Machsterdaemon

I've just mentioned this twice in other topics with reference to the activity streams and search functions, but I'm sticking it up separately as I really do think it's important. 
The use of the reputation system in content discovery seems to be zero. Here we are, our members telling us 'this is a good post' - and we don't seem to be able to use that info. Right off the top of my head here are some ways we could be using that information:
1) Show me posts with 10 or more likes - instantly you're getting a 'best of the board' feed
2) Search for posts in topics with '4.1 upgrade failed', rank by likes - you get solutions or explanations of the problem
3) Show me posts by users with over 1,000 likes - find out what our most valuable users are saying
4) Blocks of most popular posts over the last 7/28/365 days - showcase to new members of our  best content; stuff to highlight in the newsletter
5) Show me my highest rated posts - the ultimate ego-search. What do people love most about you?
6) People who liked this post also liked...
7) Loads of others, I bet
I find it remarkable that the time was taken to let us filter by number of replies or views, but not by how GOOD something has been judged to be. Major missed opportunity, IMHO. 
Now, it is traditional at this point for someone to point out that actually all of these things are possible, I just haven't noticed how. Do go ahead...
 

@Lindy since you asked, I would like to know how I can get a list of topics with new (unread posts). When I come to visit the board, I want to know which topics have new replies since my last visit. I don't care for individual posts and I don't understand why I should even see each specific post that has been made. Busy boards can have 1.000+ new posts each day. Do you really expect a visitor that comes back to the board 24 hours later to go through an endless stream of individual posts to see what is new?
What would you suggest to that user to stop complaining about the loss of overview he had with VNC?

Posts from the same topic in 'All Activity' stream is very unfriendly way of get updates in my experience. I don't use it, but this is the only way for guests to get updates The "unfriendly" 'All Activity' stream seems to be the only way for guests to get new posts updates Topic start date is missing from the activity stream Number of views is missing from the activity stream (it's nice to have)  

I've read a lot of topics criticising the activity stream feature and I find it utterly unuserfriendly as well. What was the logic behind this change? It seems like a case where someone was trying to fix something that already worked and made it worse. Like Microsoft and the whole Windows 8 debacle.
Activity stream may be useful for a low traffic board and works on Facebook where you only get certain "posts" in your stream. But what is the point of having an activity stream on a high traffic board? It's so clumsy at what it should be doing.
Instead of letting you know which topics have new posts so you can get up to date, you face an endless stream of new posts (often from one and the same topic).
Basically what I'm asking si how the h**** should I be using this feature to help me browse the board? It obviously isn't doing its job properly but I'll allow the possibility that I'm just not using it as it was intended.
Can anyone help me understand this thing better? And why we can't simlpy have a choice of both (the old new content list and activity stream)? This way it just seems it was forced onto users.

IPS Rules Application - A powerful rules engine for your IPS4 site
Download Rules "LITE" Version  -  Download Rules FULL Version
The Rules application makes it possible for you to create customized workflows, automation routines, manipulate content, send emails, create conversations, post content, manage members, apply filters, redirect pages, and generally perform any standard operation on your site… all in an automated way based on rules that you create for your site.
Notable Features
·         Over 500 built in events, conditions, and actions for stock IPS products and contributed apps. ·         Rule actions can be configured to happen in real time or at a future time. ·         Schedule and unscheduled actions from inside of rules or manually through your ACP. ·         Built in lists of “replacement tokens” for including variable data in text entry fields (like email content) ·         Fully extensible by app and plugin developers to add new tokens, events, conditions, and actions. ·         Look for Rules Expansion Packs in the marketplace which add new events/conditions/actions. ·         Create your own custom actions within the rules app which can be invoked by rules. ·         Create your own custom data fields for any entity on your site to manipulate with rules. ·         Rules can be grouped together into rule groups and rule sets for easy management. ·         Easily import and export rules and sets to share with friends or distribute as your own rule packs. ·         Built-in rule debugging console for full visibility of what your rules are doing on your system. ·         Built in rules error and performance logging console.  

Well, I've seen quite a few requests for help in this forum now and I thought I'd gather a number of tools you can use to report your status. This will help others help you faster. :D That and additional ability to help yourself as well.

