Mjay06

I have put tis in general as it isnt a Xisto issue, but is there anyway of recovering a poll created on an IPB forum after it has been accidently deleted?It wasnt deleted as such, but two threads were merged & in the process the poll has vanished. The original thread still exists in its entirety, just the poll is missing.Any help would be great.

Tucows is another good website for free downloads

I would recommend that before you edit any of the files you copy them to your computer first, that way if you encounter any errors when you have finished you can just overwrite the edited files with the originals.Trust me, this is well worth doing, otherwise you could find yourself spending hours trying to track down a typing error.

If you open fantastico in your cpanel you will see all the content management systems you can install, click on one & it will show you a link to the relevant developer's website which will tell you all about them. They usually have a test site you can play with too.

Can I ask how you got to see all that, as I'd love to have a look myself. I read through the links Buffalo posted & it certainly seems to have some nice new features, but actually seeing them is a lot more revealing than reading about them.

As I said earlier in this thread, graphic design isnt an instant ticket to being wealthy.For once, this is one topic on here I can talk about with a reasonable amount of knowlege. I have done it (freelance & employed) & as a rule it is badly paid & utterly unestimated by clients.Whatever you do is normally wrong & has to be changed, & commercial graphic design usually involves desinging brochures for industrial nail guns, not mercedes brochures...Be prepared to be dissappionted.

The BBCs were excellent computers in their day, nice & reliable & easy to use. Nowadays though the look partically prehistoric. Its amazing how far things have moved on in such a relatively short time.

This was in the days before monitors, apart from the Commodore Pet (which had a hideous green & black built in display) & the mac you had to plug all the above computers into a television.

You dont know how lucky you have it nowadays, this is a brief look at the computers that got me where I am today... First up, & probably the first sight of a computer for people my age & older is the Commodore Pet. A dire machine, which inhabited pretty much every school in the country. CPU Speed: 1mhz Ram: 16k Rom: 20k Price: ?775 Thankfully this was replaced in schools by the BBCB, which at the time rocked because it had colour output not black & green. It didnt use cassettes either, we used the fantastically dire floppy disks. These were the original 5" floppys, that actually flopped, not the hard plastic things you have now. If you gave one a hard enough stare it would lose all its data & die. CPU Speed: 1.8mhz Ram: 32k Rom: 32k Price: ?399 It was around this sort of time I got my first home computer, the legendary ZX81. Rubbish doesnt even come close. I had the beefed up version, which boosted its 1k Ram with a 16k rampack that plugged in the back. It was a silly idea that didnt work. CPU Speed: 3.5mhz Ram: 1k Rom: 8k Price: ?70 My brother, being older, had a Spectrum 48k. These things were the bad boys of home computing. They had the best games & all the popular kids had them. If you think PS2 now they were the same back then. CPU Speed: 3.5mhz Ram: 48k Rom: 16k Price: ?125 Computers were starting to move along a bit now, my next was the Oric 1. It had a weird keyboard, & was French, but apart from that was a pretty good little computer. It was with this I first started programming. 10 print 'my name is matt' 20 goto 10 The first code I ever did, & it just filled the screen with 'my name is matt'. Top stuff. CPU Speed: 3.5mhz Ram: 48k Rom: 16k Price: ?129.99 Unfortunately, a burglar stole my beloved Oric 1, but the insurance payout replaced it with its new improved version the Oric Atmos. Same as the Oric 1 really, but with a proper keyboard. CPU Speed: 3.5mhz Ram: 48k Rom: 16k Price: ?179.99 My brother thought he would be clever around this sort of time. He got a Dragon 32. It was rubbish. I lol'd. A lot. CPU Speed: 0.9mhz Ram: 32k Rom: 8k Price: ?139.99 While I had the Atmos, I 'won' a lynx of a kid at school. I didnt keep it long though as he was the smelly kid & to be honest the keyboard stank. I swapped it for a BMX. Shame really, as it was a good computer. CPU Speed: 4mhz Ram: 64k Rom: 32k Price: ?199.99 My last of the old school computers was the Atari 800XL. A top machine in every way. It had great graphics & sound for the time, & you could stick Atari console cartriges in a slot at the top. I still have it somewhere. CPU Speed: 3.6mhz Ram: 64k Rom: 64k Price: ?260 Then came my first 'proper' computer (it had a mouse), a second hand AppleMac SE. This was the thing that got me on the road to a design career. I nostalgically look back on this computer, & wish I hadnt bought it. I could have been a doctor or something dammit. CPU Speed: 7.83mhz Ram: 1Mb Rom: 256k Price: ?1600 There you go. The next time you complain about your pc running slowly, or a game isnt working, come & look at what I had to put up with. All images from old-computers.com

