Ok what with this major fiasco! I even lost me list! Ye gads, ok if you know of anything that needs fixing or adding or suggesting then please post it here in detail. I'll come along and update the list as I work through it.

Tengu requested a recipe section under articles Done

Tengu requested a Fanfic section seperate to articles. Done

Create a special chat link that opens a new window - requested by Lyon Done

Find a better chat program with sounds and stuff - requested by Imi Done

Fix battle damage for the RPG system Done

Add an alert sound for PMs - for Cricket Done

Hmmm....undisable chat? And I swear if you already have I'm gonna...well you'll find out.

Ok found the error. If for any reason you decide to change your password for your chat account you will need to clear your cookies in order to log back in otherwise you will be unable too. Chat is now enabled - requested by Elvin Done

Add: Cep take a well-earned rest and enjoy RL.

Will we get back the lost posts or should we just repost?

Just repost those lost ones are gone, sorry. hehe cricket!

1. Time of posts on the entry page is time zone American / Canadian west coast. Time zone on the forums pages (yep, started at the top level forums page and worked down, and it's consistent) is London or UTC / GMT. Sorta confusing. Be nice if it was consistent. Suggest use UTC or London time every where. I don't think it's necessary to translate to "user" time. - From Cricket Done

2. New Posts on the Forums page still lists all the forums, rather than just things that have changed since the last visit. Last 24 hours works pretty well (unless I take a weekend off, but it's really not that hard to work through the important boards.) - From Cricket It was a bug in the php & template code fixed it now Done

3. Private Messages cannot be accessed from the main screen. Not a big deal, really -- just have to remember to go to the forums or User CP, but it took me a while to remember that. - From Cricket I don't understand this request hun? You can access your pm's from the main page quite easily, look at piccie. Done

New memberships proposals are up and the modifications to the arcade and forums are also set up. As you are all hopefully aware from your recent newsletter. Done

Meant the main entry site, cr_portal.php, that you get when you first log in. But, it's not a biggie. Really, it isn't. Your day off takes priority. Cricket

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/ Cheers! Cricket

Thanks for the separate Recipes and Fanfic articles

oo! Thanks Cricket! Hehe no probs Tengu

Times of posts on portal page and forums page still in different time zones.

`Members` in different time zones... You should do something about that, Cep.

I dunno...it's fun for my posts to be listed as written tomorrow. ^_^

I don't get exactly what you want me to do. If I set it to my timezone surely those in the other will complain.

You have to move us all into the same time zone so that we won't be missing each other in chat all the time. Personally I think all those of you outside the UK should move to BST, since I don't adapt well to clock changes.

Nor me. Who was that guy who found London time dont work, so he switched to his Childhood Calcutta time? I have my own time zone...Random.

I mean that Tengu's post, talking about the guy in Calcutta, is listed as being posted at 19:46, at least according to the actual post, and the Forums index page. But on the portal page, http://www.gatchamania.net/cr_portal.php, it's listed as 11:46. I posted a few minutes ago in the IF. That post was 20:05 according to the actual post, and 12:05 on the portal page. 15:05 by the clock on my wall, but that's irrelevant. I really don't care if it's Southern Ontario time zone or not; I'd be surprised if it were. I'd be fine with Marian time, or anything else. But it would make it faster to check the boards, especially on a day when several of us are posting at once, if I can say "as of xx:xx I was up to date", and not have to convert when I go between pages. Cricket

Well I'll sort it so everything is GMT....ish....

Fix chat Please?

Whats wrong with chat?

Yep, back in KKK chat at the moment.

it crashed ant wont let me in *pouts* can only get in KKK

Ok I'm scrubbing this chat its really poorly designed and doesnt appear to have been fixed by our host so screw it. Php chat will return in its place whilst I look for a better package.

well I got into the old chat so will have to just remember to keep watch. lol

One thing I have noticed is the times on the shouts are different from the rest of the board. Can they be synchronised too?

yes they will be Cricket already mentioned this.

*pats Cep on head* There, there...don't worry about it. Work on one thing at a time. Don't want your brain to pop from overworking it, eh? Kind of messy to have your brain in glops all around the computer. You wouldn't *believe* how brain gunks up a keyboard. Terribly sticky. All-in-all pretty inconvenient, so don't stress yourself out, ok?

I'll try

You're doing a sterling job Cep, sorry if I/we seem to have been moaning a lot. This version of the forum has bags of extra features which are fantastic (love the ability to upload pictures, do funny things with my user name and earn virtual money!), it's just the little niggly things that would make it perfect.

*huggles Cep* You are a very good admin. I agree with Meridian the new board is wonderful it is the niggly things that spoil it but I am certain you will have those all sorted out in no time. We all appreciate your hard work

Yay!

Hey, Cep... On the old forum we used to be able to request email notification when there was a new post in a thread we had participated in. Does that option exist on this board? I looked but couldn't find anything. Lemme know... Thanks!

Yes we do its on the main reply form as one of the tick boxes

Ah, thanks, I see it. I thought I remembered it being in the profile choices on the old board...then again, it might have been where it is now, only checked as a default.

Fixed links for the RPG CP so that all related items will link back to their parent. Done

Have you fixed the "expand" links in the itemshop?

Theres nothing wrong with the expand links.

You've fixed them then They were pointing to http://itemshop.php/somethingorother

Ah Well Cricket baby your wish is nowfulfilled!

Wheee!! I worship the ground you walk on, and now have more time to make sure I don't step in

Fix the arcades leader board quotes. Done

Will be upgrading the RPG system to the new version (which I beta tested for the author ) Done

Cep, Any chance you can update the lottery ticket so that you can choose how many you want to buy?

Could try but I dunno, we'll see

Thank you!

Ok well that didn't work.

I will recode the site to xhtml so its a little more friendly to mozilla (though this will take months!) Done LOL I did this already

Gleee!

Cep: a question: What's with the mega-huge cookies? What benefit are they to us, the users? How easy would it be to make it so we could use this site with all the "safeties" turned on -- as in, if we have Java and JavaScript turned off, we can still read the forums and post. I'm willing to do without some of the eye candy if I can keep my machine safer, and spead downloads. What percentage of the "time from clicking on link to actually seeing it" is taken by: cookie transfer all the pictures (much as I love them, but...) the actual content -- the text whatever else this almost-computer-literate person didn't know exists Thanks, Cricket

Not quite sure hun, to be honest I don't get them But if your getting dodgy cookies I think the culprit is the archive site to be honest. I remember MD and FB saying they had to delete their cookies each time they visited the old site and came back here. I can take a look at them if you can zip em up for me. Safeties turned on? If you have Java turned off, you won't be able to run any of the Java commands on the site hun and althought the site is mostly php driven it needs Java to...stick it together if you understand me. I think the main site problem is perhaps the design and the html 4.0 its based on. The time it takes for your computer to access the server is the key thing, the server response should be less then 0.0044 seconds for everything you mentioned, then its up to your computer to download the stuff and this can perhaps take 60 seconds if there are very large uncached images but on average should only be 7.505 seconds uncached if its just regular images. Its more to do with your connection to and from, the server is actually quite fast but they have had performance issues over the past 2 months when I checked the logs, which they are aware of. Most images should be on your computer, the cookies as far as I know only contain, log in details and site preferences. Your last viewed and visited information is contained in the database serverside as well as any other information regarding your account like PMs etc.

7.5 seconds to download a page. What speed would this be at? Java to stick it together. Do you mean Java, or JavaScript, those being two very different things, despite the similarities in the name. What does it need Java for? As in, what parts of the full experience would I miss if I turned Java off? Or is that likely to be a long reply? Hmmm, I'm gonna log out and test that last one for myself. Toodles.

Well, I'm on ubersafe now -- no Java. No JavaScript. Everything as safe as I could set it, except for cookies, which go back to originating website only. Seems I can read and use quickreply. But can't access the smilies.

So, would the person I was chatting with yesterday, who said she couldn't access the site without Java, please confirm?

Why do we need to set up Gatchamania as a trusted site? Is that because of the java?

Originally posted by CricketBeautiful 7.5 seconds to download a page. What speed would this be at? Java to stick it together. Do you mean Java, or JavaScript, those being two very different things, despite the similarities in the name. What does it need Java for? As in, what parts of the full experience would I miss if I turned Java off? Or is that likely to be a long reply? Hmmm, I'm gonna log out and test that last one for myself. Toodles.

Well if you consider the amount of data you download in the time taken, that is your speed. If you want the official name its the Baud rate. Java is a programming language and has virtually nothing to do with Internet applications so in all eventuality, yes it is Java script but because you can only use Javascript on the net most people just call it Java. If you try to access this site without java enabled your not just missing out on the clock applet at the start of the site. All the bbcodes, form controls and some of the more unnoticable elements of the site design won't work, which you do need in places. It would be interesting to know just how much you can do in your test.

Meridian my sweet, you only need it set to trusted if you are not sure how to configure your browser. I thinks its perhaps one of the easier things to do to be honest with you as it means your security settings are not changed on the whole by your browser. Therefore when you visit other sites you should be secure and when you visit this site your browser will know not to be so enforcing.

Re speed: Yes, I know about Baud rate and bandwidth and such. I'm a licenced Professional Engineer, married to a senior programmer. And many of the people here are programmers themselves. What I'm asking is at which Baud rate does it take, on average, 7.5 seconds? Or, how long does it take for most people to download a typical page given the access that they have? And is it unreasonably long? I know my parents, on dial-up, would quit this group in seconds because of the time it takes. I'll keep you updated with my test results, through PM or chat.

oh lol sorry misunderstood you, 56k 57600 BR

Cep, I owe you an apology. I try and include enough background tech info so that the non-techies can follow the conversation, but then think you're being condescending to me when you do the same. So, sorry. I'll try and keep my ego out of this. 7.5 seconds on a low-end modem is annoying, but not entirely unreasonable. Is there any way I can test how much of the delay is the downloading, and how much is virus / firewall, and how much is the browser rendering it? Cheers!

Next item on your todo list (to be put in whatever location on that list that suits): On the "active threads" list on the portal, when I click on the thread name, I get the first page of the thread. Then, often as not, I have to click on the "last page" arrows. Which means I have to download two pages to get to the new posts. Is there an easy way to take us to the last page instead? Cricket

And, I may have figured out a solution to that last one -- the top of the forums page has threads since last visit, and threads in last 24 hours. So, provided I don't leave more than 24 hours between visits (I wish), or am totally up to date when I sign out for a longer time (two small kids, with associated emergencies), that works. Maybe add a "four days" option? To cover long weekends? "ten" would cover a week out of town, but that might be a huge list. Just random thoughts. Pick and choose your favourite ones. Cricket -- the user from the Nether Regions

The other three are giving it rave reviews, but I can't connect. The program can't figure out my proxy / connection / firewall / whatever. So, I'm afraid I have to cast a "fail" vote. I know you're trying really hard, Cep. Here's something I think you'll like: The Sons of Martha Rudyard Kipling It's part of the ceremony when Canadian Engineers accept their obligation and receive their rings.

Originally posted by CricketBeautiful Cep, I owe you an apology. I try and include enough background tech info so that the non-techies can follow the conversation, but then think you're being condescending to me when you do the same. So, sorry. I'll try and keep my ego out of this. 7.5 seconds on a low-end modem is annoying, but not entirely unreasonable. Is there any way I can test how much of the delay is the downloading, and how much is virus / firewall, and how much is the browser rendering it? Cheers!

Np Unfortuanetly no theres not, simply because your trace route to the server and back can change all the time. However typically a modem connection to a site (any site) will be exactly the same no matter what your computer is using as security (proxy, firewall, router). However the slowdown to a modem connection behind a standard firewall is up to a 25% increase in time taken, behind a router its pretty much the same but behind a proxy (and this heavily depends on the spec of your proxy) it can be anything up to a 75% increase in time taken. Browser rendering is a bit of a difficult one as it depends on cached/uncached, your browser settings and any security/restriction levels you have. Try pinging the server with a program that can trace the route to the server. Best bet is to use Ping Plotter its free and pretty useful.

Originally posted by CricketBeautiful Next item on your todo list (to be put in whatever location on that list that suits): On the "active threads" list on the portal, when I click on the thread name, I get the first page of the thread. Then, often as not, I have to click on the "last page" arrows. Which means I have to download two pages to get to the new posts. Is there an easy way to take us to the last page instead? Cricket

Theres not an easy way but yes its possible so I'll see what I can do about recoding that bit. Change the active threads list to target last post in thread rather then thread. Done

Originally posted by CricketBeautiful And, I may have figured out a solution to that last one -- the top of the forums page has threads since last visit, and threads in last 24 hours. So, provided I don't leave more than 24 hours between visits (I wish), or am totally up to date when I sign out for a longer time (two small kids, with associated emergencies), that works. Maybe add a "four days" option? To cover long weekends? "ten" would cover a week out of town, but that might be a huge list. Just random thoughts. Pick and choose your favourite ones. Cricket -- the user from the Nether Regions

I remember you asking me about this before so I'll add a 48 hours, last week option.

Originally posted by CricketBeautiful The other three are giving it rave reviews, but I can't connect. The program can't figure out my proxy / connection / firewall / whatever. So, I'm afraid I have to cast a "fail" vote. I know you're trying really hard, Cep. Here's something I think you'll like: The Sons of Martha Rudyard Kipling It's part of the ceremony when Canadian Engineers accept their obligation and receive their rings.

