ProjectForum Support: Older Questions 2004

Posted at Jan 05/2004 02:48 AM:
[Alf Melin]: Trying to attach an 11MB exe file fails consistently, giving an immediate error (not a timeout after a while) that Page cannot be displayed: The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.

Attaching a smaller exe file works fine so I don't think it's a firewall problem. Is there a size limitation on the upload applet? No; its possible it may be a firewall problem, restricting size. We've tested with quite large executables with no issues, but will investigate again.

Posted at Jan 12/2004 12:53 PM:
[Bob R]: Print Problem: Even when I print a page after clicking the Print link, my header lines come out as plain text, not as they appear in the browser view. Also, the page name and group name at the top come out as plain text. (I'm using ProjectForum v3.2.0.721 and IE6 on XP.) We'll look into it - thanks

Posted at Jan 12/2004 01:56 PM:
[Bob R]: Email Notification of Changes:When I think about using ProjectForum for project discussions and comments, I'm unclear on how this would work well without automatic email notification of changes. Is there any such feature that I don't see? Seems like you'd want users to be able to subscribe to being notified of changes to particular pages. Is this possible, or is there some other way to accomplish this? Notification is done via RSS; see [link] for more info.

Posted at Jan 12/2004 02:26 PM:
Others cannot connect - I am trying to get other people connected to my trial version of ProjectForum and am having problems.

I have it installed on my desktop, which is not a web server. I am on a LAN and have a static IP. I have given others the url as:

http://128.08.49.xxx:3455 but they get a browser error. I changed to Port 80 and they still get a browser error. They are not running on a proxy server and neither am I. We are all using IE 6+, although we have other browsers installed, too. I can connect using either my IP or the 127.0.... IP. What else can I look for to fix this? Can other users "ping" your machine? What is the exact browser error they are getting?

Posted at Jan 14/2004 03:21 PM:
[Laura W]: I just installed today and was working great. I created a few users and passwords, as well as one group admin password for a group. Now, when I try to go to the overall Site Admin link, I cannot get past the password. I have not changed this, it has always been "admin", but now it is not letting me in. How do I "reset" the admin password, or how can I fix this problem? In the little window that comes up when you launch the application... check the menubar for a command to reset the site admin password

Posted at Jan 15/2004 08:57 AM:
[Laura W]: I found in your help how to create custom themes. This branding is important to us, in order to purchase this product. I requested a full demo key and have installed it, but it never recognizes my new themes even after restarting the service. Any ideas? Make sure they have been placed in the correct directory. Have you tried with one of the sample themes from http://www.courseforum.com/themes/?

Posted at Jan 16/2004 03:32 AM:
[Christopher Allen]: Hmm, in my demo site, how do I log out as administrator and test how it works as a user? There is no logout function. Logout is available via the admin screens, either site admin or group admin

Posted at Jan 16/2004 03:36 AM:
[Christopher Allen]: I'm using a version downloaded today with a temporary demo password, but I don't see link to backup my site. Links for downloading backups are only on the hosting site.. for the versions you download, you can just grab them out of the filesystem

Posted at Jan 16/2004 10:16 AM:
[Bob R]: Prev Click Crash: I just upgraded from the free version to the time-limited demo version by entering the license key. So now I have the Versions feature. But when I use that, I get a crash (pfconsole.exe exception) when I use the Prev button (not always the first time, but within a few clicks). Same result after rebooting. Debug said stack overflow. I'm running pfconsole.exe v3.2.0.721, WinXP Pro, IE6. Ouch. Haven't had anyone else with this problem.. we'll check it out.

Posted at Jan 18/2004 11:25 AM:
[John L]: Hi i'm using the demo version, but I can't get it to work through my apache webserver on port 80. I have tried a bunch of different configuration files, but I still get a "Bad request! your browser or proxy sent a request that this server couldn't understand." I also tried following the guide in the FAQ section with no luck. I'm using Red Hat linux 9, with apache server 2.0. i'm trying to foward mydomain.com/notes/ -> 127.0.0.1:3455 . When I get this error, it does foward /notes/ to /notes/compnotes (which is the name that is the /xxxxxx/ of the group. It seems its recognizing it somewhat, but not really. ProxyRequests are On, and NameVirtualHost is set to *:80. Please help! Here is the current configuration of the virtual host section of httpd.conf for apache:

  Redirect /notes http://127.0.0.1/notes/
  <VirtualHost *:80>
       ProxyPass /notes/ http://127.0.0.1:3455
       ProxyPassReverse /notes/ http://127.0.0.1:3455 
  </VirtualHost>

Thanks, John
You probably want to replace the 127.0.0.1 at least the first Redirect with your external IP address. Also, I don't believe you need the ProxyPassReverse. Also, when in doubt check your Apache logs (access_log, error_log) for clues..

