Here is a thread on which to post feedback about Liferay 7.3, the upgraded DhO platform on which the site runs. When we initially upgraded to 7.1 some years ago, it had all sorts of issues, but hopefully 7.3 will be much better. Do let us know how we can make your DhO experience better, what isn't working, what could be improved, and the like, and we will see what we can do.

Thanks for your patience and thoughts!

Daniel, second underservant to the third pot boy of the DhO

Linda adds: "Among the glitches, I have found that even though I click on "Remember me", I get logged out very rapidly and that posts written while being logged out disappear when hitting "publish". I have since long fostered the habit of copying my posts before publishing, and I find that generally to be a good habit, but if it's possible to do something about the issues with staying logged in, that would be awesome. "

If it would be possible for moderators to see on the actual forum when a post has been flagged, that would be very helpful. 

In the previous version of Liferay, finding a member in order to send a private message required knowing their original alias or screenname (which confusingly is not the alias displayed on the screen). If there will be a message function again, it would be awesome if it could work more smoothly.

Navigating on the pages is a bit confusing now. For instance, when a thread is long, it isn't possible to click on what page one wishes to go to. When one replies to a specific post, the reply shows up under the replied-to post, not at the bottom of the page. I'm fine with that, but it might take some time to get used to for those who hadn't chosen that kind of display before or weren't aware that they could choose. 

Oh, and smileys.

One thing that I've found a little confusing is that on the Recent Posts page, for each thread it doesn't show the author. It only shows the last person who replied and the avatar it shows next to the thread is also that of the last reply - and not the author's.

Made post with my notes about how site works on desktop and mobile, clicked Publish and I was taken to Discussion page...

1) Having trouble bolding font... works after a while.  The button didn't work but ctrl+b did.

2) How do I change my view?  I.e. tree view vs chronological posting view, etc

Messages doesn't work. The page does nothing and stays a blank page

When going to my Log page. it doesn't go to to the latest post(the bottom) but goes to the very first post. This is different and annoying.

  
Congrats and thanks to Daniel, Manish and all the people who have helped with this upgrade. I think it has been a pretty tough process.

Other than features likes Messages that seemed to be not functioning, these are the things that I found more problematic in my experience:

1. As mentioned by others, the appearance of posts in a thread that has a tree structure, but not in way that you could collapse/expand posts like Facebook tree structure, could be better. I would prefer the previous flat view that the latest post goes to the bottom of the page.

2. There seems to be a limit to the number of posts on a thread that is fetched each time, so for a thread with higher number of posts, when opening the thread it doesn't show all of posts, and in order to see the latest posts you have to click "More Messages" a number of time. I would prefer to have all of the post in the initial fetch when opening the page.

3. The editor seems to be pretty slow.

4. The editor doesn't have Font and Size combo boxes. Or at least I couldn't find it. I use Chrome on Mac.

5. Reply With Quote seems to be not working, which can be both good and bad, depending on the person! ;)

6. There seems to be other problems in the editor. I tested B for bold. Selected two words, made it bold, then reverted to not bold, but doing that added a new line between two words.

7. As mentioned before, it would be good to have both the Author and Latest Poster on a thread in the list of Recent Posts page.
(My guess is that this is a bug. Now in the list of threads, there is a subtext with the nickname of the latest poster, but the avatar of the thread uses latest poster's image too. That's redundant. I think it's better to have the author's image in the avatar.)

8. It would be good if we could have a theme customization for ordinary users, if there is such funtionality at all.

9. As mentioned before, emojis are not present in the editor menu. Now adding a few of them here just for test: :-) :-D ;) ;-) :namaste

10. Previously I would use Paste, then Paste and Match Style to preserve the format of the copied test. Now it seems to have a problem.
I selected the Paste menu, but it said:

Press Command+V to paste. Your browser doesn’t support pasting with the toolbar button or context menu option.Again, I use Chrome on Mac.Although I pasted the above 3 lines from Pages app, and it seems its formatting is ok, only that the space between lines is different from the default of this editor.

Thanks . 

