• Hi Guest !

    Welcome to the 500Eboard forum.

    Since its founding in late 2008, 500Eboard has become the leading resource on the Internet for all things related to the Mercedes-Benz 500E and E500. In recent years, we have also expanded to include the 400E and E420 models, which are directly related to the 500E/E500.

    We invite you to browse and take advantage of the information and resources here on the site. If you find helpful information, please register for full membership, and you'll find even more resources available. Feel free to ask questions, and make liberal use of the "Search" function to find answers.

    We hope you will become an active contributor to the community!

    Sincerely,
    500Eboard Management

Site update news ...

I won an iPad in a drawing at the LaMay Auto Museum a few weeks ago. Kind of fun for trolling and games.
 
I won an iPad in a drawing at the LaMay Auto Museum a few weeks ago. Kind of fun for trolling and games.

I agree. I use it to consume content (movies, etc) and check the forum, read news etc before I drop off to bed at night.

Mines an iPad 2, so it's pushing 4 years old now. I will probably "upgrade" when the next significant iPad design comes out next year.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I just noticed the site hit the 4,000 member mark yesterday or today. That's a real milestone for a model-specific enthusiast forum.

We're definitely larger in terms of registered members than the 500Ecstasy forum was at the time of its unfortunate demise.
 
I will be working over the Thanksgiving holiday to re-embed the photos in the Wiki entries and tables in the proper locations where they were originally located.
Editing Wiki tables like a madman to get the small thumbnails and color swatches re-embedded in the right locations, and the right sizes....
 
Hello all,

A few updates for everyone on what's going on, on the forum:

  • I was able to perform the necessary edits to most of the Wiki pages, to properly re-embed the photos into the posts as they originally appeared. Some of the photo positioning was lost in the translation to the new version of the Wiki software. I will correct the remaining few pages tonight and over the next few days.
  • I performed updates to both the Wiki software and the Tapatalk plug-in (which allows those of you with Apple and Android mobile devices to view the forum "on the go") to the latest versions. This should help squash some bugs and make things a bit smoother. Still doing some configuration tweaks to the Wiki software but I think I have the bulk of it taken care of now. If you find any issues or aren't able to use it, please let me know.
  • The SSL certificate has been purchased and implemented. I am doing some final configuration with GeoTrust (the company that provides SSL security certificates to all types of web sites worldwide) today, now that it's a regular "business day" again. From there I will do a bit of custom coding to redirect all requests to the forum to take advantage of the secure connection. I will let people know before I do this as it may require 10-15 minutes of down-time to upload and test the script before I let it go "live" for general use. Once that happens, you'll see the little "padlock" and "https:" in your browser's URL bar, meaning you've got a 100% secure, encrypted connection with the 500Eboard server.
  • During the coming 12-24 months, I fully expect that vBulletin's active support for version 4.X of their software will taper down to almost nothing. I understand they only have one "full time" developer who is continuing to maintain the 4.X software, and his time is mostly consumed with fixing bugs and security problems rather than developing new features.
  • We recently had a successful brief "test run" with the Xenforo software. I was able to kick the tires of the software pretty well in terms of using it, and messing around behind the scenes to administer it. I am becoming more and more convinced that Xenforo will be the eventual migration path from our vBulletin 4.X software, which has no real, active, further development except for major security problems and major bugs.
  • To this end, I have decided to purchase a new license to XenForo, and I am going to install it on another, unrelated server (the one I use for my personal e-mail and domains) at another Internet service provider. This will begin to give me practice at the installation process, allow me to do some test imports of past versions of the 500Eboard database from this site (i.e. using a previous weekly backup), and allow me to practice configuring the software behind the scenes. I expect this process of exploration will take 6-12 months, as I plan to take my time and do things as I have time. As with the migration from the phpBB software to vBulletin, I expect that it will require at least three test imports to get the process down to where there are no snags or errors.
  • If the final decision is, in the end, to go forward with the XenForo software, I think you all will find it to be a really great and very modern package that is faster than vBulletin. We will be able to maintain cool features and plug-ins like our Wiki (they make the Wiki for both vBulletin and XenForo), Tapatalk, our unique 500Eboard/500Ecstasy "smilies," and other customizations we've come to love having here.