Imi had problems to start with too but if your not sure how to bypass your proxy/router/firewall PM me the details of what your running on and we'll see if we can get in you in

I don't want to play too much with the settings on that thing. Last time we tried, it took hubby two weeks before things were normal again. He spent 10 minutes last night checking for packets and pinging the ISP and reading the help file (full of techie stuff) and other arcane things. And, you know, fun as it sounded, I'm just not gonna risk it. Hubby has to log into the machine at work through this one sometimes, and vice versa. He had enough probs getting that going. And he has to control customer machines through this one sometimes. Call me paranoid, but we don't need the risk. If anything does go wrong, even if activeworlds isn't at fault, it's one more thing that has to be checked. So, my vote remains that, while it might be nice as an extra, it's not suitable for the main gatchamania chat room. Cricket

Well I can understand you not wanting to mess about with your hubbys work related machine your right its not worth tampering with that but I thought you said your husband was a programmer? Surely he knows he doesn't need to mess with packets and pinging to to make a hole in a firewall? And why not use your machine instead? On the other hand there isn't anything to vote on hun because I've not made any solid plans to incorporate activeworlds into Gatch and even if there was it would stand at 4 approvals to 0 at the moment because I couldn't count the vote of anyone who hasn't used the software through choice. Though the appeal of a Gatchamania world for people to jump into and become Prin, Ken etc and do some proper RP interaction or fun is something to consider as its far more then just a chat program, its not something I have in mind for the site upgrade. Just something I wanted to run past as an idea to the members, and so far its been pretty sucessful.

The packet logs and pings were to narrow down the problem -- was the firewall getting the requests; did the ISP actually exist. When troubleshooting, you try to rule out as much as you can, as fast as you can, and finding what side of the firewall the problem was on is a good start. Simply poking a hole in the firewall didn't work. The autoconfigure balked. The manual configure didn't match anything I'd seen before. And I can't just use "my" machine, because this is my machine, which he sometimes borrows. And the firewall is a little box at my feet that's shared by the XBox and the kids' machine. It may be simple to punch a hole in it, but if that mucks up his connection to work, I'm out of a husband and co-parent until it's fixed. I'd rather be paranoid than risk it. I will see if he can take more time later this week, but his word goes. I do think a gatch world there would be pretty cool, I just don't want the chatters split -- we've enough trouble connecting as it is, without half of us hanging out in a place that the rest of us can't access.

I wouldn't want to open up any firewall protection I have anyway. Giving one person special access to your system, no matter how nice, or helpful, or how much you trust their online persona is not a smart option for anyone Cricket. As much as I like Cap'itan Cep, I wouldn't want to give him any more access to my security system than I would anyone else. It's nothing personal Cep, just good internet common sense. I wouldn't reccomend it no matter who the person requesting it was unless I personally knew them face to face and trusted them as much as I do, say, my family. But it is up to the individual person to decide. I just wouldn't /knowingly/ do it myself. (Ignorantly is another matter entirely. That happens all the time) Hey Cricket, if are curious about your speed and such... try going to DSL reports or McAafee Speedometer. They will tell you how fast your system is. I'm currently operating on a friend's computer (we are on a mini-vacation out of state). Just as an FYI: His system, according to the two sites, works at a download speed of: 1.2 Mbps (153.61 KBps) according to McAafee. and 1281 kbps accoring to DSK reports. He has no firewall or proxy, and just out of curiosity, we timed the download speed of this site at an average of 10.9 seconds download speed. Thank goodness he WASN'T on 56 k dial-up, or I'd still be downloading page one. (We also were downloading using IE instead of mozilla) My computer at home has ADSL, which should run comparatively to my friend's download speed. Pretty screaming for your average Joe. Haven't tested it reciently though. Of course that is without looking at all the extra considerations that have been addressed here. Now, this site has lots and lots of bells and whistles, with apparent plans to get even more, and attempts to compensate on speed drag by changing cookies and such according to Capitan. I know Cep, that you are looking for suggestions as well. I do know that I can't consider compromising security on my computer in order to speed one single site up. Even if it is a groovy site like Gatchamania. I am not sure what suggestions I can offer, nor am I offering a complaint. Just stating what I am finding to be true speed wise according to 2 different computers I've used. I know you want this to be a kick ass fun site Cep, and you are putting an incredible ammount of admirable effort and personal (free) time into making it so.... Just be aware that the speed issue will most likely continue to get worse, and you as an admin will be balancing fun, excitement, and diversity, with easy accessiblily, esp for folks who do use dial up. And, oh, just thought of this: I tried accessing this site at my parents house on my last visit. They have dial up. It took me 45 seconds to 1 minute to upload a page. Now, I know their system is not well configured, so I take that into account. Granted my parents are not Gatch fans, and wouldn't take the time even with high speed, but what about all the other fans potentially lost because they aren't computer saavy enough, or affluent enough, or live in the right high speed connection area so that they can get faster speed? Just a consideration darlin. And if your answer is that you've thought of that and made a concious decision to not worry about that demographic, but focus more on fun, variety and to cater to users with the right kind of access, that's totally cool. This is your site. You are putting all your hard earned time and energy into it for free. I'm with you 100 percent with that decision if you made it even though it means me working with a slower download on this site alone, or limited functionality. But I wanted to make sure that you were making such a choice /conciously/, and not accidentally by default or through ignorance. This is a wonderful site, that I still continue to frequent for the same reason I started: The folks here rock. I will continue to do so as long as my connection allows reasonable use. Da Buffster

Originally posted by CricketBeautiful The packet logs and pings were to narrow down the problem -- was the firewall getting the requests; did the ISP actually exist. When troubleshooting, you try to rule out as much as you can, as fast as you can, and finding what side of the firewall the problem was on is a good start.