-- Edit 1:
Now after I published the post, I noticed that copying the text from Pages to here with Command+V has not preserved its formatting. So there is a problem there.

The publish function of the editor seems to have a Retry Policy. Now while editing, after publish it gave an error saying "An unexpected error...", then the retry sent the request again, but it gave another error saying "Oops, this is taking longer than expected...". The other post that I had after the upgrade, had a similar error too. It failed after publishing, but then it did the retry itself and was posted successfuly.

-- Edit 2:
Checked now and Reply with Quote was working.

Here's some positive feedback - keep the Notifications! They're great, much better than what was called subscriptions in Liferay 6.

  Yes. The Notification section is great.
Also another positive feedback (I don't know if it was in Liferay 6 or not, I had not checked it, or hadn't seen it), when publishing a post you can set the permission of viewing the post only to the members of the site (Or the owners of the site), and that is great.

Maybe we could have a poll about some of the functionalities? I checked "My Subscriptions" tab, and it uses table format with headers to show the thread, unlike the Recent Posts which has list format. I would prefer the table format in the Recent Posts too. What about others?
  

Yes, I like the format of the subscriptions page better too and would like that to be the format used in recent posts.

Thank you, Manish, for your hard work and dedication.

One feature of the old version that I miss is the tree structure at the top of each thread. With long threads, it was nice to have a bird's eye view of the whole thread and be able to jump from post to post using the tree as navigation. Is that still available as an option in the new version?

Yeah not having a flat chronological view (or a least a tree summary) makes it hard to find if someone replies to an earlier post. (EDIT: although I see now you can find it using the Notifications function.)

I've also noticed that the editor doesn't have a Preview button.

+ for finding table format in subscriptions
It shows the same items as in my posts and I like table format better. Would be nice to have this format in recent posts if possible

also + for having posts show more or less like in previous versions.
Currently it would be completely impossible to find new post in bigger topics.

Also top black bar which has zero purpose is visible at all times in desktop mode and on phones in desktop mode.

On phones in mobile version when topic has with a lot of replies to replies actual text have something like one word per line. It makes site hard to use like that. Maybe it is possible to make text a little smaller? Or maybe when view is changed to show last posts at the end then this issue will be fixed also.

Also it seems this site is slower after the upgrade.

ps. I would also disable quick reply completely and go straight to Advanced Reply page though (or make Source mode available in quick reply mode). I find not having spell checking when writing anything that goes to internets as suicide so it is just another link to click to get to writing posts

Yeah, I find Advanced Reply much more useful too.
Previous times when I quoted a text, it didn't show the box around the quoted text, but now it shows it.

That's my experience too. First I thought it is probably because of new User Interface and probably heavier components, but sometimes it works pretty fast, and since there were timeout errors while publishing posts, probably it's because of database, not having right indexes etc, or the Liferay itself and things like cache and memory/thread management and connection pools.

Well it has the top menu button, although that menu doesn't have much function. I guess it has more usage for admins.
 

     Thank you, Daniel, for all your effort to maintain a site with the importance this site has.  The amount of knowledge on these pages has to be treasured.  For us idiots, can you get a simple "how-to" up? 
     I know that there a lot of people here for whom figuring out the navigation is easy.  Call out!  Can you help? 
     I really like the clean look of the page!

PS  Had to edit, pretty garbled result.

Oh, so that's why most of the time I can't access source code now! That's annoying. 

Also, can't post in my log now. 

I think we are actually having the usual reoccurring glitch again, of posts disappearing when hitting publish. Simon explained that to me as being due to the server being filled up with stuff, something that shouldn't happen and yet would happen now and then, and then he added an alarm system that would signal this in time. When I forwarded that information here on the forum, people said that the explanation was incorrect, so I don't know. Anyway, whatever that issue is, it seems to be back. So I don't think this is specific for this upgrade, but it still needs some attention. 

Shorts posts work, long ones not. Old reoccuring issue. 

Hi Linda,

Yepp, the server was having disk space issues again (ie. it was full).
The monitoring worked and notified me last night when i was asleep and I had time to deal with it just now.

This time it was excessive logging from the new Liferay install the filled the disk, that is being looked into.