Posted at Jan 25/2004 09:57 AM:
[IronMan]: Ok, three things:

After 3 days of running latest version of ProjectForum it was a bloated 69MB of RAM used. Rebooted, started it and now it's using 2MB... memory leak? Probably... we'll look into it. What platform are you running on? Windows 2000 SP2, 1.3GHz AMD, 896MB RAM
One of my users says the POST button sometimes ends up under the SITE HOME link rather than next to the comments box. Known issue? I can get the browser details etc if you want it. That would help.. but CSS bugs in browsers are unfortunately quite common.

Mozilla 1.5, Windows 98SE

Using Opera 7.21 I've got an intermittent problem (about half the time) when clicking in the "Post your Comments" field on large pages with lots of attachments and pics that the scrollbar jumps to the middle of the page. Keyboard focus is correctly in the Comments box, but I have to use scrollbar to bring it into view again. We've sporadically heard some other problems with users running Opera...

Posted at Jan 26/2004 07:23 AM:
[IronMan]: One more question: how is login data actually stored? Running a password protected setup (unique user ID and password for each user) it's quite possible to log on once and then revisit the forum using direct URLs. Clearing cookies removes the poster detail from the comments box (ie [Steel:]) which can make for some confusion and there's no longer a LOGOUT link on the page. I guess my concern here is that anybody can bypass logon by using a direct link and I'd like to get confirmation that this is not the case. There are actually two cookies stored.. removing one of them will give the behavior you note, but users should still need the other one to get into the forum; each page access does check for appropriate authentication, even when going in via direct URL's

Posted at Feb 03/2004 02:56 AM:
[IronMan]: Updated problem report 1 and 2 with details in bold and a screenshot.

Posted at Feb 03/2004 01:01 PM:
[bug]: i'm having trouble with cross-forum includes. i have tried what is stated in the manual (using hash symbols). any suggestions? i am trying to include a "footer" from the main group forum in different project forums...

Posted at Mar 12/2004 07:28 PM:
[William]: I'm looking to include asp code (as an example to programmers) on a page. When I copy and save, the page is now corrupt gets "confused" with the included code. I've tried "= = =" and "= = = = = =", but neither work. Any other way or is this not possible?

Thanks

Posted at Mar 13/2004 09:48 AM:
[Mark]: You need to use six '=' signs surrounding the code block. As well, you need to make sure that the option 'allow html markup' is turned on in the Group Admin pages

Posted at Mar 23/2004 04:24 PM:
[Peter]: I have a forum with a password but depending on the URL I use in the browser I get different responses to a login attempt. If I enter a numerical URL e.g. http://211.123.4.56:3455 then the password is not recognised. Similarly http://localhost:3455 doesn't allow a successful login. Only when I use my machine name e.g. http://wxy:3455 does the password get recognised. What is causing this?

Posted at Mar 24/2004 06:44 AM:
[Mark]: Passwords are stored via browser cookies, which are associated with the host that you're using. So if you type in a different address, the browser doesn't know to send the cookie from the original address.

Posted at Mar 25/2004 02:06 AM:
[Peter]: Is the password stored in a cookie even if you don't check the "Remember me" box?

Posted at Mar 25/2004 01:40 PM:
[Mark]: Yes, though if you don't check that box, the cookie will expire when you quit your browser

Posted at Mar 28/2004 04:07 PM:
[IronMan]: Does ProjectForum run ok on Windows XP 64-bit? Is a 64-bit optimised version on your roadmap? We haven't heard any issues.. no plans at present for a specifically optimized version

Posted at Mar 29/2004 09:42 AM:
[Jenny]: What are setup requirements? How can I set this up on my web host? See http://www.courseforum.com/faq.html#webhosting

Posted at Apr 14/2004 05:15 PM:
[Stephen Hryncewicz]: Below is a question from a teacher...

