Site Upgrade/Fixes Thread

[StringTheorist]

Thanks @xtc

[Bastian]

Condolences.

[40 plus denier]

Thank you all who are trying to keep it going

[uemndlr]

Thanks @Xtc for keeping this great site alive!

One question, it seems like the string formatting was broken by the update? E.g. in my old thread https://tugstories.blog/viewtopic.php?t=18190 "Amárrame" now appears like "Amárrame". As though UTF8 strings are now interpreted as Latin-1?

[Xtc]

@uemndlr, There has been a problem when transferring the site to a new host. Steps are being taken to correct the situation. In the meantime, please see the post, https://tugstories.blog/viewtopic.php?t ... c24e476adc by @bondagefreak

[bondagefreak]

@uemndlr I think you oughta direct your thanks to @chadmc90. He is the one keeping the site afloat and he is the one that's been keeping the site hosted and working for the past seven years.

The rest of the staff simply help moderate the board.

[uemndlr]

@uemndlr I think you oughta direct your thanks to @chadmc90. He is the one keeping the site afloat and he is the one that's been keeping the site hosted and working for the past seven years.

The rest of the staff simply help moderate the board.

Thanks for pointing this out! I wasn't aware who is who, have been a little inactive in the last few months... And many thanks to all admins and mods, of course!

A funny solution, asking Chatgpt to fix the encoding! I would have dabbled with iconv or something, which is much less fun.

[wataru14]

Glad to see things back up and running. Thanks to everyone for their hard work!!!

I have a question, though. When the site moved over, I noticed punctuation marks like apostrophes and quotation marks somehow got mangled in the board movement. In my stories, at least, they appear as garbled symbols. I've been going through and fixing them, but it's going to take forever. I write my stories in Word before posting them into the submission box, so I think the new board doesn't understand the way Word renders those symbols. Like it doesn't have the font. It doesn't understand elipses or Greek letters, either. Is there any way to fix that without "hunt and pecking"?

[Red86]

Glad to see things back up and running. Thanks to everyone for their hard work!!!

I have a question, though. When the site moved over, I noticed punctuation marks like apostrophes and quotation marks somehow got mangled in the board movement. In my stories, at least, they appear as garbled symbols. I've been going through and fixing them, but it's going to take forever. I write my stories in Word before posting them into the submission box, so I think the new board doesn't understand the way Word renders those symbols. Like it doesn't have the font. It doesn't understand elipses or Greek letters, either. Is there any way to fix that without "hunt and pecking"?

I don't know much about that technical stuff but have you seen bondagefreak's comment about it? viewtopic.php?t=23490

[wataru14]

Glad to see things back up and running. Thanks to everyone for their hard work!!!

I have a question, though. When the site moved over, I noticed punctuation marks like apostrophes and quotation marks somehow got mangled in the board movement. In my stories, at least, they appear as garbled symbols. I've been going through and fixing them, but it's going to take forever. I write my stories in Word before posting them into the submission box, so I think the new board doesn't understand the way Word renders those symbols. Like it doesn't have the font. It doesn't understand elipses or Greek letters, either. Is there any way to fix that without "hunt and pecking"?

I don't know much about that technical stuff but have you seen bondagefreak's comment about it? viewtopic.php?t=23490

That's exactly the problem. But the fix isn't really any easier than what I'm doing.
Right now, I'm opening edit and copying the text into a word file.
Then I'm using find and replace to put things back to what they should be.
It seems like around the same amount of work.

Thanks!!!

[blackbound]

I strongly recommend not using an editor that does smart quotes, and uses the regular ones instead - that way, the stories won't garble. I write in a plaintext editor.

You'd still have problems for any unicode/latin1 symbols (diacritic marks etc.) but those are much less of a pain to fix.

[AlexUSA3]

I use Google Docs, and the only issues I had were with smart quotes and apostrophes. I actually tried pasting smart quotes into one spot, and it took it for some reason. Still, to be safe, I've been slowly reposting stories after removing the smart quotes and such.

[Esploratore]

That's exactly the problem. But the fix isn't really any easier than what I'm doing.
Right now, I'm opening edit and copying the text into a word file.
Then I'm using find and replace to put things back to what they should be.
It seems like around the same amount of work.
Thanks!!!

Actually, from what you said, it looks to me like you have to do A LOT of work manually, while chatgpt fixes that for you very quickly and with little effort, just have to copy-paste the text you want fixed.

In any case, there are also stories posted by users who are no longer active, which is why I wanted to ask: @bondagefreak , do you know if a board-wide fix is still being worked on or if we'll have to manually (or with chatgpt) fix them one by one?

[bondagefreak]

In any case, there are also stories posted by users who are no longer active, which is why I wanted to ask: @bondagefreak , do you know if a board-wide fix is still being worked on or if we'll have to manually (or with chatgpt) fix them one by one?

Hey there. Yes, a board-wide fix is still on the table. I can make no promises for the timetable, though, but the team has not forgotten about it. Our own stories are affected as well. Seeing as how these encoding errors were unforeseen, patience will be key for now.

