2.0.16 & 2.0.17 bugs

[VJJohn]

Except for people using SMF default themes with no mods, there's an awful lot of people having severe problems with the latest updates. Even here, I'm seeing tons of users having a lot of problems with these latest updates, with no conclusive or easy answers.

I've been using SMF for well over a dozen years, & been able to run it well on 8 forums. My first forum was in 1994. I've never experienced so many headaches as in these latest updates (on 6 different web hosts, in different configurations, themes, & mods).

I've rolled them all back to 2.0.15 rather than deal with it anymore.

Wouldn't it be prudent to withdraw the 2.0.17 & 2.0.16 updates until after they're working properly & most of the bugs are fixed?

If this is what I will expect out of future updates, I will have to try something else or go back to PHPBB. I've loved SMF for a very long time, but these last updates are terrible.

[Kindred]

1- most people are not having any trouble with 2.0.16 or 2.0.17.  I'm running on 6 different servers with different themes and different mod sets and have had no issues at all.   As always, when a release comes out, people who have unusual server configurations or other combinations (and often don't realize it) have some problems  -- those problems (while real) are not wide-spread, no matter if there are ten people posting about their issues.... that's 10 our of hundreds or thousands who updated with no issue.

2- We are not going to withdraw the release.   We realized a critical issue in 2.0.16 and thus released 2.0.17 as soon as reasonably possible.

3- having "this" to look forward to...   see statement number one above...   We test our releases before they go wild. However, there are always going to be some cases which we can't or don't test - because we don't have access to every single configuration of hosts out there.


4-- Specifically, what problems did YOU see (I don't care what you think other people may have seen. what issues did YOU PERSONALLY experience with the upgrades.   rolling back is not recommended as 2.0.16/.17 have security updates.

[Looking]

VJJohn, when you install do you see error warnings? Do you install anyway or manually do the edits?

[VJJohn]

most people are not having any trouble with 2.0.16 or 2.0.17.  I'm running on 6 different servers with different themes and different mod sets and have had no issues at all.

Yes, they are having problems. A quick scroll through this forum proves that -- lots of problems with it are stated right here. The common knowledge is just to stick with 2.0.15 until it's fixed. It's also quite common for the creator or software, or those involved with the creation to have no problems on their system & configuration, but not work on most everybody else's system in the real world. When has anything been the same in the real world, than under the perfect test conditions of the creators?

4-- Specifically, what problems did YOU see (I don't care what you think other people may have seen. what issues did YOU PERSONALLY experience with the upgrades.   rolling back is not recommended as 2.0.16/.17 have security updates.

I'm running many forums with different mods & themes on different but reputable servers/host. 8 of them are running SMF, plus 2 mirror test copies now. There are too many problems to list. Just about all the problems everybody else posted about, I'm also having. There's no reason to post the same problem they have, when no conclusive or simple solutions where provided to them yet. It will run fine with no mods, & just using the dang ugly default themes, but not with anything else. The whole attraction of SMF is supposed to be the high level of customization. Let's not be like Firefox & break or ruin everything people loved with updates. They used to be much more popular until they decided to break stuff, & take away more of what we liked with every update.

If we're forced to deal with this level of bugs, & recoding to get things just barely working with 2.0.17, we might as well just switch up to 2.1.

VJJohn, when you install do you see error warnings?

No warnings. Just a blank page, & completely broken forum when it was done. I upgraded from the patch link right in the forum's admin page. Repair_settings wouldn't even work. Somehow the update wiped out about 20% of my thousands of attachments too (on a very large forum).

I spent many days reading other people's problems here, & at other places. The solutions offered may have made them barely run, but not run properly, & entirely bug-free. Just about every problem everyone else posted, I also had. What did work was to use just the default theme, & no mods. Any mod or theme installed would bring back a blank screen, & broken forum.

Fortunately, I had backups stored at home of all the sites, so put everything back to 2.0.15, until we find a solution that actually works. Some of these places are real busy forums. I can't keep bringing them down to poke with suggested solutions that don't work.

I made a mirror copy of a couple of the forums on the servers. Until 2.0.17 works on them. I'm not gonna waste much more time on it anymore.

[Kindred]

Ah ha.

So, the system runs just fine as a core product...
It's only mods that cause issues...

So, we release a fairly major patch update and some mods have problems.
That's not actually our fault.

And once again NOT "almost everyone" is having problems. Only a few.
The reason I asked for your SPECIFIC problems was  because without specific details, it's hard to track down issues.  Just saying "its broken" is useless.