My fellow BWEers...

JimHow · Post by **JimHow** » Thu Feb 18, 2021 1:34 pm

Yeah, that’s what I figured.
When you’re taking a picture with an iPhone, you are considered to be holding it horizontally. Thus, when you take a picture vertically, it appears on its side.

DavidG · Post by **DavidG** » Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:43 pm

Wow, fantastic work Jacques! We're even better now than we were.

The sideways photo issue is common to many BBs. You do have to edit the photo and save the edited version on your phone/tablet before uploading it. That will fix it. Doesn't matter what edit you do: rotate, tiny bit of cropping, whatever, then save before uploading. It does something to the metadata attached to the photo that allows it to post with the proper orientation.

Regarding some of the other requests:

I like avatars because I know who is posting immediately (well, once I get to know which avatar belongs to who) without reading the name. When I see Jackie Robinson, I know right away that it's SFEd. That said, I'm fine without them.

Jim, are you talking about the "Quick reply" or the "Post a reply" box? "Quick reply" used to show a box at the bottom of the posts and could be filled and posted without having to click the "Post a reply" button. You couldn't attach a picture or file without going to the "Post a reply" box. "Quick reply" saves a click and a page load for most posts so I like it. Not a big deal - doesn't slow me down that much.

I have no problem using the site without a security certificate. The reason I brought up an https address is partly out of ignorance and partly out of an experience I had with the antivirus software. First time I came here I got warnings that the site wasn't secure, that it might install malware on my computer, and I had to add it to a safe/ignore list for the antivirus software. I thought that might discourage someone new from loading the page to read it and as a result reduce traffic and the number of people joining the group. The ignorance part is that I don't know what the lack of security actually means. Does it make visitors susceptible to some sort of malware, or does it make the site itself susceptible to some sort of attack?

jal · Post by **jal** » Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:19 pm

I enabled the Quick Reply, David. Sorry, it took me a while to find the option, it was enabled in Posting, but not in "Our Forum". I needed to enable it in both places

I confess I had never noticed it here before.

SF Ed · Post by **SF Ed** » Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:37 pm

DavidG wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:43 pm When I see Jackie Robinson, I know right away that it's SFEd. That said, I'm fine without them.

Ernie Banks!

JimHow · Post by **JimHow** » Fri Feb 19, 2021 6:29 pm

Let’s play two!

Winona Chief · Post by **Winona Chief** » Sat Feb 20, 2021 1:20 am

Back in the day (me in Minnesota, in the 1950s) you were either an Earnie Banks fan or a Henry Aaron fan. I was first of all an Aaron fan but always admired Earnie Banks.

Chris Bublitz

JimHow · Post by **JimHow** » Sat Feb 20, 2021 12:47 pm

Test.

marcs · Post by **marcs** » Sat Feb 20, 2021 5:17 pm

I just want to give a hearty, sincere, indeed almost abjectly grateful thanks to Jacques and Tom for saving our creaky old site, bringing it back up and giving it a shiny new look. THANK YOU!

Tom In DC · Post by **Tom In DC** » Sat Feb 20, 2021 11:28 pm

The credit goes to Jacques - thanks, jal!

jal · Post by **jal** » Sun Feb 21, 2021 2:52 am

Thanks but most of the hard work was done by Mark Hamill (no, not the Star Wars guy), who we hired to do the upgrade. We were lucky to find him and after he was done, he gave me a quick tutorial and with his help and the help of his excellent book, we can probably take care of most of the day to day stuff. We may have to hire him to do the next upgrade once it is out, but we're now in better shape than we've been in years.

Now just waiting for the BWE Archives from Billo.

robert goulet · Post by **robert goulet** » Sun Feb 21, 2021 3:10 am

New board looks great boys...well done

DavidG · Post by **DavidG** » Sun Feb 21, 2021 7:57 pm

SF Ed wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:37 pm
DavidG wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:43 pm When I see Jackie Robinson, I know right away that it's SFEd. That said, I'm fine without them.
Ernie Banks!

LOL, my bad!

I still knew it was SFEd!

s*d*r · Post by **s*d*r** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 5:41 pm

Would love to see a search function. How else to find every comment on “1989 Lynch Bages”?

Great work so far; thank you Jacques.

