CodingJungle's Apps [support topic]

[CodingJungle]

3 minutes ago, Cyboman said:

I'm having the same problem and reported this above.

As one of the "early purchasers" after the IPS has shut down, there weren't any problems in the beginning of the app. But since several upgrades the count shows a false number and the online members in the chat online list is wrong. It shows users not in the room and even banned members...

Please repair this problem. Shutting the chat on/off multiple times a day (I think this was recommended as a workaround anywhere) is not a suited alternative. The online list must always properly check the current chatters (and beyond that imho, the anonymous chatters, too, but we already discussed about it as an option request).

I get a lot of user feedback concerning this problem.

Thanks for helping.

not trying to diminish your issue here, but gonna try to put it into perspective. as of 1 hour ago, the North American server had a little bit over 2k users on it, with 36 sites connected to it. out of those sites, i can only confirm that 1 site has reported this issue (and that is in the last month). so the problem isn't that its happening, it's that its not happening to the vast majority of sites that run it, so whatever the cause is, its something specific (as i can only reproduce it under weirdest of circumstances and not even reliably at that point.). the one way i can reproduce it is to go to a babble page, and just hit f5 like 30 times in a row, and the other way is to open up about 20 tabs to the same room while logged in as the same user. there is a final way i did recently discover, going to a room as a guest then logging in, the guest and my account will be there, but the guest will disappear as i leave (as they "share" connections).

with as few sites actually reporting the issue (on the chat service) and afaik only you have been the only one who has reported it with the self hosted, i can no longer justify the time to fix this in the current version, with the next major version on its way that has a revamped from the ground up online list. i know its an annoying problem, but i spent over a month last summer chasing my tail on the online list and this is actually a far far less reported problem than the other issues that were reported from the online list before.

bug fixing is sorta like triage, you have to take the most serious first, then work you way down to the stubbed toes. sorry if this disappoints anyone, but there is really only 1 of me and only so many hours in the day.

[Unlucky]

8 hours ago, Cyboman said:

As one of the "early purchasers" after the IPS has shut down, there weren't any problems in the beginning of the app. But since several upgrades the count shows a false number and the online members in the chat online list is wrong. It shows users not in the room and even banned members...

Please repair this problem. Shutting the chat on/off multiple times a day (I think this was recommended as a workaround anywhere) is not a suited alternative. The online list must always properly check the current chatters (and beyond that imho, the anonymous chatters, too, but we already discussed about it as an option request).

I get a lot of user feedback concerning this problem.

Thanks for helping.

I get constant complaints about this as well.

I think it is probably the main reason chat usage has dropped off over the last few months this has been happening

 

[Unlucky]

How long until the new release of babble?

I am constantly getting badgered by site members and now this is the latest from our chat mod.

 

Sorry to pester you but chats really acting up now, we are getting multiple ghosts all of a sudden and chatters cant even log off. The functions for private messages and the mod controls have all disappeared. Then we have a problem of chat be so slow to appear in the window when the chat lines entered. I think the issues are driving people away in all honesty

[Unlucky]

Please can we have an update - We are getting renewal notices for babble but don't want to renew until we get some support.

Please can you respond / fix?

Just had this in from another unhappy customer.

"know it is a support issue, but this chatroom issue is really beginning to bore. I have been permanatly showing in the room now for 14 days, despite logging out of the site completely and closing all browser. I know they are not offering support but its rediculous"

Edited March 14, 2018 by Unlucky

[CodingJungle]

1 hour ago, Unlucky said:

Please can we have an update - We are getting renewal notices for babble but don't want to renew until we get some support.

Please can you respond / fix?

Just had this in from another unhappy customer.

"know it is a support issue, but this chatroom issue is really beginning to bore. I have been permanatly showing in the room now for 14 days, despite logging out of the site completely and closing all browser. I know they are not offering support but its rediculous"

i’m not refusing to fix it, i have to go to extremes to even get it to duplicate (as i haven’t found a reliable way to reproduce it at all. I have pretty much have already fixed all the issues i have been able to catch as to what is causing this. simply put, if i can’t reproduce it, i can’t easily\reliably fix it). if it is constantly the same user (which looking back at what you’ve had to say in other post, it appears to be), i would start asking them to track what they are doing when they notice it happening and to disable browser plugins, and what browser they are using. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but this issue is extremely minor, that its status will more than likely remain ‘fixed in next major version’. so the more information i can get from you, your users and any one else experiencing this issue, the more likely i can have get it fixed in this branch of the software.