Looking forward to seeing where the winds of change and progress take us during 2015 and beyond. :D

Cheers,
Gerry
 
Folks,

Over the past day or two, I've gotten notice of a couple of weird things happening with the system .... specifically, some attachments to specific posts have gone missing and they had to be re-added. This happened to a couple of different people, including myself.

This morning I did a comprehensive maintenance regimen to the forum, including dumping all caches, rebuilding the search index, rebuilding all tables/avatars/user profiles in the database, and reconfirming all attachments that have been uploaded to the system.

I still have a couple of other maintenance items to perform, and will do this later tonight. Of course it is all transparently happening in the background, so no one should see anything happening. But hopefully the act of "flushing out the pipes" here in the system and getting rid of some of the cob-webs should help things overall.

In the future, if you observe any wonky behavior (occasional "system errors" are normal and not the fault of the forum software) please let me know ASAP ... I'm talking about stuff like missing threads or attachments, and that sort of thing.

Thanks for your vigilance, participation and assistance!

Merry Christmas season to everyone too!

Cheers,
Gerry
 
The final release Gold Master of the Wiki software, version 4.0.0, was just released today. I'm going to run a patch to update the software, but this should not affect operation of the forum, and the forum will not be down as a result of this software update.

I'm probably going to run this later tonight.

Happy 2015 all !!

Cheers,
Gerry
 
Finally ran the upgrade to the new Wiki software version 4.0.0 with no problems, this afternoon. Hopefully this will kill a few of its lingering bugs....
 
A few minutes ago, I updated the Tapatalk software on the server (the "back end") with a new update that they issued on December 31. There was a slight database error in one minor portion of the install, pertaining to the actual nomenclature of the software's version in the forum's control panel. However, 100% of the software loaded fine onto the server. Some modest testing is showing that everything is working fine, using my iPhone and my iPad.

I'd like folks who are using Tapatalk to let me know if they see any funky behavior, or get any weird errors though, when accessing the forum through their mobile devices. Shouldn't be any problems, but .....

Thanks,
Gerry
 
A few minutes ago, I updated the Tapatalk software on the server (the "back end") with a new update that they issued on December 31. There was a slight database error in one minor portion of the install, pertaining to the actual nomenclature of the software's version in the forum's control panel. However, 100% of the software loaded fine onto the server. Some modest testing is showing that everything is working fine, using my iPhone and my iPad.

I'd like folks who are using Tapatalk to let me know if they see any funky behavior, or get any weird errors though, when accessing the forum through their mobile devices. Shouldn't be any problems, but .....

Thanks,
Gerry
Everything is back to normal. Some judicious "surgery" of a couple of the Tapatalk-related SQL database tables ("vb_tapatalk_users" and "vb_tapatalk_push") that back-end the site to remove duplicated columns got everything back to normal. Database table surgery is not my favorite thing to do, as it's EXCEEDINGLY easy to mess things up for the entire site, permanently, but in this case was able to bring things to a successful resolution.

None of this was visible to, or would have affected anyone .... but I wouldn't have been able to live for long with this not being 100% correct. All of this messing around just so that what I highlighted in the third photo would show up correctly....

Cheers,
Gerry
 
Folks,

I have personally received a couple of "database error" messages today from the system. Chances are that some of you may have received some of these error messages, as well. Please note that this is indicative of problems with the hoster and their back-end database server, not with the forum software and setup itself.

It is somewhat likely that this problem will get worse before the hoster resolves it - often it's the sign of a server starting to go down and/or need rebooting.

Thus, if the forum does go down, just be aware that this is a situation that I have no control over, and it will be resolved if/when the hoster gets to it.

If the forum does, in fact, go down, I will be doing everything I can to contact the hoster and to get them to resolve the issue ASAP.

Just being proactive here, in case something happens. Last time it did, the forum was down for 3-4 days. This may also be a false alarm.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
It looks like the anticipated database server issues never materialized, which is a relief. I was receiving some errors from the site that folks were experiencing with the server, earlier this week, but that also seems to have calmed down. I think we're all good, for now.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
There's a new small revision of the Wiki software available that I'm going to install and upgrade to later tonight. Shouldn't affect forum uptime.

