[Scaffies]

Thanks for your input.

We use the commercial (meaning for-pay) DymaniX theme v5.0 — we cannot reach the author anymore 🙁

[Scaffies]

Yes, below the WP menu bar, in the theme.

And yes, we also informed the theme vendor, envato / themeva.

The only thing that changed was the BP v2.2 update – before it worked fine, afterwards not anymore (like all the other issues we reported with the update).

I am sure you do test, and I hope these reports are not viewed as complaining. But as just users, what else can we do other than report it and hope for a fix (and wait for 2 months after the next update releases in the future).

[Scaffies]

We did not get any technical details. Quote:

[#WRS-879-40106]
We just fixed the server issue, everything is fine now.
Sorry for the troubles we brings to you, and thanks so much for your understanding!

Here is the screenshot of the email:
NSFW: http://scaffies.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Chat-Support-Ticket-WRS.png

You are most welcome to contact our vendor in Hongkong with the ticket number and ask for technical details (I wouldn’t understand what they mean, anyway, I am afraid).

host [at] 123flashchat.com

(It is called “flash” but in fact we use the HTML5 version)

[Scaffies]

Thank you very much for your response(s)!

We will look into the test server, s o thanks for the tip with XXAMP.

And either way, going forward, we will definitely hol doff updating until several weeks have passed. Our understanding how the open source community and their developers work together was significantly too “rosy”, and the harsh reality brought us down to facing how it is really working – it may work fine if you are a coder / developer youself, but if you are not, and just work on administering what is there and concentrating on content, it easily becomes quite frustrating.

[Scaffies]

Hello,

we just received “official” confirmation from our Chat & Messenger vendor in Hongkong that they completed the adaptation to the new BuddyPress code last night, shortly after we reported the trouble after the BP v2.2 update, breaking both products.

Thanks to them and everyone else who helped resolve these issues!

Brandon, London UK
for the Scaffies Admin Team.

[Scaffies]

Thanks for your efforts!

We use a cmmercial theme (i.e. paid for) called DynamIX version 3.1.2 by themeva
http://themeforest.net/item/dynamix-business-corporate-wordpress-theme/113901

We do not really have that kind of background, skills, or resources to run test sites with default and other themes, and test all plug-ins against every change (I estimate we use about 50 plugins – we make sure that they are compliant with the latest WP versions, and are popular, i.e. proven on many thousands of sites).

A test site seems like a major pain in the butt, but given today’s events, may not be such a bad choice. We had expected there was more communication between developers, since WordPress and Buddypress are usied in such a HUGE number of sites – yet fairly simple updates break major stuff across many sites. So there may not be much of a choice of running a separate test site, or simply wait several weeks after new releases until the bugs are worked out – we do run another commercial security package, which may not make this too bad of a choice.

We got burned on EVERY BuddyPress update this is just by far the worst one so far. Sadly … since the software allows us to run a popular site.

[Scaffies]

Both Chat and Messenger now work again – we did not change anything on Scaffies, so assume our vendor for both products fixed the issue on the code they run remotely?

Thanks to everyone who helped!

[Scaffies]

@r-a-y AWESOME, thank you for restoring (approving) the post.

Would have been a pain to re-type 🙂

Brandon, London

[Scaffies]

same username (scaffies) .. all the admins log in with the same name.

Josh / Stukka wrote a long answer before, with links to screenshots and links to the chat vendors’ products, and when submitted it simply did not show.

this was about 1 minute before his post above, which reads “I responded to you at length, with links to the plugin vendor, but the message did not post after hitting SUBMIT (waiting for approval due to the links included?)”

We get frequently similar issues, when a comment / post is held for moderation. Hope this helps. Writing it again would be a pain, plus it may not post again.

[Scaffies]

thanks @mercime – we will then tag them all NSFW going forward.

being a keymaster, I hope you can recover the message previously posted by Stukka (the other Josh), which the system did not publish here in this thread.

Thank you!

[Scaffies]

as for staging, I think we learned that lesson today.

We had some issues before with updates, but nothing remotely as bas as the BP 2.2 update.

We run a not-for-profit site, even though one with a significant following, and this puts yet another strain on volunteer admins — but obviously, this cannot be avoided.

I hope you can recover the message previously posted by Stukka (the other Josh), which the system did not publish here in this thread.

Josh (also in Dallas)

[Scaffies]

We did put “NSFW” in front of every link to potentially irritating content, after the very first of our posts (problem with links) was changed today to include the reference.

Post to admin screen shots etc were not tagged with “NSFW” as they only show the admin interface (and the BuddyPress problems)

We have great respect for peopls work lifes 🙂

[Scaffies]

Hello,

and thank you for the response.

