Need more technical help -- with the forums!

[Goose Egg]

Hi Folks,

I'm having some difficulty making time to figure out a couple of problems with this forum software [img]images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]

I hope some of you Internet types out there could lend me a hand.

The two most pressing problems I'm having with the forums of late are:<ol type="1">[*]Why unregistered people are required to login first in the Open Forum and the Teaching in Taiwan forum
[*]Why some people (like me) still "seem" to be logged in after I think I've logged out</ol>

You can help me out by browsing the Ubb Support forums at Infopop.com (click here) or the forums over at www.ubbdev.com

Regarding the second question above, I tried clearing cookies (read more here) but this seems to be only a temporary fix.

[markshih]

Gus,
what browsers are you using and what security level? It's possible that if you are running two instances of the browser(If you click on the browser icon twice to run the program instead od using one broswer and opening a new window), they are keeping two cookies.and when you clear it in one instance, it's not clearing it for both instances. It's possible that since session information are stored in the database of the server, you have a server database problem. I don't know much about UBB and how it works but these are a few possible problems. Also check to see if there are problems with UBB's Perl interface with cookies.

Mark

[markshih]

Gus,

Forgot to mention, I tried to replicate the problem but I could not. Logout was ok. No need to login for the two forums mentioned. I could read them without login in. It has me as "undefined".

Mark

[serendipity]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Gus:
<strong>Hi Folks,[*]Why some people (like me) still "seem" to be logged in after I think I've logged out[/list]

I tried clearing cookies (read more here) but this seems to be only a temporary fix.</strong><hr></blockquote>

That happens to me all the time. I share this computer with another Orientite, and when I'm on the main page HIS name is listed. Even after he's logged off and I've logged in. But if I go to "Who's online", it lists me correctly. If I then log off, can't begin a new post as an unregistered user in Open Forum (It says "Sorry, we have no one registered with that name. Use your browser's back button to try again."). I'm using IE 5.5, and have only one browser window open. I've also tried deleting cookies from both accounts.

[markshih]

I'm using win 2000, IE 6.0.26 and when I clean the cookies using the tools-> internet options->delete cookies, it does log me off. I did see the problem with UBB checking login for open forum and teaching forum. I believe that it might not be set properly because it's still trying to figure out a login for the user based on a cookie or something.

Mark

[Goose Egg]

Guys, thanks for the assists so far.

My research of the www.infopop.com and www.ubbdev.com forums thus far has only told me that there are cookie related problems. However, Infopop exdplains that they use CGI.pm, the "simplest, cleanest cookie implementation... yada yada yada" (in short, they don't believe it's a server side problem)

Normally, I'm running off of Chinese Windows 98 using IE 5.0 (I haven't checked the release number yet) and NS 5.something. I regularly use several instances at a time, so I will be mindful of this when I test again.

It seems you've realized this out already, but I'll mention this anyway: the Non-registration required forums (currently Open Forums and Teaching in TW) are always viewable, but the problem lies in posting new messages or replies.

One thing I could do is upgrade the forums to the latest version (v 6.2 has been released), but I risk losing many of the mods I've put in place: Who's Online, various little details, etc.

For now, I'm inclined to keep looking/hoping for a solution for this problem and only consider an upgrade as late as August (I'll have a break in my school schedule then [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[markshih]

Gus,

CGI.pm maybe be the "cleanest" but it doesn't account for possible design flaws. One possible design flaw is that if they are only looking for one cookie, and there are more than one cookie on the computer(more than one instance), then it's possible that it's not deleting all of the cookies. Still a possible server problem.

Mark

[rwired]

Gus,

Could you clarify something, and I'll try to help.

You mentioned CGI.pm - but why would your UBB need a perl module! - from what I can see you are using UBBThreads - the php version - or are you? What am I missing?

[Goose Egg]

Hi Richard,

I'm sorry that I never responded to you on this. It got lost in the shuffle!

We are not using UBBThreads -- or "Ubb.threads" as I think they are calling it nowadays. This is Ubb 6.2 (even tho at the bottom it says 6.1.0.2). Infopop now calls it "Ubb.classic"

Why does it use the CGI.pm module? The basic engine is still Perl driven. The PHP you see is a feature called The Ubb Accelerator which caches recent threads and routes requests to them using PHP. This "re-routing" results in faster page grabbing (or so they say) [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[Goose Egg]

The following suggestion has been posed to me:

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva">quote

Since your Unregistered Posting function doesn't work (most of the time) anyway, just make the entire forum Required Registration.

What do YOU think?

Please vote at my poll about this over at this thread (click here)