If forum does go down, DONT WIG or otherwise freak out. Forum would be down for 4-5 minutes maximum for upgrade.

Cheers,
Gerry


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
As part of the ongoing refinement of the 500Eboard, I made a slight change to the "description" of the Off-Topic Discussions sub-forum to narrow it a bit, and to reflect that the focus should be automotive-related whenever and wherever possible.

The old wording had it as "anything goes" and our intent is to keep this forum more focused on 500Es and related/period MBs, and NOT have any overtly political or other types of non-automotive threads here.

This forum is the perfect place for Klink and GSXR to do their future motor oil threads :stickpoke:
 
One small addition this evening to the forum, to make folks' life a bit easier:

I added a "Today's Posts" button to the main button row directly below the header image on all pages. This will allow you to see all posts made in the previous 24 hours, with all unread posts at the top of the listing.

View attachment 38698

Hope people find this beneficial.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
Thanks Gerry. I always use the Today's Posts link and it's great that it now shows up on the Today's Posts results!
 
Am doing a slight upgrade/update to the Tapatalk software on the server this afternoon. Shouldn't result in any problems/downtime for the forum.

Also, for those of you who use Tapatalk on your iDevice, or Android device. Tapatalk just instituted a new "background" image feature for the forum ... sort of the equivalent to the banner image at the top of this forum's screen.

I added this cool image, which is one of my favorite photos. It's of a W108/109, driving at dusk. Or KarlC could probably squint and image that it's his coupe .....

Heck, I'll bet even Klink will like it.

To see the new image, just quite Tapatalk on your device, and then fire it back up again, and the image should show itself. Also, Tapatalk just released a new version of their app for the iDevices over this weekend.

Cheers,
Gerry


Click to enlarge the image.

View attachment 38940
 
I just updated the "Post Thank You" hack so that it is fully compatible with the latest versions of the forum software. I was previously using a kludged piece of older code that I had custom-modified the php code so that it would work. This new code for the Post Thanks is designed for the recent versions of vBulletin.

Shouldn't have affected anything at all.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
I just updated the "Post Thank You" hack so that it is fully compatible with the latest versions of the forum software. I was previously using a kludged piece of older code that I had custom-modified the php code so that it would work. This new code for the Post Thanks is designed for the recent versions of vBulletin.

Shouldn't have affected anything at all.

Cheers,
Gerry
I think I'm going to revert the "Thank You" hack back to the prior version 7.84 version of the software - I don't like this malfunctioning "Collapse" button. At least the way I had the 7.84 hacked, it worked well. Sometimes new versions of software aren't necessarily progress..... I'll do this tonight.
 
I think I'm going to revert the "Thank You" hack back to the prior version 7.84 version of the software - I don't like this malfunctioning "Collapse" button. At least the way I had the 7.84 hacked, it worked well. Sometimes new versions of software aren't necessarily progress..... I'll do this tonight.

Good call !
We're back to version 7.84 of the "Post Thanks" hack, the one we were using before. It has some newly enabled search functionality, which is a plus.

The only downside is that I believe existing "Thanks" for posts have been deleted, as well as members' overall "Thanks" counts.

But who was counting Thanks, anyway?

Anyway, thanks to everyone for your patience.

Thanks
Gerry
 
Anyway, thanks...
Since all the data was lost... might be a good time to consider just eliminating the feature? Think there may have been prior discussion on this and the majority wanted it though.

:seesaw:
 
Am doing a slight upgrade/update to the Tapatalk software on the server this afternoon. Shouldn't result in any problems/downtime for the forum.

Also, for those of you who use Tapatalk on your iDevice, or Android device. Tapatalk just instituted a new "background" image feature for the forum ... sort of the equivalent to the banner image at the top of this forum's screen.

I added this cool image, which is one of my favorite photos. It's of a W108/109, driving at dusk. Or KarlC could probably squint and image that it's his coupe .....

Heck, I'll bet even Klink will like it.

To see the new image, just quite Tapatalk on your device, and then fire it back up again, and the image should show itself. Also, Tapatalk just released a new version of their app for the iDevices over this weekend.