Well the ISP must have existed or you would not have been able to download the software, visit the site or heard us lot making such a racket about it but I can see what you mean.

And I can't just use "my" machine, because this is my machine, which he sometimes borrows.

I'm getting confused here, I thought you told me that you had a computer and your husband had a computer?

And the firewall is a little box at my feet that's shared by the XBox and the kids' machine.

You don't have a firewall at all which would explain why autoconfigure didn't work and why the manual settings looked nothing like you had seen before. Your on a router by the sounds of it.

I do think a gatch world there would be pretty cool, I just don't want the chatters split -- we've enough trouble connecting as it is, without half of us hanging out in a place that the rest of us can't access.

If your using a shared connection through a router I'm not surprised your connection is bad but try not to worry so much about what I am doing. The last thing I want to do is alienate members.

Originally posted by Buffy I wouldn't want to open up any firewall protection I have anyway. Giving one person special access to your system, no matter how nice, or helpful, or how much you trust their online persona is not a smart option for anyone Cricket.

Thats very true.

As much as I like Cap'itan Cep, I wouldn't want to give him any more access to my security system than I would anyone else.

I have no idea where you get that idea but ok.

It's nothing personal Cep, just good internet common sense. I wouldn't reccomend it no matter who the person requesting it was unless I personally knew them face to face and trusted them as much as I do, say, my family.

Yes its good common sense but your not giving me or anyone else for that matter access to your system and firewalls allow you to install and run programs but limit what they can and can't do.

Hey Cricket, if are curious about your speed and such... try going to DSL reports or McAafee Speedometer. They will tell you how fast your system is.

I wouldn't trust McfAffee as far as I could throw them and online website speedometers are usually (pardon the expression) full of crap anyway. Just like the "boost your internet speed" sites and programs you hear about. And heres why,

Just as an FYI: His system, according to the two sites, works at a download speed of: 1.2 Mbps (153.61 KBps) according to McAafee. and 1281 kbps accoring to DSK reports. He has no firewall or proxy, and just out of curiosity, we timed the download speed of this site at an average of 10.9 seconds download speed. Thank goodness he WASN'T on 56 k dial-up, or I'd still be downloading page one. (We also were downloading using IE instead of mozilla)

They are suggesting that his download speed is 150KB per second!? And that he is connected to the internet on a 1.2Mb line. Even simple mathematics suggests that if it takes 10 seconds for him to download this site from fresh at that speed, he would have downloaded 1.5 megs of data on the opening screen alone and thats just complete rubbish. The site in total including everything is about 21Mb and 5mb of that is the database in its entirety, a further 5mb of which are the games and music files which are downloaded by choice, the entire smilie & image list is only 4mb and you never view all of those in one go, ever. The backups which you never download take up a further 3.5mb, the php and java files which you never download take up a further 2 and the templates take up the rest. Its simply impossible on that type of connection to have taken 10.5 seconds to download this site without there being some major hub problem, a server burnout, extremely bad network connections somewhere between him and the site, its simply impossible.

Now, this site has lots and lots of bells and whistles, with apparent plans to get even more, and attempts to compensate on speed drag by changing cookies and such according to Capitan. I know Cep, that you are looking for suggestions as well.

There are no plans to get more bells and whistles and I'd love to know where this got about. I am changing the design of the site to hopefully be more friendly to non IE users and to improve on its load times.

I do know that I can't consider compromising security on my computer in order to speed one single site up. Even if it is a groovy site like Gatchamania.

Please explain how you are compromising on security I find this quite bewildering, if your using a standard browser with the security on high you should have no problems on this or any other site.

I know you want this to be a kick ass fun site Cep, and you are putting an incredible ammount of admirable effort and personal (free) time into making it so.... Just be aware that the speed issue will most likely continue to get worse, and you as an admin will be balancing fun, excitement, and diversity, with easy accessiblily, esp for folks who do use dial up.

I am aware of the speed issue.

And, oh, just thought of this: I tried accessing this site at my parents house on my last visit. They have dial up. It took me 45 seconds to 1 minute to upload a page. Now, I know their system is not well configured, so I take that into account. Granted my parents are not Gatch fans, and wouldn't take the time even with high speed, but what about all the other fans potentially lost because they aren't computer saavy enough, or affluent enough, or live in the right high speed connection area so that they can get faster speed? Just a consideration darlin.