Do you know if there's a way to change the font size on a project forum page without copying it into an Appleworks document, enlarging it, and copying it back? I know you can adjust the font size while viewing it, but I'd like to make the change permanent, if possible (it seems like sometimes when I copy and past from AppleWorks, the result in project forum is pretty small and faint).

Posted at Apr 15/2004 05:01 AM:
[Mark]: No, there is no way to change the font size.. given the formatting model (simple markup rather than WYSIWYG editors)

Posted at Apr 29/2004 12:00 PM:
[Adam]: Just downloaded the demo key for the full version (the software is kickin') but I'm wondering about two things...Vertical columns within pages and the abliity to reverse the posts to most recent at the top (with the post box at the top) and scroll down to see the history. Let me know.

Posted at Apr 29/2004 02:20 PM:
[Adam]: One other thing...Can I limit the number of "Changes" that appear AND can I limit a find to a particular page? Thanks.

Posted at Jun 07/2004 02:38 PM:
[Keith]: Can you use the INCLUDE command to include pages from other groups? Even if they are pw protected or user protected etc? And what is the command?
[Mark]: Yes if they aren't protected... to do this do 'include:' then the forum's url prefix, then a '#' and then the page name. amit
[Keith]: Ahh okay, can you unprotect certain pages in a protected group?
[Mark]: No, unfortunately this isn't possible, you'd need to place those pages in another group.

Posted at Jun 14/2004 08:02 AM:
[David]: Is it possible to have a paragraph with the first line indented. How about a whole paragraph indented. A common style for a quoted paragraph
[Mark]: This could likely be accomplished using a custom theme, by changing the stylesheets - info here: [link]

Posted at Jun 14/2004 08:54 AM:
[Larry Virden]: While exploring http://tcl.projectforum.com/ ...Notice at the bottom of the projectforum screen that the 'path' Site Home > ProjectForum .... appears overtop of the input text area and Post button. I'm using Mozilla 1.4. Is this something unique to the SPARC Solaris Mozilla 1.4 environment, or is it a general problem with Mozillas all around?
[Mark]: There are issues in terms of weaker CSS support with older versions of Mozilla.

Posted at Jun 14/2004 11:37 AM:
[David]: My site is www.mysite.com:3455/newstuff What address do I use for my rss client? Do I have to turn it on for the forum?
[Mark]: Click on the 'RSS' link on each page; the RSS feed is automatically available, and can be accessed as www.mysite.com:3455/newstuff/admin/rss.xml

Posted at Jun 16/2004 06:33 AM:
[jack]: RSS with content syndication would be great, yes... Still waiting for this one.
[Mark]: RSS is there (see above and http://www.courseforum.com/rss.html) - not clear what is missing?

Posted at Jun 16/2004 10:13 AM:
[Keith]: Someone somehow destroyed an entire group, it seems to have reset back to default when you start a new group. The .db files are still in the directory and if i look with a hex editor real quick i can see it's the correct data from group2.. Is there a way to force it to use those .db's? or to tell the wiki that hey there's already a data base where why are you putting some default data base on my screen :)
[Mark]: Please email us directly at support@courseforum.com .. we can help you import old db's into a current site but will need some more details

Posted at Jun 20/2004 11:17 PM:
CDS: How can I change the Site Home page? I want to match the look and fell of my exisiting public site to ProjectForum,
The directory.html always prints ProjectForum Home near the header. Plus in the Title bar.
I love this program!
[Mark]: Glad you like it! See http://www.courseforum.com/themes/ for info on changing the look and feel

hebrew

Posted at Jul 15/2004 10:53 AM:
[JR]: This is a terrific product, by the way. I've got a question about URLs. By default, it appears that each new page's URL is generated by an increasing number. Is it possible to have the URL just include the name of the page? For instance, if my group's name is "mygroup", and I create a new page called "members", the URL would become .../mygroup/members. Can we do that? This actually works right now.. while every page does get the number, for most pages if you put the page name in the URL that will also work

Also, is it possible to place an image on a page which resides on a network drive? It would look something like image:file/////mynetwork\folder\image.bmp inside brackets []. Thanks. This can be done via http links but not file links right now.. will look at adding the latter.

Posted at Aug 17/2004 10:22 PM:
[Needing Help]: I wish to inquire about authentication behaviour of pf.

I created a number a group, assigned an admin password, added a new user, assigned the new user a password, saved all, with logout on save selected.

Now I should be logged out of admin completely, which I checked, main admin and group admin.

I login with the new user account and it shows my new account name in the comments box, but in the classic skin over on the right it says I am logged in as the administrator and I still have admin priv access.

Any idea where I am missing on this ?

Scott

Posted at Aug 18/2004 03:45 AM:
[bigtalk]: you're most likely still logged in as the site administrator.. so go to site home, click on site admin, and then logout from that screen

Posted at Aug 24/2004 09:20 AM:
[John Kerr]: I have been having trouble with the "Include" feature when attempting to link to external content. I keep getting a 'cannot process include' message. I would like to create something like a news aggregator page that combines the contents of several newspaper homepages onto one pf page. Can a longer timeout interval be set?

[Mark]: There's no way to adjust the timeout right now... could you post or email us the URL's of some of the pages giving you trouble?

Posted at Aug 25/2004 12:40 PM:
[John Kerr]: Two sites I have tried are www.thestar.com and www.globeandmail.com. I tried thestar.com from a home machine last night (no firewall) and while it worked the star page would not act as an include but opened its own full browser window. I suspect this may have something to do with fact I'm on a corporate server.

[Mark]: Globe and Mail worked for me, though the Toronto Star refreshed and took over the whole window... not uncommon for sites like that to do that. Those types of pages aren't really designed to be easily included anywhere...

Posted at Nov 08/2004 06:40 AM:
[Bob Leach]: I have a licensed copy of ProjectForum. I notice that version 4.0 has been released. What's the upgrade process? Do we simply stop the app, replace the .exe, and then re-start the app? Yes, that's all you'll need to do.

Posted at Nov 11/2004 02:19 PM:
Nancy A. Renfree: I am a bit concerned that RSS feeds for the forums are automatically provided. This seems to be a huge security hole, since anyone can access our team's ongoing discussions of software projects. Am I missing something? Is there a way to make our discussions more secure? Nancy... the information provided in the feeds is deliberately kept minimal, exactly because of that. The only information is the name of the page changed, and when it was changed. The contents of the page are not available. As well, even if you use the link to the page to try to visit it in a web browser, if the forum is locked, you won't be able to get in.

Posted at Nov 16/2004 07:06 PM:
[Zheng Yichao]: What does group member mean? and how to uninstall ProjectForum. Group member means a person using the group. The Windows version comes with an uninstaller, but simply removing the software and its datafiles is fine - it's self contained and doesn't scatter things all over your disk.

Posted at Dec 13/2004 09:41 PM:
[Claude]: What's the price? See http://www.projectforum.com/pf/sales.html

Posted at Dec 14/2004 05:05 AM:
[Tomo]: Does this wiki support LaTeX or some form of algebra filter? For example, if I typed "/triangle" have the symbol for triangle appear? No, it doesn't

Posted at Dec 17/2004 08:38 AM:
[Keith]: Can you view the free trial on the web hosted from a computer for testing purposes? If so, how do you connect to it? Please see our FAQ

Posted at Dec 21/2004 12:35 PM:
[Mark]: All of my text gets bunched together when I copy from other programs. How do I find out more about formatting functions? The user's guide has a good explanation of formatting.

Posted at Dec 30/2004 06:49 PM:
[Keith]: Had a suggestion. If you add an image you can create a custome link for it so that it can be called from anywhere with that keyword. Ie you upload a little smiley face or something, then edit and change [image:19428] for example to [image:19428 smiley] and then you can write [image:smiley] elsewhere and it will display that picture.. just an idea. We've been thinking about a mechanism to support something like that actually...

Posted at Jan 16/2004 03:11 AM:
[Christopher Allen]: The RSS for changes is that interesting currently, only being a title with the name of the page and the body being a date. More interesting would be the diff between it and the last page, and who modified it, and maybe an optional comments field that can be filled out when a true edit is added.

Posted at Jan 16/2004 03:13 AM:
[Christopher Allen]: Also an option that was an RSS feed for the entire site, with the full current text of each page would be useful.

Posted at Jan 16/2004 11:27 AM:
[Mark]: There's some security issues with doing this, especially for password-protected forums. Most news aggregators handle authentication poorly. We decided that making the title of the pages available but none of the content was a reasonable compromise. Optionally extending this to include content might be a future option.

