Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

The latest news about the forums and the Transport Tycoon world is posted here.
Please also read the rules here before posting elsewhere in the forum.
User avatar
Redirect Left
Tycoon
Tycoon
Posts: 7238
Joined: 22 Jan 2005 19:31
Location: Wakefield, West Yorkshire

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Redirect Left »

The description for attachments is difficult to read, I am guessing it is leftover original CSS from before you modified it.
Attachments
2019-06-11 19_46_14-The official-unofficial screenshot thread (non OT) - Page 138 - Transport Tycoon.png
2019-06-11 19_46_14-The official-unofficial screenshot thread (non OT) - Page 138 - Transport Tycoon.png (22.06 KiB) Viewed 4861 times
Image
Need some good tested AI? - Unofficial AI Tester, list of good stuff & thread is here.
User avatar
orudge
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 25134
Joined: 26 Jan 2001 20:18
Skype: orudge
Location: Banchory, UK
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

I will be making modifications as soon as I’m able to (hopefully the next few days) to improve the colours - the bright blue will be going, amongst other things! Thanks for your patience.

The old TT theme on the phpBB 3/3.1 forums (that we’ve used since around 2008) was based on the even older phpBB 2 theme, subSilver. proSilver, the theme we’re now using as a base, was introduced in phpBB 3, and was then quite a radical departure from what went before. The TT theme was never adjusted though and became increasingly ancient, and subSilver is simply no longer supported in phpBB 3.2. It could probably have been upgraded but ultimately a clean break was necessary. Unfortunately my free time is somewhat lacking with 3 kids on the go, so I pushed this out when it seemed initially “good enough”. I am aware that further changes are needed though, and hope to get them in place quite soon. Thanks for your patience, everyone, and a special thanks to those who have reported specific issues or offered useful suggestions! 🙂
User avatar
kamnet
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 8548
Joined: 28 Sep 2009 17:15
Location: Eastern KY
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by kamnet »

So, I see we've made the transition to PHPBB3! Woot!

I did some of the work to try to transition the old PHPBB2 "Transport Tycoon" temperate theme to PHPBB3. Now that I see it in action, here's some of my thoughts, maybe some notes for me to try to go back and fix.

1. The color for the moderators needs to change. The green text is getting lost in the green background. Or, maybe I need to find a way to use a colored background.

2. The areas with blue backgrounds is annoying me. Needs a different color, and maybe something semi-transparent?

3. I feel like there needs to be more space between each group of forums on the main page.

4. We need more visible icons to indicate forums which have new posts, or maybe some other color for the background? I'm not sure what to do here, because changing icons is one of the most difficult parts of PHPBB3.

5. I think some of the areas that have a whitish-pale-bluish background needs something darker.

6. Quotes and Code sections definitely need to be black, not white.

7. Mobile version looks SO MUCH BETTER! With that said, I noticed the logo is missing from the mobile versions, but I dunno if that can easily be fixed.

8. Footer in the mobile version has a weird padding around it which doesn't make it symmetrical with the bottom directory.

So, with all that said, let me just say that trying to transition from our old subSilver-based theme to the new proSilver-based theme has been incredibly frustrating and difficult. An entirely new system altogether. Unfortunately after all this time there is no simple theme editor for PHPBB3 like there was for PHPBB2. It used to be that you could use a GUI interface to pick and choose colors, images, and style settings. None of that exists anymore. I had to spend many hours trying to manually track down every color in every line of code through every template, embedded in a template, embedded in a template, embedded in a template. I noticed that a LOT of theme did not make the transition from PHPBB3.1 to PHPBB3.2, authors simply abandoned them, and in turn many theme creators have abandoned PHPBB3 support in favor of other forum systems.

The icons are really going to be the most difficult thing to adjust. I can create new high-res versions of the old icons. It's simply not easy AT ALL to get them to replace the new icon font that PHPBB3 uses. They're embedded everywhere and I have my doubts that trying to use a mass search/replace is going to accurately find them all.
GunChleoc
Engineer
Engineer
Posts: 108
Joined: 21 Dec 2012 12:34
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by GunChleoc »

Regarding the icons, you might hunt for a dark theme on the phpBB site and grab some dark ones from there.