Stu

jal · Post by **jal** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 5:56 pm

Stu,
I did a search for 1989 Lynch Bages in the "search this forum" box
Here's what i got;
search.php?keywords=1989+lynch+bages&fid%5B0%5D=4

The results are all the posts that include those 3 words but not necessarily in the correct order, so a post with 1989 Canon and 1986 Lynch Bages would also come out in the results.
It seems this is the best we can do. I'll investigate further when i have time, but I doubt we'll be able to do better

JimHow · Post by **JimHow** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 6:42 pm

Yeah this new and improved search function is nice, something we haven't been able to do for years on the site.

jal · Post by **jal** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 6:50 pm

Jim gave the OK.

Avatars are operational.
Max 35 kilobytes
120 pixels max heights
120 pixels max width

We'll give it a few days and see how it goes. If it becomes really annoying, we can always revert.

Racer Chris · Post by **Racer Chris** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 7:24 pm

35 bytes?

Racer Chris · Post by **Racer Chris** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 7:29 pm

kilobytes

jal · Post by **jal** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 7:31 pm

Racer Chris wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 7:29 pm kilobytes

Oooops
Corrected

DavidG · Post by **DavidG** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 7:55 pm

Thank you again Jacques. I see Chris is back on track, and I'm corked!

jal · Post by **jal** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:19 pm

I finally found a way to get rid of the Blue Square with a "?"
It's now a generic inoffensive head

Racer Chris · Post by **Racer Chris** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:28 pm

: mueba.gif (6.79 KiB) Viewed 1445 times

SF Ed · Post by **SF Ed** » Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:51 pm

I'm happy I can be Ernie again.

Let's play two!

JimHow · Post by **JimHow** » Tue Feb 23, 2021 1:50 am

Was just checking his stats...
A little surprised by his modest .274 career BA.
But... 512 HRs.... Back in those days, that was a real number.

DavidG · Post by **DavidG** » Thu Feb 25, 2021 9:48 pm

Ed, I've always thought you were earnest...

s*d*r · Post by **s*d*r** » Fri Feb 26, 2021 9:42 pm

jal wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 5:56 pm Stu,
I did a search for 1989 Lynch Bages in the "search this forum" box
Here's what i got;
http://www.bordeauxwineenthusiasts.com/ ... d%5B0%5D=4

The results are all the posts that include those 3 words but not necessarily in the correct order, so a post with 1989 Canon and 1986 Lynch Bages would also come out in the results.
It seems this is the best we can do. I'll investigate further when i have time, but I doubt we'll be able to do better

Hey, that really works! Thanks, Jacques.

Stu

s*d*r · Post by **s*d*r** » Fri Feb 26, 2021 9:43 pm

I am missing something. How do you add your avatar?

Stu

jal · Post by **jal** » Fri Feb 26, 2021 9:47 pm

Stu,go to the user control panel (under the icon of the small human silhouette in the top right bar)
Select profile, the second tab on the bar
You will see avatar on the left menu

You can also select your name in the bottom of the page (under users browsing this forum)
Then edit profile

dstgolf · Post by **dstgolf** » Fri Feb 26, 2021 10:07 pm

Seeing if I figured out posting with an avatar. Need a very small file and most that I saw online don't allow such a small file to upload unless I'm clueless which is likely when it comes to figuring this stuff out.

dstgolf · Post by **dstgolf** » Fri Feb 26, 2021 10:08 pm

Wow ...it worked!!

s*d*r · Post by **s*d*r** » Wed Mar 03, 2021 6:09 pm

We don’t want to be just like that “Other Wine Board.”

But how about sticking a few BWE threads permanently at the top?

Candidates: 1) BWE France trips memories 2) Ian’s BWE updated Bordeaux classification 3) Dream wines or best ever Bordeaux 4) BWE wine of the year. Many other possibilities but need to keep permanent threads to a minimum.

I guess you could search for these but it would be nice to have them readily available.

Stu

stefan · Post by **stefan** » Wed Mar 03, 2021 7:24 pm

I stole my avatar idea from David. Mine is a picture of our real cork garden, which we started at the beginning of the pandemic. David, is yours a picture of your cork garden?

DavidG · Post by **DavidG** » Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:15 pm

Very cool Stefan. Mine is a picture I took of a bunch of corks from a big tasting of 2000 Bordeaux that was put on by a local store/distributor shortly after they were released in 2003.

marcs · Post by **marcs** » Thu Mar 04, 2021 10:00 pm

s*d*r wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 6:09 pm We don’t want to be just like that “Other Wine Board.”