Yes its a consideration but I do have one thing to say about it in general and to everyone who uses the Internet, I can't support everyone its a simple fact, so I have to provide for the majority over the minority. And I can't support those who have made the choice not to do something to help themselves improve their Internet experience. If your running a 56K because you don't want to get broadband and are then complaining that a site is taking ages to download then...sorry but your on a 56k! What do you expect? If you don't want to configure your software to improve your internet experience, then tough that was your choice, live with it. If you don't want to download chat clients or other software to improve your pleasure then don't thats fine but its your choice and I won't penalise the majority because of it. Please take note that I can only do so much to improve the site and I will do my best to help improve everyones individual experience but I will not help those who do not help themselves. And for those who cannot do anything because of circumstances beyond their control, I'll try and do what I can but unfortuanetly your are in the minority and... well.. the majority rules.

And if your answer is that you've thought of that and made a concious decision to not worry about that demographic, but focus more on fun, variety and to cater to users with the right kind of access, that's totally cool. This is your site. You are putting all your hard earned time and energy into it for free. I'm with you 100 percent with that decision if you made it even though it means me working with a slower download on this site alone, or limited functionality. But I wanted to make sure that you were making such a choice /conciously/, and not accidentally by default or through ignorance.

I have to cater to the majority first and the minority second, it may not sound like a nice thing to do but unfortuanetly its the only thing I can do. However it does not mean I won't try.

This is a wonderful site, that I still continue to frequent for the same reason I started: The folks here rock. I will continue to do so as long as my connection allows reasonable use. Da Buffster

Yes they do, every last one of you, which is why it can be quite frustrating at times that not all of you are getting the full benefits of this place but its something I'm working towards.

[unrecoverable text]

I have found the speed issues for me improve when I delete my gatchamania cookie. But even then it's slow. I last deleted my cookie 2 days ago and loading this page here takes 18 seconds for me. I haven't been in the old forums in the last 2 days and my cookies are less than 1k. The first 6 seconds of the 18 are waiting for the gatchamania server to respond, I can see on my firewall that there's no data being sent back to my browser during that time. (edit - this time delay doesn't seem to apply to the arcade page, just the forums and portal index, or maybe it's just whatever luck I was having at the time I did the testing) I've said it before and I'll say it again, I have no speed problems with any other site I visit. I do not believe that this is any problem with my connection. On the firewall front, all I had to do was allow the ActiveWorlds program to have internet access. I have it set up so that my firewall asks me every time it connects and I can deny it access if I wish, exactly the same as my setup for media player and Word. In terms of a hole, it's reasonably sealable. But, of course, any windows components that it calls on which I have already permitted internet access to, won't warn me if they're being accessed by ActiveWorlds rather than anything else. On the firewall and holes and security front, Cricket & Buffy, there are a lot of Word docs over at Clubhouse. How do you access these? Do you open them in Word via internet, giving Word access through your firewalls, or do you download them and load them into Word locally?

[I] On the firewall and holes and security front, Cricket & Buffy, there are a lot of Word docs over at Clubhouse. How do you access these? Do you open them in Word via internet, giving Word access through your firewalls, or do you download them and load them into Word locally?

Not being an expert on how Microsoft does things, I've always downloaded the file and loaded them into Word locally. I'll check when I get home as I'm curious now. (I'm at work now, bad Buffy, no cookie). I don't have any programming skills to speak of, I just have managerial access on the MSN communities. Increased userfriendliness does breed holes in systems inherently which has been the weakness of microsoft all along. Hard to have security and user-friendlieness. Edit: I am now home, and have checked the Clubhouse. Yes, it does operate through Word via the Internet. Another example of how microsoft products sacrifice security for userfriendly eh? My ongoing and endless soapbox. But I can't have my cake and eat it too. LOL

Now I'm curious how your firewall works. On my setup, my firewall asks me if I want to allow Word to have internet access every time it tries to connect (I hate giving Word internet access, too many bad experiences of macro viruses at the office that customers seemed unable to clear up at their end). So is yours set up to specifically allow Word to access it, or do you think it's sneaking through via some unexpected route?

I never let any program run on my firewall unless I know whats its doing. I even prevent the microsoft spooling service from running

Ah, I see the misunderstanding Meridian, it's Cricket's system that uses a firewall. Edit: My computer runs with a hardware firewall according to my in-house tech guy (if I'm saying it right). The system does seem to have some settings open and others closed that are different from other folk's settings. My issue earlier was with granting an unknown to a system knowingly, specifically, since it was Cricket's system, Cricket herself. I was not asking about myself other than general policy. Actually, it kind of reenforces my concerns. Not everyone is going to have the same level of experience and tech as everyone else. I've mantained I won't do things to knowingly endanger my system, but there are lots of things I might do unknowingly. So back to the earlier comments, I don't want to screw around with my settings just to make one site work better. If I find in my travels I'm making my system weaker on the other hand, I'll work to beef it up. Buffy pets Cep...who is wagging his tail so hard his butt is wiggling. Good boy, here's a cookie! Of course, Cep has mentioned that he is working on improving the site, so as he takes the time to learn more efficient programming techniques, this site can't help but get better.

