ACT BUS Updates

Started by Buzz Killington, December 02, 2007, 08:36:36 PM

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Buzz Killington

Apologies for the downtime over the last few days - we hit our traffic limit for the month on the 28th and so the website wasn't able to be accessed until the start of the new month (Today).

There were more images (and with higher file sizes) added to the Gallery last month, and the Wiki was reloaded with the newest software, which was no doubt what pushed us over the line. I'm hopeful it won't happen again this month.

Buzz Killington

#51
We're coming close to our bandwidth limit again guys. If you get a white screen with an error between now and 1 July, that's the reason.

While increased traffic has played a part, I think I have identified another back-end issue that is being a bit of a data hog, and have a workaround in mind.

Buzz Killington

Sorry for the downtime at the end of the month again. I think we were down over the weekend and on Monday.

I've put a few things in place to hopefully cut back on our resource usage. These won't have any impact on your usage of the site as they affect back-end processes.

Iif things don't improve our next move is to reduce the size of the Gallery. This would be achieved by identifying individual photos that have a larger than necessary size (such as a 2MB photo when a scaled down version looks just as good), and removing the photos that 'aren't that good'.

I'll post again later in the month to let you know how things are looking.

Buzz Killington

My apologies for the significant amount of July that the website was displaying the 'bandwidth exceeded' message.

We're having some back-end issues with one part of the site. I strongly suspect it's the Gallery, which we have taken offline for the moment to investigate the issue. The site will continue to have the Gallery, but there's a good chance we will be replacing the software it runs on with something a little more reliable.

I'll keep you updated, and if you're not following us on Twitter or Facebook, I strongly encourage you to do so (the links are up the very top of the page above the ACT Bus Forum logo) as these are the ways we will communicate with you in situations such as the 'Bandwidth Exceeded' one.

Buzz Killington

So, false alarm on the Gallery front. The problem was actually in the Wiki. I've updated the software and problem solved. All parts of the site are now functioning as normal and we can get back to adding content :)

smitho

Thanks to Buzz and team for persevering and finding the cause of the problem!

Busnerd

Found out last night that Bus Australia had a problem with it's wiki too causing the site to not be available, possibly exceeding bandwidth also, they have since shut their wiki down permanently i'm lead to believe.

smitho

I couldn't get in to ACT Bus on Sunday night, but I suspect that was caused by a TransACT problem....some other sites were troublesome also.

Buzz Killington

I get email alerts whenever the site goes offline for any reason, and didn't receive any on Sunday evening.


Buzz Killington

Some improvements for mobile users - the wiki and forum now autodetect mobile devices and switch to a mobile-friendly theme.

The forum version is currently on trial, and I'd appreciate any feedback on how you find it.

This now means that the website, forum and wiki have mobile versions. The Gallery will not have a mobile version at this time due to conflicts with the tagging functionality. You can also access our forum via the Tapatalk app, which can be downloaded free of charge from your app store.

Bus 503

Feedback: maybe a 'last post' section at the end of the topic bar? :D

King of Buses

Quote from: Bus 503 on March 19, 2015, 06:55:40 PM
Feedback: maybe a 'last post' section at the end of the topic bar? :D

Seconded. Or at least the green bus symbol showing if there are unread posts since last visit.

Buzz Killington

Thanks guys, I'll see what can be done. I'm not too sold on the mobile forum skin so if people prefer the standard version I'm happy to revert to that.

Bus 503

Is it just my iPad or is the forum part on the home page of ACT bus not showing?

King of Buses

Quote from: Buzz Killington on March 19, 2015, 08:45:05 PM
Thanks guys, I'll see what can be done. I'm not too sold on the mobile forum skin so if people prefer the standard version I'm happy to revert to that.

I'm in favour of reverting to the standard version. I'm not sure about everyone else though...

Buzz Killington

#65
Quote from: Bus 503 on March 20, 2015, 06:04:24 AM
Is it just my iPad or is the forum part on the home page of ACT bus not showing?

Not just you - thanks for pointing it out. I'll take a look over the weekend and see if I can fix it.

