Forum announcements

Problems with posting using huge messages resolved

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 16:55:48 +0000

During the past couple of weeks, we have experienced some problems on our servers when users have tried to post huge (>20kb) messages to our discussion forums. These issues have been apparent especially with HjT logs and other log posts.

Now, we believe that these problems have been resolved. As an added bonus, posting of even smaller forum messages such be significantly faster now, too.

However, if you experience problems, please contact us directly via our...

Problems with posting using huge messages resolved

User profile section closed

invalid@example.com (Ketola) — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 14:15:57 +0000

As many of you may have already noticed, the Profiles section (aka my.afterdawn.com) has been slowly phased out for the past couple of months. The section has only been accessible to users who have been logged in to the site.

We have now removed link to the section from the topmost navigation element of the site as well. There will be an option for existing My-users for taking out their content from My in the near future.

Along with profiles, links to the...

User profile section closed

Welcome to the new AfterDawn discussion forums!

invalid@example.com (Ketola) — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 08:49:23 +0000

Having served us for over 13 years we have today retired our old discussion forums engine for good. The forums were built in-house by us at AfterDawn, but keeping the forum engine maintained and fresh was too much for our small development team. The forums are now running on XenForo, developed by XenForo Ltd. We have been working on the migration for months to make sure everything works as smoothly as possible the day we launch (today, yay!), but there are...

Welcome to the new AfterDawn discussion forums!

Discussion forum updates

invalid@example.com (Ketola) — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 14:33:03 +0000

This message and thread will contain major (and sometimes minor) updates and patches to the forums. If you encounter problems that you believe is related to the update, feel free to post to this thread.

Update 2014-10-30

The discussion forum engine (XenForo) has been updated to the latest 1.4.2 version. This update mostly patches found bugs, the list of which you can find below.

Minor improvements:

The IP of the user submitting a "Contact Us" form is now...

Discussion forum updates

New members can no longer post links

invalid@example.com (Ketola) — Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:28:24 +0000

In order to try and reduce the amount of spam we've changed the way new users can post to the forums. This change has been suggested by several members. While its effectiveness remains to be seen, we hope it discourages spammers from posting here.

99% of spam is already filtered successfully. It is, however, nearly impossible to filter out non-automatic spam that is written by people who register to the forums, activate their account, pass anti-spam detectors and write the spam by hand....

New members can no longer post links

Reorganizing the forum rooms - thoughts?

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 16:11:35 +0000

As we have finally switched to xenForo, I think it is time for us to reorganize our forum rooms, too.

I personally feel that we should reduce the number of forum rooms significantly. We currently have 71 open forum rooms and I'm thinking about reducing that down to 25.

Our old strongholds, like digital video, have become much less important in modern world, where video editing and encoding has become a niche hobby and there's very few posts going to those areas. Merging all or most...

Reorganizing the forum rooms - thoughts?

Javascript libraries updated - please report problems here

invalid@example.com (Ketola) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:03:45 +0000

We have just updated some of the JavaScript libraries to more recent builds. More specifically jQuery was updated from 1.3.x to 1.4.2 and jQuery UI from 1.7.x to 1.8.4. Also some other components, such as Fancybox, were updated.

If you encounter any JavaScript-related problems with the site, please report them here. Problems can appear as errors or incorrect/changed behavior.

Issues with character encodings fixed

invalid@example.com (Ketola) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:52:21 +0000

There has been a persistent issue with our servers ever since we moved to a new server layout and app server. Several characters were handled incorrectly, and translated into question marks.

This problem should now finally be fixed, and special characters should show up correctly.

Feel free to test here and report in case you run into problems!

€ euro
♫...

Issues with character encodings fixed

First glimpse of upcoming AfterDawn layout / "v4"

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:22:57 +0000

For those of you who are interested to see how the upcoming AfterDawn.com will look like, you can test our v4 software section here:

http://www.v4.afterdawn.com/software/

Header/footer and overall structure of the software section will also be the basis for other AfterDawn sections. "v4" is not just a layout redesign, it means also a complete rewrite of our site's code and rethinking many of the site's features and usability issues.

First glimpse of upcoming AfterDawn layout / "v4"

Changes to the way images are displayed at forum threads

invalid@example.com (Ketola) — Tue, 17 May 2011 17:36:30 +0000

We have changed the way images are loaded on some of the "image heavy" pages at AfterDawn. A good example of this is the Desktop pics forum thread. Slow loading pictures in posts or signatures can cause some forum pages to load very sluggishly. Now, after the recent change, all the images in the all posts are loaded "lazily", i.e. when they are scrolled to view. When you view posts you'll see placeholder images such as this:...

