Team-BHP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/)

-   Shifting gears (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/)

-   -   Suggestions for Team-BHP from Team-BHPians (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/59432-suggestions-team-bhp-team-bhpians-434.html)

I have a few suggestions which might, or might not be viable. But I thought it was worth it to point them out here.

1. Force HTTPS and redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS. Can be easily done with the server software (one-liner). But things complicate when you use Vanish :uncontrol
This can be solved by running different instances of a web server (ex-nginx) on two different ports and passing Varnish unencrypted requests. This would solve half of the problems and XSS attacks.

2. This one comes from friends and family. Although Team-BHP is an amazing place and an invaluable resource, the forum interface is outdated. phpBB used to be cool in the mid and late - 2000s, but every time I write a post, I spend more time on the bbcodes than the actual post, if I decide to write a good-format post. This is quite a redundant activity. More and more WYSIWYG forums are popping up nowadays. When I had my own startup, we had a forum. We used IPBoard. Although it is paid, it was best at the time. Used AJAX and WYSIWYG editor and was extremely intuitive to use.

3. This one is related to the above point. I want to mention it separately because it can either be done in conjunction with the second or without. The visual feel of the site looks somewhat old. Maybe give it a visual refresh? This one comes from an average consumer standpoint.

Now, I know that this is a lot of work, but it will be worth the time, if the proposal is accepted. It is kind of like a fun project to me, but of course, the opinions vary wildly. Regardless of what I mentioned, not everyone here is present on the forums for the usability and visual feel. It is a valuable database of knowledge. Here are my two-cents.

Yes, you've been quoted:

FYI - The issue where members weren't getting PM notifications of being quoted when the member quoting them was using the Android/iOS apps has been fixed a few weeks back :)


Hi typlo,

1) Definitely plan to roll this out soon (by force/default).

2) There actually IS a WYSIWYG editor - though for some reason it only works on older browsers (typically IE). It wasn't very popular, but perhaps we should try and get this up and running with modern browsers. Note the icon on the top right that toggles the WYSIWYG mode:



3) Hmmm. This is a tricky one. My personal opinion is that if it ain't broke, don't try and fix it. I also think there's way better (functional) things we could invest our time in than a visual make-over. But let's see...

If one takes a pride in the appearance and layout of one's posts, it can indeed be time consuming. I'm sure you know that there is an optional wysiwig editor. I still choose to use the "traditional" editor, though!

Another forum in my life has software that does indeed make our breed of forum look very clunky, not only in appearance but with additional useful functionality. And the WYSIWIGness of the post editor is pretty good --- but I still find myself switching into code mode sometimes.

It's quite alright switching to code sometimes. WYSIWYG editors aren't perfect since they mostly make use of Javascript and AJAX. Switching to manual mode for that last thing you need to be absolutely perfect and switching back is what I used to do too, in IPBoard editor.

For most of the tasks like highlighting the text and Ctrl+B to bold it, worked fantastically and so did attaching and resizing images within the posts, which could be done just by holding down and dragging the mouse.

Sir, I opened the page on an Iphone 7.

Yes whatsapp is installed.

Since I wasn’t very sure of trying out the feature, I did not give Safari permission to access Whatsapp. Hence, it lead me to:

https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=h...interesting%2A
:)

Not sure if anyone else is facing the same issue; however mentioning it here :

I am accessing TBHP from my Moto G5Plus using Chorme browser.

If I get a message on my inbox and try deleting it after I have read it, it just sits there. The message does not get deleted.

At times, when I want to reply on a thread and I hit submit button, same thing happens. The progress bar just sits there. Have to try multiple times to get it through.

I have already tried clearing the cache and the usual suspects.

Apart from these two issues, I find it great that we moved away from the Android app in favour of the mobile version!!

Ah that would explain it!

Is this consistent behavior, or occasional?


Could you try incognito mode and let me know if you face the same issue.

Also - is this on Wifi or Cellular data?

Thank you for your reply!

1. It is a consistent behaviour.
2. Tried incognito mode and still the same issue.
3. Currently on cellular data. Will give it a shot on WiFi once I am back home today.

Another similar issue I am facing is with uploading images. After I add a attachment and click the upload button, nothing happens. I even reduced the JPEG file size to around 148kb and still nothing. :(

Very strange!

Can you try updating your Chrome (if there is an update in the play store).

Also, do you have any sort of anti-virus app running?

Thank you!

Chrome is on the latest patch and I do not have any antivirus apps on my cell.

Would it help trying with any other supported browser? Maybe firefox, UC or Opera mini. Any thoughts?

Worth a shot... though I'm really not sure why only you are facing this issue!

Hi,

I just wanted to suggest an important thing that slipped off my mind earlier.
Use Cloudflare as a reverse proxy, maybe? It is a web performance company that caches static resources (ex - all the images, js and css) and is basically a firewall for your website, with POPs/datacentres all around the world. I suggest you read more about how it is different from a CDN. Oh, and any new OS bugs like heartbleed or web application exploits on CMS (Drupal, wordpress, etc.) are remedied by the CF team. Since all the traffic is routed through them, it will give you a buffer time to actually patch the server/web app.

A few years ago, I went with the free plan of Cloudflare for my website and saved a MASSIVE (not overstating it) amount of bandwidth costs towards my webhost and the service is ridiculously easy to set up (though your webhost might not be happy about it). You'd just need to change nameservers for DNS resolution and retrieve the Connecting-IP header. Just look it up and I am sure you'll be impressed by their feature set.

Hope this helps.

Had looked at them at $dayjob a while back. The free account gives only free CDN and free DDOS protection - everything else is paid/payable/metered (including the WAF/OWASP part and many of the good things you suggest). At my site's traffic volume it was working out to be quite expensive so we went with Cloudfront instead for only a specific use-case.

In fact the free account works only on SNI hence it might not even support all browsers.

Btw, one feature request - can we have the ability to save a reply post as a draft, and resume editing it (a) on the same computer at a later date as a bare minimum, and (b) on possibly a different computer as the best case scenario?

They're not browser dependent since it is a reverse proxy. Also, they do not charge for bandwidth. Unlimited bandwidth is included with all plans. Although I agree the free plan is barebones, I believe any plan will save a lot of bandwidth since Team-BHP hosts a lot of images.

EDIT: CloudFLARE is different than CloudFRONT. Just noticed this.

Team-BHP probably has a very low need for world-wide mirroring. I'm sure that the vast majority of traffic is local, ie from within India. Whilst we have members abroad, and probably a fanbase of browsers worldwide, I'd guess that is tiny compared to usage in India.

This is the fastest, best-response forum that I use: I'm sure it doesn't need any improvement, at least for India use. And I'm sure that GTO and team have their fingers on the technology pulse, the sites needs, and the service providers.