## System Problem Resolved ##

[Mike Ratledge]

We seem to have fixed the problem yet again, with tech assist from Montenzi

They keep "fixing" it for us, but mung my ".htaccess" file - 3 times now starting with 10-March.

If it goes down, people like Pierre know how to ping me.

[Decknowledgy]

Thank you Mike and Alex for working hard on upgrading the system

[Mike Ratledge]

Thank you Mike and Alex for working hard on upgrading the system

I had not much to do with it. @Montenzi Design deserves 100% of the credit. Best I could do was stumble around. Fortunately for us, he has considerable experience in hosting.

We are now using phpBB 3.3 (latest) and php 7.1.4 instead of the archaic ones (3.1.2 with 5.4).

[Magic Tapp]

Thanks Mike and Alex - that is good to know as I was getting increasingly worried. One thing though - I used to be able to access the forum through the Tapatalk app (as did some of the others here) but it no longer seems to work. Is there something that can also be fixed or do we go back to using a browser for that? Thanks again.

[Timmargh]

[...] One thing though - I used to be able to access the forum through the Tapatalk app (as did some of the others here) but it no longer seems to work. Is there something that can also be fixed or do we go back to using a browser for that? Thanks again.

I wanted to ask this, too.

[montenzi]

Thanks Mike and Alex - that is good to know as I was getting increasingly worried. One thing though - I used to be able to access the forum through the Tapatalk app (as did some of the others here) but it no longer seems to work. Is there something that can also be fixed or do we go back to using a browser for that? Thanks again.

I have done everything to relaunch UC urgently, so old add-on modules were not a priority. It's up to forum's admins now. I am too busy at the moment.

[Conturbia]

Thank you guys! It seems that now the forum is working better than before, at least for me!

[Bikefanatic]

Pictures are still a hassle to download.

In my settings, I had both the notification and email checked for receiving PMs. Just with only the email part checked, I still have to log in and see if I have them instead of getting emails.

[Mike Ratledge]

Thank you guys! It seems that now the forum is working better than before, at least for me!

The thing is that almost coincidentally (in this case literally - meaning "at about the same time", the system was upgraded by HostGator to faster processors and SSHD (solid state drives) instead of the older mechanical drives, so it should be blazingly fast. We upgraded the phpBB software from the previous 3.0.12 to version 3.3 (latest) and the php interpreter from a 5.4.x version to a much more recent 7.x version. Things that had to be disabled before, like the newer "recapture" that uses the more recent graphical picture "pick all of the xxxx" type robot challenge as opposed to the old school alpha-numeric based version.

Things like smooth scrolling are MUCH faster, and look better as well. In general we moved up from 2005 vintage software to 2015 or later software. I had resisted making any upgrades to the software for fear that it would be more than disruptive to the forums, and it turns out the opposite is true.

I have been up to my ears and eyeballs taking care of my mom for the past two+ weeks, so I have not gotten around to installing the Tap-a-Talk extension, but I hope to get that working here shortly. It will be educational for me since the new 3.3 version of phpBB uses a different and much easier to maintain method of adding extensions to our phpBB software.

[Magic Tapp]

Mike - first things first, many thanks for keeping this forum running as it is really invaluable.

I was just wondering if you had any luck with the Tapatalk extension - much easier to read the forum from a phone. Thanks again.

[Mike Ratledge]

It has not been updated since I tried and found that the scripts it used were so poorly written that it crashed the system until I figured out how to manually remove it from the system.

I will keep watching and try it again, but I am really happy with how this new version works on my smartphone, which at one time I was using Tap-a-Talk myself.

I don't need it, but I can see how / why some people want to.