Welcome to the new TechExams.net!

I'm pleased to introduce to you the new TE! Took a "tad" longer than expected, which was expected but it took even longer than that.

This upgrade was what we internally refer to as phase one of TEv4 and besides a major forum upgrade provides us with a better system for integrating additional features. Phase two will be spread out over the next several weeks and includes integrated blogs, a new test engine (including new practice exams) and more.

The forum upgrade by itself introduces a whole bunch of new features of which I will list some of the imo best:

- Much better editor (box I'm typing in now) that amongst many other things supports an auto-save draft feature.

- Notifications menu (top right of page, the counter) - Although it was available for our forums earlier, if you use Google+ you'll find it very familiar. Currently notifies you of new PMs, new rep, and friend requests. I'll add more in the future, perhaps when you get a reply to a subscribed thread.

- Better search - Not directly something you'll notice, but once we finish phase 2 of the upgrade you'll be able to search blogs, articles/TechNotes, and the forums in one search. [Search tables are still rebuilding, so results are incomplete for a while]

- New Mobile Style - A new mobile theme that supports iPhones and Androids, and soon other mobile browsers. There's an update coming that fixes a whopping 122 bugs so consider this one in a test phase.

There are still several things I need to do to but they don't require the forums to be closed. That includes some cosmetic changes as well but if you notice something unworkable or simply not functioning please let me know (either by posting here or PM-ing me). I hope you like the new design! Still needs some tweaking (including some font size changes) which I'll do this weekend.

Several maintenance routines and cache rebuilding might cause the site to respond slower than usual. I'm keeping a close eye on the server and we may have some additional down time during the weekend.

Johan

Find more posts tagged with

Free for TechExams community: Cybersecurity salary guide

Compare cert salaries and plan your next career move

Button

Comments

Webmaster

erpadmin wrote: »

Hmmm...on my Windows 7/IE 9 setup at home I can't see it. On my Windows XP/IE 8 setup at work, I can see it. I am using compatability mode in both instances.

I just check on both versions, also on Windows 7 and it shows up for me. I noticed it "was" a known issue for IE7, which does give me some indication so I'll take a look and see if I need to fix some IE specific css.

TBRAYS wrote: »

JDMurray, we need to get a Apple app for techexams, also is there a way we can get alerts sent to our personal email, if so, how?

As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread we will have a iPhone/iPod and droid phones app later this year. As for alerts to email, when you post (and "Go Advanced) you can choose a Subscription option below the box you typed your post in. You can also set notification emails for already subscribed threads here.

On a side note: I'm working on the missing smilies/post icons.

sys_teck

Greeting Johan!

nice job! I like Techexams new look. More neat.

wayliff

I like the new look!

I do want to ask if someone is noticing performance degradation though...I've tried since yesterday PM several times and it is very slow compared to what it used to be.

Good job!

Webmaster

wayliff wrote: »

I like the new look!

I do want to ask if someone is noticing performance degradation though...I've tried since yesterday PM several times and it is very slow compared to what it used to be.

Good job!

Webmaster wrote:

Also, in regards to a message I received about site performance, the new design is "not" slower than the old. It's actually faster partly because it uses divs/ul/il+css properly instead of the old table/tr/td html structure. However, the underlying system "is" a bit heavier on the server so actual site performance may be less. If it turns out to be really bad at peaks we'll definitely upgrade the server hardware as well but I think we'll be fine. It'll undergo some tuning later this week once we gathered enough usage info.

To add, also because I received a PM about this, I know from a visitors perspective it seems a decrease in performance is likely caused by the new design/skin because that's what you see loading slowly and what visibly changed, but that's not the case. Especially once you got the main css and images in temp internet files. The upgraded system is heavier on the server though, which may cause delays in the server responding. Under normal circumstances it should still (and in my case does, from the other side of the pond) respond rather snappy (takes a second or two to load instead of the average of 6.4 seconds yesterday).

We've had however few moments of normal circumstances the past days/week. Last night I had to stop a chinese pretending to be a search engine from harvesting TE, the day before a maintenance routine got stuck, and we do have nearly 3,000 visits extra per day since the upgrade. Don't be surprised if it actually becomes worse at times as more and more pages (example) are moved into the new system and we'll be launching our new test engine this week which may cause overall performance to degrade as well. By the end of this month I should have phase 2 completed and if it's still slow then I will invest in new hardware but before that there are several other measures I can and need to take first. I apologize for the slowness and the inconvenience that may cause in the meantime - I am working on this.

JDMurray

And the new polls look very nice too: http://www.techexams.net/forums/virtualization/70360-vmware-study-lab.html

Devilsbane

I think this pretty well summarizes the thoughts of the new TE.

Most users ever online was 1,330, 09-15-2011 at 02:44 PM.

whatthehell

Just a quick heads up. Not too sure if someone mentioned this before, but when you reply to a thread, and go to "Thread tools", it still thinks you are not subscribed to the thread automatically. If you refresh the browser, it then updates as subscribed. Tried this in FF 6.0.2.

Need me to try in other browsers? Or is this WAD?

whatthehell

whatthehell wrote: »

Just a quick heads up. Not too sure if someone mentioned this before, but when you reply to a thread, and go to "Thread tools", it still thinks you are not subscribed to the thread automatically. If you refresh the browser, it then updates as subscribed. Tried this in FF 6.0.2.

Need me to try in other browsers? Or is this WAD?