As to people saying that the disk being full not being the cause of the posting issue well, i guess its possible its just a coincidence that the disk has run full every time this particular issue is reported to me, but it sort of doubt it

Simon

Simon, you are a hero of the sangha. Thank you for everything you do for this community.

One nitpick would probably be that the body or paragraphs should have different background colors compared to the rest since it looks just one plain white background right now. Since it would be easier to look at them in that way. BTW kudos to Manish and thanks to Simon. 

Hi,

I think i fixed the short session timeout issue (i hope).
It should be set to a week now.

Simon

For some reason my posts don't use my display name. Right now it's showing my display name doubled up because, for privacy, I changed my real first and last name to the display name. If I hadn't done this, my posts would show my real first and last names instead of my registered display name.

Here's a short public service announcement to break the Liferay tension:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNgIHT65hC4

The new design has improved quite a few things (though I do have a tenderness for the mid-00's forum aesthetic, it will be missed!).

A couple things I've noticed:

- On mobile, the "overflow-x" property scrolls visibily into whitespace for a while even though there is no content there, could likely be a quick one-line fix. 

- The post index at the top of threads is no longer there, this was a useful way to navigate conversations. 

- The header nav is crowded, the site url is displayed but doesn't have much utility in being there

- There are two search bars on the main page 

- Can we get a dark mode?  

Thankyou! I thought that might be the case exactly. I’m no programmer and no technician, but I thought to myself that the transfer probably occupies lots of space, and that the alarm might have gone off at a time when you were either busy or asleep. Thankyou for explaining it visibly too. For some reason, people seem to think I have misunderstood when I forward information about technical stuff.

Great! Thanks!

That's on old quirk of the forum. It is confusing. I think you could solve it by removing one of your names or maybe putting an initial there instead. It's still a weird setting. I don't know why it is like that. 

What is the prognosis for getting our old messages back?

At the top of every page this message is displayed (in red letters): "You do not have the roles required to access this portlet." It doesn't bother me but it could confuse someone.

Thanks, yes, that does work. But it's still curious that the screen name is ignored in favor of whatever's in the real name field(s) under Account Settings.

Also, another seeming glitch carried over from the previous Liferay version is that I don't receive email notifications to things I've selected getting notifications for.

<br /><br />Seconded!

Hm, I've got to say, that was a short week... I got logged out again. With the previous version, I barely ever needed to log in. It remembered me. 

Mine also keeps logging me out on both my phone (iOs 14.3) and my laptop (Safari on macOS Mojave)

So probably that means this is an issue on Safari, on iPhone iPad and any iDevice. So maybe try on another browser and see what happens?

IMO, long running threads on forums are only useful if you can quickly see the most recent posts. Or exclude the posts you have read already. Or... something. These aren't new ideas, we could do that back in the stone age of usenet.

The site is barely usable now. It wasn't exactly great before. I suspect the UI is even worse on mobile. 

Previously, posts were marked with the creation date; now we have this less intuitive "modified X days ago" tag. I suppose they are equivalent, but it will take some adjustment.

I got signed out on the Chrome browser too... so it might not just be a Safari or Apple thing.

Thanks for all the big work with the upgrade.

There might be something wrong with the search function. I happened to find that out because I did a search a few days before the upgrade (for Mantak Chia), got a whole list of hits, didn't get through them all, and hence I did the search again, just now, and now there was only one hit. I couldn't remember if I had used "mantak", "Mantak", "chia" or "Chia", so I tried all of these, but never got more than one hit. So either some old threads have disappeared, or there is a bug in the search function.

Has anybody else had a similar experience?

I just tested your search right now. There are two search boxes, one above the message board which showed only one result other than this thread itself, but the search box at the top of the page showed many other results. I opened some of them, but they didn't have those terms, mantak.. . Maybe there is some change in the logic of the search function in new Liferay? 

+1 on these and I'd like to add that I wonder if it would be possible to add a darker theme perhaps. I'm all but feeling snowblind now... >_<

Is messaging still not working or am I missing something?

Is messaging still not working or am I missing something?