Changes to the way images are displayed at forum threads

Spanish AfterDawn project needs YOU!

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:33:43 +0000

Do you speak and write fluent Spanish (preferrably your native language is Spanish)?

If so, send us a feedback and your contact details via our contact form -- we need volunteers to translate the site to Spanish. The project will begin soon and we want to get this done rather quickly. There's about thousand lines of terms and phrases that need to be translated from English to Spanish.

AfterDawn redesign - public alpha

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:37:56 +0000

Our "v4" redesign project is approaching its final stages. In case you want to test it now and share your thoughts with us (and let us know of the bugs you might find..), here's the URL:

http://www.v4.afterdawn.com/

Please note that the "Compare products" section is still MIA - it should go online by Monday. Bear in mind that it is still an alpha - all bugs, 404s and hiccups should be reported to us.

Thoughts?

P.S. Site is slower than current version as it runs...

AfterDawn redesign - public alpha

New forum room opened for external media players

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:44:54 +0000

...aka media tanks. You can find it here:

http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/247

Feel free to post your questions regarding WD HD TV, Linksys players, Popcorn Hour, Elektron, Egreat, etc to this forum room. After all, nowadays such devices cost around hundred bucks and can make your HTPC pretty much obsolete when it comes to video playback

New forum room opened for external media players

Experimental change to forums' URL structure

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:13:36 +0000

Some of you might have noticed that new discussion threads now use different URL scheme than the old threads. Old forum threads use this URL schema:

Code:

/thread_view.cfm/123456

Code:

/thread_view.cfm/2/123456

(123456 being the thread's id number and in latter one, page number being 2..)

..and the new ones are in this format:

Code:

/t.cfm/f-123/thread_title_here-123456/

Code:

/t.cfm/f-123/thread_title_here-123456/2

So, the URL now...

Experimental change to forums' URL structure

Minor update to forums: "Link to this message" quick link added

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:41:22 +0000

Now on top of each message, there's a link that can be used as a copy/paste link to link directly to a particular forum post, rather than linking to the whole thread or a specific page of a thread.

Some performance improvements made to forum code

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:24:50 +0000

I made couple of changes to the forum code couple of minutes ago that should improve the response times of the forums in certain cases:

-you're logged in and are browsing a thread you've subscribed to

-replying to an existing thread should "process" the message much, much faster now

-when you click a thread link in an email sent to you by our notification system, the thread should appear bit faster to your screen

...these changes wont affect the speed the forums function...

Some performance improvements made to forum code

Over one million posts...

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:30:22 +0000

Last night our forums reached yet another milestone -- now, when all of our forums are combined, we have over 1,000,000 posts in our message boards. This includes 200,000+ posts in our Finnish forums, ~700,000 posts in our English forums and appx. 100,000 posts in our DVD X Copy support forums.

I'd wish to thank all of our users for making our forums one of the largest in the world!

Thanks For Everything aldaco12

invalid@example.com (vurbal) — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:10:47 +0000

Since one of our long time moderators, aldaco12, has decided to step down I'd like to show my appreciation for everything he's done for Afterdawn. He's knowledgeable, helpful, polite, and generally a great asset to the site. No matter how many new mods we get we won't replace him.

So thanks aldaco12 and I hope you'll have a little time to stop by once in a while.

Small changes to the forum engine

invalid@example.com (dRD) — Mon, 12 May 2008 01:20:37 +0000

Made couple of cosmetic changes to our discussion forums today:

-now the "crumbtrail" is visible also at the bottom of the page

-now the threads that have more than one page, will also include "next" and "previous" buttons to ease the navigation

-now admins and mods can add "sticky notes" to specific discussion threads. This will be done only in very, very specific threads where certain further instruction related to posting new messages to the thread, etc is needed.

Forums now show a "Processing message" dialog after posting

invalid@example.com (Ketola) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:03:54 +0000

Forums now show a "Processing message" dialog after posting. This is to avoid accidental duplicate posts.

The message disappears automatically after the post has been processed and submitted. If you experience problems with the message, please post here. Also please let me know the browser type and version you are using as well as your your operating system and version.