As an added note, it seems to only occur when posting a "Post Quick Reply"

Webmaster

whatthehell wrote: »

Just a quick heads up. Not too sure if someone mentioned this before, but when you reply to a thread, and go to "Thread tools", it still thinks you are not subscribed to the thread automatically. If you refresh the browser, it then updates as subscribed. Tried this in FF 6.0.2.

Need me to try in other browsers? Or is this WAD?

I'm guessing this is after using the Post Quick Reply option, which operates as it does to allow users to post a reply without reloading basically the entire page (which happens when you use Go Advanced, which is like the old reply to thread). Same thing happens with for example your post count, if you use quick reply to reply to this your post count will not be directly update in the post above. It's inherit to the way php works combined with this quick reply option saving the server and the client from reloading the page.

whatthehell

Webmaster wrote: »

I'm guessing this is after using the Post Quick Reply option, which operates as it does to allow users to post a reply without reloading basically the entire page (which happens when you use Go Advanced, which is like the old reply to thread). Same thing happens with for example your post count, if you use quick reply to reply to this your post count will not be directly update in the post above. It's inherit to the way php works combined with this quick reply option saving the server and the client from reloading the page.

Thanks for the reply

Also, thanks for a great site update!
Sounds like it is WAD, so all good. Just thought I would drop a line just to make sure it is WAD. Cheers!

SteveLord

Lately the forums have been a bit sluggish. Not always, but often enough. Anyone else notice this? I am on a 30Mb pipe and none of my other sites/forums are experiencing this.

Webmaster

SteveLord wrote: »

Lately the forums have been a bit sluggish. Not always, but often enough. Anyone else notice this? I am on a 30Mb pipe and none of my other sites/forums are experiencing this.

Hey Steve, check my post on the previous page about this: http://www.techexams.net/forums/off-topic/70069-welcome-new-techexams-net-5.html#post567811 It should already be a lot better than on last Monday and Tuesday though.

SteveLord

Ah, thanks. Sorry for the oversight.

Webmaster

No problem, I appreciate the feedback.

Devilry

When I am mobile browsing on Android 2.2 (EVO)

I am in a thread, there is no link [or else im blind] to return to the forum.

I have A LOT of load issues with the forum over the past few weeks at work (Win7/Chrome & Home XP/Chrome), just flat out
loads a bunch of text several times in a row before it loads the forum.

rjs_essex

Is it just me or are none of the date/time stamps for posts appearing? Anyone else having this problem?... Only noticed it today - There is no info at the top of any post I look at tonight so I can't tell how old the posts are and if I should reply or not??...

Richard

Webmaster

rjs_essex wrote: »

Is it just me or are none of the date/time stamps for posts appearing? Anyone else having this problem?... Only noticed it today - There is no info at the top of any post I look at tonight so I can't tell how old the posts are and if I should reply or not??...

Richard

Yeah ERPadmin reported that bug in the following post:
http://www.techexams.net/forums/off-topic/70069-welcome-new-techexams-net-5.html#post566953

It seems to affect only IE, and not the latest and not for everyone. Which version are you using? In any case it's on my ToDo list and expect to have that solved this weekend.

rjs_essex

Ah right... I didn't see that...

I'm currently running Windows 7 Professional SP1 64Bit with IE V9.0.8112.16421

Just tried it in Firefox V6.0 and it is displaying the date/time stamps fine.

Hope that helps!

Richard

Webmaster

rjs_essex wrote: »

I'm currently running Windows 7 Professional SP1 64Bit with IE V9.0.8112.16421

The weird thing about it is that I have the exact same version of IE 9 installed and they do show fine for me. It's a css bug is preventing it from showing up (the date/time is in the html code) and I just need some time to reproduce the issue and dig into it, which I'll have after I solved some more pressing issues. Thanks.

varelg

Awesome, two thumbs up for the upgrade!Both eye pleaser AND new features, nice!

JDMurray

Just a quick note to members to be mindful of what filters they are running in their Web browser(s) that might be affecting the appearance of Web pages. I run NoScript in Firefox and I often need to tweak it to get the right balance of usability/performance/protection on many Web sites. Using filters like NoScript might be the source of some odd visuals and behaviors you are experiencing on this site too.

erpadmin

rjs_essex wrote: »

Ah right... I didn't see that...

I'm currently running Windows 7 Professional SP1 64Bit with IE V9.0.8112.16421

Just tried it in Firefox V6.0 and it is displaying the date/time stamps fine.

Hope that helps!

I am on the same except I'm on 32-bit W7.

It has been working for the last couple of days in IE 9 now. Whatever

did must have resolved the issue.

hiddenknight821

I just noticed the new changes to the Practice Exam. Maybe I overlooked it, but I definitely noticed that the links on the left pane above the first banner ads were reordered. I was used to clicking the third links from the bottom, which would take me to the forum, but now it's the second link from the bottom. It would be awesome if we can see how everyone did on their practice exams anonymously. Only the first attempt should be counted toward the statistics.

Webmaster

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

I just noticed the new changes to the Practice Exam. Maybe I overlooked it...

Indeed, added the menu option last night. Our "old" stand-alone test engine died unexpectedly a couple of weeks too soon. I'm still in the process of moving the still relevant exams/questions from the old to our new integrated custom test engine and improving the layout. And I do like your feature suggestion (could help me too to sort of tune exam difficulty), and we do have some currently unused related features that I hope to introduce in the future, but, for the next several months adding new exams/questions will have top priority compared to adding features.