Changelog

[Rawhide]

Many things happened behind the scenes, which I will not list here, but here are some things you will soon notice:

• The first thing you will notice is the change in URL. You will now need to access the forums from https://forums.giantitp.com. All old links will redirect, but please update your bookmarks and links.
• The forums are now using https and https only. You must access the forums through https.
• Avatars are now required to be https. All old avatar URLs were changed from http:// to https://. This change will break some avatars, so please check that yours is still working.
• View Single Post now works in the mobile theme.
• Dice can now be rolled and viewed in the mobile theme.
• The sidebar will temporarily be just the primary static links, no dynamically updated content (e.g. most recent comic and news). This change is not permanent.
• We are currently trialing sending emails through a company called SendGrid. We hope that this will help more people to receive forum emails, and help us to diagnose any problems. You may notice that your email client says that the email was sent "via SendGrid", or that links include sendgrid.com. This is why.

[DeTess]

I'm not 100% certain if this is the right place to do this, but I just wanted to thank you, Rawhide, and of course everyone else that worked to get the forums back online again!

[Iruka]

My heartfelt thanks to you, Rawhide, and to everyone who contributed to bringing the forum back. I really missed it.

[The Aboleth]

Thank you, Rawhide, for saving the forums!

[Rogan]

Thank you Rawhide!
Thank you Rich!
And a special thanks to everyone donating money.

Glad the forum is back online.

[RCgothic]

Thanks Rawhide!

[king_steve]

Thank you Rawhide! And thanks to anyone else who helped out as well!

[IthilanorStPete]

Thanks a bunch, Rawhide! Great to see the forums back (and great to see that they're using HTTPS, too).

[137beth]

Yay, it's back!

One thing that I am curious about: while the forum uses https, it looks like the main site and the comic do not support https at all. Is that intentional?

[Zevox]

Thank you so much for the work bringing this place back Rawhide - and anyone/everyone else who did so behind the scenes! It's wonderful to have it back at last.

[Gwynfrid]

Seconding all those thanking Rawhide for the hard work and getting us back in shape.

[Rockphed]

Did we change the forum software version, or has it just been so long since I logged on that my memory has gone fuzzy? I am leaning toward the second one, but I want to be sure I'm going crazy.

[Rawhide]

Yay, it's back!

One thing that I am curious about: while the forum uses https, it looks like the main site and the comic do not support https at all. Is that intentional?

Yes .

[Rawhide]

Did we change the forum software version, or has it just been so long since I logged on that my memory has gone fuzzy? I am leaning toward the second one, but I want to be sure I'm going crazy.

The last four minor releases of vBulletin 4 receive critical and security updates. Changes between these versions were extremely minor and added no features. We were on one of those versions and saw no need to take the forums down for an upgrade. But, as the forums were already down...

[dantiesilva]

Thank you to everyone who made getting this site back up and running. I have been playing for years now using GitP and meet many of the friends I have today thanks to you all.

[137beth]

Yes .

Thanks for the answer.

Did we change the forum software version, or has it just been so long since I logged on that my memory has gone fuzzy? I am leaning toward the second one, but I want to be sure I'm going crazy.

How can you tell which version of vBulletin the forum is on?

[martixy]

HTTPS move was loooong overdue.

Unfortunately many, many people will have many, many bookmarks. It would be unfeasible to edit all of them one by one.

A better method is required.

I have one such better method.

Both chrome and firefox can export and import bookmarks in .html format.
Once you export your bookmarks in this manner find the directory where you saved that file and open a powershell there.

(gc -encoding UTF8 bookmarks.html) -replace 'http://www.giantitp.com/forums', 'https://forums.giantitp.com' | Out-File -encoding UTF8 bookmarks_fixed.html

Replace "bookmarks.html" in the command above with the name of your file.

When you run the command, a new file will appear in the same directory named "bookmarks_fixed.html". Import that file into your browser.

Additionally many, many signatures will have to be edited. I can't help there though.
(Though perhaps someone with access to the database might - e.g. run a search and replace on the whole database. Lol.)

[Rockphed]

The last four minor releases of vBulletin 4 receive critical and security updates. Changes between these versions were extremely minor and added no features. We were on one of those versions and saw no need to take the forums down for an upgrade. But, as the forums were already down...

So there might be a few differences, but nothing major. Thanks for the info.

How can you tell which version of vBulletin the forum is on?

I am sure it is listed somewhere, but my question was triggered by things not being quite the same as I remembered it. Screencaps from the old forum and the new forum would probably differ by only a few pixels.

[Eriol]

• The forums are now using https and https only. You must access the forums through https.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOT

• We are currently trialing sending emails through a company called SendGrid. We hope that this will help more people to receive forum emails, and help us to diagnose any problems. You may notice that your email client says that the email was sent "via SendGrid", or that links include sendgrid.com. This is why.

A company I worked for used them too for automated stuff. Their API "just worked" for us quite well. So this actually makes me feel more secure, not less, but thanks for pointing it out for us.

[Rawhide]

A company I worked for used them too for automated stuff. Their API "just worked" for us quite well. So this actually makes me feel more secure, not less, but thanks for pointing it out for us.

I should also point out that our connection to SendGrid is encrypted. Though, whether it remains that way is entirely up to your mail service.

[Firest Kathon]

• We are currently trialing sending emails through a company called SendGrid. We hope that this will help more people to receive forum emails, and help us to diagnose any problems. You may notice that your email client says that the email was sent "via SendGrid", or that links include sendgrid.com. This is why.

I got my first mail for my board subscriptions since the change this morning, and I noticed that the links in the mails are redirected through SendGrid. Not a problem in itself, but the SendGrid links are very long and the subscription mails contain a link to each post listed. So more than half of the mail ist just links, which makes it a bit hard to read especially on mobile. I uploaded a screen capture here so you can see the effect.

I'm not sure what could be done to improve the situation. Maybe the link replacement can be switched off (I think its main purpose is tracking click rates anyways) in SendGrid, or you could change the mail template to only include a link to the first post or the thread itself.

[Rawhide]

I got my first mail for my board subscriptions since the change this morning, and I noticed that the links in the mails are redirected through SendGrid. Not a problem in itself, but the SendGrid links are very long and the subscription mails contain a link to each post listed. So more than half of the mail ist just links, which makes it a bit hard to read especially on mobile. I uploaded a screen capture here so you can see the effect.

I'm not sure what could be done to improve the situation. Maybe the link replacement can be switched off (I think its main purpose is tracking click rates anyways) in SendGrid, or you could change the mail template to only include a link to the first post or the thread itself.

Ideally, we'd like to keep them replaced. We're not concerned with click-through rates, but it will help us to identify certain issues. However, those are some really long links on mobile devices... I will investigate further.