Q. Why didn't you just use some existing forum package?
A. I wanted to control the feature set so that older browsers could still use the forums.
Q. So, what are these "features?"
A. Feature set:
Other features coming soon:
Q. When I changed my e-mail address in my profile, my password was reset to some random string and e-mailed to me.
A. Yep, that's what's supposed to happen. That's the only way for me to verify that your new e-mail address is actually valid. Once you've logged in with that new password, feel free to change it back to whatever you were using before.
Q. How do I edit a past post of mine?
A. You don't. Post a new reply, correcting yourself. View the threads like real conversations. In a real conversation, if you make a misstatement, you can't go back and edit it. Rather, you just explain the mistake and correct yourself. Additionally, allowing people to edit past postings can make threads confusing and misleading.
Q. Why do I need an e-mail address?
A. To give members some sort of accountability. If a user is banned from the Forum, their e-mail address is also banned.
Q. When I changed my e-mail address, I made a mistake typing it in. So I didn't get my new password and I can't log in to reset it.
A. Start a new account. I have no way of knowing whether you are the same person that originally set up your account. Accounts are free, so just set up a new one.
Q. What kind of formatting can I put into a posting?
A. You can format text as bold or italics. You can also make hyperlinks. You bold text by surrounding it with [b] and [/b] tags. Similarly, text can be italicized by surrounding it with [i] and [/i]. For example:
This text is [b]bold[/b] and this text is [i]italicized[/i].
Would result in this:
This text is bold and this text is italicized.
Hyperlinks are simply URLs surrounded by square brackets. The "http://" is required at the front of a URL. For example, here's a link to the museum:
Check out the Obsolete Computer Museum [http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/]!
Would result in this:
Check out the Obsolete Computer Museum http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/!
Q. Why can't I make a normal HTML hyperlink where the text of the link is different than the URL to which it leads?
A. I want people to have a clue where a link will take them before they get there.
Q. Why is the "http://" required?
A. URLs require it in general. If you leave it off in most browser, the browser will add it for you. But it's still required. Also, there are other types of URLs. For example, a link could go to an FTP site. Or it could be a mailto: tag. Or it could even link to a telnet service or gopher site. The flexibility is worth the bother of making you add the "http://". (Just think of it as Clive's BASIC requiring the use of LET.)
Q. Can I put HTML into a posting?
A. Nope. It opens up too many holes and creates too many problems.
Q. What if my browser doesn't support cookies?
A. If you either can't handle cookies, or you've turned them off, then, each time you try to create a new thread or post a reply to an existing thread, you'll have to provide your account name and password. The same applies if you're trying to send a message to another member. Everything still works, you will just need to provide your validation information every time you do something that requires it.
Q. How many cookies do you set and how long to they stay on my computer?
A. The Forum sets two cookies, one for your account name and one for your password. The cookies expire in eight days. Each time you access the Forum, the expiration date is reset to eight days later. If you check the Forum at least weekly, then you'll only have to explicitly log in once. You can also explicitly log out, which immediately clears out the cookies.
Q. Why does Opera hang when I try to post?
A. Opera seems to hang when a page does a redirection to another page and the URL for that target page contains an internal link. (That's one of those URLs with a "#something" at the end.) For some reason, Opera locks up. This system was developed to run under LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP), but I've had identical problems with Opera in the same circumstances with a system I wrote to run under Microsoft software. So that leaves one of two main possibilities:
I plan on setting up a little test case that I can then send to Opera. The few times I've needed to contact them, they have been very responsive.
Q. Will this problem affect other browsers?
A. It could. But, because Opera was developed from the ground up, more than once, and uses no legacy code from other browsers, it's unlikely that, if this is indeed an Opera bug, that other browsers would share it.