Forums upgraded to phpBB 3.0.7

[orudge]

I've belated upgraded the forums to phpBB 3.0.7 (well, 3.0.7-PL1 to be precise). If anybody notices any issues, please let me know!

[michael blunck]

Since that update, the login/posting procedure seems to have been changed:

old behaviour: <post reply> <login> [post]

new behaviour: <post reply> <login> <re-navigate to topic> <post reply> [post]

It´s quite annoying.

regards
Michael

[orudge]

I noticed that logging into the admin panel, actually. I assumed it was some kind of an admin-related glitch, but maybe it's a system-wide bug. I'll have a poke around.

[ChillCore]

I knew I read somewhere about the post reply/login problem, here it is .
It is a bit annoying indeed.

Also annnoying is the following:
When I post a link I check afterwards if I posted it correctly by clicking it while viewing the submitted message.
It seems that I am no longer logged in when reaching my destination.

It seems as the board index will say I am still there but the link at the top of the page says Login and I can not Logout untill I have logged in again or used the backwards button on my browser to before clicking the link.

Also logging in twice does not seem to make sence unless the login procedure checks the IP adress if it sees that someone is already logged in ... if it does not I would consider that a bug (and should be reported at the phpBB forums, I know).

[Nite Owl]

Click on the Preview button to see your post before you hit the Submit button. Check the link from the previewed version of your post by clicking on it with your middle mouse button so that it opens in a new tab. If you do not have a middle mouse button then right click on the link and select either 'open in a new tab' or 'open in a new window'. Either method will keep the original window or tab containing your post open and will prevent you from having to log back in since you will never have left the 'post a reply' page and will never have logged out.

[orudge]

When I post a link I check afterwards if I posted it correctly by clicking it while viewing the submitted message.
It seems that I am no longer logged in when reaching my destination.

That shouldn't be happening. Perhaps your browser is somehow messing up cookies? Or are you using some kind of an ISP with a load-balanced transparent proxy service that basically makes your requests appear to come from several different IP addresses? (I believe AOL has been known to do that.)

I'd suggest you try emptying your cookies (at least any tt-forums-related ones). If you have any URLs bookmarked which have a session ID (?sid=dskjg09rkdsjf9 type thing), then remove those, as the invalid old session ID may be confusing things and forcing a new login.

[ChillCore]

I have cookies disabled and JavaScript and about everything else that can be disabled. It was not a problem before. I only enable cookies to check my mail, else I can not login in the M$ account I have. I disable them and clean the list after logging out.
My ISP is Clearwire. For as far as I know my IP is changed from time to time and assigned automatically but not between changing pages. I do not think that I am allowed to set a fixed IP as the connection is LAN based.

It happens when following an internal link, also when opening a second tab I am not automatically logged in on the second tab. This used to be the case before. I'll enable cookies and try again.

I also have changed from Ubuntu 9.04 to 10.04 in the meantime. When I reboot my computer I'll fire up my old OS to see if that makes a difference. Maybe I had something installed that I do not have now. Ubuntu 10.04 is also much stricter on security and I think Firefox is a newer version.
Post to be updated in a bit ...

What are your feelings about logging if already logged in? This should not be possible/allowed ...
I have been searching the phpBB forums a few days ago but could not find anything apart from using the wrong updater, which could potentially mess things up. I'll see if I can find the page again. What was the previous version of phpBB installed here, if I may ask?


@NiteOwl:
Thank you for the hint. Middle clicking opens the link in a sepparate tab but a menu does not show before.

[orudge]

I have cookies disabled and JavaScript and about everything else that can be disabled. It was not a problem before. I only enable cookies to check my mail, else I can not login in the M$ account I have. I disable them and clean the list after logging out.

You'll find your life a lot easier if you at least enable them for the forums. I see no real reason not to.

The forums *should* be able to work without them enabled, but you'll get an SID attached to every URL. If for some reason the session is changing, then I guess what's probably happening is you're opening links in another tab and some of those have an old SID, which logs you out entirely. I can't say I know why this would be. Does the same happen if you register on, say, the phpBB forums at www.phpbb.com and try to browse those? I'd likely suggest making a bug report there if so.