The blue in the header is the phpBB default color, BTW.
User avatar
orudge
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 25134
Joined: 26 Jan 2001 20:18
Skype: orudge
Location: Banchory, UK
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

I think the post/forum icons (which are still standard image files) would be easy to replace if we can get high res versions of them. I don’t mind the other icons staying the same for now.
GunChleoc
Engineer
Engineer
Posts: 108
Joined: 21 Dec 2012 12:34
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by GunChleoc »

Maybe the icons from this one would do: https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/style/black_silver/

And for a recolor of the official buttons, there is a GDK available: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=542993
Scautura
Engineer
Engineer
Posts: 102
Joined: 01 Aug 2006 07:30

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Scautura »

Auge wrote: 11 Jun 2019 13:57 Hello

Nice to see a new, more responsive theme (used the old pro silver theme during the last two years) even I spotted a few inconsistencies (IMHO unsuitable combinations of colours (not only the blue bars)) here and there. Nice on the whole. ... But ...

I was a bit puzzled in the first moment because I saw placeholders over placeholders all over the place (I am a user of NoScript and uBlock origin). I.e. the icon font gets loaded from maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com instead from the own server (tt-forums.net). Furthermore the forum loads parts of its content from google.com, googleapis.com and cloudflare.com. Is it really necessary to load so many components of the site from foreign servers?

Tschö, Auge
There's actually a good reason for that with HTTP transfers. Downloading from a single site (the first part of the URL, like www.tt-forums.net_ is a blocking request (they have to be done one after the other), but requesting scripts and other items from another site (maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com and the like) means you get your content faster.
Duct tape is like the Force - it has a Dark side, a Light side, and it holds the universe together.
Auge
Director
Director
Posts: 633
Joined: 23 Oct 2006 02:07
Location: Berlin

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Auge »

Hello
Scautura wrote: 12 Jun 2019 12:00
Auge wrote: 11 Jun 2019 13:57 Is it really necessary to load so many components of the site from foreign servers?
There's actually a good reason for that with HTTP transfers. Downloading from a single site (the first part of the URL, like www.tt-forums.net_ is a blocking request (they have to be done one after the other), but requesting scripts and other items from another site (maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com and the like) means you get your content faster.
No, there isn't (nowadays). This was an issue in times of HTTP 1, when for every ressource (page, images, scripts, css) a HTTP connection was opened and these requests was processed serially one after the other. With HTTP 1.1 a request opened one connection for all ressources (from one source server), and was able to load up to four ressources (HTML page, images, scripts, css) simultaneously. Nowadays with HTTP 2 this is not an issue at all. All ressources (from one source server) get loaded simultaneously. But several source servers can (not must) lead to additional delays. As I can see the server tt-forums.net and all other servers (Google, Cloudflare, Bootstrapcdn) serves the contents with HTTP 2. Furthermore most of the ressources are cached.

But in all cases a request for possibly changed ressources goes to all of these servers and if no change is announced the element comes from the cache. At that point it becomes an issue of privacy. Not, because this site loads foreign content but many sites does this and so Google, Cloudflare and $whoEver gets an overview about the activities of every one of us. Which sites we visit, how often we does it, and how much time we spend there, what we buy and what we are interested in. This is IMHO not desirable and it is at least partially preventable.

I know, we germans (or at least many of us) seems to be alone with this opinion but for us it is as it is.

