Just a heads up

[Mike]

At some point, later on this afternoon, the forums will be closed for approximately 10 minutes, whilst I upgrade the forum software to the latest release. If you arrive at a point between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM EAST, to find the forums closed, just give it a few minutes and check back. We won't be gone long, I promise.

The Hot Rod Refuge has already been upgraded and the process went smooth as silk.

The upgrade just fixes a handful of bugs, so there are really no new user features in this one. But it will allow us to increase stability of the site.

 

[Mike]

Apologies for the brief downtime, but we are now upgraded.

Enjoy!

 

[Mike]

You may have noticed a brief hiccup on the site, a few moments ago. I upgraded both the DXF and DXF-Red styles. If you saw anything, it should have been momentary.

 

[409T]

About once every 5 seconds or so a black rectangle appears in the top right hand corner of my screen. It stays on for only a second, displays a small white object in the middle and then disappears. The black is about 1/4" tall and 1/2" wide, but of course that will vary depending on resolution.

1. Whazzat?
2. Please tell me that it hasn't been there for years and I'm just now noticing it.

I just noticed the same thing on Hot Rod Refuge.

 

[Mike]

1. Whazzat?

There are several 'things' happening in the background, via jQuery, and when added together, they are enough that a progress bar is appearing. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. Some of it is simple enough, like the ticketing system being polled for new ticket submissions. Some of it is part of the anti-spam arsenal we have deployed.

2. Please tell me that it hasn't been there for years and I'm just now noticing it.

It's pretty hard to believe you missed it for so long... No, it's not been there for very long, only about 2 or 3 weeks.

I just noticed the same thing on Hot Rod Refuge.

It's almost enough to make one think I might have some of the same 'things' running over on that one, isn't it? Actually, the custom notifications system on HRR is another jQuery element that is adding to the process.

It is pretty amazing at all the different tasks that are running in the background on this site. There are also a lot of cron jobs running. The board totals counters (total threads, total posts, total members) get updated, user profiles get trophies added when applicable, RSS feeds are updated (both incoming and outgoing), checks are made for expired temporary user bans, checks are made for expired warnings, checks are made for user promotions, checks are made for expired user promotions, forum view counters get updated, media gallery view counters get updated, the sitemap gets rebuilt, etc. There are also some daily cron jobs, like some daily statistics that are available to me, along with some clean-ups that are run once each day.