 

[Unlucky]

On 26/02/2018 at 1:11 AM, Cyboman said:

As one of the "early purchasers" after the IPS has shut down, there weren't any problems in the beginning of the app. But since several upgrades the count shows a false number and the online members in the chat online list is wrong. It shows users not in the room and even banned members

This statement above is so true

It worked perfecting in the beginning - it's the changes you have made.

We originally purchased the stand alone version and had issues after you made changes and released upgrades - you asked us to try your hosted version and we still have the same issues.

I can't ask my whole membership who use the chatroom and have issues to be your troubleshooters.

I have lost so many members over this chatroom issue.

Why not just roll back to the stable version before all of your changes?

Or at least offer it as an alternative because it did work 100% perfectly.

As per that person I just quoted - we both have the same issue so there must be an issue that is not related to my personal server - I am using your hosted version of babble.

 

Edited March 14, 2018 by Unlucky

[CodingJungle]

50 minutes ago, Unlucky said:

Why not just roll back to the stable version before all of your changes?

 Or at least offer it as an alternative because it did work 100% perfectly.

 

see that's just it, it didn't work. i had hundreds of reports of all the issues it had. some even from you (before i changed things).

50 minutes ago, Unlucky said:

 I can't ask my whole membership who use the chatroom and have issues to be your troubleshooters.

i can't reproduce this easily (and lately not at all since adding the quick fixes into the service), and we are just chasing our tail around the maypole at this point. without any new data on any potential that could be causing this and considering how minor the reports on it has been.  You say people are reporting this all the time, well i don't think its any leap or too much to ask them "hey what browser you on? can you disable any addons you might have for the browser?". there are browser plugins, that are designed to inherently interfere with what is on the page and how it operates ( adblockers, nojs, tampermonkey, etc). that could cause issues with a script like babble that heavily relies on javascript to be running unhampered.  then there are browser like vivaldi and brave that do weird stuff to websites in a misguided attempt to protect the user from themselves. so there are lots of reasons why data from your members would help me in the long run, I am 1 guy, i have 3 computers in the house i can "test" on and in my testing i have fixed all the issues i've uncovered that are related to babble's online list.

50 minutes ago, Unlucky said:

 Or at least offer it as an alternative because it did work 100% perfectly.

i can provide you with the old install files for self hosted, if this is the only thing you want to do.

50 minutes ago, Unlucky said:

 As per that person I just quoted - we both have the same issue so there must be an issue that is not related to my personal server - I am using your hosted version of babble.

out of the 3 that have reported, the one was cause of poor mobile connections that would rapidly connect and disconnect. with help from him and his users i was able to find the root cause of the issue and worked a fix into the chat service to mitigate this. however, i haven't found the root causes of yours or his, and cause if they are the "same" issue, then they might have a common reason, a root problem. this is why i asked if you can ask your members for more information.  i mean, i had 2200 people connected to the chat service this last weekend, you'd think if this was a "common" problem, i would have a lot more reports of issues, but i don't.

so let me know if you want the older install files and you can go back to self hosting if you'd like.

Edited March 14, 2018 by CodingJungle

[Unlucky]

Yes please we would like the stable old files that never had any of these issues

Thanks

[CodingJungle]

https://codingjungle.com/files/file/33-babble

you can download it from here, this is the self host version, click on the changelog tab, select version 2.2.8, below the change log text, it will have a "download" option

Edited March 14, 2018 by CodingJungle

[CodingJungle]

What I've uncovered:

looking further into this "online list issue", i have uncovered a few things.

i implemented a routine to check the online list, with active connection what i discovered was this: between 20 to 30 users out of about 1300 appeared not to be connected. when i contrasted this list with another list that is kept (to avoid multiple connections into the same room by the same user from disappearing from the online list when one of those connections are closed), the 20 to 30 users that were "stuck" were all listed 50+ times in the "connection" list, compared to 1 to 2 for the other 1300 connected users. this can occur when multiple connections to the same room as the same user happen.

so what i can figure out best  what is happening, they aren't getting cleared out when they disconnect cause the system thinks that have another open connection (which is due to excessive connections).

