Results 1 to 11 of 11

Thread: Getting going on VBForums is tough

  1. #1

    Thread Starter
    New Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2017
    Posts
    13

    Getting going on VBForums is tough

    Boy oh boy, I've never had so many problems getting going on a message board in all my life. Wow this has kinda crazy.

    Let's start with the normal registration. Everything looks like every other board, setup the basics and we'll email you and you'll have to click the link in the email to activate. Okay, that's typical, no problem.

    Email comes in and click the confirmation and....... 404 Not found. Okay, maybe it's not friendly with Chrome, try IE. 404 File not found. Come back to the board and login, nope, can't post, can't PM, can't do much of anything. Okay check the FAQ. FAQ says any other problems with registration email the webmaster and gave the email address to do so. Sure, okay, let's email the webmaster. That makes sense. Emailed webmaster and BOUNCE! email address doesn't exist.

    Scour the site for any means of contacting someone to let them know that the confirmation message isn't working..... Nope, no other emails to be found and no way to message anyone with any pull, so kinda let's take a step back and look at the problem again. The confirmation email looks like it came from a customer service email address. They're typically do not reply to those messages, but what the heck, can't hurt. It didn't bounce, but also did not get a response.

    Hmmm.... What else can I do. Let's see. The people over at Mr. Excel are usually pretty helpful and I've used the site on and off for nearly a decade, maybe one of the VBA guys over there is also registered here and can get a message to someone that might be able to do something about it or at least the person they contact can contact a different person who can do something about it. Who knows, worth a shot, the board looks too busy to not be able to get registered. Go back and forth with a couple guys over there for a day, but none of them were registered and they were just trying to help me out to get going on this site and it's not even their site.

    I give up.......


    2 days later and out of the blue..... I get another email confirmation message from VBForums. This time from a different email address a different canned registration response along with a link that actually worked. GREAT! Thanks! I already figured out my own problem, which can be a good learning experience sometimes, but I'll get on the board, maybe there are other portions of my small project that I may need help with and it is more VBScript related than Excel related even though VBS and VBA are similar, there are some differences. Let's go ahead and check the site out.

    Now prior to this, I was thinking that the board must hide messages from those who are not registered, but now that I have a valid activation I should be able to see the messages......

    Let's go straight to the VBScript section, because that is what I'm currently working with. The site says there are 4100 (roughly) threads. Okay great! Click to go in and...... I can only see one single message. Go back out to the SubForum list. Okay, I can see the last post to the right. Click the last post. Sure enough I can see the last post. Go back into the forum itself, 1 post.... The pinned post saying that ASP.NET has it's own forum.

    Okay, so I still can't see messages even though I'm now activated. Can I post a message? Well, we'll see a minute. If this thing posts, will I be able to see it? Oddly enough, the forum feedback actually showed me more than just a single post, but the VBScript forum did not as well as most any other I clicked on just had 1 to very few messages even though it says they have thousands of messages.

    I'm sorry if this comes off as me just wanting to complain about the board. That's not the case at all. I've probably been on half a dozen programming boards of some sort over the years including ones that cover VBA, PHP, JavaScript, HTML and the link and have never had these kinds of problems to get going as a user. The point of this point is to point out to the people in control that if I've had these kinds of issues and I've been doing this for 2 decades, what is it going to be like for those college kids just starting out or your freshly out of school kid who wants to put his knowledge to work for the first time and needs a little assistance. I'm sure kids these days would throw their hands in the air and just give up, as I did prior to the 2nd confirmation email that came in 2 days after the first one. In the end, you could say, I'm a fix it guy, so thought I would post my experience so maybe those in charger could fix it for others in the future.

    If anyone knows anything about why I can't see most of the messages I would appreciate that bit of knowledge as well.

    Thanks,

    RJ

  2. #2
    ex-Administrator brad jones's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Indianapolis
    Posts
    6,608

    Re: Getting going on VBForums is tough

    Thanks for the feedback. It is appreciated.

    In each forum near the bottom is a drop down that lets' you select the time frame for messages that are displayed. This can be anywhere from the last day to the beginning of the forum. Chances are, if you aren't seeing anything, then the forum area you are in is not recently active and the time phrase is probably short. You can set a default time frame in your settings, but each forum area has a default as well. We'll need to look at the one for the scripting forum to see where it is set.

    As to the emails and broken links, I'll look into those.

    Brad!
    Have you given out your reputation points today? Select the Rate This Post link to give points for good posts!
    -------------------------------------------------------------
    Brad! Jones
    Lots of Software, LLC
    (I wrote: C Programming in One Hour a Day) (Dad Jokes Book) (Follow me on Twitter)

    --------------------------------------------------------------

  3. #3

    Thread Starter
    New Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2017
    Posts
    13

    Re: Getting going on VBForums is tough

    Quote Originally Posted by brad jones View Post
    In each forum near the bottom is a drop down that lets' you select the time frame for messages that are displayed.

    As to the emails and broken links, I'll look into those.
    Thanks Brad, I'm not sure what it was set to, but I went in and look now and it was set to "Last Month". Obviously a feature I haven't seen before, but it could cut down on the clutter of old posts. Did someone change it's defaults because I wasn't even seeing the one message posted yesterday? I got it now and will keep that in mind for the future. I'll see if I can find the personal setting and hopefully be able to set all boards to 3 months. That sounds a bit more logical to me.

    Re: Emails. If it helps, I can forward you the email with the broken links that I received on the day of registration. Although I'm sure if you want that, you'd probably prefer it to be done privately so the address isn't in the open.