Tschö, Auge
User avatar
orudge
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 25134
Joined: 26 Jan 2001 20:18
Skype: orudge
Location: Banchory, UK
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

I've made some initial CSS tweaks which should make the forums look a bit more like they used to. I've not touched icons, etc, yet. You may need a hard refresh to get the updated CSS.
User avatar
Redirect Left
Tycoon
Tycoon
Posts: 7238
Joined: 22 Jan 2005 19:31
Location: Wakefield, West Yorkshire

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Redirect Left »

orudge wrote: 12 Jun 2019 21:28 I've made some initial CSS tweaks which should make the forums look a bit more like they used to. I've not touched icons, etc, yet. You may need a hard refresh to get the updated CSS.
That already makes a world of difference!
Image
Need some good tested AI? - Unofficial AI Tester, list of good stuff & thread is here.
User avatar
kamnet
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 8548
Joined: 28 Sep 2009 17:15
Location: Eastern KY
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by kamnet »

The quote boxes look tons better now, as does the new green border around the forum list on the main page. :)
User avatar
Redirect Left
Tycoon
Tycoon
Posts: 7238
Joined: 22 Jan 2005 19:31
Location: Wakefield, West Yorkshire

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Redirect Left »

Global Moderators are now stuck in invisible mode. That is to say, they are not visible on the who is online list.
2019-06-13 02_15_18-Transport Tycoon Forums - Index page.png
2019-06-13 02_15_18-Transport Tycoon Forums - Index page.png (21.4 KiB) Viewed 4861 times
The rank colours are fairly OK within the forum, but where there is no background the global moderators especially suffer from invisibility issues.
Image
Need some good tested AI? - Unofficial AI Tester, list of good stuff & thread is here.
User avatar
Chrill
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 15974
Joined: 18 Dec 2004 17:35
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Chrill »

That's just as well, we operate in the shadows. :mrgreen:
Image
My Scenarios:
Archipiélago Hermoso (Latest Release: Version 3.2)
Turnpike Falls (Latest Release: Version 0.91)
User avatar
Geo Ghost
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 6550
Joined: 25 Oct 2004 10:06
Location: Hertfordshire
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Geo Ghost »

You'll never see us coming.. mwuhahaha!
User avatar
Nawdic
Tycoon
Tycoon
Posts: 3883
Joined: 28 Jan 2009 14:35
Location: Pembroke Dock
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Nawdic »

Is there any chance the grey bar at the top with the quick links/board index could be reorganised so that the board index button is on the top line as opposed to the bottom, as it was before the upgrade?
Very much a retired regular poster..... If you can say that :mrgreen:
User avatar
orudge
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 25134
Joined: 26 Jan 2001 20:18
Skype: orudge
Location: Banchory, UK
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

I’d prefer to minimise the changes from stock phpBB to make future maintenance easier, so probably won’t change that, sorry. You should get used to it quickly enough I’m sure! 🙂
User avatar
Nawdic
Tycoon
Tycoon
Posts: 3883
Joined: 28 Jan 2009 14:35
Location: Pembroke Dock
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Nawdic »

Also incase you haven't seen yet, there is a bit of black text at the top of the profile page, doesnt really contrast well with the green.
Attachments
Untitled.jpg
(292.86 KiB) Not downloaded yet
Very much a retired regular poster..... If you can say that :mrgreen:
User avatar
orudge
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 25134
Joined: 26 Jan 2001 20:18
Skype: orudge
Location: Banchory, UK
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

Ah yes, thanks. I adjusted one bit of styling to make something black instead of white, but it seems it's used in a few other places. I'll need to track them down.
User avatar
orudge
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 25134
Joined: 26 Jan 2001 20:18
Skype: orudge
Location: Banchory, UK
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

With phpBB upgraded, I've now upgraded the OS on the server. The forums and wiki should all be functional - if anybody spots any problems, let me know.

The projects.tt-forums.net site is currently down. This include the TTDPatch bug tracker, which I intend to migrate to the TTDPatch GitHub project in the near future. I hope to get it back up shortly.
User avatar
Chrill
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 15974
Joined: 18 Dec 2004 17:35
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Contact:

Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Chrill »

It's very encouraging to see this time spent developing the forums. Having a mobile accessible site feels really good, and could potentially attract more members since a mobile friendly site is boosted in Google searches compared to those who are not mobile friendly.

It seems the OS upgrade went fine too, the forums were not down for long. Good work, Owen! :)
Image
My Scenarios:
Archipiélago Hermoso (Latest Release: Version 3.2)
Turnpike Falls (Latest Release: Version 0.91)
Post Reply

Return to “News”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests