Hawker
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Posts posted by Hawker
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Welcome back to the board...
...I know lots of things aren't quite right on it, but I decided it was kinder to open it back up and let you all play for a bit rather than keeping it locked all night (especially as I need to run out to buy my tea and eat it, so I won't be working on it for an hour or so
).So yes, there is more to come - but enjoy having a look around.
Don't worry, lots of things will change still.
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It won't be completely different; it'll definitely be recognisable - the default skin on it is based on the one we're currently using, so it will seem very familiar.
There will be some new features, and some of the old features will be implemented differently.
I'm just taking a look at it on my test board, and it looks pretty good, I think.
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Hiya guys,
Just a bit of notice that we will be upgrading the board in the near future (I am being loose with the times because I haven't quite decided when).
When the board is offline, you can follow our progress on Twitter at https://twitter.com/neighboursfans
I will pop the link to our Twitter into the offline message, but I would suggest bookmarking it for future reference.
I used to run board upgrades overnight as much as possible to minimise disruption, but I am old and worn out now and utterly incapable of doing an upgrade between 2am and 6am, so er, you'll have to put up with a bit of daytime downtime instead.
Cheers in advance for your patience.
Edit: This has all gone ahead now, and has been completed.
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Hiya guys,
We're having quite a few problems with spambots using gmail accounts - and it's creating a huge backlog of work for us to sort through so that legitimate members can join.
If you have an alternative to a gmail account, please use it when you sign up.
If you don't have an alternative (and I use my gmail account for everything, so I do understand!) please shoot me an e-mail (sal at neighboursfans dot com) with your desired username and I will create a manual membership for you, rather than you signing up to the board yourself.
If you try to sign up with a gmail account, the board will reject you.
Hopefully this will be a temporary measure (it's been about a decade, but we had to ban hotmail and yahoo for a while in the past!), but it should speed up the joining process for legitimate members.
Cheers,
Sal
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Incredible work, gang.
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Graham - the bit where Michael gets dropped off at Jordan's and the whole elaborate stunt from then on to make Julie (and Phil!) think she's crazy.
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I don't make loads of forum announcements, but I thought this was definitely worth highlighting.
A few of you might be aware that we have a Challenge forum this year, and the idea was to motivate a few of us to do things that we might not otherwise achieve (feel free to join in on challenges or start new ones!)...some challenges are group activities, and some challenges are personal goals.
Gaynor has been working on a challenge to write 31 summaries in 31 days. This is a real undertaking, because writing summaries isn't a quick job!
The following have been added to the archive by Gaynor over the past month:
1836 from 1993.
1837 from 1993.
1892 from 1993.
1897 from 1993.
1898 from 1993.
1899 from 1993.
1956 from 1993.
1960 from 1993.
1965 from 1993.
2041 from 1993.
2042 from 1993.
2389 from 1995.
2466 from 1995.
2478 from 1995.
2483 from 1995.
2484 from 1995.
2485 from 1995.
2596 from 1996.
2602 from 1996.
2603 from 1996.
2605 from 1996.
2949 from 1997.
2950 from 1997.
3101 from 1998.
3102 from 1998.
3118 from 1998.
3119 from 1998.
3176 from 1998.
6330 from 2012.
6390 from 2012.
6395 from 2012.
That's 31 episodes from 7 different years, with a whole host of different characters and wide ranging storylines...it's a pretty mean feat in itself keeping track of what everyone is up to over such a spread of eras, let alone writing them all up as well! Lots of great episodes in there...it's definitely worth an afternoon reading over Gaynor's work.
I thought this was such an awesome achievement, it deserved some widespread acknowledgement - huge congratulations, Gaynor!
(Also, a big thanks to all of our summarisers in general, who are doing a fab job of keeping 2012 up to date and filling in the rest of the archive too - check out this summary for one of my favourite Neighbours moments ever!
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Hi guys,
We're going to do a bit of board optimisation, and part of that is getting rid of any threads that haven't been used for a very long time. Some forums should be safe, such as the episodes forums, but if there's something specific (particularly in the off topic areas) you think you might wish to read again in the future, I recommend that you dig it out and save it and/or put in a plea here for me to retain it.
We don't often get rid, but every so often we try to have a clean up...some of the forums haven't been "swept" in about 5 years, which is a bit OTT.
Any questions etc, you know where to put them.
Cheers,
Sal.
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As some as you know, I've been a bit sick recently - and wasn't even online for the anniversary this year.