Edit: Seems to be an issue on the forum side - the feed that populates that box on the website is not functioning. I've removed the box from the website homepage for now until I can fix it.

Bus 503

#66
Quote from: King of Buses on March 20, 2015, 09:15:40 PM
I'm in favour of reverting to the standard version. I'm not sure about everyone else though...

Yep, also in favour - it gets annoying changing from the mobile to the standard version all the time!

Bus 503

#67
Recently, I've noticed a new member roaming through the threads of the forum.
His name is ACT Bus forum and rather likes advertising on everywhere he posts.  >:D

Is this just an error on my iPad or is everyone else having this 'advertising member' showing up on random threads?

(Sorry for being picky and finding errors that don't really make a problem)

King of Buses

Quote from: Bus 503 on June 29, 2015, 08:14:27 PM
Is this just an error on my iPad or is everyone else having this 'advertising member' showing up on random threads?

I've noticed this too...it isn't a member though, it is like an add on to some moderator posts as the ad post, and the post above, share the same reply number...

But only in some threads sometimes  ???

Buzz Killington

im just trialling ads in threads. They'll show up after a certain number of posts have been made in a thread. They display similarly to a normal post, attributed to the forum

Buzz Killington

Apologies for the downtime today, and the generic error message. Both of these have been sorted.

Buzz Killington

A couple of minor changes - spotting threads (AOA, what bus did you get?) have now been shifted over to the Games section.

Buzz Killington

Apologies for the downtime on the forum lately. Not too sure exactly what's causing it, but I'm looking into it.

If you do come across the error message during a weekday, the forum will generally come back online that evening. 

Buzz Killington

#73
Apologies for the forum downtime (and the ever informative white screen of death) over the last day or so. Let me know if you encounter any issues while using the forum.

Buzz Killington

Tapatalk and the forum software have been updated to the latest versions.

Sylvan Loves Buses

#75
I see the forum has had an upgrade.
May take a little while getting use to the new format though. Has anything altered or is it the same just with a different look?

Buzz Killington

Same features, new look.

The new look also scales to the size of your screen, so phone users in particular should have an improved experience.

Sylvan Loves Buses

Oh that's good, no more of posts with multiple photos on one line being pushed around. Hooray.

Sylvan Loves Buses

This new update seems to have bugged out a lot of the photos that had been uploaded over the past 2 years. I know things like that tend to expire, but it usually shows something to say that that has happened, but I was looking around some recent posts last night, and many with recent photos just have multiple paragraph spaces now.

Sylvan Loves Buses

Now that is more like it! Nice update.


Busnerd

Thanks for the feedback Sylvan, we're trying to roll out some minor updates around the place so expect a few teething issues for a week or so whilst we get everything working.

Sylvan Loves Buses

And they change colour to the ACTION livery when there's something unread, that's awesome! Love it!

Sylvan Loves Buses

#82
Did something change recently, cause I could've sworn i had more than 1 of those yellow squares below my avatar a few days ago? What do the different yellow ones indicate anyway, cause I've noticed a few other members have 2 or three?

Also, still love the Renault fronts for the read/unread indicators, but have you possibly considered doing a bunch for each section of the board? Like having the Renault's for the old bus related boards, CNG or Euro front for modern, Bustech for the more active boards, and a LR and plane front or whatever for the others. Any chances of something along those lines?

Barry Drive

Yes, I changed the squares recently. It basically represents your seniority on the forum. Once you go over 1000 posts, you'll get more squares.

As for the icons - no. The forum software only allows for "read" and "un read" icons.

Buzz Killington

#84
Hi all, we've upgraded to the newest version of the forum software. If you spot any bugs around the place, please let me know and I'll do what I can to sort them.

Tapatalk will be unavailable for now unfortunately. While the latest version of Tapatalk is apparently compatible with the new software, it definitely did not work when I installed it. I'll need some more time and testing to sort that out.

Avatars have also blanked out, so you may need to re-add those.

Most of the improvements are to the back-end, but you'll see some new features around, including two-factor login authentication, likes, and notifications.

Sylvan Loves Buses

At least for me, I set the time zone to Sydney, but it appears to be running 11 hours ahead which is rather off putting.

Barry Drive

Time display problem should now be fixed. If your time is still wrong, set your account to "Forum Default". If that still doesn't work, send me a message.

Busfanatic101

Probably not something you can change at your end, but selecting the correct word/spelling suggestion on my preferred phone keyboard no longer works. It works fine on other sites. 
The stock keyboard on my phone does work for the forum though.

Sylvan Loves Buses

#88
Accessing other areas of the site with click-able links aren't possible anymore. There was always a button to go to the gallery, wiki, actbus site etc. Obviously it can just be typed into the address bar, but I feel it's a good thing to have esp for guests.

Busfanatic101

Also noticed under profile stats, posting activity by time has AM and PM flipped around (or is out by 12h), so has me most active in the wee hours of the morning but never posted during the afternoon...

Buzz Killington

#90
Earlier in the week, our site was moved over to a new server. Unfortunately I was only notified after the fact. It appears that a full snapshot of the site on or around 15 February 2020 was the version that was migrated, meaning posts made in the last fortnight or so were not migrated across. My apologies for the inconvenience.

The Wiki and Website are both functioning reasonably well, however we ran into some issues with the Gallery, and I've had to run a fresh install. Thankfully our Gallery software stores images directly on our server rather than within a database, which meant it was easily restored. We will however need a bit of time to restore some of the custom look and functionality that our Gallery previously had.

Let me know if you encounter any unexpected error messages or problems around the place (screenshots including the page URL are great).

Sylvan Loves Buses

Nice to see another new logo, would be good to see a better font though. It wouldn't be too hard to do it in that weird old font ACTION used for their first logo?
What happened to the Renault faces that would light up? I miss those.

Buzz Killington

The ACTION font forms part of registered trademark, so we're not going to go there.

I'll add the Renault forum icons to my to-do list for the site, which is admittedly quite long at the moment.

Buzz Killington

PR100.3 and Dennis Dart SLF Manuals have been added to the website: http://actbus.net/bus-manuals/

Buzz Killington

We've moved to a new server!

Some of you may have noticed that we hit our bandwidth limit near the end of March, making the website inaccessible for a couple of days. In a bit of good timing, our current hosting plan is expiring next month, and the long weekend gave me the opportunity to move everything across to a new server. While we've been with our current hosts for nine years, the limitations to that plan meant that we were seeing downtime, and limited in our ability to expand content.

For the most part, there's no real change to the user experience, however what it does mean is:
* We now have unlimited storage - so can continue to expand the Gallery, and our timetable scans.
* We now have unlimited bandwidth - no more of those annoying outages!
* We now have https, for a more secure browsing experience™

As is often the case with these sorts of things, not everything went totally smoothly. A couple of issues to be aware of:
- The forum has moved from actbus.net/forum to forum.actbus.net (different, apparently!). This was unfortunately a side effect of the forum software not being totally compatible with some back-end settings. Rather than switch to different software, we've elected to have the forum in a 'subdomain' to keep it operating as-is.
- The current version of the Wiki software has a bug that impacts on Safari users, who will see a 'cannot parse response' error message. I'll update the software when a fix is available, but in the meantime, Apple users can get around the problem by using another browser, such as Chrome.
- Some non-essential items are currently being reloaded - Wiki categories, and images on the website articles.

If you do encounter any unexpected errors, please let me know - screenshots are helpful, otherwise the error message and what you did or what you clicked on before it appeared are good too.

Our new home is reasonably future-proofed, so hopefully we'll not need to do this again for a while. By my count, it's about our fifth move since May 2005!




Buzz Killington

Wiki issue for Safari users has been resolved.

Buzz Killington

I've been able to re-load the forum to the old URL (actbus.net/forum). An automatic redirect has been implemented for forum.actbus.net (where we've been for the last few weeks).

Let me know if you encounter any issues.

Buzz Killington

Some updates to the Timetables section, with additional timetables added from 1981 and 1982

https://www.actbus.net/category/timetables/

Buzz Killington

Around fifty timetables have been added to the 1982 collection:

https://www.actbus.net/1982-bus-timetables/