Well, I had hubby sit and review the thread (he really, really loves me), and these are his unvarnished comments: re packets and pings comment "but I thought you said your husband was a programmer? Surely he knows he doesn't need to mess with packets and pinging to to make a hole in a firewall? And why not use your machine instead? " Firewall is open to all outgoing traffic, and according to software homepage outbound https is all it needs. traffic scanner was to try and figure out what ELSE the program was doing, and to get an idea of where it was going so I see if the sites accessible at all. And I dont really like doing special firewall rules for 1 piece of client software when everything else we download just works. re "You don't have a firewall at all which would explain why autoconfigure didn't work and why the manual settings looked nothing like you had seen before. Your on a router by the sounds of it." its a dsl router with a built-in firewall that discards all incomming connections with the exception of a few trusted connections. re speed being bad, its actually quite good, only problem is large (200k+) causes the occasional xbox live timelag friday nights +++ Hubby forgot to mention we also have a software firewall as well, that blocks ingoing and outgoing. And, when asked, we set ActiveWorlds as allowed. +++ On a more productive note: We seem to have gotten two topics confused: 1. Active Worlds Cep has assured us that: "On the other hand there isn't anything to vote on hun because I've not made any solid plans to incorporate activeworlds into Gatch." So, that's not an issue. And the fact that I can't get into it is irrelevant. Cep's a smart boy -- he looks around at things and tries them out before deciding if he likes them. We can't object to him then thinking that ActiveWorlds really needs a Gatchaman room -- everywhere needs more Gatchaman! 2. Speed of the site We're trying to find out where the bottleneck is, so Cep can widen it. The more info the better. So far, we've ruled out several things and probably have several more things to try. The process is: Send request from home computer (by clicking). Home computer composes request. Home firewall approves it. Home computer sends it through small hole to the internet. (Size of hole is your connection speed.) Request runs through the streets of the internet -- traffic jams and all. Server receives request (through bigger hole than home machine) and processes it. Server sends out a page (again, through a hole, not the same one as it received the request from). Page runs through the streets of the internet -- traffic jams and all. Page squeezes through very small hole into home machine. Home hardware and software scan it for viruses, etc. Home machine renders the code into something visible, sometimes showing us intermediate results. General concensus is that other sites finish the entire process faster than this one, which narrows it down. Cep's right -- the size of the pages to be downloaded, even including the images, is pretty small. (I forgot to ask Hubby about the size of outgoing requests.) That still leaves a fair number of suspect operations. Cep -- if you can give us specific experiments to run, we'll run them. Right now, we're just stumbling around at random -- the absolute worst method of troubleshooting. I ran some tests myself. It takes 10 seconds from a click till my machine starts to render the page, and another 5 to render it. So, I took a quick look at the HTML and noticed a few relatively easy things that might help with the rendering: Include size, in pixels or % or whatever, for the images -- especially the ones we see a lot. The browser, esp Mozilla/Netscape will leave room for them in the table and go on. What we get now is a very blinky screen as it leaves a guess, renders the rest of the table, and then corrects the size. I do like that there aren't very many smilies on the main page -- may take us longer to find them, but it keeps the main page faster. I'd like to say reduce the number of tables and their complexity. Netscape / Mozilla is slow with them. But, this might seriously impact the appearance. Worth checking as you go through to make it Mozilla friendly. Beyond that, I don't know if the JavaScript (much of which wasn't in the HTML source) causes much rendering lag or not. 3. Closing Comments. Cep, just because you can't narrow down a problem, or haven't seen a hardware firewall before, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You're a smart person -- you ask questions, and get answers. Otherwise, you wouldn't be as good as you are. You just have to remember that the rest of us may have some brains as well. Also, our choices to have slow machines or slower modems or to keep our security settings high are not frivolous. Some of it is budget related. We've got mortgages, kids, cars, tuitions and taxes. I'm sure if you were helping a friend set up a machine, on a budget, and then he changed security settings and got infected, you'd be screaming bloody murder at the idiot. Likewise, we're taking the best advice we can get, with extra weight to the person who has to give up their time to fix any problems we cause. And, given conflicting advice and insufficient information, we have to decide. So, if we can't figure out what it's doing, we err on the side of safety. You yourself said, "I never let any program run on my firewall unless I know whats its doing. I even prevent the microsoft spooling service from running." When we ask for help (even if we phrase it badly), it's because we want to accomplish something. Telling us "all you have to do is poke a hole in your firewall" is useless to the point of insult. "Surely he knows he doesn't need to..." is downright inflamatory. Better answers would be "Did you try entering the port as recommended in the manual, URLxxxx?" or an honest request for his reasons in trying pings and packet logs. (Worst case, you and he agree he ruled out a problem; best case is he found a problem; even better best is you add them to your own arsenel of troubleshooting tools -- it's impossible to have too many of them -- and to look at the pros and cons of his approach to the problem.) Or "I've never heard of a hardware firewall." At which point I look under my desk and tell you it's a DSL ethernet broadband router made by D-Link, (and feel really good about being able to tell you something you didn't know) and next year you realize that that piece of equipment might solve your problem at work, where the idiots keep turning off the software firewalls on their PCs. I've worked with lots of people, and implemented some serious changes that affected the company president right down to the janitor in a company making parts for several industries, to $12M / year. And the best approach I've found is to listen to the person and ask questions. Even when I didn't learn anything new, the person felt listened to, thought that I really cared, and trusted me, even when I had to make changes that made their job harder. Even if what they wanted to tell me had nothing to do with what I thought the problem was, it was worth listening. I could explain why their idea was wrong, or get a new insight into that problem or another one. (QA Manager -- I needed all the insights I could get, 'cause nobody wanted to tell me what the real root causes were!) Either way, they felt part of the solution. A nice side effect was that they thought I was smart. Seriously -- asking questions and listening while they're answered, even if you already know the answers, is the best way to look smarter. Asking an intelligent question about what they told you is better. Asking the person to help you define and solve the problem, works wonders. Anyhoo, I've got some HTML files to reformat. Cheers! Cricket

