Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

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flash2015
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Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#1 Post by flash2015 » Sat Feb 09, 2019 6:58 pm

When I am not logged in and I hit reply to a post it brings me to a login screen. Logging in via this screen always fails. Is this a known issue?

If I however choose login from the choosing the main option in the top right hand corner I don't have a problem.

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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#2 Post by bo_sox48 » Sat Feb 09, 2019 7:13 pm

Yes, your account runs through webDiplomacy and your forum account is technically a separate entity altogether and logging into your forum account does not actually give you user privileges. You will have to use the webDip login as opposed to the forum login in order to access the site as a whole as a user. As far as I know, there is no way to fix this, but perhaps I could find a way to force the redirect route to the webDiplomacy login page as opposed to the forum login page in the future.

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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#3 Post by jmo1121109 » Sat Feb 09, 2019 7:16 pm

Like bo said, direct login to the forum is intentionally disabled. It's a phpbb bug that it does not tell you that and instead gives you a login page.

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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#4 Post by flash2015 » Sat Feb 09, 2019 7:48 pm

jmo1121109 wrote:
Sat Feb 09, 2019 7:16 pm
Like bo said, direct login to the forum is intentionally disabled. It's a phpbb bug that it does not tell you that and instead gives you a login page.
If that is the case, perhaps disable the reply button entirely if you aren't logged in?

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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#5 Post by flash2015 » Sat Feb 09, 2019 7:49 pm

Or send users to a different screen...which does not suggest it is possible to directly login via the forum.

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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#6 Post by tobieee911 » Sat Feb 09, 2019 8:05 pm

Question, why do we need an apart account for the forum? Why is a separate entity? Can't we use the same account for the forum and the rest of WebDip?

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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#7 Post by flash2015 » Sat Feb 09, 2019 9:42 pm

tobieee911 wrote:
Sat Feb 09, 2019 8:05 pm
Question, why do we need an apart account for the forum? Why is a separate entity? Can't we use the same account for the forum and the rest of WebDip?
Probably because the new forum is bolted on to the existing code rather than natively integrated. Some more work needs to be done here.

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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#8 Post by bo_sox48 » Sat Feb 09, 2019 11:55 pm

tobieee911 wrote:
Sat Feb 09, 2019 8:05 pm
Question, why do we need an apart account for the forum? Why is a separate entity? Can't we use the same account for the forum and the rest of WebDip?
In all effect, you are using the same account. When you first log into the forum, your forum account is automatically created, matching your webDiplomacy username. When you visit the forum from webDiplomacy, your logged in status automatically carries over so you can post as normal. phpBB has certain settings and functionality that we cannot just dive in and change and that is one of them.

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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#9 Post by jmo1121109 » Sun Feb 10, 2019 12:20 am

This is how phpbb forums work via site integration. You can either force everyone to make a new forum account or you have that handled automatically by the site which means the site "makes" you a 2nd phpbb account with all the database columns it needs to work with phpbb functionality without impacting the schema of the main site.

The problem being described is that phpbb allows you to click a reply button even with the site is set to autologin mode only. That's a phpbb bug only, not a webdip bug. We could submit a patching suggestion to the phpbb forums, but I'm not too inclined to make people do that since I've never heard of anyone else reading the forum while logged off. I'd recommend just having your device save your webdip username/password.

As to why you can't use the same account for both, because then you'd need the main site and the phpbb forum site to both use the same database table with the same columns. And since phpbb doesn't need things like "points", "CD's", and other diplomacy specific columns, it means the webdip data schema would have to be updated to make the main user account not have a lot of use data it contains. Moving that data to other tables would be less efficient and make little sense. Especially if it's all done to solve a phpbb bug.

So while I don't see an issue here, you are welcome to report it to phpbb via their forum and if they implement a patch we'll pick it up during the next upgrade to our forums.
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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#10 Post by flash2015 » Sun Feb 10, 2019 6:56 am

There is a reason to read the forum when you are logged off...it is to hide that you are online. Many people do this. This wasn't a big issue, just wondering whether it could be an easy fix as it is confusing (it took me a little while wondering why my password wasn't working...before I realized what the problem was). From what you are saying it sounds like my "easy fix" assumption was incorrect. Thanks for the correction.

I am curious - what version of phpbb are we running? I see there are features like avatars and the embedding of images/gifs etc available. Were these features that we actively decided to not use...or were these features something we were concerned would clog up the forums?
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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#11 Post by jmo1121109 » Sun Feb 10, 2019 4:55 pm

Click on your new forum settings, Board Preferences, you'll see the section called:

"Hide my online status:
Changing this setting won’t become effective until your next visit to the board."

Set that to yes and you shouldn't need to view it offline anymore.

3.2.1 is our version

embedding images is intentionally disabled for everyone except me. I have it on for me and did testing on it. If you embed gif's they don't render properly for all mobile users, seems to be a phpbb issue. I'm also concerned about the type of security checking that phpbb does on embedded images and gifs. It doesn't seem comprehensive enough to prevent virus embedded images to be used to infect other members. Kestas shared the same concern when we moved to the board so we haven't enabled any of the image upload features. At the time of upgrading we were also on a smaller server then we are now so we had concerns around space usage. I've been steadily increasing the max number of private messages people can keep on the new forum system (up to 200 now) instead of turning on imaging functionality since I think that's an overall better usage of space.

The final issue with images is the problem of having to moderate them and decide which images are appropriate and which are not. At some point we may turn them on, but for now there's a few too many concerns around them.
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Re: Logging In From Forum Appears To Be Broken

#12 Post by flash2015 » Sun Feb 10, 2019 6:35 pm

I didn't know this! Now everyone who cares will do this.
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