 

how to fix:

there are 3 things i've added  to help mitigate this.

first: when a user disconnects now, when it checks the other connections they might have, it will verify that those connection are actually active, if not it will remove them.

second: i've decreased the heartbeat detection from 60 seconds to 30 seconds, hopefully with the reduction in the heartbeat it will be able to remove inactive connections better.

and finally, i've added in a "zombieKiller" task. each user when they connected will be given a 15m time stamp, that gets updated every 10 minutes when connected (this will also update every time they send a message or send a whisper). this task will run every 5 minutes on the chat service and it will go thru the online list. when it finds one that has an expired it will remove them from the online list.

Release:

I will be testing these  out a few more days to make sure there aren't any unforeseen problems that might occur from any of the new task/functions added to the chat service or to the app itself. these features will also be included with the self hosted. if there aren't any issues, 8pm sunday (central standard time) i will be releasing it on my site and here in the MP. I will also be taking the chat service down for a few hours to upgrade the servers. i will be sending out an email to all the clients of the chat service to let them know about the chat service down time.

if this problem persist after this and the cause again is users with 50+ connections to the same room, i will implement a  connection cap of 5 (which should be enough for desktop/laptop/phone and tablet).  there shouldn't be any reason i can think of why a person would need 50+ connections made to the same room  as the same user.

[SMen]

15 hours ago, CodingJungle said:

i will implement a  connection cap of 5 (which should be enough for desktop/laptop/phone and tablet).  there shouldn't be any reason i can think of why a person would need 50+ connections made to the same room  as the same user.

So, out of ignorance and curiosity.... If an user looks at 5 user profiles in Room 1 in the first minute within the room.... causing 5 disconnects and reconnects to Babble... What happens?  Is the user going to be unable to enter chat for 15 minutes or until the "zombiekiller" process runs?  I also have five chat rooms.  It's not unreasonable to think that users may scroll through those rooms (each room causing a connect/disconnect) to see who is in them.

 

[CodingJungle]

1 hour ago, SMen said:

 So, out of ignorance and curiosity.... If an user looks at 5 user profiles in Room 1 in the first minute within the room.... causing 5 disconnects and reconnects to Babble... What happens?  Is the user going to be unable to enter chat for 15 minutes or until the "zombiekiller" process runs?  I also have five chat rooms.  It's not unreasonable to think that users may scroll through those rooms (each room causing a connect/disconnect) to see who is in them.

It wouldn't be a per site limit, it would be a per room limit. in normal operations of babble, if you connect to a room, you get added to 2 objects for the chat service that are linked to your site. those are the "online" and "connected" list. the online list is what appears to users inside babble, so who is in the room you are currently, the connected list is purely used internally.

if you go to a room in babble you get added to both, if you go to that same room as the same user on a different tab/browser/device, you will only get added to the second again (the connected list). this is so if/when you close/leave from the other tab/browser/device or the first browser tab and are still connected on the other, it wont remove you from the online list. this is what i use to refer to as ghosting, a person that was in the room but didn't appear.

so in normal operations, if you go to babble in one tab/browser/device, that would be considered 1 connection to whatever room you go to. if you left the room for whatever reason (like viewing a profile, which btw in this next release there will be a setting to turn on or off for them to open in a new tab or not), that connection should be removed and when they return it should again only be counted as 1.

I know it sounds a bit complicated, but 5 connections per room should allow a single user to have it open on say a laptop/desktop, phone, and tablet at the same time without issue. the only time it would be an issue if the person is sharing their account, and/or for whatever reason they try to open it 5+ times on any device/browser.

with that said, this isn't a feature i will be implementing at this time. i only mention it, cause after this release on sunday this will be literally the last time i will address any online list issues with babble 2.x branch as i will be concentrating my efforts on version 3. so if there are still any "stuck" members issues after this, the only solution left would be to force a connection limit per room on the chat service.

[jcdesign]

In Download Plus I don´t want to show version number. It is disabled, but when searching the version number shows on every result. We sell Digital Download and I don´t know why IPS think everybody use this application to sell software apps.

[CodingJungle]

13 hours ago, jcdesign said:

In Download Plus I don´t want to show version number. It is disabled, but when searching the version number shows on every result. We sell Digital Download and I don´t know why IPS think everybody use this application to sell software apps.

the hiding of a version number is just a superficial hiding, i didn't alter how the search works.