[JohnnyRockets]

Right now, the domain tugstories.com is still redirecting to a "website down for maintenance" page. Will you guys get the domain back at some point? The site would probably get a lot more traffic if its .com address were working.

[Xtc]

Apparently @chadmc90 has to wait for a time before he can reclaim the domain name from the previousl host. It is on his to do list - along with several other considerations.

[bondagefreak]

Right now, the domain tugstories.com is still redirecting to a "website down for maintenance" page. Will you guys get the domain back at some point? The site would probably get a lot more traffic if its .com address were working.

Hello @JohnnyRockets
This concern has already been addressed some time ago. When you have the time and if this interests you, you may want to consider looking at forum news in the Headlines section of the forum. This thread FORUM NEWS: NEW HOST, FORUM LINKS & OTHER BUGS is one such thread in which we keep the forum up to date about important board news and changes.

I initially shared your concern, but we were actually surprised not to see any change in traffic. Registration is steady, and more importantly, user participation is seeing an uptick. As for the domain name, an update will be published as soon as we have something to report.

[chadmc90]

That's exactly the problem. But the fix isn't really any easier than what I'm doing.
Right now, I'm opening edit and copying the text into a word file.
Then I'm using find and replace to put things back to what they should be.
It seems like around the same amount of work.
Thanks!!!

Actually, from what you said, it looks to me like you have to do A LOT of work manually, while chatgpt fixes that for you very quickly and with little effort, just have to copy-paste the text you want fixed.

In any case, there are also stories posted by users who are no longer active, which is why I wanted to ask: @bondagefreak , do you know if a board-wide fix is still being worked on or if we'll have to manually (or with chatgpt) fix them one by one?

For me to do a board wide fix, I would have to take down the website, create a dump of the entire database, and either write some kind of coding script or find one that can go through the entire database dump to fix it. It's not just a "click a few buttons" solution.

As for the original domain, I am waiting for the grace period to end so I can initiate a new transfer. The current domain rules require a 60 day cool down period per transfer, which is international law from what I understand. Once that cooldown is over (which should be in a few weeks), I will reclaim the domain and have it mirrored with the new one so both domains lead to the website.

Please be patient on this, as the domain issue is impossible to address at the moment.

[Sablesword]

As for the original domain, I am waiting for the grace period to end so I can initiate a new transfer. The current domain rules require a 60 day cool down period per transfer, which is international law from what I understand. Once that cooldown is over (which should be in a few weeks), I will reclaim the domain and have it mirrored with the new one so both domains lead to the website.

Please be patient on this, as the domain issue is impossible to address at the moment.

It's much easier to be patient when one has an estimated time with an explanation of "it will take at least this long to fix."

So I'm glad you posted that here, and I'm sorry if you posted it earlier and I somehow missed it.

[ExcessivelyCurious]

Yes, much appreciation to the owner/admins for getting things working. I haven't managed to successfuly log in, in quite a while before today although by the looks of things plenty of you were (I wasn't trying that often to be fair).

For the garbled posts, I think using the "find and replace" tool in any word editor is likely the most effective, don't see why you'd need anything else. Obviously doesn't apply in retrospect, but I'd also advise writing your stories in any external program and saving them on your computer so you have a backup, rather than just relying on the forums.

[JohnnyRockets]

As for the original domain, I am waiting for the grace period to end so I can initiate a new transfer. The current domain rules require a 60 day cool down period per transfer, which is international law from what I understand. Once that cooldown is over (which should be in a few weeks), I will reclaim the domain and have it mirrored with the new one so both domains lead to the website.

Makes sense. Thanks for your efforts to keep the site going.

[AlexUSA3]

Right now, the domain tugstories.com is still redirecting to a "website down for maintenance" page. Will you guys get the domain back at some point? The site would probably get a lot more traffic if its .com address were working.

Hello @JohnnyRockets
This concern has already been addressed some time ago. When you have the time and if this interests you, you may want to consider looking at forum news in the Headlines section of the forum. This thread FORUM NEWS: NEW HOST, FORUM LINKS & OTHER BUGS is one such thread in which we keep the forum up to date about important board news and changes.

I initially shared your concern, but we were actually surprised not to see any change in traffic. Registration is steady, and more importantly, user participation is seeing an uptick. As for the domain name, an update will be published as soon as we have something to report.

I'm surprised to hear that. Does the new domain/webhost do a better job of filtering bots? I'm just asking because it seems "post views" are down by around 50-75%, which could be explained by the absence of many web crawlers.

[bondagefreak]

I'm surprised to hear that. Does the new domain/webhost do a better job of filtering bots?

No. Most automated bots and crawlers were manually disabled not long ago.

[chadmc90]

I'm surprised to hear that. Does the new domain/webhost do a better job of filtering bots? I'm just asking because it seems "post views" are down by around 50-75%, which could be explained by the absence of many web crawlers.

It's probably also due to the website working under a new domain name (.blog vs .com), as those crawlers were programmed with the original name over the years.