Anyway, my recommendation would be to enable cookies for at least this site (Firefox has an "exceptions" option for that) and see if the problem goes away.

I have been searching the phpBB forums a few days ago but could not find anything apart from using the wrong updater, which could potentially mess things up. I'll see if I can find the page again. What was the previous version of phpBB installed here, if I may ask?

We were previously using 3.0.6. I didn't install 3.0.7, so the update was straight to 3.0.7-PL1 (which was just an emergency security fix, anyway). There were no errors while updating.

[ChillCore]

Iepsie from my old OS.

You'll find your life a lot easier if you at least enable them for the forums. I see no real reason not to.

Cookies can be used to track users and allows for information gathering about browsing behaviour (to a certain extent).
Me likes my privacy and thus I disable them.

The forums *should* be able to work without them enabled, but you'll get an SID attached to every URL. If for some reason the session is changing, then I guess what's probably happening is you're opening links in another tab and some of those have an old SID, which logs you out entirely. I can't say I know why this would be. Does the same happen if you register on, say, the phpBB forums at http://www.phpbb.com and try to browse those? I'd likely suggest making a bug report there if so.

When I do not allow them I get logged out when following an internal link as mentioned before but the page is not opened in a new tab, unless Firefox replaces the current tab by a new one by default. Clicking the view active links or other internal links at the top of the page does not log me out so I guess this is not the case.
I have not yet tried on another phpBB forum. Will do in a bit.
I think the 'real' bug is that for as far as the forum(database) is concerned I'm still still logged in, as seen on the board index page, while my browser says I'm not.

Anyway, my recommendation would be to enable cookies for at least this site (Firefox has an "exceptions" option for that) and see if the problem goes away.

Adding an exception for tt-forums.net to allow cookies did the trick. Booting my old OS did not, so it is defenately the upgrade to the new phpBB version that is to blame for the inconvenience, old an new OS have the same version of Firefox and behave the same way.

I'll live with it now that I know how to prevent getting logged out when I do not want to be logged out.
Thank you for the answers, I know what the sid nuber is about now .

[orudge]

Cookies can be used to track users and allows for information gathering about browsing behaviour (to a certain extent).
Me likes my privacy and thus I disable them.

On a wider scale, they can, but on these forums, they are purely used to record your session ID, and, if you enable it, to keep you automatically logged in. (The Google ads may add their own cookies, but they appear on a Google domain, not the tt-forums domain.)

Also, one thing that may contribute to you losing your session is if you click links to other forum pages/topics that people have pasted into posts. I'm not sure if phpBB is clever enough to append a SID to those (I'm imagining probably not), so that page you open would then not know you're logged in - then you if continue browsing from that particular page, it'd open up a new session for you. Your old one is still "active", just "disconnected" from the current page. Normally, it'd all be kept track of via cookies, of course.

[Dave]

Getting occasional errors where I've clicked Mark Forums Read, and they've not ben marked.

[ChillCore]

Small update:
I have tried browsing the phpBB forums without cookies and JavaScript enabled and they behave even worse than here ... while I was in the modifications section and tried to browse the tools section, I clicked the second page link and instead of page 2 of 103 entries I was shown the second page of the modification top section with 957 entries. That helps if you are searching something. (This test was without being logged in and yes allowing cookies solves this.)
Anyway when I asked about it I got this reply: 'phpBB is designed to be used with cookies and JavaScript'.
I am still waiting for a reply about being able to login twice.

Secondly the redirect to the index page, after clicking post reply and logging in, is most likely caused by the style templates not yet being updated to work with 3.0.7(-pl1). You would have to fix this manually (again), sorry for the bad news
Below a few links with some but not all info needed.
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... p=12859570
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 65#ACPROOT
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... #p12214455
The pages seems to only discribe part of the solution. I have not yet found a page with a complete solution.

Also I have not yet searched for mr. Worley's new problem.

[orudge]

Hmm, curious. I did, as far as I know, make all changed necessary to the custom styles. I'll take another look at that later though to make sure.