Thought I’d share - learned how to delete PM’s on new site

[XLRATING]

There’s no “delete” button anywhere, so was lost. I then found out clicking “Leave” will let you delete the PM. Not at all what I would have expected. So, if anyone out there is as dense as me on this, I’m sharing the info.

 

[pure zen]

Thanks for sharing,,,, I have mixed thoughts about the 'new look' to XLR-NET

 

[mickeytee]

yeah me too. The old forum was much like everyone elses and easy to work with.. the new one not so much and really I am not a fan.

 

[Gord]

Not bad...just different, and with a fairly normal learning curve imho.

Rob (if you happen to read this), perhaps a forum could be added for test posts? Maybe a sandbox where people can poke around with how things work and then run a cron task to dump it say, once a week?

And maybe if someone with time could write up a single post 'how to' regarding at least all the basics like how to post, reply, attach a file, add a smiley etc?

Gord

 

[Rob]

Not bad...just different, and with a fairly normal learning curve imho.

Rob (if you happen to read this), perhaps a forum could be added for test posts? Maybe a sandbox where people can poke around with how things work and then run a cron task to dump it say, once a week?

And maybe if someone with time could write up a single post 'how to' regarding at least all the basics like how to post, reply, attach a file, add a smiley etc?

Gord

There is a Proving Grounds forum that was inside the New Member Introductions Forum. I've moved it outside and it's the the last forum listed on the bottom:

Proving Grounds

Test out the various forum features here.

www.xlr-net.com

You should see an Attach files button as well as the image button - both of which I have outlined in Red?

 

[Rob]

While I understand the look and feel is slightly different from the old forums, the functionality and capability is far greater than the old forums.

Right now, functionality may seem difficult to you because it's all new, however, the more I use these forums, there more I'm falling in love with the functionality over the old forums. They're quicker for a start. Posting responses and starting new threads are lightning fast and a lot of the changes you can make while posting are done on the fly.

The forums are now fully mobile compliant - you don't need Tapatalk now to access the forums on your phone or a tablet and the functionality was very limited using the TapaTalk app.

Now, you can add an official XLR Net app to your phone which I've explained in this thread stuck at the top of this forum:

Site Update: - Add the Cadillac XLR Forums as an App!

One of the great features of this new forum software is that you can now add the Cadillac XLR Forums to your mobile device as an App! Just pull up the Cadillac XLR Forums in your mobile browser and follow the instructions below!

www.xlr-net.com

You can also enable push notifications so that as soon as someone responds to a thread you started or a thread you're following, you'll instantly get a small notification on your phone, tablet or computer. There's a banner that floats at the bottom of all the forum pages asking you if you want to enable push notifications:

Last but not least, the forum vBulletin forum software we were using for the old forums was no longer being developed. It was extremely old and full of security holes that not only put security on my server at risk, but it also was posing security vulnerabilities to our members when they would come to the forums.

Both instances, I was not willing to sacrifice for the sake of running a software package that everyone was familiar with.

While I'm not sure what "other forums" one member was talking about, I've seen a lot of other automotive forums running the old vBulletin forum software and those forums are at risk of security vulnerabilities just as our forums were.

vBulletin did come out with their fifth generation forum software, but the layout and functionality was absolutely horrendous. When I compared the new vBulletin forum software to the XenForo software that you see here, XenForo offered much greater functionality in a much more intuitive design. The other big plus, with the XenForo software: the original developers of the vBulletin software started XenForo when Internet Brands bought out Jelsoft which built the vBulletin software. Internet Brands let the original developers go and used their own software developers. That's when the vBulletin forum software really started to go down hill and they made the decision that they were no longer going to support the version we were using here.

Believe me: I held off making the change as long as I could and it wasn't an easy decision for me because like all of you, I hate change and I like things to stay the same. However in this case, I was not willing to sacrifice the security of both my server, and your member accounts here just to keep something that everyone was familiar with.

As you know, I own and operate the Corvette Action Center and the Cadillac V-Net websites. Both of which have their own forums as well. They were using the old vBulletin forum software as were here. My confidence and comfort with this new software package grew to the point that I converted those forum sites over to this new software package as well.

So, if you're not sure how to do something here, please don't hesitate to either post in this forum, send me a private message here or use the site's contact form. As soon as you do, I'll get the notification on my phone and computer.

 

[Rob]

Also, just to give everyone a little background info and hopefully a little more understanding of why I had to install a new forum software package:

There's many layers of software packages that are needed to run a server. Forum software packages like vbulletin and this package require a programming language / software package called PHP. The server here was running PHP version 5.6. it was extremely old, and full of security holes because PHP was completely recoded into a new generation...now at PHP 7.6. Version 8.0 is right around the corner. The old PHP was several years old and shelved by the developers so that they could build the new generation of PHP. The old forums were completely incompatible with the new PHP and these forums require the new PHP.

So I had to recode the entire XLR site which you guys would never know, then upgrade the server software, and then upgrade the forum software and migrate everything over from the old forums.

Surprisingly, I do still have some hair left on my head. 😂