[Forum] Forum support is awful!!!

[jwbond]

I have had no assistance on 2 separate threads from the vBulletin support team for days now.

Meanwhile, my forums continue to look unprofessional and I am losing potential clients, as I don't have room for my sign-up forms.


If anyone who works for vBulletin cares, I should would appreciate a response on these 2:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?335608-Search-box-constantly-dropped-down

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?334018-Fix-width-and-more

[akia]

I agree.

[s0lidgr0und]

The first issue is most likely a result of your own alterations to the code they provided.

[jwbond]

The first issue is most likely a result of your own alterations to the code they provided.

I added my template code to the header and footer templates, but did not modify their code.


My reference to the bad customer service was in reference to their responsiveness, not their knowledge.

[s0lidgr0und]

Understood, but I'd rather they focus more on their own coding of their product than be in a super rush to help someone out with a botched customiztion.

Revert the header. Does the search box go back to normal? My guess would be that it does. And if it does, that means that the problem does indeed lie with your own coding.

[waynem]

Did you open a support ticket?

[Trevor Hannant]

I did actually post in your second one - 3 times...

Looking at your site, I'me getting 2 javascript errors:

Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Timestamp: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:34:09 UTC

Message: 'document[...]' is null or not an object
Line: 91
Char: 2
Code: 0
URI: [URL]http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/scripts/slideshow.js[/URL]

Message: Object doesn't support this property or method
Line: 200
Char: 45
Code: 0
URI: [URL]http://forums.jwsuretybonds.com/[/URL]

and

Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Timestamp: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:37:39 UTC

Message: 'document[...]' is null or not an object
Line: 91
Char: 2
Code: 0
URI: [URL]http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/scripts/slideshow.js[/URL]

Message: Object doesn't support this property or method
Line: 200
Char: 45
Code: 0
URI: [URL]http://forums.jwsuretybonds.com/[/URL]

Working through those will hopefully help with the dropdown issues.

As for the fixed width, both myself and another staff member have tried the fixes suggested in that thread within the last few mintues and successfully gotten a fixed width, centered forum. If this isn't working for you then something else is breaking that within your templates.

To troubleshoot that, temporarily disable the plugin system, edit config.php and add this line right under <?php

define('DISABLE_HOOKS', true);

Then if you still have this problem, create a new style and choose no parent style. This will force it to use the default templates. Finally empty your browser cache, close all browser windows then try again. Make sure you change to the new style and view your forums with it.

[DoE]

I validated your forum at w3.org. You have a lot of self-induced errors you should correct before moving on.

The validator at w3.org is invaluable, IMO.

The support staff here is second to no one. They go above and beyond assisting members here.

[cbiweb]

I have had no assistance on 2 separate threads from the vBulletin support team for days now.

Meanwhile, my forums continue to look unprofessional and I am losing potential clients, as I don't have room for my sign-up forms.


If anyone who works for vBulletin cares, I should would appreciate a response on these 2:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?335608-Search-box-constantly-dropped-down

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...width-and-more

Consider yourself lucky that Trevor replied in this thread. And here's another news flash for you:

THE vBULLETIN FORUMS ARE NOT THE VENUE FOR OFFICIAL SUPPORT!!

You cannot expect nor demand support from the vBulletin team here. If they do chime in (and they often do), it's a bonus. Otherwise, you just have to wait for one of us lowly users to come along and help, if we happen to know the answer.

If you want direct help from the dev team, submit a support ticket.

[c.c.]

I'm going to have to disagree. Support for us has been really fantastic and trust me, we've run into tons of issues. I think the VB Team has been great especially since they are getting pounded with thousands of questions.


Christian
highdefjunkies.com

[TheAquanox]

I have to agree. I had to solve my questions myself, resulted to be easy to solve but took a long time to find out how.

I still have one problem remaining. I just don't know how to show images as thumbnails, I have thumbnails enabled, if I copy the url to the full sized attachment and add "&thumbnail=1" in the browser it does show a thumbnail so it means that it's being generated but for some reason it doesn't show it.

Currently I have to set each picture one by one, edit it and click on show as thumnail. As a result it shows the FULL gigantic image but in the size of a thumbnail.

Please assist me here:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?336509-Thumbnails-are-generated-but-article-keeps-showing-full-picture&p=1901587#post1901587

I have an unanswered topic here too, about sidebars:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?335614-Problems-with-login-sessions-and-multiple-questions

Thank you.

[Reeve of Shinra]

THE vBULLETIN FORUMS ARE NOT THE VENUE FOR OFFICIAL SUPPORT!!

Actually, as of 4.0, the forums are the only official support venue for forum only customers. Therefore, forum suppport is now official.

[cbiweb]

@Reeve: For some reason I didn't know that. But if that's the case then I guess they should step up with a more solid support presence in the forums.

[TheLastSuperman]

@Reeve: For some reason I didn't know that. But if that's the case then I guess they should step up with a more solid support presence in the forums.

I've seen them posting but... spend all day helping fix errors on sites individually OR read about them and fix it for the next version? That seems much quicker and a more constructive use of time imo. I say they are doing the latter especially with 4.0.1 possibly coming later today and the next version sometime around the 22nd.

All I know is some members are terribly impatient, I know where your coming from but to those who have customized and had problems... you decided to customize so you must be ready to implement changes, revert back to default OR find a work around yourself.

Sorry some are having problems, I have seen a few good replies on vbulletin.org too some are giving out helpful info there too so check it out.

Mike

[jwbond]

I did actually post in your second one - 3 times...

Looking at your site, I'me getting 2 javascript errors:

Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Timestamp: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:34:09 UTC

Message: 'document[...]' is null or not an object
Line: 91
Char: 2
Code: 0
URI: [URL]http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/scripts/slideshow.js[/URL]

Message: Object doesn't support this property or method
Line: 200
Char: 45
Code: 0
URI: [URL]http://forums.jwsuretybonds.com/[/URL]

and

Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Timestamp: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:37:39 UTC

Message: 'document[...]' is null or not an object
Line: 91
Char: 2
Code: 0
URI: [URL]http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/scripts/slideshow.js[/URL]

Message: Object doesn't support this property or method
Line: 200
Char: 45
Code: 0
URI: [URL]http://forums.jwsuretybonds.com/[/URL]

Working through those will hopefully help with the dropdown issues.

As for the fixed width, both myself and another staff member have tried the fixes suggested in that thread within the last few mintues and successfully gotten a fixed width, centered forum. If this isn't working for you then something else is breaking that within your templates.

To troubleshoot that, temporarily disable the plugin system, edit config.php and add this line right under <?php

define('DISABLE_HOOKS', true);

Then if you still have this problem, create a new style and choose no parent style. This will force it to use the default templates. Finally empty your browser cache, close all browser windows then try again. Make sure you change to the new style and view your forums with it.

Good find!

The javascripts shouldn't have been in the template to begin with, as they are never used. Took them out, but the problem persisted.

I figured that one out though! Looks like it was a css confliction problem.