The Border Is Up!

[NightMistBlue]

I’m so glad The Border is back! Many, many thanks to Soda and Dreamer for your dedication and mad technical skills!

[LuvTim]

Sooo happy we're back up and running! Missed you guys!

Thanks to Soda, Dreamer and anyone who helped! 👍

[cosec3791]

Yay! Thanks so much for the colossal work Soda and Dreamer! It must've been treacherous coding HTML for all of the forum!

[East Texas Girl]

Thank you Soda, Dreamer and whoever else helped get us back on-line!! So glad it is working again, I was definitely going through withdrawals.

[sodascouts]

Yay! Thanks so much for the colossal work Soda and Dreamer! It must've been treacherous coding HTML for all of the forum!

Oh, I wasn't trying to code the whole forum! There were just two php files that I needed to fix. Two fundamental php files... with a few thousand lines of code, and where one wrong semicolon causes the entire board to collapse, because these were the files that told the other pages what to do. With that kind of coding, there's no room for mistakes; it's all or nothing.

I actually was able to fix the code, though. All those error messages - "Parsing error on line 3746" etc. - I fixed them all. That wasn't what defeated me. What finally defeated me was the fact that our new server's php upgrade no longer recognized the old mysql php database extension in our board's code. In other words, the board could no longer communicate with the database.

I tried to find a way around that. I experimented with simply changing the old extension "mysql" to the new extension "mysqli" in the code, but that was insufficient; complex parameters needed to be changed. In the end, even that was just a temporary fix until the next php upgrade. The truth is that our board's mysql extension was worse than deprecated in the php upgrade - it was discarded. When I was looking for solutions, the reply I usually found to questions about how to make the old mysql work with the upgraded php was "just upgrade the mysql." I finally had to give up trying to fix the old, and just install a new version. (So all the time I took to fix the old code was for naught, except to grant me an excruciating education in php coding... but anyway....)

So here was are, with upgraded php, upgraded mysqli, and essentially a new board.

[LovinGlennGirl]

I may not post often, but always reading and interested in all things and all of you guys. I REALLY REALLY missed the board and am so happy we are back.

[Glennsallnighter]

Yay!! Soda, delighted to see our Border back again - thanks to you and Dreamer for all your dedication

[Ive always been a dreamer]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I know we all missed the board while it was down and are glad to have it up and running again. I was glad that I was able to drive down to Soda's place to help her out, but to be honest, she had been working on trying to fix it for several weeks in between her working hours before I went down. So I was more than willing to offer any help I could, but Soda definitely deserves the bulk of the credit. However, I'm always very happy to lend a helping hand to my friends for such a worthy cause!

[Ive always been a dreamer]

I am still getting accustomed to the new board layout as some of you probably are as well. As I've been navigating through it, I have noticed a few cool features that I really like so I thought I would share with everyone.

My favorite new feature is when you click 'New Posts' on the top left menu, you can view all the threads that have posts in the last 24 hours. Another favorite is that if you click on any members name on the main page, it will bring up a menu of options for that member without having to go to their profile page.

There are a few features that are now under different menu's than before. The new 'Community' dropdown on the top left menu lets you view groups, albums, friends & contacts, and the members list. There is no longer a 'User CP' menu option, but if you want to view or edit your profile, you can either click 'Forum Action' on the top left menu or 'Settings' on the right menu at the very top of the page.

This is all I can think of for now, but if you are having any problems with the new functionality, don't stress over it too much - just post your issue here and we will be happy to try to help out. Also, please share any new features that you like here. If we get lots of comments, we can even start a new thread. But most importantly ...

Enjoy!

[CAinOH]

And it's looking more "to home" around here.

Thanks again, Dreamer! And, soda, a deep bow and hat tip to you! Thank you so much for giving us such a great place to hang out.