Front Panel Blocks not showing for admin.

[curls1991]

Hello,

I am starting up a website using TinyPortal 1.0 beta 5-1, and have come across a wierd and very annoying issue. My website is at <http://curls1991.comeze.com/loa-forum/index.php>.

For guests, the front panels appear perfectly fine (i.e. the boxes entitled "Welcome", "Legends of Agandor" and "CORE: Online RPG Engine"). I have not confirmed if regular members can see them, but upon logging in using my administrator account, the blocks are invisible and I only see a large empty space where they should be.

I have tried:
- Checking permissions
- Checking who has view access
- Using a completely different browser and OS (I use Google Chrome on Ubuntu primarily, Mozilla Firefox on Windows Server 2003 in a Virtual PC)
- Clearing caches, cookies etc.
- Slapping my laptop

Can anybody help me with this please?

Regards,
Shane C

P.S. I have also noticed various other glitches around this version of TinyPortal, to do with the positioning of certain elements. Am I right to assume these are just the Beta nature of it and will be fixed in an update?

UPDATE: I have just tested this issue using another account. Regular Members and Guests can see the blocks just fine, however Global Moderators only see the top block, and Administrators see none. Why is this??

[ZarPrime]

Hello curls1991,

Welcome to the TP Support Site.

Sometimes the various permissions can be kind of complicated (due to the power of TinyPortal) but there's usually a good reason why this is happening.  Sometimes "Slapping my laptop" is indeed the best course of action.

Got to TPAdmin --> Settings & Frontpage --> General Settings.  At the bottom of that page, make sure that "Yes" is selected for "Admin can see all blocks?".

Also, you might want to update to the latest TinyPortal, which is TinyPortal 1.0 beta 5.2.  If you do this, since you are using SMF 1.1.11, set your Forum to the default SMF core theme, uninstall beta 5-1 with the Package Manager and then install the latest version to avoid any problems.  It is available here --> http://mods.simplemachines.org/index.php?mod=97

If this doesn't help, let us know and one of us can take a look at your site from inside to see if we can find out why it's happening.  If we need to do that, you will need to setup a temp Admin account and PM one of us the details.

ZarPrime

[curls1991]

ZarPrime,

I checked the setting for admin to see all blocks, it was already set to Yes. I have upgraded to b5.2, that has made absolutely no difference.

Do you have Skype/MSN and a VNC client (or would be willing to install one)? If so, can you add me (Skype: shane_curless, MSN: shane.curless@gmail.com)? I will share my desktop via VNC so I can see exactly what to do

EDIT: No need for a VNC client, you can access my Virtual PC via Remote Desktop (mstsc) if you have Windows or Ubuntu

Regards,
Shane Curless

[ZarPrime]

Shane,

WRT your 2 shouts in the Shoutbox, please be aware that we are all quite busy and sometimes we just can't do things to help everybody immediately as soon as they want us to.  This is especially true given the fact that none of us gets paid for doing this stuff.  I am also an Admin here and, being that this is still a fairly new site, I have been quite involved in working on it as well.  This, combined with the fact that today was a big day for me in RL, and you might begin to understand how busy I've been today.  I have either been on this site all day or receiving birthday wishes from various friends and members of my family all day long and just got off the phone with my 80 year old Father.  Admittedly, I did take a 2 to 3 hour nap a little earlier this evening but that was only because I got up at about 5AM this morning and was quite tired.  I'm still tired as I type this.

I do not do support over Skype.  None of us do.  Perhaps this might be a possibility for paid support at some point in the future but, at this time, it is not possible for us to do that at this time.  Besides, none of our other members who might have the same issues as you would benefit from me helping you to solve your problems one-on-one.

I will again attempt to help you again tomorrow but it will likely require that I must see your site as an Admin, since you can't solve the problem from what I mentioned earlier.  FWIW, my test site has 1 FrontPage block (10 recent topics) which is visible to guests, regular members (accounts of my own with no other membergroups), and to me as an Admin.  All groups are able to view this block on my FP with no problem.  My test site is here --> http://talesofthehavenexpanse.com/smf2test/index.php

The title is wrong because I'm actually showing more than 10 recent topics but it shows up for everyone.  If you can't solve this issue on your own, setup a temp Admin account that I can use to login to your site and PM the details to me.  If you want me to do that, I need ...
Site URL
temp Admin Account username
password

ZarPrime

Edit:  In the meantime, if you can't get it to work yourself, and don't want me to try to fix it, move your FP block into the upper panel and set it to show only on the FrontPage.  That will work the same way as having a FP block, to a certain extent.

[curls1991]

ZarPrime,

I've decided the best course of action for now is to use SimplePortal, as a part from it having a broken shoutbox and lacking a download manager, it provides almost the same functionality.

I do like TinyPortal, but unfortunately I must say after YEARS of using it for various things, I've never seen a release that doesn't have that worrying "beta" tag on it. And the quality of the latest releases reflects this.

Also, I may have over-reacted a little about lack of support, but when I first used it a few years ago I was used to actually having a conversation where I didn't have to wait a whole day for a reply, hence why I was still expecting that today.

Best of luck in the future, when TP eventually gets out of beta I hope to use it again

Regards,
Shane Curless

[ZarPrime]

Shane,

Very well.  Thanks for letting us know.  I'm sorry we weren't able to solve your problem quickly enough for you but sometimes 24 hours is just not quick enough.  Best luck to you in the future as well.  Case closed.

ZarPrime

[curls1991]

ZarPrime,

I'm terribly sorry to have wasted your time at all - Turns out the issue was nothing to do with TinyPortal at all, but the terrible quality of the free webhost I was using - Seems they have a wierd php.ini setup that randomly prevents PHP from writing files, even with the correct permissions. I've switched host and also upgraded to SMF 2.0 RC3 (maybe the TP beta does not work well with SMF 1.1??)

However, this experience has given me an idea for a very interesting method of paid support should you wish to offer it - I will make a separate post about that

Regards,
Shane Curless

[ZarPrime]

Shane,

You didn't waste my time.  If I wasn't helping you out, I would be helping someone else.  In any case, it's often just a process of elimination.  I'm glad you figured it out.

ZarPrime