But how about sticking a few BWE threads permanently at the top?

Candidates: 1) BWE France trips memories 2) Ian’s BWE updated Bordeaux classification 3) Dream wines or best ever Bordeaux 4) BWE wine of the year. Many other possibilities but need to keep permanent threads to a minimum.

I guess you could search for these but it would be nice to have them readily available.

Stu

I am not a big fan of stickied threads at the top. I want to see what the latest comments are and stickies make it hard to do that. Invariably it ends up with a bunch of threads stickied and it's hard to tell what's new and what isn't? Maybe we could have a separate forum that lists classic threads or something? Or ONE stickied thread with links to all the different classic threads in it.

JoelD · Post by **JoelD** » Thu Mar 04, 2021 10:11 pm

marcs wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 10:00 pm
s*d*r wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 6:09 pm We don’t want to be just like that “Other Wine Board.”

But how about sticking a few BWE threads permanently at the top?

Candidates: 1) BWE France trips memories 2) Ian’s BWE updated Bordeaux classification 3) Dream wines or best ever Bordeaux 4) BWE wine of the year. Many other possibilities but need to keep permanent threads to a minimum.

I guess you could search for these but it would be nice to have them readily available.

Stu
I am not a big fan of stickied threads at the top. I want to see what the latest comments are and stickies make it hard to do that. Invariably it ends up with a bunch of threads stickied and it's hard to tell what's new and what isn't? Maybe we could have a separate forum that lists classic threads or something? Or ONE stickied thread with links to all the different classic threads in it.

I agree with Marcus's amendment to the idea. Either a separate link to all time top threads, (also what about recent top threads as a separate option?). I don't think we need to move them to the forefront like google ads. This idea seems to fix that and is the best of both, so that people that want to see the top threads can, and those that don't want to don't have too.

One option I love about WB though is the "your posts" section and notifications. If either or both of those were able to be implemented here I think that would be great.

jal · Post by **jal** » Thu Mar 04, 2021 11:18 pm

As for "your posts", you can select your avatar (or the silhouette with your name if you don't have an avatar) and then select Search user's posts.

Please keep in mind that I'm not a phpBB expert, I can do some small tweaks but extensive modifications are not straightforward.

JimHow · Post by **JimHow** » Thu Mar 04, 2021 11:22 pm

No more tweaks!
I am of the very firm belief that BWE has survived 21 years because we are basically the same thing that we were that morning in February 2000, when it all started. We are successful because we keep it simple. Start a thread, post some replies.... No need to overthink things. A successful site, like the Medoc, is a delicate microclimate.

Racer Chris · Post by **Racer Chris** » Thu Mar 04, 2021 11:36 pm

I would like a button to view a User's Topics in addition to a button for User's Posts.

marcs · Post by **marcs** » Fri Mar 05, 2021 10:04 pm

JimHow wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 11:22 pm No more tweaks!
I am of the very firm belief that BWE has survived 21 years because we are basically the same thing that we were that morning in February 2000, when it all started. We are successful because we keep it simple. Start a thread, post some replies.... No need to overthink things. A successful site, like the Medoc, is a delicate microclimate.

LOL hear hear!

The key change was making sure we actually had a functional forum, other stuff is very optional at best.

JimHow · Post by **JimHow** » Sat Mar 06, 2021 12:35 am

In all seriousness, I think one of the reasons BWE has been successful for 21 years is that we are essentially unregulated, and we have just kept things really simple. I have deleted a small handful of posts over 21 years, and I think I have banned like two people. It is very easy to get self-important on the internet, and petty, and easily offended, and geez a wine web site by definition lends itself to snobbery. And for the most part we have avoided that here. There was a time when I wanted as many new members as possible, bigger was better. Now, I want as few new members as possible, we have a fantabulous group here, I have no need for us to be bigger, more fancy, etc. Some people might define "success" differently. Some might say, gee, other websites have more activity. That's fine, but from my perspective, BWE has been a little oasis in my crazy life, a place where I can peek in several times a day, whether I'm at my desk at the office, or from my iPhone during a break at court, or sipping a fine northern Medoc at home in the evening. Everyone going about their lives, literally around the world, and every so often we get together in real life... and then go on our separate ways, apart, but only a simple click away here on the computer. For 21 years now. No need to tweak anything, as far as I'm concerned.