Forum Bug: Posts are Posted Multiple Times

Lately new posts appear to post multiple times:

Between this and the other feed issues lately, perhaps its finally time to consider escorting Ning out behind the shed and pulling the trigger ;)

/Anders

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on October 11, 2017 at 8:16am

Here is what happens when you try to post something: That uncaught exception pops up as soon as you press post. Actually just lost my post I already typed as it gave me a "this post has been deleted" warning. Of course that is a pretty tough error to debug, as it is not caused inside a specific script.

So yeah, I think Ning is pretty terrible. Even their "customer success stories" are worse than this forum.

The first thing I would do though, is split the main content website of Grasshopper from Ning and use Ning just for the forum (as most websites do). That way you can have a contemporary website based for example on Wordpress, which does the impeccable UI and power of Grasshopper justice, but keep the forum for the time being, as migrating it, is indeed a huge task.

I guess Vanilla Forums would be nice, but they cost about 10x as much as Ning.

Also in the screenshot the weird bug, caused by the Google translate widget, which displays the google translate bar on every page and can not be hidden.

Permalink Reply by Chris Kuether on October 11, 2017 at 8:20am

I sort of figured it was just a delay by the forum page, so people would think it hadn't happened, and simply repost. Seems the typical interval was about two minutes...

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on October 11, 2017 at 8:28am

Perhaps it did actually do something after waiting a long time (havent tried), but the problem is that things get posted several times if you press several times, since the mechanics of posting still work in the background, but the page doesnt refresh which would normally hide the original post box and delete the content out of it, therefore prohibiting multiple posting or just take you to the created post if you create a new topic. If the page refresh script has an error and doesn't refresh the page, this can happen.

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on October 11, 2017 at 8:24am

Yup, definitely some double posting going on:

Oh dear, and all that, while David is on holiday:

I'm taking a 10 day break and won't be able to go online until the 20th of October.

Permalink Reply by Andrew Heumann on October 11, 2017 at 8:28am

DEATH TO NING LONG LIVE DISCOURSE

As long as we can find a way to archive posts and uploads from here in a searchable way - it’s time. Obviously there will be some amount of pain in the transition - but it will be so worth it.

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on October 11, 2017 at 8:32am

I agree, if Rhino is already using discourse its time to move grasshopper to it as well!

It doesnt seem overly complicated to migrate from one to the other:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrating-from-ning-to-discourse/49749

Once its migrated get all the content off of the ning pages and create a better Grasshopper website (content only), which is better organised and doesnt hurt my graphic-designer-eyes ;)

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on October 11, 2017 at 8:41am

Its in my opinion crazy, that the actual Grasshopper website doesnt even really showcase what Grasshopper can do in any sort of visual way. The "Albums", "Videos", "Architectural Projects" and "Installations" pages are just user-generated albums, which are not curated in any way. As much as I think its good to have users post what they are up to, if I had never heard of Grasshopper and checked the website I would have no clue what it can do. And since Grasshopper surely more and more is one of the main features of Rhino to persuade potential new users, I find this utterly baffeling. No showreel, list of features, proper use cases, etc.

Could we get some feedback from McNeel? Are they happy with the Grasshopper website? Are there plans for a redesign both visual and content-wise? Whats the factor most holding this back - financial, technical, etc?

Permalink Reply by Anders Holden Deleuran on October 11, 2017 at 8:51am

There has been talks on this forum (including David) concerning migrating to Discourse. Either by sliding into the existing McNeel forum (which is kinda/sorta already happening) or starting a dedicated Grasshopper one (if I recall correctly). I suspect a dedicated support forum might be called for, considering the amount of traffic/posts that would be Grasshopper specific.

Permalink Reply by Mostapha Sadeghipour Roudsari on October 11, 2017 at 8:43am

It's not complicated and it's the right move! The only setback is that everyone has to reactivate their accounts. We recently moved to discourse and can't be happier. On the most basic level now I can find my own replies!

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on October 11, 2017 at 8:45am

I think active users of this forum wont mind to do that, especially if you only have to do it once. And it will also weed out all the inactive accounts.

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on October 11, 2017 at 11:57am

I strongly disagree since Discourse looks like a throwback to Yahoo forums or Usenet and lacks a gallery so I can see people's new work and also build an effective online portfolio of images related to my work, not just as a portfolio but as a visual index reference for myself to find things in my "online notebook." Otherwise my notes are scattered on various devices.

I've also been locked out of Discourse.McNeel.com for weeks going on months, even with a new email address, even from different IP addresses, "temporarily." I'd rather hit refresh and delete duplicate submissions than be locked out completely.

Just fix this forum so the comment button works instead of hangs.

How will you include the astonishingly useful Grasshopper component reference on a text-based site like Discourse?

"Leave it to computer programmers to screw things up, they always will." - Motto of our age.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Look at this low information bandwidth page, and you *want* that? The 1990s are calling, just like Rhino itself is being overtaken by Autodesk in general, this is just embarrassing. Another user is calling to delay and censor gallery content. It takes ten minutes to see a year's worth of image uploads here. It takes forever to see them on Discourse, since there is no gallery at all. If you moderate image uploading, I will stop uploading them at all too, on and off one of this forums most active contributors.

If you abandonware this forum into obscurity, as some old archive site, you are destroying my professional portfolio that I use to find work and find clients. I will likely just switch to Dynamo if you ruin this forum with Soviet worthy aesthetics.

YOU JUST NEED TO FIX A SUBMIT BUTTON. That's all. Otherwise you are a big boss shutting down the coal mine because you couldn't fix a switch. Computer programmers should not be dictating forum interfaces!

Since this site will have to remain the reference page, my seeing nothing like them on Discourse, a text-interface site, that means Grasshopper will then have two homes, greatly confusing to young and old alike.

If you want to switch forums, you need to build a serious site with a modern web interface, and migrate Discourse.McNeel.com over to that, not abandon the most valuable community McNeel has, and it's not Discourse, it's *this* creative forum. You should also migrate completely, if so, to move our galleries over to the new site. And, no don't CENSOR the damn galleries, just look at the visual version of ZBrush forums, etc. where users upvote image, so you can view the galleries by popularity.

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on October 11, 2017 at 12:29pm

Because on the existing Discourse forum, you can't see the user name of the poster in the list, nor a large avatar, there is no sense of community there, at all. It FAILS as social media, which is what such a forum is. It's like going back to Friendster, or even ICQ. The best I can do it squint at puny little circle avatars and click it to see a ridiculously useless pop-up pane of nothingness:

So I click on Member and am transported to East Germany:

I simply don't *trust* a band of programmers, of plug-in developers, to even want to create a new forum that creates a useful sense of community and can act as a portfolio for each user. LOOK AT WHAT MCNEEL HAS DONE ALREADY. It's horrible!