[8wayRun.Com] XenPorta (Portal)

[bhuwan]

As I said... I have no issues with people telling me about bugs; bugs are clearly my fault and I have no problems hearing about them, or fixing them; feature requests either. My problem is that many of the "bugs" people post aren't bugs at all, but their failure to read the instructions, or even look at their available options. If I take the time to stop and explain simple things, like the permissions system for XenForo, how to upgrade a mod, or how to customize skins, to everyone who asks, I'll never get anything done. Not to mention, that has nothing to do with this mod, and I shouldn't have to hold people's hands.

You ever see that show "The IT Crowd"? Everytime someone calls, they begrudgingly answer the phone and the first thing they say is "IT, did you try turning it off and on again?". This is honestly how most people in tech support feel. Yes, I know, its a TV show, a comedy, and it's a joke... but thats honestly very close to the first thing many in tech support ask: "is it plugged in correctly?".

guess what, not everyone is going to have the same level of understanding when they are customers.

And yes, people will ask dumb questions, but if you start taking that out on all customers, you won't have any.

Instead of ignoring, simply say....sounds like you have an issue that is unrelated to the mod, be sure to check permissions etc.

again, SAY what support you offer, and in the least ACKNOWLEDGE peoples problems, rather than just ignoring them as you have half of the issues in this thread.

And just because someone wrote instructions, doesn't mena they are easy to follow.

and bottom line if you can't get stuff done due to customer support...you are doing to much.

make your producets more user friendly, compile faqs or a wiki, put some simple videos together...rather than expecting people to read through 1100 posts and 57 pages to find an answer

I don't watch the IT crowd because i don't have time for much tv (maybe you would have more time for customers if you watched less???)

But sounds like they are the stereotypical pompous nerds who know ONE thing about life and have to belittle others for not knowing it. I bet those guys don't have many friends, dates, or know much outside of IT do they? They aren't very successful clearly, or else they would be RUNNING a company and not working in one...thjey would hire people to do support instead of doing it themselves...think about that.

Yes people will say "I don't see an 'any' key" and you can call it PICNIC and I-D ten - T, hahahahaha big joke

in the end, they are the ones that make your paycheck...and if you are unemployed, it would seem you would strie to make your "employers" ie customers, a little more comfortable with providing you a paycheck

again its just my 2¢ and the good thing about the global economy...if you don't want to too "busy" to give your customers with good product and excellent support, someone else gladly will come along and do it for you...then you won't be harrassed any more with people who failed to read instructions.

I hate to be a party pooper but ..... This mod is free with no warranty. Jason isn't getting anything out of this

If people want good support then you should pay a modder to build a custom script for you (or pay for support). Don't expect anything out of something that is free

Jason great job.as a developer myself, I can understand your frustrations and thought process. I'd love to help you out in any way-maybe you should consider setting up. A GITHUB repository with their free bug tracker?

 

[Rich]

I hate to be a party pooper but ..... This mod is free with no warranty. Jason isn't getting anything out of this

If people want good support then you should pay a modder to build a custom script for you (or pay for support). Don't expect anything out of something that is free

Jason great job.as a developer myself, I can understand your frustrations and thought process. I'd love to help you out in any way-maybe you should consider setting up. A GITHUB repository with their free bug tracker?

I think people are feeling Its the way the posts are sometimes answered, not the free support. Not everyone wants to have someone come off crass to them. As a manager for many years ,trust me there is a better way answer questions that may seem silly to people in the know. The best part of this software (Xenforo) is its simplicity. With that the mods should be simple also...

Jason does a great job. And a few small frustrating posts shouldn't kill all the good he is constantly doing.

 

[TheBoss]

With responses like the one above by Business Coach its no wonder a lot of very talented coders will NOT release their work for the masses..

Why should they put up with outright cheek , they do have lives in the REAL world that need attending to first and foremost..

If the addons were required to be bought then maybe tech support would be expected but since they are FREE GRATIS , wait with patience..

Regards..

 

[Paul B]

Before this thread gets derailed any further, I think that's enough discussion regarding support, responses, etc.

Read through the thread, weigh up the issues and decide whether you want to install it or not.

 

[Paul B]

I've just deleted 3 more posts on the same issue, after requesting that the discussion on it stop.

Any further posts not directly related to the add-on will be deleted.

 

[bhuwan]

Great mod - I've created a lot of modules for this Portal which is pretty easy to do.
(they wouldn't benefit other members here because the modules are for a very selective niche).

I've also been having issues with load times on the Recent News module (15 recent posts, 2000 truncation, no caching) - I think that I've found a way to speed it up - going to test it some more - perhaps it can help out other members?

 

[principia]

@bhuwan
are you able to create a module for custom HTML?
I think that a lot of people here ar waiting for this.

