miraro3

8 minutes ago, muddeh said:

Only a 4 hour drive. That's do-able.

It surely is!

It looks like we're actually going to do this, aren't we?  

3 minutes ago, muddeh said:

We're talking about beer. Ofcourse I want to come. I would get my ass over to the edge of the world to get some.

I guess you're officially invited then!

10 minutes ago, muddeh said:

Why the fuck is no one thinking about me????

You'd be the first I invite, but you keep on telling me that Belgium is an inferior country. I wasn't sure you would lower yourself to our standards to have some beers with us!

9 hours ago, GoLdFiNgEr said:

LOL  I don t think so.... thank you.  

9 hours ago, Charlie said:

Ben!! Some of the funniest times have been when people never known! @oliveira pt. Cough cough.

Miraro3, saving innocent people's lifes since nineteenninetysomething.  

4 hours ago, P3Sone said:

Dafuq wheres my invite to this LAN party  

You don't have to be invited, you should know that your presence is required.

3 hours ago, Minty said:

Yeah I'd be up for a meetup. But Bruges tho, I can do that on a weekend aswell, it's about an hour and a half of a drive.

Bruges is the center of the world! Of course it's going to be during a weekend

@Minty can join as well. I've always wanted to have a Duvel with that guy.

17 minutes ago, GoLdFiNgEr said:

LOL guys why not....

you're not so far from Maasmechelen village JESSICA, maybe i can see you one day...

Even when you realize that Jessica is a man?  

44 minutes ago, Macka said:

Haha I have visions of venom riding his bike across Europe

It would make a great Hollywood movie, i'm sure

26 minutes ago, VenoM said:

Leave me out of this broer

@VenoM will come as well, but since he will be taking his bike here we will have to make sure he knows it quite some time before it actually is going to happen.

How about a small meet up in Bruges this summer? Lan party will be a bit hard to organize but a beer party on the other hand...

@Wolf will also come. Or at least that's what I heard.

Just now, GoLdFiNgEr said:

Heyyy OSIK how are you mate? thank you all for your welcome.

for more about myself, i like holidays (who doesn't like that), playing football. and yes NIKI belgian chocolate is one of the best in the world, and for the wine it's rather in France, here in Belguim it's BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I'M NOT A BIG DRINKER...

@miraro3 Charleroi, you?

Charleroi, hmmm I guess that's close to @PurpleHaze ?

I live in the Bruges area, nice and calm ^^

Woo, another Belgian! Welcome!

Where are you from?

On 2017-6-2 at 3:08 PM, MrMuppet said:

Do you want this completely removing and another adding?

Eventually I think that will be the right thing to do.

I have a thesis to finish this month. If we don't have a chat box by the time I'm done with my thesis I will create a chat myself. I've already spent some time thinking about the mechanics and I think I might be able to pull it off without too much effort.

40 minutes ago, MrMuppet said:

Correct, the main site database access to open source freeware software is a no no, hackers paradise, I'm glad you appreciate the consequences of doing so!

How is the chat coming along? I'm not seeing much in the way of change or usage to be honest.

I did install and try three other versions, Aerial chat, Ajax chat and phpopenchat if you think any of these would be better, these and the current chat are installed into separate databases to the site so access to these can be granted as they pose no security risk to our site.

I think we are on the same level when it comes to that. Security, especially these days, should be top priority.

I have taken a look at the chat settings only to notice that it's quite limited. I also noticed that the automatic clearing of chat history is not working. I've spent some time on chat and I'm not loving the experience completely.

I've also been thinking that maybe a different chat might be a better option, so I would gladly take a look at the chats you mentioned.

I also haven't had the time yet to take a deep dive into it, which is why there aren't any changes made yet. Which is probably good, since there might be better options on the market than blab chat.

1 hour ago, MrMuppet said:

Just drag it down in the menu manager to the position you want and save via the acp.

Pm'd you.

Woops.

2 hours ago, MrMuppet said:

Menu tab done, password emailed.

Thank you, I will look into it.

One last request. Can the chat button be moved two places down the navigation? I think it makes more sense to have portal and forum before chat.

4 minutes ago, MrMuppet said:

Eagle pm'd me on the 9th of May which was the day we left for Marbella, we returned home, had one day off and then returned to work on 12hr nights until Wednesday morning, we installed a chat on Friday after your pm.

Nobody requires access to this sites database to run a chat room, the chat installed is a standalone and separate to this site using its own database as .eu is locked, if someone wishes to have the api key for the chat then they can have that but this is not going to be linked to the .eu database for security reasons, end of.

So back to my question, what actually is wrong with this and what improvements are needed?

The chat being standalone is one problem because it pulls the user out of the "forum environment". That's easily fixed by just embedding the external page into a normal forum page, as I've already done. We, being both Charlie and myself, lack the permissions in the ACP to hide the "chat room" button in the main navigation and replace it with the "chat" button which is now hidden as a sub-item of the portal button. (The former page should keep existing, it should just not be visible in the navigation anymore, since that page is being embedding in the latter page)

Another problem with the chat is the fact that the user needs to sign in before being able to use the chatroom. This is an extra step that bring accessability and user experience down by quite a bit since they already had to sign in to the forum to be able to use the chat room in the first place. The database access was to help make the connection between the chat and the forum. Althought I believe that we can find other solutions for this because as your said, direct DB access should be a last resort because of security reasons.