The search system has been funky as long as I have been here, but that sounds like it might have gotten even worse. Ouch. 

It seems to be somewhat easier to search for members now than before, though. That might come in handy once the message function is in place. After a while there are zero hits, though, but if I back out of it and then return to that part again, it works again. 

I notice that I'm clinging to the old look of the forum. This is very... uncool. 

Lot's of disorientation and confusing experiences in the new forum.
 
Somehow clicking in a forum discussion thread brings me to the following page:

https://www.dharmaoverground.org/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Copy/FrontPage?p_r_p_http%3A%2F%2Fwww.liferay.com%2Fpublic-render-parameters%2Fwiki_nodeName=Copy&p_r_p_http%3A%2F%2Fwww.liferay.com%2Fpublic-render-parameters%2Fwiki_title=FrontPage


6 Great Things About Spring And DatingSeduction is ManipulationCrafting a Nickname that will Help in the Dating GameTexting Rules in Online and Offline DatingWho Pays For The Date?Sometimes I Lie. But it's for everyone's benefitI'm Doomed Never To Exercise So I Guess I'd Better Have a Mars BarOpen Heart | Open Mind | Happy LifeDelaware Girls Night OutAsian BackpageThis is Turning Into a Delaware BitchathonGet Your Hands DirtyFalling in Love? How and Why to Take it SlowWomen Love A HunterGolden Dating RuleA Little Flirting Goes A Long WayRomega LoveawakeThere is no life without romantic relationshipDon't Compete with Your FriendsJust so that I get to dispel any unnecessary potential excitement caused by a lack of blog post, where some may think that I have popped the bambino...I haven't. I can barely believe after all the predictions of the bambino arriving early because of my size of bump, small frame and pre-labour pains (everyone else's words)...I'm now two days overdue. When I say I was inundated with messages and calls on my due date (the 18th), I kid you not. The phone started ringing at 7am - Have I mentioned that I'm a grumpy bitch first thing in the morning? The boyf, who already gets twitchy whenever the phone rings, was still answering calls and messages late into Friday night and the snowball continues...

Private messaging doesn't work.

For the benefit of tech support angels ... 

A longish post got zapped, reason being that i'd got logged out due to a ripple in spacetime i expect.
That's one way it can happen.

Good job i'd taken a copy ;-)

Question - was the Notifications widget/portlet in the top right-hand corner of each page removed intentionally or by accident? Can we please get it back?

Thanks!

Could we also please get back the log in function in that same corner? Thankfully I found another possibility for logging in at the home page, but that's unneccesarily complicated. 

Thank you, someone, for bringing Notifications back!

<bows>

I did it, just in case anyone wants to know.

Thankyou someone for bringing back the log-in button! (I did not do it, in case anyone wants to know ).

And for adding some color! 

That was what I was confessing to - background color. I added it yesterday morning. I think it makes things just a little bit more readable, but others may disagree.

My eyes(and I) are thanking you!

Also there seems to be a message up there saying  "You do not have the roles required to access this portlet." in red. What could that possibly mean ?  

Ah,I see! Thankyou! I find that it helps a lot.

I get spitted out from the forum rapidly again (too short sessions). I'm grateful thay I did copy my log post before trying to post it. 

And Chris, in case you don't check the "reply too" posts back in the feed, I'm also grateful that you added the color, because I find that it helps a lot. 

It means that you have been logged out, I think.

Thanks!

I'm going to spend some time today figuring out if I can get rid of the comment limit on topics - in other words, to get rid of the "More Messages" alert.

That would be wonderful. 

Hey, sorry about the recent DhO server glitch just a few minutes ago: that was me upgrading the Hetzner server to 8 virtual cores from 4 and to 32GB of RAM. Hopefully, this will make the place a bit more snappy. If it doesn't, will consider upgrading further, perhaps to dedicated cores/server and also looking at things that could be slowing it down.

I note a very much faster, snappier forum this morning. Thanks for the hardware upgrades, Daniel.

Yep! Just 3 seconds delay to refresh the page. My thanks too. 

Noted Linda , thanks ! 