 

[Business Coach]

@bhuwan
are you able to create a module for custom HTML?
I think that a lot of people here ar waiting for this.

this will do simple HTML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<module>
  <module_name>Html</module_name>
  <module_cache>now</module_cache>
  <module_settings/>
  <module_template><![CDATA[<div class="messageText ugc baseHtml">
    <div class="secondaryContent">
        <center>
        <div><img src="/images/image.jpg"></div>
    </div></center>
<div><h3>Welcome to my website!</h3>

this is some text.<BR><BR>

lorum ipsom dolor<BR><BR>

blah blah blah.<BR><BR>

click <a href="http://google.com/forum/">google</a> to link<
</div>
</div>]]></module_template>
</module>

 

[principia]

WoW, thanks. this is easy.

 

[Business Coach]

WoW, thanks. this is easy.

no prob, and I won't even charge you for supporting free software

 

[dieketzer]

if its static html wouldnt it be better to save a query and set it to something more than 'now'?

 

[ddmmh]

Hi Jaxel,

Sorry I should of been more specific, its actually recentnews module Im referring too, I dont use the recentthreads module. But disabling it makes my page lighting fast. Ive got it set to 3 at the moment and just then took about 5-6 seconds to load. But as news changes I notice that even though the charecter cutoff is set to 1500 the threads that are longer seem to really bog down the loading times. I changed it to 5 now and it took 13 seconds to load. site is @ mmazone.com.au. Any ideas? cheers

*bump* post got buried again

 

[Jaxel]

*bump* post got buried again

Have you tried setting the cutoff to 1000?

 

[Deleted member 745]

[8wayRun.Com] XenPorta (Portal) v1.3.2 CHANGELOG

• Recent Threads module has been completely rewritten. It will now once again support viewing permissions and read times. As well, you can now select which forums to poll from! ("unselected" will default to all) I believe some people promised donations for this feature. =P
• Fixed a huge security exploit! THIS IS IMPORTANT!
• Added "Show/Hide" permissions for each module based on usergroups.
• Fixed the facebook issue with their new XFBML scripting.
• Fixed the link to the new media search system.
• Fixed the link to the new wiki search system.
• Fixed the twitter template to properly read the search term.

Thanks for this man, much appreciated - will install it next week and give you the $50+ as promised as well next week when I get payed.

PS - Sorry took me a while to reply, only just noticed you upgraded your script from 1.3.0 to 1.3.3

 

[Ampd]

Is there any reason why the font family and size of the portal posts aren't the same as the post in the forum? I have a post with size 3 font, georgia and in the portal it displays as size 4, times new roman. Also, is there a way to enable BB Code or HTML in the Recent News? (For bullet lists and embedded videos)

 

[ddmmh]

Have you tried setting the cutoff to 1000?

I changed it to 1000, reset the cache and tried again. I couldnt really tell much of a difference.

Not sure if it makes a difference but sometimes there are images in the post that are hotlinked. They are 99.9% of the time from ufc.com or mmajunkie.com which are really fast servers... but yeh not sure if that makes a difference. At the moment most of the posts dont have any images just text and they are still fairly slow. I run on a VPS, i have full cpanel root access. I thought it may be my config but the forum itself is fast as, ive used WP and other scripts and everything was fast. Scratching my head over thisone, anything else you suggest I can try? thanks Jason

 

[Jaxel]

I changed it to 1000, reset the cache and tried again. I couldnt really tell much of a difference.

Not sure if it makes a difference but sometimes there are images in the post that are hotlinked. They are 99.9% of the time from ufc.com or mmajunkie.com which are really fast servers... but yeh not sure if that makes a difference. At the moment most of the posts dont have any images just text and they are still fairly slow. I run on a VPS, i have full cpanel root access. I thought it may be my config but the forum itself is fast as, ive used WP and other scripts and everything was fast. Scratching my head over thisone, anything else you suggest I can try? thanks Jason

Have you tried using [prebreak]?

Also, try this RecentNews.php and tell me if it speeds anything up.

 

[Deleted member 745]

Can the url be changed on the header where it gives a title of "Forums" but the url goes to /forum/ could it be changed to /forums/

 

[ddmmh]

Have you tried using [prebreak]?

Also, try this RecentNews.php and tell me if it speeds anything up.

Hi Jaxel,

The attached recentnews.php didnt make a difference in load time. Prebreak on the other hand made a huge difference. At the moment my newsmodule is set to '4'. The first 2 posts were under 1000 charecters so i didnt bother with prebreak tags. The last 2 posts were fairly big but not huge. Using the prebreaks on those 2 posts made a huge difference, it loaded in maybe 2 seconds as compared to 10-11 seconds without the brebreak tags. My news is fed from and RSS feed so it allows my news to update automatically, I dont really want to go into a post every time and add prebreak tags, pretty sure youre brewing up some ideas based on this info, so auto prebreak tags relating to the charecter limit, would that be possible for a future release?

Also one issue when using prebreak tags. The text that was tagged shows up as a link and it kinda looks ugly, screenshot below i used [prebreak] and [/prebreak] to close the tag. Thanks Jason, looking forward to what you think can be done about this? thanks mate

 

[Jaxel]

Text within [PREBREAK] only appears on the portal, it does not appear in the actual thread. As well, the actual text within the break will be linked to the thread. So you would want to do something like:

[PREBREAK]More after the break[/PREBREAK]

The words, linked to the thread "More after the break" will only appear on the portal, and not in the thread itself.