Warning: Software update, and action needed from members

[GeoffB]

Please note: A major update of the forum software will be installed soon.

This is currently planned for next Monday (1 May) and the forum will be out of action for around 2 to 4 hours while it takes place.

After this update, members may initially notice a problem with how the forum is displayed. If so, you will need to refresh your browser page or possibly clear the cache to enable forum pages to be displayed correctly.

Geoff

[Evocacion]

I almost missed this warning, hidden away in New Posts. Perhaps an email to members would be better?

[David Norton]

Can it be sticky-posted to the header of the main page?

[GeoffB]

As you'll have seen, Mr Delcamp has now moved this thread to the announcements area. And I believe emails will also be sent out nearer the time.

Geoff

[spanishguitarmusic]

Thank you for the announcement! This is why yesterday when I was trying to log in to the forum, I would see all these weird characters on the home page of the forum and also every drop down menu was opened and I couldn't figure out what was going on or wrong with the forum. Thanks for the heads up!

[tateharmann]

Great! Love the new audio player maybe we'll see some more action in the various 'our recordings' sections now.

[Jeffrey Armbruster]

How does one clear the cache?

[GeoffB]

It varies depending on your browser. Here's a guide from the web, picked at random, which lists instructions for various browsers: https://kb.iu.edu/d/ahic . Be aware that if you use saved passwords, or automatic logins, clearing some areas of the cache may lose them, so try not to clear more than you need to.

[Jeffrey Armbruster]

ok before reading Geoff's answer I clicked onto the link he provided on another thread that brought me to automatic log ins that had been used by other computers (???) and deleted those. That worked. Hopefully there will not be any repercussions later on...

[Sérgio Lopes]

How does one clear the cache?

You don't need to clear the whole cache. Just refresh the site without accessing the cache for that site. You can google for "how to hard refresh on [browser] [system]" (e.g. "how to hard refresh Chrome Windows"). For instance, on a Mac, you can do that with command + shift + R.

[robin loops]

I wonder how many people will find this post now that it is displaying all crazy. I happened to stumble on it because I was randomly following active topics (although I couldn't actually see what they were). For that reason it's important that this one stay on top of the list. My guess, is we will loose at least a few people that never figure out how to sort it out.

[mmapag]

How does one clear the cache?

You don't need to clear the whole cache. Just refresh the site without accessing the cache for that site. You can google for "how to hard refresh on [browser] [system]" (e.g. "how to hard refresh Chrome Windows"). For instance, on a Mac, you can do that with command + shift + R.

This worked perfectly for Chrome. Thanks Sergio!

[dory]

I got an email in French. I read French but am not super tech savvy. I was able to get in my lost my bookmarks and my whole browser history.

[GeoffB]

Sorry you lost your bookmarks, Dory. That shouldn't have been necessary. The French email you got will have been because you are a member of the French forum. Strange you didn't get the English version too, assuming your email address in your profile here is the same one. Maybe it's stuck in your spam folder (as occasionally happens with forum email).

[Sérgio Lopes]

For future reference, these things happen because your browser caches often-used files locally on your computer for faster loading in the future. Usually, those files have a limited time-to-live, after which they expire and the browser fetches a new copy. The files responsible for styling the site (i.e. where elements in the page are placed, which colors they have, etc), are good candidates for caching as they don't change often.

In this case, after the update your browser was served new content that required new styling files to display properly. Because your browser had cached a now-outdated version of the styling files, things got messed up.

Whenever such things happen, all you have to do is a hard refresh of the page you're at (see my post above). That forces the browser to ignore the locally cached files and request new up-to-date ones, thus rendering everything correctly (hopefully). After this, your cache is up-to-date and you don't need to hard refresh again.