Messages are back to taking an inordinate amount of time to post. It feels like there's an accumulation of crap (log files?) that is gumming up the system over time.

Also, are there any plans to re-install the capabilities that DhO used to have, like private messages, a choice of message board views (flat, tree, combined view)? Is there any way to get some kind of regular updates on what those plans are and how they might be implemented?

While I imagine the DhO will muddle along as is, it would be nice to feel loved and invested in as a community.

Thank you for listening.

Best is to accept things as they are they might eventually pass away. Most stuff does eventhough some seem to last longer than others. 
Seems like DhO doesn't feel like going on. Maybe bad case of re-observation? As long it doesn't roll up the mat. 

Someone is playing with the message board formats, so it is impermanent. The "Notifications" link is now gone again, and someone has managed to place a shopping cart in its place. I have no idea what "Select Account & Order" means. Here's the new menu at the top right:
​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​I found Notifications in the far lower-left corner of the interface, in a pop-up menu that appears when I mouse over my avatar there:

​​​​​​​

The site is pretty much unusable on my iphone at the moment.

Using ios14 with chrome or safari. Half the links don't work, nor the beloved 'More Messages' button. Even if they do work, half the time you have to refresh the page to get them to work. The vertical '...' buttons (eg for replying with quote) don't work. If you try to select text to copy, the selected section is totally off, way up in the right hand corner. If you click out of your post you can't click back in (hence first version of this lost). Didn't try my PC. Feel like floating off into space to join terry. 

Copying post to clipboard before clicking publish when writing posts is a must on this version of site.
Previously issues like loosing post were very rare and now it is the norm.

Well, at the very least using this site it is a good excercise/verification for stoic unbothered state of mind.

Hey, that was my fault, accidentally switched themes while trying to install the custom PM and logo portlets, didn't realize I hit it. It should be back now. Apologies!

Yes, it's back - thanks!

I find that the most challenging drawback of the current interface is the lack of dates and times for posts. In my log I have been relying on that to be automatic. Thus I haven't written the dates and times. Now they are all gone. Can we get them back please, if that's possible? I can wait, but it would be a relief to know that they will be back, if that's an option. 

I knew it, whether there is Liferay people think about relief!

It really unfortunate date/time display is gone. Though general notification about how long ago post was made is useful also, especially with current unchangeable posting structure (BTW. imho time format is also set in stone along the nice and very useful black bar at the top ;) ). Imho showing date when hovering mouse pointer over a time text (instead of repeating he same text which is pointless) would be sufficient for occasional checks.

Is it just me or that recent posts has changed and that it only contains one page? and that when you check the recent posts of profiles it only shows very recent postings not all of the things posted by the person? 

Yes Josef, only the last sixteen posts appear today...
I'm sure some selfless ants are working working on this

A big thanks to them and metta to all
smiling stone

Its my third time trying to reply hopefully this time it will be posted .My thanks to all who manage this website  

Only being able to see the last 15 posts means a lot of threads are going to get missed by people who don't visit the site every day. 

Ok, its just been mentioned by the last few posters. Yes, the Recent Changes page shows only 15 entries. This is a showstopper.

I changed the settings for the "Recent Posts" page just now. The number of posts shown is determined by how many previous days' posts are to be shown when a user comes to this page. It was, for some reason, set to 24 hours, or basically one day. I reset it to 7 days, so users will find a week's worth of recent posts listed when they come to this page.

Chris Marti
​​​​​​​DhO Moderator

Thank you, thank you Chris!

Yep, thank you, Chris !
A question : is it limited to 7 days ? I ask because, on the former version of dho, you could access the whole chronogical history from the forum starting on last page of recent posts... A few years ago, I did just that (starting at page 482 or something) and went up to page 252 (or something!) going deeper into each thread which felt interesting to me at that time (that changes!). So I still have a bit to go to get the "complete" picture...

Anyway, that's better already
with metta
smiling stone

Thanks Chris! 

Ok I understood : it is because we are stuck on page 1, the arrows to go to next page (to navigate the recent posts) does not work...
That's what needs fixing, beyond Chris intelligent move!

