Larry C.

dino88 brought to my attention when he clicked to view my profile another user's name popped up. thing-fish24(2)'s can you take a look and correct the issue please?

Cardsfan111

I'm going to guess the period in your username is the cause of the problem.

Obi-Wanma

Yup, and instead of fixing it, they're going to suggest that you either remove the period or live with it. I have the same problem because of the hyphen in my username.

Adam Tyner

To be fair, the mods and garden variety admins can't fix it, even though we'd really like to. Only Internet Brands can fix this, and they've said that's not possible with the version of vBulletin that DVD Talk runs (which is from June 2008). I don't know how likely an upgrade is at this point, but if the software's ever brought up to date, hopefully this bug will be fixed in the process.

Obi-Wanma

I'm sure it COULD be fixed, but they probably don't want to invest the money it would take to get someone to fix the outdated software. Not sure why an upgrade would be a big deal though, since they own the product.

Cardsfan111

That's interesting, Adam. Guess an upgrade is an expensive deal?

By the way, I think that "Garden Variety Admin" should be a user title.

Adam Tyner

It'd be a project for sure. Upgrading a forum the size of DVD Talk demands a lot more time and resources. Just the processing time to rebuild search indices and all would take a pretty long while (and some substantial downtime), and it'd require more handholding than your average vB forum, especially considering it'd have six years of upgrades to slog through. More recent versions of vBulletin expect more power under the hood and could require beefier hardware. Templates might not cleanly carryover, requiring some graphical / design fiddling. Existing plugins may no longer be compatible or even have an equivalent.

Plus, to be frank, a lot of the other elements that make up DVD Talk are showing their age, so bringing the columns, review system, etc. up to date as well would require an even bigger investment. Whole lotta static files, a ton of individual CMSes that don't talk to each other, a custom review system by a programmer who didn't really know what he was doing (I'm way better at this now! This is what I do for USA TODAY)...

I'd love to see a shiny, all-around upgraded DVD Talk, but when you start getting into cost/benefit analysis and all that, I guess the numbers don't work. They really have done a bunch of work and maintenance on the site, though. It was running 3.0.13 when IB was handed the keys!

Larry C.

Hmmm this is only recently happening. I checked my profile about a month ago and it didn't have this issue. And I've been a member since 2001

VinVega

I think Adam summed up the technical reasons why we're still on ancient software. Larry C., if you want to take the period out after the C in your name, let me know and I can do that for you.

stevevt

Larry, you should be able to use this link to view your profile:

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/members/larry-c%2e.html

Larry C.

I understand we are running on old software but this was never and issue until recently. dino88 brought it to my attention but I had clicked on my username from threads before and I know in December it was linking to my profile correctly.

stevet thanks but I'm more concerned with other members sending PM's to me and someone else getting them while I won't. When I click on user cp it works fine.

Vin I guess if it can't be corrected go ahead and change it to Larry C

Thanks for the responses.

Obi-Wanma

Mine worked at one point too, although it stopped working a while before yours did. I guess it's something that just happens randomly over time to people who have non-alphanumeric characters in their name.


You don't need a profile page to get PM's. There's a dropdown menu when you click your name, and "Send a private message to Larry C." works fine, just "View Public Profile" doesn't. I get my PM's just fine.

Larry C.

Hmmm you're absolutely correct Obi-Wan everything works perfectly except View Public Profile. Thanks for the heads up. I appreciate it.

VinVega

I sent you a test PM Larry. If that's your main concern, I think PM's should still be working fine for you.

Trevor

This thread makes me wonder how people come up with user names like thing-fish24.

Dan

His real name is Trevor Thing-Fish, and he's 24 years old.

Larry C.

Well one of my concerns. It would be nice when members click on "View my Profile" it was my profile that appears.

Trevor

Is clicking on profiles a thing people even do?