Quirks in this forum

[RobertB]

     If users of this forum don't know yet, when you get a 412 Error message, just refresh the screen once, and then you can read the postings here or log on.
    Another bit which I don't know how to fix... though many of the categories show N/A, there are topics being posted there.  Just click on the category to see the topics.  To see the latest topics, go to the bottom of the forum's opening page and click on "View the most recent posts on the forum". (If the topic is from an N/A category, it will not be announced, but if you click on the "View the most recent posts on the forum" link, you will see it).
    Finally, to my frustration, sometimes a new topic is accepted, but the text body is not accepted.  For example, in the announcement of the next year's Commodore Vegas Expo, I was only able to get one sentence into the text body and could not add any more sentences into the body.

         Truly,
         Robert Bernardo
         Fresno Commodore User Group
         http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

[Paul]

The hosting isn't exactly the greatest. I'm going to try to get some advertising going in the blog to see if I can generate enough revenue to improve the forums. Please excuse the ads...

[RobertB]

     Would updating from our old SMF 1.1.20 to the current SMF 2.0.12 cure some problems?

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

[Paul]

Hi, Robert.

Upgrading to SMF 2.x isn't an easy task. It's not impossible, but I'd have to set aside some time to make sure to do it right; meanwhile, I've patched up the current version. It's now upgraded to version 1.1.21, which should address some bugs.

Many of the problems you may experience are probably due to the fact that I'm running this on a lower tier hosting package, which also hosts my personal blog at pquirk.com, as well as mymicra.com. If I can monetize either the retro-link blog or mymicra.com (or both), then I would use that monetization to move retro-link.com up to a higher tier hosting package, and then it would make sense to use that opportunity to also upgrade SMF to 2.x.

Another option I've considered is simply migrating these forums over to a free hosting service. Unfortunately, nothing is really free, and we would lose control to the hosting provider. This means that unfounded complaints or harassment by certain people could result in the forum being taken down.

Hopefully the work I did today will improve things, and here's hoping we can see some monetization in 2017!

[RobertB]

...when you get a 412 Error message, just refresh the screen once...

Now after refreshing the screen once to avoid the 412 Error message, it seems you have to enter your user name and password once and then repeat the process again so that you can be logged into the forum.

         Truly,
         Robert Bernardo
         Fresno Commodore User Group
         http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm