No, there wasn't.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Wednesday, July 12, 2023 - 01:08 am: Edit

The link for the 1" Fleet counter in F&E returns a 404 File Not found error.

By Jean Sexton Beddow (Jsexton) on Wednesday, July 12, 2023 - 10:59 am: Edit

Thanks! I couldn't fix it, so I created a new topic with the link in the message.

EDIT: It shows fixed in admin, but it doesn't in the public view. I'm reaching out to WolfPaw.

EDIT 2: And now it is working for me. Please let me know if it works for y'all.

By John M. Williams (Jay) on Wednesday, July 12, 2023 - 12:38 pm: Edit

That page loaded just fine for me.

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Sunday, October 08, 2023 - 05:14 pm: Edit

Has the site software recently changed lately? It no longer works on Chrome on my phone. I can see the two frames but don't get any content. It still works fine on PC or on Firefox mobile.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, October 08, 2023 - 05:33 pm: Edit

No change I know of.

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Sunday, October 08, 2023 - 11:10 pm: Edit

Doesn't work for me in Chrome either. I've had issues with Chrome on other applications also. Then again I have some applications that only work in Chrome. It's like living in a digital paradox.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Sunday, October 08, 2023 - 11:46 pm: Edit

I'm also not getting it on Chrome on my laptop, I read on a PC. I'll try from my work computer tomorrow as I have chrome on it too.

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Monday, October 09, 2023 - 01:33 am: Edit

The discus board is working fine in Chrome for me, on both Android mobile and on PC.

By Dal Downing (Rambler) on Monday, October 09, 2023 - 03:20 am: Edit

Working for me in both as well.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Monday, October 09, 2023 - 11:03 am: Edit

Hasn't worked on Chrome for me for weeks now.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Monday, October 09, 2023 - 11:12 am: Edit

Works in Chrome on my work computer, but not my personal laptop.

By Jeff Guthridge (Jeff_Guthridge) on Monday, October 09, 2023 - 11:55 am: Edit

For those of you that are having problems on Chrome.... You might want to check your browser security settings. Sometimes software updates (especially sneaky ones) roll out changes to these settings that do not advertise themselves. These pushed security updates love to reset user settings and it causes no end of trouble when you wake up one morning and nothing works.

Blocking non-secure web servers is one such setting, which is ON by default in Chrome.

I don't use Chrome so I can't easily advise on how to get around this, but if your looking at the blocked page, you should be able to click on one of the icons to the left of the address bar to access "site settings" and institute an exception to the security settings for a specific website. A quick websearch shows this is indeed possible and not complicated to accomplish.

By Jeff Guthridge (Jeff_Guthridge) on Monday, October 09, 2023 - 11:58 am: Edit

Jean, you might want to get with your Web Dev team and ask about one of the free/low cost self-signing certificate programs that will allow you to offer this content on a secured server, which will mitigate these issues, potentially without cost.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Monday, October 09, 2023 - 02:29 pm: Edit

Mine didn't work on one of my chrome broweserd, but did on others in house. Chrome updated the other day and now it works again.

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Tuesday, October 10, 2023 - 09:44 am: Edit

Having the BBS be https would be great. It should have always been https since it takes login information and other potentially personal info.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, October 10, 2023 - 12:22 pm: Edit

I think the problem is the DISCUS software pre-dates HTTPS and might not work with it.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Guthridge (Jeff_Guthridge) on Tuesday, October 10, 2023 - 01:22 pm: Edit

Garth, the general issue with HTTPS is that you need to have a signed certificate with your website's details. This used to be something that required a fair bit of money (in internet web hosting terms) before the web moved to a security minded by-default viewpoint some years back. The main site isn't even secure and that has potential for financial issues, especially with the recent trend in laws for user details and protections.

In order to let the small-fry continue to operate several services became available that allowed someone to self-vet themselves and self-sign certificates, effectively reducing the cost of a security cert to free. I believe most of these services are available to businesses as well, though they may have a fee similar to one's domain cost.

Without a signed cert, the web server and your browser client cannot operate in secure mode, and so it falls back to http service. The secure mode is only relevant between server and client. While some rare software issues exist, it is uncommon for code to work insecure and fail in secure mode.

I do realize that this BBS runs on software that is incredibly old in the digital scheme of things, but its not as connected as that. To build a gross example, in a car from the 1970's, would you expect the dome light to quit working if you used 87 octane fuel rather than 91?

That said, I do know that some things didn't want to work after the transistion to the secure servers and I started looking... And I couldn't find anything at all, as all the pointers lead to web-squatters, turn-key business solutions (that don't do anything) and vague posts about converting from Discus to something else. So you might be right.

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Friday, October 13, 2023 - 10:13 am: Edit

I was able to verify that it's because my phone's browser is prepending the website with https even though I specify http. I even turned that off in my settings and it still does it. I guess I'll have to stick with my PC until the website joins the modern world.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, October 13, 2023 - 10:45 am: Edit

The modern world doesn't work as well as the old one. No existing BBS software does what Discus does. It would be impossible for me to run this BBS on other software. We've tried.

Just like my 20 year old Mac runs circles around a one year old PC.

Newer isn't necessarily better.

By David Bostwick (Zarquon) on Friday, October 13, 2023 - 11:19 am: Edit

Ginger: Thanks for that, I can now get to the forums again by deleting the "s" in "https".

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Saturday, October 14, 2023 - 10:24 am: Edit

Do you have to change software to install an SSL certificate?

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, October 14, 2023 - 11:14 am: Edit

Ginger, yes, because (as I understand it) all the internal links hard-coded into DISCUS are HTTP and can't handle HTTPS.


Garth L. Getgen

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Saturday, October 14, 2023 - 07:09 pm: Edit

There are absolute http URLs unfortunately sprinkled here and there in the version of discus in use. Probably the biggest hindrances to using https exclusively are:

1. A couple of spots at the top level entry point URLs that include some absolute http URLs, which when one tries to use https makes an insecure http/https mix and my browser stops displaying
2. The login CGI used before one can post a new message provides an absolute http url before the POST -- so one's UID and PW are most likely in the clear

https://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/board-topics.html

https://www.starfleetgames.com/cgi-bin/discus/board-newmessages.cgi?method=last&number=1&units=1440&tree=ON&where=all

By Kenneth Humpherys (Pmthecat) on Sunday, October 15, 2023 - 10:30 am: Edit

Just had the site read problem with Chrome.

Found a solution:
1. Right click the lock in the address bar next to starfleetgames.com
2. Select site settings
3. Scroll down to the Insecure content line, click the box and select Allow.
4. Close the settings tab and reload the page.