Of course we do not know how this all works with the development; but of course one would think since BuddyPress thrives on all the other plug-in developers for it, it would make some kind of an effort to communicate important changes, instead of just doing it, and saying “well if you guys don’t check our blog for changes…”?

This upgrade broke so many things, and so severely that we cannot even load the admin interfaces for both the chat and the messenger in the WP dashboard:
NSFW: http://scaffies.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/flashchat-admin-panel.png

From the Plugin Page:
NSFW: http://scaffies.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/chat-messenger-plugins.png

These are the (Commercial) plugins – meaning we pay for both, several hundred $ per year:

Chat:
NSFW: http://scaffies.nl/wordpress/wp-admin/plugin-install.php?tab=plugin-information&plugin=wordpress-chat-plugin-by-123-flash-chat&TB_iframe=true&width=600&height=550

Messenger:
NSFW: http://scaffies.nl/wordpress/wp-admin/plugin-install.php?tab=plugin-information&plugin=wordpress-instant-messaging&TB_iframe=true&width=600&height=550

We also informed the vendor in Hongkong about it (by email, since we could not submit a support ticket through the admin interface…):
NSFW: http://scaffies.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/FlashChat-Support-re-BP-2-2.png

We certainly appreciate every bit of help we can get!

Stukka
(Creator & Admin of Scaffies – in Dallas, Texas)

[Scaffies]

I responded to you at length, with links to the plugin vendor, but the message did not post after hitting SUBMIT (waiting for approval due to the links included?)

Sigh.

[Scaffies]

[Correction] “our” 260,000 users of course, not “your”

[Update] We also passed on the same to the commercial vendor of the chatand messenger system, as we learned from the “links” problem with 2.2 that changes had been made to BP, which were (apparently) not communicated to developers:

“In 2.2 we’ve introduced a bp_is_active() check in the function bp_core_get_directory_page_ids(), i think it’s the reason why this problem has occured with this plugin.”

[Scaffies]

Thank you for the quick response.

This kind of PHP code is above my head, so we cannot do much else but wait for a fix.

Will this bring back all the links and votes? Or are they lost for good?

[Scaffies]

this was the issue before (quotes from our change log)
NSFW: http://scaffies.nl/change-log-nl/
.. and it took from SEP/OCT 2014 to now you get it sorted in this 2.2.0 release.

07 OCT 2014 – Tuesday
☠ [10:35 GMT – @scaffiesadmin ] Dumb: the previous BuxFix (known BP 2.1 issues) a few days (Oct 1st) ago, which solved a bug we had reported (GitHub), was NOT included in today’s bugfix update. Manually restored it. Hmmmpf!
☠ [09:00 GMT – @scaffiesadmin ] Updated 1 Plug-In: BuddyPress BugFix Release v2.1.1

this referred to the “enqueue” bug, which was previously discovered, and manually fixed
https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/5889/5889.01.patch

☠ [14:35 GMT – @scaffiesadmin ] BuxFix (known BP 2.1 issues) received: The BuddyPress people found a bug we had reported (GitHub)- some of the broken functions are now restored!

23 SEP 2014 – Tuesday
☠ [18:30 GMT – @scaffiesadmin ] Upgrading to WordPress 4 and BuddyPress 2.1 unfortunately broke some things – we reported it upstream, and hope for a solution soon.

[Scaffies]

Same problem here .. pretty annoying, to be honest:

NSFW: http://scaffies.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/BuddyPress-Links-gone.png

“☠ [16:50 GMT – @scaffiesadmin ] Through the BuddyPress Update the page “Links Elsewhere” was broken – all Links disappeared. Hmph! Removed t from the menu.”

We had lots (!) of links entered on the page(s) under “Links” and many ‘up’ and ‘down’ votes. ALL are lost, it is now completely empty and I had to remove the page from the menu.

When I stated on our change log I had upgraded Buddypress to the latest version, I added “let’s see what it fixed and what it broke” .. something always seems to go wrong, and with over 260,000 users, it is a bummer.
NSFW: http://scaffies.nl/change-log-2015/
Sadly, I was proven right 🙁

This is a bad day for open source development.

We (all the admins) are clueless about “classes” and “skeleton components” – we just use the software, pay / donate for what we do use, and hope it works … and does not render the work and efforts of thousands worthless in a single, badly tested software update.

I am afraid to install updates – the last one required some code changes do be done manually to fix something else which was broken – yet have to, in order to avoid security problems.

We are not using Multi-Site (i.e. single site, WP 4.1, and all plugins in their latest revisions).

Brandon, London