So apologies for the lateness of this...I wasn't going to write one but it seemed strange breaking a board tradition. So er, happy anniversary + 3 days!Usual stuff first - congratulations to Neighbours for making it to 27 years. It's great to hear the news of some long hoped for DVD releases and hopefully we'll all get chance to reminisce over our favourite seasons over the next few years.
Huge thanks to everyone for visiting and allowing us to reach our 7th birthday as NeighboursFans.com - of course, most of you know that we've been online for 12 years and it's bizarre to think that so many of our regulars have been with us for at least 5 years, and many over a decade! Newbies are always welcome, so feel free to drop in and start chatting.
NeighboursEpisodes.com is still going from strength to strength. A huge thank you to all of the current summarisers who keep the archive going, and to all of those who give up their spare time to trawl through history and write up older episodes as well. It's all bulking out really well now, with lots of summaries having their appropriate screencaps - and we've got 16 years fully written up. Hopefully, with a big push, we might be able to break through to the 90% complete barrier over the next year or so - which I know would make a lot of us very proud.
With regards to the board itself, I remember when I posted last year, I said that the IPBoard banner at the top of the forums was going to be a stop gap...which was always the intention and then IPBoard made some changes which made me hold off from upgrading. My fears have been slightly allayed by the newest release of the board and you can expect to see some big new features in the next couple of months.
I feel that I must offer huge thanks to Gaynor for her assistance (I can recall one very stressed phone conversation on the eve of my birthday when I was standing in ASDA going, "Zomg!") during the Dreaded Board Meltdown of September 2011. It seems like forever ago now, but I think I gained a few grey hairs from it when it occurred!
As always, I must offer my thanks to my partner in crime, Janet - and all of the Staff who help this place to run smoothly. I've already mentioned the summarisers, but thank you also to all of you who support the site. Thanks to EVERYONE who posts and comes up with content each day - you make the board a pleasure to read, participate in and run...so thank you.
Finally, one of my favourite bits of the board in the past few weeks (although I've been really rubbish in the photo challenge - you're all putting me to shame!) has been the 2012 Challenge forum. I know some of you (JA and Col, perhaps?) suggested a refresh of the Getting To Know You area...if you've got any ideas or wants for the forums...maybe you've seen something elsewhere on the internet that you think would be great here...or if you want to see things changed around (the boards aren't fixed...we've had them all kinds of ways over the years) - then please shout up with any ideas and we'll see what we can do.
Think that's it...onto 2013!
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No worries, mate - I know you weren't angling...it's a valid question!
Alas, the sub manager doesn't allow for auto subscribing (although that's something I'd have to require people to choose themselves as well - I hate the thought of someone ticking it accidentally and then going overdrawn or something because they didn't realise a payment was going out)...I don't think it even tells you when your package has run out(!)
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Thanks ever so much for subscribing.
Graham's right - the board software just isn't very clever at all and doesn't do things in a way that you'd expect. It doesn't count years (I'd probably have set it to expire on the day that you register if I could...e.g. you sign up on the 8th of Jan 2012, it expires on the 8th of Jan 2012 to give you some grace to resubscribe).
However, it doesn't do that - it counts 365 days, so if you signed up on the 8th of Jan, it expires on the 7th of Jan (because, by its logic, you've already had an 8th of Jan in your subscription).
This year is a leap year, so it counts 365 days and falls a day short....so as has happened to you, if you subscribe on the 8th of Jan it counts forward and with the 29th of Feb being an extra day, it ceases on the 6th of Jan. Does that make sense?
I would be happy to manually extend everyone's subscription by a day to counter it if you'd like me to - that's not a problem.
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I will look into the inbox; I should think that would be fairly do-able.
The board subscriptions manager isn't brilliantly bright and doesn't allow for donations of your choosing (only set amounts), but you could Paypal me directly and then you could choose the amount that you wanted to send. I could then action that through the board, which would activate the sub. Or you could buy a sub and then Paypal me directly the difference...but that's a bit cumbersome for you guys (and it'd mean Paypal taking its cut of 42p twice!).
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Ah yes - I didn't mention the other options!
If you don't fancy using the board software, you can send me a Paypal payment manually (PM me for my e-mail address..it's not my neighboursfans one!) - or if you'd rather pay by cheque, if you PM me, I will pass you over an address.
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Hiya guys,
I've been sorting out a bit of the back end of the board, after someone brought to my attention that they were still listed as a Premium Subscriber when they hadn't paid for a while.
