any good anyway. I'm tired of it all. I'm so sorry to teacher/students like perfect, Diana, and connie to name only a few who have mentioned problems in this thread.

VERY sadly, MadridMan

So what if all of us sent $1 to the Madrid Man PO Box #? It would be a pain for those outside of the US to send the equivalent (though if the Euro were IN, at least conversion would be easier for MM!) Seriously, that would help, right? There must be 200 of us in the US who feel we've gotten at least our $1's worth of information on this site! What do you think, fellow MMMB addicts...can we solve this problem?

[ 07-02-2001: Message edited by: la maestra ]

MM - say the word and my dollar is on the way! Seems like that is the very least all us Spainophiles can do - we would be lost and minserable without our daily fix! Come on gang - lets hope that 200 odd envelopes with a dollar each are in the post!

Thanks la maestra and Puna! Your kindness is MUCH appreciated. BUT, I've been in the internet "game" since the beginning and know that people still want (and expect) internet services for free and am quite certain this is no exception. I think this concept is starting to change, but very very VERY slowly.

I have no doubt a few kind-hearted message board members would be happy to send in their dollars, but I can't ask you to do this - you're setting yourselves up for disappointment. I'm quite certain only a few dollars would be received leaving a huge balance and this only gets peoples' hopes high and without results.

Thanks, but no thanks. Really. I do appreciate it. I'll save the money little by little and hope that by next year sometime I'll make the upgrade. Still, I'm haggling with the software makers to allow for a free upgrade since they knew of this deficiency when I purchased my licence 14 months ago. But YOU know how software developers develop software -- they make software WITH bugs so you're forced to upgrade at your own expense later on down the road. They say amongst themselves, "Don't make it too good too fast. We need to feed them a little bit at a time, always keeping them hungry for the next development."

Happy 4th of July USA!! Saludos, MadridMan

MadridMan--Don't be such a pessimist!! I am sure that many of us are willing to donate to this worthy cause. And a dollar doesn't have to be the limit, right? Just give us an address and, as they say, the check is in the mail!!

Sending individual dollars by post might be a bit awkward. But here's another idea. If all those who are passing through Madrid, say, every month, get together for a few drinks, we'll buy you a beer. Since you're not here to drink it, we'll just have to put the money in a hat - el bote - and send it to you now and again. This should be a fun way of raising a bit of money and honouring/drinking to your health at the same time.

Yes, like a kind of sponsored Madrid Man get together.

I don't mind sponsoring myself at home by myself even and then sending the money! I can easily have a drink and put the equivalent in money to one side until I have enough to send!

What better excuse to over indulge? Although I think friends and family might think I have gone mad.

What about becoming a registered charity! I'm sure the site has helped enough people out to be classed as this?!?!?!!?

Jo

A few of you have sent oh-so-kind emails and Private Messages and I thank you so much.

Still, my role as website owner/administrator/moderator cannot include fund raiser. This said, I've asked Antonio to take on this task and we've agreed to divide the booty (income) 50-50. Then, we'll both split town with our $29 in hand and live the high-life on some secluded beach in Central America , never to be seen again by internet eyes.

Okay. Okay. All kidding aside, I've visited a few websites where the website admin is doing the old "PUHLEASE give generously or I'll have to shut down for lack of funds!", sounding like a first-class ass, liar, and evangelist (I'm NOT saying all three are equal -- I'd put "ass" at the top of the respectability pyramid as being the most positive ) in order to make a little extra money on the side. Nope. I'm not going to do it. My conscience and reputation (and that of this website/message board) mean more to me than cash so thank you for your consideration, but I humbly and respectfully say "no thanks" . I'll raise the cash myself over the next year or so and will upgrade after a few more versions have passed.

Thanks group! You're the best!!!!

Saludos, MadridMan