New Discussion forum

L1: New Discussion forumI have spent the last few days re-writing the discussion forum. While it is not 100% complete (or error free) you can see the preliminary version by selecting [Home][New Forum] from the left menu. The new forum appears to be faster than the current version as it uses more recent technology. Some of the new features include…

The “List of Posts” page includes a new page control to move to older posts. On this page, the first 350 characters of the post appear – clicking on the [View Details] link will take you to the “Details” page which contains the full post and all associated replies.
Links in the emails should take you to the page with the initial post and then automatically scroll down to the actual message that was linked in the email.
The ability to Reply to a Reply – all replies are indented from and appear immediately below the post to which the reply belongs.
The Date/Time associated with posts and replies is color coded to show age – the legend appears at the bottom of the page.
The RSS Feed on the “List of Posts” page shows chronological order based on date with the oldest post/reply appearing first.

Any posts that you make to the new forum will not appear in the current forum – the new forum is all test data which is made up of posts made prior to last week.

When the new forum is released, all previous posts and replies will be transferred to the new forum – no data will be lost.

Like the previous forum, you have the ability to edit your message as long as you initially entered a password and you re-enter the same password. Using your password, you can also delete your post as long as there are no replies that have been made. Once a reply has been made, the post may no longer be deleted.

I have increased session timeout has been increased to 60 minutes. However, the 60 minutes is only an estimate. Sessions depend on memory on the server and as the server gets more traffic, the actual session time may be less. If you are going to take a long time to construct your post or reply, I suggest that you create if off line and then paste it to the page used for new posts and replies – just like I did for this post.
Gfw2008-12-18 04:31, By: Gfw, IP: [216.80.125.206]

L2: New Discussion forumWOW !!! That’s awesome. And it only took you a “few days”. Even more impressive. Thanks for all of your hard work.But, your clock is 3 hours slow for us on the East Coast. I replied at 9:36 a.m, but it shows as 6:36 a.m. Impossible. I never get up that early.2008-12-18 06:36, By: dlzallestaxes, IP: [96.245.168.66]

L3: New Discussion forumdlzallestaxes… the clock is set for server time which I believe is Pacific Standard – one of the next things we plan on doing is converting all the dates toUTC [Coordinated Universal Time] for standardization, but it willprobably not reflect your local time zone.2008-12-19 08:44, By: Gfw, IP: [216.80.125.206]

L2: New Discussion forumThe new discussion forum has been activated – with anything new, there could still be a few bugs to work out -if you find any, please let me know.2008-12-19 08:41, By: Gfw, IP: [216.80.125.206]

L2: New Discussion forumWe are converting all dates to UTC [Universal Coordinated Time] for all posts madeon or after 12/21/09 at9:30AM CT.Posts made prior to the indicated time willnot have proper times associated with the post.Not the best solution, but the only one readily available right now.2008-12-21 16:10, By: Gfw, IP: [216.80.125.206]

L3: New Discussion forumConverting to UTC or GMT (Greemwich Mean Time) for all dates and posting is a good, logical change. But from what I have seen it seems that you have not made a complete conversion, which I suggest you go all the way.1. Convert to the “24-hour clock” format and be sure to identify the time as either UTC or GMT. For example, current time is 1:38 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST)which is 6:38 PM UTC / GMT. Changing the format to the 24-hour clock will have a current time 1338 EST or 1838 UTC / GMT. With this format you can eliminate the “:” between sections of time and it flows much better. 2. Include a small chartso people canconvert the displayed UTC / GMT to local time. US time zones range from 5-hours Standard Time / 4-hours Daylight Time behind or “slower than”UTC / GMTon the East coast to 10-hours Standard Time / 9-hours Daylight Time in Hawaii. Simply read the UTC / GMT time displayed on the post and thensubtract the appropriate time zone difference and you will have local time. People who live outside the Continential United States (CONUS) already know how to use UTC / GMT.I’ll be happy to help design a chart to post.Jim2008-12-22 18:54, By: Jim, IP: [70.167.81.119]

L4: New Discussion forumI have converted displayed time to a 24 hour clock. I did leave theHH:mm format as it is more consistent with hour:minute displays and also makes it easier to read.Rather than a chart, I decided to merely grab the time from the client browser and display both thebrowser time and UTC offset. Something like…

Your Time: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:25:44 UTC, Your Offset UTC-6
The date format is a standard JavacriptUTC time format. This should also eliminate the need for a table of offsets.2008-12-23 12:36, By: Gfw, IP: [216.80.125.206]