There was quite a bit of complication when subscriptions were first brought into the board with getting the back part of it to work, so quite a few people were entered manually. I have had a check for expired memberships, run a board update and it's removed them where it seems like the subscription has lapsed. I've done a bit of cross checking and there's a short list of people who are still active as subscribers.
If you have been removed from a subscription group and you think it's an error, give me a yell and I will sort it out for you.
If you have been removed from a subscription group and would like to re-join, you can do so by following this link. If you've never been a subscriber and would like to be, you can also follow the link - your support is greatly appreciated.
I think I might do some changes to the subscribing groups in the next few weeks - if there's anything you'd particularly like as a feature, please let me know.
Cheers.
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Gaynor has just pointed out to me that we've hit 5500 episodes summarised on our Neighbours Episodes site.
Considering that only approximately 6300 episodes have ever aired, that's a tremendous achievement and I'm really grateful to everyone who has ever contributed.
It seems that our two next milestones will be 90% of summaries written (around the 5700ish mark), and 6000 summaries. We'd best get writing!
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Well, they've banned both me and you a few times.
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I'm fairly sure they're two different lists, but I will look.
Edit: They are different.
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I'm wondering whether JA's right and Alex was requested to be banned at some point when she was working...I can't remember doing it, but maybe if we were looking to ban from one location (I.e. let someone access from elsewhere but banned from home)?
But I don't for the life of me remember doing it...but it's the only thing I can think of as plausible.
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Was there?!
I contemplated it, but I didn't fancy it in the end. I do think that maybe LJ has run its course a bit - it was quite of its time (and was like Facebook is now - I.e. people saw it when they were online, whereas now I think most people navigate that way when the site looks like it has a problem).
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I swear to god, if you don't stop, I'm going to tell you that you're not welcome here.
The time to be constructive is not after 4 days of us all collectively ripping our hair out. If I want constructive criticism, I will ask for it. I am not doing. Just stop.
And actually, there is a pinned thread in Forum News all about our Livejournal - http://www.neighbour...ournal-updates/ - so if you'd read it and followed the advice in it, you wouldn't have been 'left adrift'. It's been there for 5 years - I'm not sure, is that long enough?(!)
You want to try reading some of the pinned threads before you kick up such a fuss next time. (And yes, I'm referring to the post I've removed in another thread as well, not just what you've said in here.)
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I recognise that in an odd sort of way, it's a compliment that you like the board so much that you were anxious about its return...but honestly, this sort of thing isn't usual. It isn't standard practice. We don't go offline for long periods of time without prior warning; and we certainly don't delete accounts or have to send information out or update other websites with information about what's happening here.
You omitted the part of my post where I explained three things, but evidently I wasn't clear enough...so I will try again:
1) I was not at home.
My house is where my computer is. I have a desktop; not a laptop. For most of the downtime, I was borrowing a friend's computer, or I was on my mobile phone. I don't know if you've ever attempted to use ftp (whilst incredibly stressed) on a mobile phone, but I'd be interested to see how successful you are(!)
2) I was on holiday.
Not too much to elaborate on....I wasn't lying around on the sofa, in my pants, stuffing my face full of crisps and laughing at how the site was down. I have had an incredibly full week, where from Monday through to Friday I have been seeing different people, sleeping in different houses and visiting different counties. So whilst it's difficult enough to bring a site back to life via a mobile phone...it's IMPOSSIBLE when you're in the company of other people when you're attempting to either enjoy their company or sort important things in your life out.
3) The site was TOTALLY smegged.
This wasn't a tiny problem. It wasn't a blip. It wasn't a small error which required me to tick a few boxes, upload a few files and wave a magic wand. You have absolutely no idea of the scale of the problem, and every spare moment I had was spent on looking at how to mend the site. My efforts were 100% focused on getting as much of the site back as quickly as possible. The frontpage wasn't accessible for a certain amount of time - and I was locked out of editing it for another lengthy period of time, so some of what you are suggesting wasn't possible at the time.
If there's a planned outage (ironically, I was planning to upgrade the forum this weekend but there's no way we're doing that for a while now!
), all of the information about how to find out our progress (e.g. Livejournal, Twitter etc) is reiterated and a schedule of what to expect when is posted. Unplanned outages - especially for any length of time - just don't happen under ordinary circumstances. As a consequence, it's pointless having a link on the frontpage which directs people AWAY from the forums (which is what having the Twitter link on there would do). I think you're mistaking this for something that's a regular occurrence, when this is anything but.