The Recent Posts upper limit is 365 days. There's no "unlimited" setting that I see. So yes, I just set this page to its uppoer limit to show one year's pervious posts.

Hiya Chris:- I saw your confused response to my one word post on my log, so I thought I'd explain what I'm doing because I'm sure other people have the same issue. 

Since the "upgrade" we all have issues with losing longer posts when you hit publish, but you can no longer save a post as draft until you've published it first! Also the publish time has gone back up to a nail biting 60 seconds.

I know you can use a text editor and copy/paste, but that's clunky on the phone (which I mostly use) and messes up the formatting and is impossible with quotes. You can try periodically selecting the text in the DhO editor and copying it to save it on the clipboard, but as the post gets longer it becomes fiendishly difficult on the phone to select all the text. And then one wrong swipe and the browser refreshes and you've lost your latest changes. 

So what I do for longer posts is type a few words, publish, hope no one sees, quickly hit edit and then keep saving as draft. 

I hope Daniel is reading, because while I love this forum and am very grateful for everything he and the volunteers do to keep it running, I feel sad that it's become so much harder to use and it probably deters people from using it as much as they would otherwise. 

I agree, and I had already sent Daniel Ingram an e-mail this morning about several issues related to the performance and utility of the new Liferay 7 version of DhO.

Me too

Hello! A small nitpick would be is that whenever I try to use an emoji either by my phone or copying it online what ends up happening is that my comment would not be posted and that I would be sent to the home page. I have tried to comment on this with an emoji but it didnt work. Its just that its a waste for the whole comment to be lost and not posted just because of an emoji. Maybe it is time to switch to a different platform as discussed by Daniel and others in an earlier post . Thanks  to the admin and moderator!  

Want to know what I resort to with emojis? (and this is really a sad testament to my dependence on the little blighters) I have a special draft thread called Emojis with them all saved (copied one by one as people use them). It's always open in a separate tab on my phone, ready to copy/paste whenever I need a hit. There, I've admitted it! 

Actually for some reason my account never had an emojis button in the editor, whatever device I was using, so I've always had to do this. The things we suffer for the dharma ... ​​​​​​​

If only I had the eloquence of Tim and could kick the habit. 

Thanks Chris, it's much better... Now there are 18 pages of 60 recent posts, it gives quite a bit to explore when you come back from a long vacation!
And thanks again for doing your very best to have this function at its best...

Something I do when I paste from a word document : ctrl shift v
It pastes as source, respecting the paragraphs and stuff (like on the old liferay)
Highly recommended

And if I write directly on the forum (it happens), I copy the text (ctrl c) before I publish, or even after if it takes a while (it's possible). So I can paste it somewhere in case there's a problem...

I am having trouble finding a way to go directly to the last post of a thread. Is there a way to do it? All I get is a button for "more messages" at the bottom of the page. And I don't see how to change the view from threaded to flat etc. I'm using opera browser on windows 10.


Thanks

Abandon all hope
Liferay 7 is social experiment to check how terrible website can get before users will start throwing keyboards or mobile phones out the window

Yes.

Daniel Ingram. Paging Daniel Ingram.

What's the scoop on improving the user experience?

- posting limits removed for topics
- no private messaging available
- posts that go missing once the "Submit" button is pressed
- time/date stamps on message board posts
- optional flat, hierarchical, and combined message board views

Yes, please, could we get an update? I'm finding the interface overwhelming, and I'm supposed to be a moderator here. Everything I try to do here involves too many steps for my executive functioning. 

@Jim, not a perfect solution but as a workaround you can hit END or CTRL+END on windows to scroll to the bottom of the page.
You will have to do it twice, once to get to 'More Messages' and once after that.

On Mac it's Apple+Down Arrow.

@Jim, not a perfect solution but as a workaround you can hit END or CTRL+END on windows to scroll to the bottom of the page.
You will have to do it twice, once to get to 'More Messages' and once after that.

On Mac it's Apple+Down Arrow.

Friendly reminder to be careful about posting any personal information such as email addresses here, also wary of shared passwords, it seems the site still may be compromised because I've noticed a few bot/spam posts over the past week.