Posted at Jan 16/2004 09:53 PM:
[Christopher Allen]: But if you have read allowed by default, and only use passwords for edits, then diffs or full RSS would be very useful. As it stands now, very limited usefulness.

Posted at Apr 05/2004 01:12 AM:
Why doesn't this thing send out an automated email to the group members when something is posted --- you have to keep checkingh for new updates ... Notification of changes is done via RSS, which provides better control of how individuals are notified... - see http://www.courseforum.com/rss.html

Posted at Jul 07/2004 01:24 PM:
[Jason]: Is there a way to increase the size of the post your comments area? This can be easily modified if you're doing a custom theme.
[Red]: In that vein....I would love if there was a way to customize/personalize the size of the EDIT PAGE area. It's really small for longer pages, showing only 20 lines it seems. Increasing that frame would be cool.

Posted at Jul 16/2004 09:21 AM:
Is there a way to reverse the appearance of the posts so that the most recent appears at the top?

Posted at Jul 28/2004 08:26 AM:
[Steve]: I am using the Projects area alot and would like to be able to archive completed projects and remove them from the active projects list menu. Is this easily accomplished?
[Red]: This too will become a very useful feature for our workgroup. Especially if we could archive them as static HTML for off-line viewing.

Posted at Aug 31/2004 10:38 AM:
Chris Spence: I would like to have the ability to "Add Audio/Video" (Quicktime, Real, &amp;amp;amp;amp; Windows Media, extensions).

Also better control of Mime types. My Appleworks documents (.cwk) open as scattered text n the browser window instead of loading onto my desktop.

Added 9/22/04
[Red] here's one: When I control an image size, (i.e. [image2833@200x200]) it would be a super sweet feature if clicking on that image would open a link to the full-size image. Kinda like a thumbnail version. If not this as a default, then being able to pipe it to a link. As in: [image2833@200x200 | image2833]

Added 9/22/04
[Red]: I would love to not only ARCHIVE a group, but to archive to static HTML. This is a key feature for offline viewing and long-term storage (years from now).

Added 9/22/04
[Red]: One more....(i'm feeling needy today)....being able to have a few more Heading sizes.

"***" and "****" and perhaps "*****" maybe.

Posted at Sep 30/2004 03:51 PM:
[Red]: User access on the Enterprise edition: It would be nice to be able to force the user to change their password on initial login so that we can setup accounts and not worry that they are keeping the setup password. **OR** it would be nice to have a "request-to-join" where they can register and simply await the "okay" from the powers that be.

Posted at Oct 01/2004 11:06 AM:
[Sergey]: I'd love the possibility to "tag" or "label" places inside pages (or maybe pages themselves) with a set of pre-defined values. Look at GMail for a model.

Posted at Oct 11/2004 09:00 PM:
[Mike]: When attaching a file of the same name as one already attached to a page, it would be great if the new file optionally (possibly a setting) replaced the old one's place on the page rather than being added at the end. We regularly update files and want only the latest one on the page. So, we add the new one, edit the page, copy new file number to old one's location, and finally remove the new instance from the bottom of the page.

Posted at Oct 29/2004 06:12 AM:
[Ian Stobie]: This may already be possible with custom themes, but I'd like better accessibility for visually impaired users. This is already a legal requirement in some countries.

The basic clean layout is already good, but the option of a larger font size globally would be very helpful.

If you are using CSS and cookies, it shouldn't be too hard to add a lot more user control.

Regards, Ian.

Posted at Oct 29/2004 06:48 AM:
[Ian Stobie]: Following on from my previous post, here's a link that shows the kind of control it's possible to give users.

http://www.drc-gb.org/easyread/accessoptions/index.asp

These guys obviously have the time and money to go to town on this. But the basic idea is simple, and the colour choices are interesting.

Schools and colleges have to make a reasonable effort to make their courses accessible.

Posted at Oct 29/2004 07:05 AM:
[Mark]: Yes, the custom themes can do this - it's all based on CSS. We're looking at ways that we can make tweaking some aspects of themes easier from within the web interface, which should also help with this... thanks.

Posted at Nov 07/2004 02:18 PM:
Mark Kadonoff: I would find it useful to be able to email the contents of a page, in addition to being able to print the contents of a page.

Posted at Nov 24/2004 10:31 PM:
[Zac Gowen]: I'd like to be able to check a box once and always have all new comments put at the top. Look for some changes in the next version that will allow for that...