I don't mean to be grumpy, but I don't think you quite realise what a stressful week this has been.
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May I make a suggestion? What I believe is your home page still came up, would it have been possible to put a short message on there to briefly say what had happened?
There's a Twitter page and a Livejournal page that I was updating, but although the main page was available, it wasn't accessible from the back end of the site (I.e. I couldn't change it).
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/neighboursfans
(Maybe we should think about making the name of the lj page a bit more obvious...)
The other thing is, I wasn't actually home for most of this because I'm on my holidays - the amount of sorting out that I've been doing via my mobile phone (my god, thank god for Gmail and Opera Mini!) is unreal. If I had been home, yes, I would've probably stuck a note on the Eps Archive or something as well (it's another part of the reason that I have them at different hosts - so if one stuffs up, I can inform you on the other page...but it's not easy to do when you have prior appointments in "real life")....but when the problem first arose, we had no idea of the depth and scale of it....I honestly assumed we'd have been back online in a matter of minutes and hours, not days.
Thanks to everyone for all of your patience - it's been a rollercoaster of emotions the last few days and everyone's been supportive and understanding. Huge thanks to Gaynor, who worked diligently and constantly to get the site back up - she talked me down off the ceiling a few times too.
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As most of you are aware, today is Neighbours' 26th birthday.
I think some of you will be aware that today is also NeighboursFans.com's birthday - and this is our 6th year online.
...and of course, a few of you will know that we aren't 6 years old - we're 11 years old (celebrating 12 in November!), but we've now tipped the balance...we've been NeighboursFans.com for longer than we were Erinsborough. Crikey.
I can't think of an awful lot to say this year. There's the usual thanks - to Janet, to the Staff, to the Contributors and, of course, to you guys for coming on and chattering away everyday.
I would talk a bit more about the board, but as many of you know, my progress on it has been halted due to some offline things...hopefully I'll get chance to have a splurge at it soon. (This is the first time in our history that we've had the IPBoard banner at the top of the forum!)
We've got 15 years completed in our summary archive - NeighboursEpisodes.com, which out of 26 years, is pretty good going! We're very nearly at 86% completed...which is an astonishing achievement, and something that when I was sitting here 6 years ago trying to sort out moving the forums to a new server, I could never have envisaged.
For once, I'm at a loss of what to say....so er, over to you! The usual comments, cheers, complaints etc all welcomed.
Thanks for visiting, and here's to another brilliant year!
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Thanks to those who pointed out that we weren't having new posts by RSS Bot pulled into Current Affairs...I've now rectified this.
Quotes - adding to the Random Quotes system
in Forum News
Posted
Random quotes are back - wahey!
I have to admit, I have really missed our random quotes feature...and I know that I'm not the only one. I think it has to be high on the list of 'most requested feature' and I am chuffed to bits that we have it back.
Even better, it's much improved too!
I would love it if you all started adding quotes - please feel free to do so. However, as we're starting from fresh, I would also love it if we could all format our quotes in the same way...hence this guide! (I know that this might seem a bit lame to some people, but I remember the hell of trying to re-format hundreds of quotes on the old board and it's a pain...if we all do it the same way to begin with, it'll look ace and it'll save a LOT of work!) Thanks in advance!
To add a quote
1. Go to: http://www.neighboursfans.com/forum/index.php?/quotes/
2. Press the 'Add Quote' button (top right).
Formatting the year and episode number
Where it says, "Quote Information, Quote Source," please fill in the YEAR and EPISODE number.
e.g.
1986: Episode 0222
1998: Episode 3000
2007: Episode 5172
Please note the 0 prefix for any numbers below 1000.
If you don't know the episode number, please write: YEAR: Episode Unknown
e.g.
1994: Episode Unknown
Please note that there are two spaces after a colon.
If you don't know the year or the episode number, just write Unknown in the box.
Formatting the quote
In, "Quote content," please fill the quote in as follows:
1. If you need a setup line, please write it in italics and end it with a colon.
e.g.
When Michael appears to apologise to Wayne:
After Lou threatens Russell:
Then drop to the next line to write your quote...
2. Please write the character names in capitals (as if it is a script). Please bold the character names, and follow them with a colon.
e.g.
PHILIP:
JULIE:
LOU:
HAROLD:
3. Please write the rest of your quote as normal (e.g. no extra formatting). Please try to be as accurate to the show as possible.
There are lots of quotes on our sister site @ www.neighboursepisodes.com - feel free to look through them and add them!