Yup I know about routers which is why I was lost about your outgoing problem and they are also a right pain in the royal. Now I see why he was looking at the packets! Yes that makes much more sense. All the images do have a size value attributed to them, you can't have got at all the html because its split into several templates called from the php commands but its a good idea none the less However the tables are a flaw in the design and need to converted to an XHTML DTD frameset, plus I need to convert the iframes were possible and also image map certain areas, for instance the above toolbar. Anyway Cricket I needs you to answer the PM I sent you. I will disgaree on one thing though,

When we ask for help (even if we phrase it badly), it's because we want to accomplish something. Telling us "all you have to do is poke a hole in your firewall" is useless to the point of insult. "Surely he knows he doesn't need to..." is downright inflamatory.

The responses are your misinterpretations of what I have said and unfortuanetly the last time I tried to be more explainative (if thats even a word) I get my head bitten off because "I'm a professional engineer and my husband is a senior programmer so we know what were doing", its too hard to judge how to respond to you sometimes.

Another misinterpretation: "I'm an engineer and hubby is a senior programmer" was intended to mean "We're not idiots. We can understand things, given the info. OneBit's even got a rather good background to build on." It was NOT meant to imply that it means "we know what we are doing", because we're wise enough to know that, most of the time, we don't. Sorry if it came across the wrong way.

just a note re/ActiveWorlds. i was experiencing what sounded like Cricket's problem in that i could not access the site - kept coming back with a "proxy not found" error on the setup. since i am on a LAN and am not the server computer i figured ActiveWorlds couldnt find me behind the firewall. so i went to the horse's mouth as it were, went through the online tech help (didn't find anything except a really vague explanation about what proxy servers were, no explanation on how to correct it) and then asked ActiveWorlds if they could help me. the reply was a brief note asking me to download the most recent version of the AW software. I checked and the link on the mainpage gave me version a.32 (which gave me the errors) but this new link gave me a.36. downloaded, installed, ran autoconfigure and .. bingo. it worked. spent some time wandering around, thought the people were sort of lame (i hate those that use l33t) but then again i didnt have anybody there to hang out with. so there you go. solved my problem at least.

Originally posted by lyon just a note re/ActiveWorlds. spent some time wandering around, thought the people were sort of lame (i hate those that use l33t) but then again i didnt have anybody there to hang out with. so there you go. solved my problem at least.

Wished I would have known that you were on. I could have showed you around some of the places that Imi and I stumbled into.... BTW-if anyone is on ActiveWorlds, I am registered as Lolabella. There seems to be a LoLa that hangs out in the Main Portal area. "LoLa" is not me.

Yes I registered too, just because its a place with a lot of laughs. Interesting to hear that upgrading to v.36 stopped your problems Lyon. Next time we will have to take you to all the places like lolla said.

Regarding Active Worlds: I couldn't access the program from my work computer, so I followed Lyon's advice and downloaded the 3.6 plug-in from the Products page of the website. I have no problems getting in now.