Cheers,
Gerry


Click to enlarge the image.

View attachment 38940

Yes, good call!
 
Tonight I'm going to install a critical security patch for the Wiki software. The forum may be down for 10-15 minutes while the install/update is underway.

Please do not wig, freak out, or otherwise go postal if you see that the forum is down for a few minutes!

Thanks
Gerry

P.S. The "Post Thank You" hack is useful and is an often-used element of this forum, so I think it should stay.
 
I'm going to run a small update later today to the Wiki software. The site may be down for 10-15 minutes while this update is being performed.

Please do not freak, wig out or otherwise go postal during this brief site interlude.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
NOOOOOOOO!

I am always nervous when these things happen.
My kids joke that I will be cut off from my friends for WHOLE 10-15 minutes.
What will I do then???

Well, I guess I'm ready to forge into the unknown. . .:-? go ahead and pull the trigger Gerry.
 
Another small update later today to the Wiki software. Shouldn't result in any down-time for the forum, but wanted to give folks a heads-up that it was happening nonetheless.

No need to wig, freak out, go postal. yadda yadda.


Second ..... I have decided to proceed with my plan to migrate this forum's software, later this year, to the XenForo forum software. Active development of the vBulletin forum software has stopped over the past two years, and we need this forum to be on a platform that keeps up with Internet standards, patches known bugs and security breaches, and remains state of the art from a functionality standpoint. Essentially, something that is actively being maintained, enhanced and refined. Unfortunately vBulletin 4.X is not being actively developed and only very occasionally (perhaps once per year) are security patches and other bugs being patched. The forum software has not debuted any net-new functionality or capabilities in the past 1.5-2 years.

This spring, I will purchase a license for the XenForo software, and for the Wiki software specific to XenForo, and will do several test installations and migrations (which will not affect the functionality or availability of this forum at all) to practice migration. Once this process has been refined and executed successfully, to a 98%+ level of accuracy, we will move to the new platform. The forum will retain the same URL, of course. I would expect this "final" migration to happen in the August to September, 2015 time frame, so it is a long way off. This gives us plenty of time to plan, test, create sample forum migrations, and iron out all of the bugs in the process to ensure a successful importation of the database and all information.
I have purchased a license to the XenForo forum management software, and will be installing it on another, unrelated server in the near future for test purposes and to "kick the tires".

Part of this process throughout the late spring and early summer will be performing some "test imports" of this forum's data (posts, wiki, Gallery, and so forth) to determine the best process and methodology for the eventual migration of this forum to the XenForo software. I may invite some members of this forum in the future, to help in the "kick the tires" process after the test imports, to see whether there are any obvious bugs or problems from an ordinary "member experience" perspective.

Again, there will be no changes or disruption to this forum in its present form at all. Any and all future changes will be announced well in advance here, along with instructions as to what to do if and when that time comes.

In the meantime, thank you for your continuing support!

Cheers,
Gerry
 
:update:

Tonight I initiated the first step of the process of testing the installation of the XenForo forum software, which this forum will be migrating to probably in the fall of 2015.

The first step was to actually FTP (upload) the software package up to another server (totally separate and at another hosting company from this one) where I have a couple of my domains parked. I'll spend the next few nights doing the actual software install and configuration, as an exercise to see how it goes. This will not be a "public" thing but rather a private installation.

The next step after that will be to import a version of the database from this forum (which I back up every Friday at 5PM Central time). I will test import that to see how the member names and accounts come over, and how all of the posts convert over. And most importantly the image and document files, of which there are now many gigabytes.

I'm sure as with the conversion to vBulletin several years back, that several "test runs" will be needed to perfect the process. And even then plenty of manual work to clean up the mess, even when the "recipe" for import and conversion is perfected as well as it can be.

When I have the forum up and running, with a decent "test" import from this forum, I'll give everyone here a "sneak" preview of the forum with a few generic test accounts that folks can use to log in and kick the tires (no posting, just moving around the system and so forth). So y'all can get a feel for things. Probably will do that phase for a couple of weeks so that folks get familiar with how things will be.

From there the final phase will begin ... a very very careful and precise install of the XenForo software, and final import of all data. And a switchover of the 500Eboard domain to the new software. I will try to make this as seamless as possible so there is perhaps a few minutes' downtime of the site when the actual switch is made. But...all that is months into the future from now.

XenForo is getting ready to come out with version 2.0 of their software (current version is 1.4.6, just released a few days ago), and I'm going to try to test both versions and hopefully do the install on version 2.0 if it's out and had a few bug fix versions released by the time the forum software switchover comes up. If not, then I'll stick with the last version of the 1.X generation and do the migration to version 2.X in the future.

Lots of work to do between now and say, Labor Day time frame when the switch should come. I'll continue to keep folks updated.

Hopefully, on its 7th anniversary on November 30, 2015, the 500Eboard will be safely ensconced on its new software and y'all will be loving life !! That's the ultimate goal here — to make the site as robust, easy to use and as fun as possible for the membership.

Thank you for your continuing support.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
This looks to be off to a good start. The reviews on XenForo are good giving it high marks for security, speed, mobile (friendly & fast), and stability.


Robert
 
Correct ... and better search functionality built-in too.

One thing I'm exploring is an additional add-on package for even better expanded search capabilities - this is really supposed to make the search totally awesome, which would make a LOT of members here happy.

The problem with the add-on is that I would have to up the ante on the hosting package I have, to move to a full-on "virtual server" package which is considerably more expensive. The good thing with a VPS is that I would be able to control everything about it - and would have the flexibility to install whatever software I wanted on it, and so forth.

The downsides are several-fold:
1) considerably more cost for the annual hosting package (because I'm basically getting the equivalent of a dedicated "virtual" server in its own separated partition, that is sharing the physical server with many others...instead of the current setup where I don't have any "dedicated" resources, but am just sharing all processing, memory and storage with many others)

2) I would have to perform upgrades of the base MySQL database and php (scripting) on my own, which would introduce somewhat more potential for disruption and problems, not to mention significant more time upgrading, patching and maintaining this base software that the forum runs on. As it is currently, the hosting company takes care of all of these upgrades .. they do it once per physical server for all of the hundreds of web sites that run on that box in their data center.

So, it's more monetary cost and administrative time, with a bit more risk ... with a benefit of having near-complete control of all aspects of the environment.

Something to ponder over the spring and summer.....

Cheers,
Gerry
 
I had a few of the wiki pages book marked like the paint code page. I noticed the book marks no longer work.
 
That is because the Wiki software was totally revamped last year and most everything about it changed. You'll need to re-bookmark the pages you want.
 
Personally, I don't think it's worth the extra complexity or cost for a dedicated VM. Search in it's current state is definitely sub-optimal but with a little effort, you can find things. I say we try the better built-in search of the new software before purposefully complicating our lives and increasing costs.
 
A bit later tonight (Central Time) I'm going to run minor (security) updates to the Wiki and to the Tapatalk software.

There shouldn't be any impact to 500Eboard availability -- these actions should be 100% transparent to everyone.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
A bit later tonight (after I spend some time on my SEC, for a new HOW-TO) I'll be updating the Wiki software to version 4.0.3, so if the forum is down for 20-30 minutes while the update is being applied, please be patient. The forum will be up fairly quickly.

I'm also doing some final work in the next few days to implement the SSL (secure server) functionality, so the site's security will be the same as any common e-commerce or bank web site's is. This means that all internet traffic between your computer and the 500Eboard server will be encrypted (i.e. 100% secure). We have been issued a security certificate by the issuing authority, and I just need to install it on the server and modify some server-side settings. No forum downtime and shouldn't affect anything at all.

Thanks,
Gerry
 
Will the Wiki update fix the problem with borked images in the Wiki pages?

:watchdrama:
 
Will the Wiki update fix the problem with borked images in the Wiki pages?

:watchdrama:
No, that is a manual process that I have to go to each page to fix. I've done many of the pages, but not all of them yet. When it's only me doing this kind of stuff, I have to do it in small snatches of time that I find, a page at a time.
 
I did a small update to the Tapatalk plugin software for you iPhone/iPad and Android users today, just to keep things in sync with the Tapatalk releases, which seem to come every two weeks for the plugin code on the server.