Next is the look of the chat room which is a design that probably originates from somewhere around 2007-2010 I'd say. It works but it's not appealing and the controlls are rather bulky and distracting. We can fix this, no problem.

The history of the chat should be removed together with the censorship. One of the beauties of the old chat was that you could say what you want when you wanted it without having to worry about anyone reading what you said at any point in the future. This encourages open discussions and deeper social connections.

I would love to take a look at the API for the chat client and see what I can do with it to make some improvements. Of course in a team effort with Charlie and the others.

2 hours ago, MrMuppet said:

Not at this moment in time.

As said to Charlie, I reviewed the chat room access at its closure and it only average one person when in use so my time+effort over gain is minimal. I have considered the plus version for IPB integration but even at only $35 unless I see some usage then I'm not wasting any more money on resources that are just not used, so if someone wishes to purchase this and send me the software then I will get it installed by next weekend.

There seems to be a consensus that when something needs doing I have to complete this immediately, frustratingly when ever I ask for something simple such as "have you tested the server for the event" or "can you check this on the forums" them people don't spend five minutes of their time in doing so but I'm expected to spend hours trolling sites for chat software, installing, testing and removing until I find something half decent.

So, what actually is wrong with this and what improvements are needed?

Craig I have always looked up to you and respected you so the last thing I want is to start a fight. This response is not meant to attack you in any way. I hope you understand that before reading further.

I don't agree that there is a consensus that you have to do everything immediately when something needs doing. What I would agree with is that there are some tasks that simply should be done as soon as possible with the best interests of this community in mind. We have an admin team in place with an ambitious new leader who are more than willing to do these tasks for you but the problem is that even Charlie doesn't have complete access to the services needed to do these tasks for you.

You are our founder, the one who has been so generous to invest so much time and money in a community that we have all loved for so many years. If, after all these years, you do not feel like putting the same amount of time into this than nobody will blame you for it. You have done your fair bit and it has been an amazing carreer. But please, let the others do the work for you then so that we can continue what you have started and maybe improve some things here and there along the way.

I also don't agree that this community of people never do what you ask them to do. There have been many people in TM, some aren't anymore but a lot still are, that have been willing to put a lot of work in. Some of these people have been overlooked and some of these people just never were asked to help out when and where needed. Just look at Eagle who has spent an unhealthy amount of hours tinkering around in here. If anything, the wrong people were asked to do things at the wrong moment in time or just lost their motiviation to do things for whatever reasons they might have had.

I feel like, for reasons unknown, that you are only seeing the negative side of the community at the moment. I don't know what happened and I since we never had a conversation on a deep personal live I don't expect you to tell me right here and now. But, I hope from the bottom of my heart that whatever is going on with you right now will pass over sooner than later. I hate to see you like this compared to the times when you seemed to enjoy yourself.

If it's real life related you can take some time of to sort things out, all of us will understand. Just pass the keys to the kingdom to the admin team so that we don't have to send you PM's all day and all night for things that may appear to be trivial to you. All of us would be more than happy to annoy Charlie with that.

If everything is fine outside of TM, then I beg you to be open with us and have a conversation with us to let us know what exactly is going on. There might be so much more things annoying you than we know of. And if that is the case we should know about it and try to find solutions for it as a team. Never has a solution for a problem been found without decent communication.

2 hours ago, VenoM said:

U mad?

Outraged.

On 2017-5-26 at 10:21 PM, MiniMuppet said:

And will not be anything added.

So we're not going to try to improve the look & feel of this thing a little bit?

48 minutes ago, Toni said:

 

Sadly I didn't read forums at that time. I was getting ready to go work. I will come to server set your level at friday 02:45AM - 03:30AM UK time. 

This right here is dedication ladies and gentlemuppets

11 hours ago, Charlie said:

Some people from where I live are still missing. Poor families

I hope they will turn up fine.

It's a horrible thing, absolutely disgusting that people would target a pop concert like that. Those people have never done anything wrong and aren't involved in any political mess that some governments may have made. Psychopathic and retarded behavior like that will not benifit anyone, not even the terror groups, and I can't believe that people actually are willing to undertake actions like this.

Just a misunderstanding mate, we didn't take you admin level away! No worries, someone will set it back for you as soon as they see you on the server

On 2017-5-19 at 1:43 AM, Eagle_cz said:

R.I.P and hope we will meet again!

Hate to break it to you mate, but you probably won't!

RIP though

On 2017-5-11 at 3:44 PM, MrMuppet said:

We can delete all the history of the chat box and open it up to all forum members, we can also add this as a menu tab and allow it to open in a pop lick the original chat. I tried a shout box to run alongside the chat box but it won't post correctly.

In that case we can consider it as a temporary solution.

Emphasis on the temporary