  4. #4
    ex-Administrator brad jones's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Indianapolis
    Posts
    6,608

    Re: Getting going on VBForums is tough

    I just adjusted a few of the default settings on the forums - which is why it is now a month for the one you were reviewing.

    You can forward the email to bjones <at> Quinstreet dot Com.

    Thanks,
    Brad!
    Have you given out your reputation points today? Select the Rate This Post link to give points for good posts!
    -------------------------------------------------------------
    Brad! Jones
    Lots of Software, LLC
    (I wrote: C Programming in One Hour a Day) (Dad Jokes Book) (Follow me on Twitter)

    --------------------------------------------------------------

  5. #5

    Thread Starter
    New Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2017
    Posts
    13

    Re: Getting going on VBForums is tough

    Quote Originally Posted by brad jones View Post
    I just adjusted a few of the default settings on the forums - which is why it is now a month for the one you were reviewing.

    You can forward the email to
    Done along with the bounce response too.

    RJ

  6. #6
    Administrator Steve R Jones's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    Largo, FL.
    Posts
    1,826

    Re: Getting going on VBForums is tough

    I just searched the database for -> Join Date is After 2017-02-20 and it showed 34 people have joined.

    I see that you're using an @gmail.com address that normally is one of the better addresses to use.

    It's more that weird that you received two emails.. Be sure and send both to Brad.
    Wi-fi went down for five minutes, so I had to talk to my family....They seem like nice people.

  7. #7

    Thread Starter
    New Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2017
    Posts
    13

    Re: Getting going on VBForums is tough

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve R Jones View Post
    I just searched the database for -> Join Date is After 2017-02-20 and it showed 34 people have joined.

    I see that you're using an @gmail.com address that normally is one of the better addresses to use.

    It's more that weird that you received two emails.. Be sure and send both to Brad.
    I sent the ones that failed, but I can send the one that worked if need be. Although Brad will have to confirm if they have been received. I received this message and now even more confused.


    From: Domain-mgr <postmaster(at)quinstreet(dot)com>
    Date: Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 11:49 PM
    Subject: [Postmaster] Content Alert Notification
    To: Russell Wiley <RedactedAddress(at)gmail(dot)com>


    This is a content alert notification message.

    The message indicated below matches content alert policies set by the
    system administrator(s).

    Message information:

    Sender : "Russell Wiley" <RedactedAddress(at)gmail(dot)com>
    Intended Recipient : Brad Jones <RedatectedAddress(at)quinstreet(dot)com>
    Message Subject : Fwd: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
    Message Date : Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:48:21 -0500
    Message Status : The message has been placed on HOLD - action required

    Content Policies Triggered:

    - Policy (Subject Line Filter)

    found term ["delivery status notification"] in Subject, score is 1

    Number of hits for this term: 1
    Matched text: Delivery Status Notification

  8. #8
    Administrator Steve R Jones's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    Largo, FL.
    Posts
    1,826

    Re: Getting going on VBForums is tough

    I don't think you sent it to bjones <at> Quinstreet dot Com
    Wi-fi went down for five minutes, so I had to talk to my family....They seem like nice people.

  9. #9

    Thread Starter
    New Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2017
    Posts
    13

    Re: Getting going on VBForums is tough

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve R Jones View Post
    I don't think you sent it to bjones <at> Quinstreet dot Com
    Responded privately with full email address context included. That is the address I sent to.

    Edit: Brad, can you confirm if you received the messages I forwarded last night or not? The email address was correct.
    Last edited by rjwebgraphix; Feb 23rd, 2017 at 02:54 PM.

  10. #10
    PowerPoster Poppa Mintin's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Bottesford, North Lincolnshire, England.
    Posts
    2,423

    Re: Getting going on VBForums is tough

    Hi, Just a comment.


    When I'm at home with a nice clean, strong internet signal I have no problems at all.

    But when I'm away from home and have to rely on hotel (usually vastly overpriced) internet it's a totally different story...
    It can take an hour or so just to make a post... I always use 'Preview Post' and that can loose the whole text in a single click, often the control buttons (above) don't appear or reappear, it's a nightmare.
    As it happens, I've just resolved that problem by buying myself a mobile router.

    If rjwebgraphix's internet connection is poor, this could be the cause of the trouble ?


    Poppa.
    Along with the sunshine there has to be a little rain sometime.

  11. #11

    Thread Starter
    New Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2017
    Posts
    13

    Re: Getting going on VBForums is tough

    Quote Originally Posted by Poppa Mintin View Post
    Hi, Just a comment.


    When I'm at home with a nice clean, strong internet signal I have no problems at all.

    But when I'm away from home and have to rely on hotel (usually vastly overpriced) internet it's a totally different story...
    It can take an hour or so just to make a post... I always use 'Preview Post' and that can loose the whole text in a single click, often the control buttons (above) don't appear or reappear, it's a nightmare.
    As it happens, I've just resolved that problem by buying myself a mobile router.

    If rjwebgraphix's internet connection is poor, this could be the cause of the trouble ?


    Poppa.
    Hardwired broadband connection. 20Mbps per second that usually speeds tests just above 24Mbps. Not likely the connection. Although what you've mentioned is not specific to this board. I've seen issues like that with pretty much any phpBB board and make a habit of compiling any message longer than a couple line comment in notepad and copying and pasting rather than typing it out (especially code) in the forum.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  



Click Here to Expand Forum to Full Width