[CodingJungle]

both the north american and europe servers have been upgraded and are now running. make sure you are running 2.6.5 of the chat service or you will not be able to connect as previous versions have been blocked. let me know if you experience any issues.

[CodingJungle]

I'm testing a new init script for babble for systemd, it seems to have cause some instability in the chat service. so if you are experiencing several disconnects in a row and then reconnects, i'm looking into the cause of it atm. it seems to be related to the init script.

[AlexWebsites]

1 hour ago, CodingJungle said:

both the north american and europe servers have been upgraded and are now running. make sure you are running 2.6.5 of the chat service or you will not be able to connect as previous versions have been blocked. let me know if you experience any issues.

Did you send everyone subscribed a message you were upgrading and we needed to update? I had no idea and just saw I'm not connecting and had a scheduled chat session my members usually do. It would be helpful to have a heads up in the future, like time, needing to update, offline, etc..

[CodingJungle]

15 minutes ago, AlexWebsites said:

Did you send everyone subscribed a message you were upgrading and we needed to update? I had no idea and just saw I'm not connecting and had a scheduled chat session my members usually do. It would be helpful to have a heads up in the future, like time, needing to update, offline, etc..

yes i sent out 2 bulkmails about this upgrade and down time. the first one was sent on 3/15/18 and the second was sent out today 2 hours before the downtime/upgrade occurred.

Edited March 19, 2018 by CodingJungle

[AlexWebsites]

8 minutes ago, CodingJungle said:

yes i sent out 2 bulkmails about this upgrade and down time. the first one was sent on 3/15/18 and the second was sent out today 2 hours before the downtime/upgrade occurred.

Ok that's good to know but i didn't receive anything. Just checked your site and my notifications are not checked so maybe that's why I didn't receive any email?

I just checked it on for news and info.

[CodingJungle]

i do not know, i didn't show any of them failed to send. check your spam folder? if you find them, they are either sent under cju@codingjungle.com or donotreply@codingjungle.com (maybe whitelist them in your spam settings to be on the safe side). the only other thing i can think of is the email you have on file for your account is not the one you monitor, check to make sure it is correct.

Edited March 19, 2018 by CodingJungle

[AlexWebsites]

5 minutes ago, CodingJungle said:

i do not know, i didn't show any of them failed to send. check your spam folder? if you find them, they are either sent under cju@codingjungle.com or donotreply@codingjungle.com (maybe whitelist them in your spam settings to be on the safe side). the only other thing i can think of is the email you have on file for your account is not the one you monitor, check to make sure it is correct.

I checked my spam folder and nothing. It's the same email I use for this board.  I believe that.... if Send me news and Information is unchecked, bulk mail does not go to those users. So hopefully checking that on your site corrected this for me moving forward. I don't recall un-checking that though, so you may want to check your registration settings:

I updated and chat is working. ?

[CodingJungle]

Checked registration settings, "send me news and updates default" is enabled for new registrations.

I'm using a smtp to send out emails, so they shouldn't be seen as "spam" as i don't use php to send them and i send so few that going to like sparkhost isn't worth it.

I'm not sure how it would've gotten disabled on your account, maybe you unchecked it by mistake or something .

now i'm still trying to figure out this stability problem, it has to be related to the new code added to babble.js, but the error logs are clean and i can't seem to capture an error as of yet.  I'm thinking one of the sites out there is using a very outdated version that is missing the time and/or version variable for the member data and that is causing it to crash. i now have them wrapped with try/catch blocks, so with any luck this problem will not be happening again. knocks on wood.

[CodingJungle]

If you have members reporting they can not connect, after the update (and you have updated to 2.6.5) have them clear their browser cache/cookies/sessions/etc.

[Unlucky]

On 14/03/2018 at 10:34 PM, CodingJungle said:

https://codingjungle.com/files/file/33-babble

you can download it from here, this is the self host version, click on the changelog tab, select version 2.2.8, below the change log text, it will have a "download" option

Thanks. Can you remind me where I make someone a moderator in this earlier version?

 

[CodingJungle]

5 hours ago, Unlucky said:

Thanks. Can you remind me where I make someone a moderator in this earlier version?

 

that old of version, they would still be in the Members->groups->edit a group, they will be in the babble tab. the old moderator/admin commands will be in Member->Admins i do believe. they were all over the place back then, why they got redone.