Helpful information
The following are information that's often crucial to diagnosing problems.
What is the environment you are running your website from? IPB Hosting / Shared hosting / VPS / Cloud / Dedicated Server? If VPS/Cloud/Dedi, what are your cpu, ram and disk availability?

Tools
The following are tools you can run in order to gather further data. These can be run from ssh and is only accessible for vps, cloud and dedicated servers for linux distributions.

top - Top processes (very useful for any scenario) | top is usually available in all linux OS distros by default.

top (this will constantly output your server's general status as well as top processes, default in CPU usage order) top n -1 (same as above, but will output your first stat instead of constant loop) If you'd like more colourful version. There is also htop (usually not available by default. Can get here: http://htop.sourceforge.net/ or rpmforge ) iostat - Input/Output Statistics (very useful in diagnosing disk usage) | iostat is part of sysstat package.

iostat (this will output general stats regarding IO) iostat -x 10 5 (this will output extra information for 5 times total with 10 second intervals. First stat is always "since boot" and after is since last report) sar - System Activity Reporter (Displays system performance over time) | sar is part of sysstat package

sar mpstat - Multiprocessor Usage (Displays system stats in relative to CPU) | mpstat is part of sysstat package

mpstat Apache Status (Outputs the apache status) | apachectl status, as name suggests requres apache to get the stats. You will also need to have a shell browser to run.

apachectl status (This outputs the simplified current status) apachectl fullstatus (This outputs the detailed current status. Please be warned that this will list all users and their requests. So, you will want to remove any IP address and further private information) Connections

netstat -an | grep :80 | wc -l (This lets us know how many people are connected to your server on port 80 [http]) Uptime (How long you've been up)

uptime vmstat - virtual memory statistics (This is actually not related to virtualization. This is about your swap)

vmstat free (Shows your memory statistics)

free free -m (In megabytes) free -g (In gigabytes) beancounters (Shows your limits) | Only for those with VPS/Cloud systems

cat /proc/user_beancounters ifstat (Gives live information about network usage on each network interface)

ifstat iftop (Similar to ifstat, but per user and top behavior)

iftop mysqltuner (Gives information and suggestions about your current mysql configuration) | Available at below address Available at: http://mysqltuner.pl/ You can run the mysqltuner with perl (chmod to 755 and run or call with perl) and type in your administrative mysql user id/pass. mysqlmymon Available at: http://mysqlmymon.com/ Similar to mysqltuner, but lot more information about everything else too! This is mostly meant to serve as an all-in-one tool. MySQL Workbench http://www.mysql.com...ucts/workbench/ This is a GUI tool that helps you administer, diagnose and plan. (Complete) Monitoring Solutions Nagios (Everything - heavy learning curve) http://www.nagios.org/ Cacti (Network) http://www.cacti.net/ vnstat (Much more simple network usage logger) http://humdi.net/vnstat/ Useful to Know Settings MySQL settings | Only if you have mysql The settings are often found at: /etc/my.cnf Outputting your current information will help others identify problems. Apache/HTTPD settings | Only if you have apache The settings are often found at: /etc/httpd/conf.d/httpd.conf If you have WHM/cPanel, please look inside WHM instead. Outputting your current information will help others identify problems. Nginx Settings | Only if you have nginx The settings are often found at: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf Outputting your current information will help others identify problems. PHP Information (information regarding your current php build) | Available only to PHP users... for obvious reasons. To get full php information, there are 2 easy ways. One, make a php file with the below contents and save.

<?php phpinfo(); ?> Or via shell

php -i



I'll add more if people suggest other tools.

Yes. You won't break anything by leaving it switched on in ACP, but with Deflate active in Apache, EVERYTHING served up from your server is gzipped already, regardless of the settings in ACP.

Indeed, this reinforces the need to ensure you are only handing out moderation privileges to those who can be fully trusted and who take reasonable measures to secure their own accounts.

I think, personally, that this shouldn't be a site-wide setting that changes the behavior for all members, but rather it should be something individual members set as a preference in their My Settings pages. Clearly as we can see from this topic, we have some folks who really like external links opening in a new window, and some who always want to control whether or not this happens. As it is on this site, the powers that be decided that they would leave this setting to No, and so that means that all of us members here have to live with that.