If you have an iPhone or iPad or Android phone, the Tapatalk app (which is free at the app stores, if I remember correctly) are a great way to keep up with the forum while "on the go" and work well for posting photos that you take with your mobile device. I'll be making extensive use of Tapatalk again this summer when I head off for my annual Euro Tour 2015 on this coming Tuesday.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
All:

Long update follows, so please bear with me.

Now that I'm back from Europe, there's a lot to catch up on. One of the highest priorities are software updates for the site.

Over the past few weeks, there have been new updates for the vBulletin site software, as well as a significant upgrade for the XenForo forum software that will be powering the new site later this year (as you may remember, I have obtained a license and have begun testing this software).

For this site, as it currently stands, there are three software upgrades that I'm going to perform today:

- a long-awaited update to the vBulletin software to the final version 4.2.3, from the beta version that I've been using for the past year or so. This lack of updates & effective curtailment of development by vBulletin to the 4.X version of the software has been a primary factor in the decision to shift to the XenForo forum software, which is updated with new features and security updates on a monthly basis.

- an incremental update of the Wiki software to version 4.0.4 Build 008. We will be carrying over the VaultWiki software to the XenForo forum software when we migrate to that platform in the future, as VaultWiki does make a version (again, actively developed) for XenForo.

- an incremental update of the Tapatalk plug-in software to version 5.5.5. We will also be carrying over the Tapatalk plugin to the XenForo form platform when we migrate to that, as Tapatalk does support XenForo and actively develops for it.

The Tapatalk and Wiki software updates won't require any forum downtime, so they should be completely transparent to everyone.

I expect the vBulletin forum upgrade to version 4.2.3 will require around 30 minutes of forum downtime. The usual "Don't wig out!!" message will be displayed during this time, but please know that the forum will be back up just as soon as possible.

This will be my first time updating the XenForo software since I first installed it on another server this past spring. With this update, I'll be "testing" the ease and friendliness of the XenForo software update process. As you may remember, this software has a base install on a completely different server for test purposes only so that I can get familiar with installing, administering, configuring and operating the software -- it is not a production forum.

I expect that I will be performing the first of several "test imports" of the database from THIS forum to that XenForo software over this July 4 holiday weekend. We'll see how that initial test import of the database goes, and I will report back on the progress and what snags I hit via another dedicated thread I'll start to keep folks informed on the progress of the conversion of this forum to the XenForo platform.

The database of this forum (basically all of the cumulative posts and information in forum threads, Wiki, etc.) is now up to 205.5 MB in size. The index of this forum (basically the information that keeps all of the data in order and properly organized) is now 88.5 MB in size. The image database of this forum is 12.8 GB (that's gigabytes, folks!) in size. The collective group of members' avatars is 3.2 MB in size.

So as you an see, it will be a LOT of data to import and migrate, and is going to require some exquisitely careful planning and coordination.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
Wiki and Tapatalk software upgrades have been completed with no issues.

:update:

UPDATE: Forum software has also now been successfully updated to version 4.2.3 final.

Please let me know if you come across any issues/problems with the new software.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
All,

We have in recent days had an attachment display issue, whereby attached photos/documents are showing up either as links, or are not displaying in the "lightbox" mode (meaning that images only display individually with the black screen background, and you can't click a button to go to the next attached image).

I have traced this to a flaw in the latest version of the Tapatalk code that I installed recently.

Tonight I will do one of two things:

- change some of the php code in Tapatalk to alleviate the issue; and if that doesn't work...
- revert back to a previous version of Tapatalk

I am sorry for the inconvenience this problem has caused. It's pissed me off too, until I finally discovered the root of the problem.

I promise all of you that it will be fixed very soon.

Cheers,
Gerry
 
5,000 member who have taken an interest in less than 1,000 cars.

That's a 5 to 1 ratio!
 
5,000 member who have taken an interest in less than 1,000 cars.

That's a 5 to 1 ratio!
It's actually more than 5,000 folks, but I have culled the list a slight bit. Probably closer to 5,300 ... if you count the spammers who have joined :D
 
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