What you are suffering from isnt that unusual to be honest. A quick google uncovered numerous forums where people have posted complaining about it. It would appear that there is little you can do to make them any bigger. I found this, which seemed to sum it up quite well:

I thought I had read that wrong to start with, surely people dont expect Xisto to just give away hosting & get nothing back in return?I wont repeat what the others have said, just add i've found posting on here extremely helpful (& I dont mean because it gives me hosting).Pretty much every problem/query i've had & posted has been answered, regardless of what it was about.If/when I leave Xisto I imagine I shall probably still return to the forums purely because of the helpful & knowlegable nature of most of the members.

Wouldnt it be possible for staff to simply close the thread once it becomes clear the problem has been solved?That way people wont be able to make pointless posts, any information that might help other members would still be on show, & it would still appear in search results.

Just set up a subdomain & install it there if you want to have a play around & are worried about over-writing stuff.I must admit it looks pretty good, though saying that its about time phpBB did something to try & catch up with IPB.

I am suprised you got warned, you struck me as one of the better members. Maybe I missed a thread or something. Buffalo & myself had a disagreement one night through pm, & he could have quite easily warned me as I admit I was probably out of order, & would have accepted a warning that night. He didnt, & my respect for him has gone up by quite a huge amount.As for your question, do you know which particular mod warned you? It may be wise to have a word & sort out any differences you have.

i.e. the code that Xisto uses to calculate peoples credit from the posts they make...Is it commercially available? If not, how would someone go around getting something similar?Thanks

Thats really quite good. Nice to see it uses oggvorbis files too, as that is the format I use on my P910.

What do you mean by 'get you going'? Are you going to get people excited or something?

Thought id better ask before I started uploading things to my file manager which wern't actually anything to do with my site

This is just a general query, & not something that i'm actively after being able to do.I have become involved in a community based website, which I try & fit in along with doing my own. Whilst there, I have had quite a few requests to modify member profiles using css. This is all pretty simple, but the profile headers usually mean me having to manipulate an image provided by the member to give each profile a personal touch. These images are not massive (see below), & at present are usually hosted at imageshack or some other site. Unfortunately, these image hosting places are not always that reliable & images tend to 'disappear' with monotonous regularity - wrecking the look of a profile & requiring time to upload the images again, copying the codes etc..., which can be time consuming and generally a pain.Would Xisto have an issue with me allocating say 1mb of my webspace to host these images myself? I currently have about 60mb free, & nearly 5gb of bandwidth available. All the images will be copyright free, not contain adult content etc.Like I said earlier, it wouldnt be a disaster if this was a problem, I just thought id ask.

Try going into Site Management Tools / MySQL Databases & creating the database there, then go into phpMyadmin to actually construct it.

I am a full time designer for a fairly big graphics house/signwriting company during the week, & at weekends I do door security for a couple of nightclubs in the city.

The server is up & running & showing a full row of green lights, so it isnt a Xisto issue.It has to be a problem with your Mysql database. Go into your cpanel, phpmyadmin, & check the database actually exists.

Working on that logic then, the UK is better than the US purely because I havnt been there...

We all know a forum is only as good as the people that post on it, & I admit I frequently struggle to find something decent to post it, & any threads I make myself tend to drop off the page at a high rate of knots.This is probably down to me being somewhat older than the average Xisto member, different age groups are interested in different things & all that.As for getting members to stay & improving the forums, the existing members will have to join in with staff to make this happen.A decent arcade, with high score tables linked to points/credits - always a winner. I can personally donate nearly 300 high quality java games with the corresponding thumbnails. Once set up, it'll run itself.A weekly general knowledge quiz, again with points/credits for winners. I can donate question for this as I used to set quizes on a student website I was admin on.Post/thread of the week competitions. Referral bonuses for people who bring new members to the forums.There are loads of things that can be done, but the members themselves will have to give a bit of input to make sure they all work.

Why dont they just take their own loan out?