sadams101

After more research, I realize this is coming from one of my custom plugins...sorry!

I believe there is a serious issue with how ads are delivered--the fact that even though desktop or tablet ads might be hidden to the viewer using the desktop, tablet, mobile check boxes you provide in Blocks, or by wrapping the ad code in the CSS tags that hide them from various devices, the ads hidden from mobile are unfortunately still loading in mobile (in the background, and vice versa, mobile directed ads load hidden in desktop, etc.), which makes it nearly impossible to make money with Google or other network ads for the obvious reasons that Google sends ads to sites based on viewability and click through rate. When viewability and/or CTRs drop, worse quality and lower paying ads are served. This also greatly slows down the mobile version for those who run ads.
I discovered this issue using Google site speed tests, which revealed that my large 728x90 and 300x600 desktop display ads were still loading in the background, though hidden, on the mobile speed tests.

Ideally I would be able to turn off any and all caching. I will try to recommend this as a feature.

Flagged for the next release 🙂 

Just an update that 755 permissions also works, and is more secure.

I realize IPB's ability to provide support now seems to have become severely limited (at least in comparison to my experiences prior to 5 years ago), which is why I've posted this in your forum. 
Perhaps you already know what programming changes were made that would cause this big change in how those blocks are cached, but if not I think it could be important for you to figure this out, as I've displayed my ads for years this way without issues. Perhaps there is a coding issue? It would certainly not be the first time.
Also, in this thread I've pointed out another (what I believe to be a serious) issue with how ads are delivered--the fact that even though desktop or tablet ads might be hidden to the viewer using the desktop, tablet, mobile check boxes you provide in Blocks, or by wrapping the ad code in the CSS tags that hide them from various devices, the ads hidden from mobile are unfortunately still loading in mobile (in the background), which makes it nearly impossible to make money with Google or other network ads for obvious reasons (and this also greatly slows down the mobile version for those who run ads). If what I've described is actually happening, wouldn't you agree that this is an issue with the software that should be addressed?

Yes. It has to be set to that in order to function correctly.

I think I solved the issue of not being able to save admin settings. I saw this error on the Data Storage page when trying to save anything:
In order to enable this setting you must make the /path/to/task/task.php file executable (i.e. chmod 0777). I have always had this chmod 0644 without issues, but after the upgrade something changed. Is 777 even secure?
Now I am able to save admin settings.

I've run IPS for probably 15 years or more now, and I still have no idea what this widget is trying to tell me. Below, for example, I have 526 users online, and 71.9% of them are using an app that I don't believe I have...it is an app called "System" 😃 After all these years "System" still makes zero sense to me, and it only obfuscates the ability to see what these 526 users are actually doing on my site (I know for a fact that every single one of them is visiting either my Forums, Pages, or Blogs areas, but can't really see how many are visiting my blogs below, and the percentages are totally off due to the "System" slice of this pie.
If System were eliminated, I might actually be able to know what users are doing on my site, but, unfortunately this widget has never been able to convey this.
 

I have the same issue with search in Pages app. It can't be able to find anything, always the results are 0 and this only in Pages app. In other applications it works as it should.

You're more than welcome to suggest this but the amount of users who will show up will be huge for even a small-medium sized community if there were a user agent list and would not fit the needs here either due to just sheer numbers.
Every system to track a user is not without flaws. Typically, the most accurate are cookie or IP address based but those can be bypassed by those who know what they're doing. When dealing with troublesome members who are also tech savvy, the only way to thwart their attempts is going to be human eyes reviewing things.

Correct. This would indicate that our Spam Defense system is outlining this user as a spammer (level 4) and per your settings, you have opted to reject registrations for level 4 users. You can either do as @Lucas James has suggested and manually register them or you can whitelist their email address/IP address in ACP -> Members -> Spam Prevention -> Whitelist (top right).

Create their account manually from AdminCP and then ask them to change their password. Response Code 4 shows that their registration Email/IP is blacklisted.

I managed to provoke this issue.
I added a comma from one browser to the domain, and this generated the missing page message.
https://www.celiac.com/,

I repeated the request for the page with this message constantly, for more than a minute, then I opened another browser and the first time I loaded the exact address of the site, and I came across this page with message.
Ie there is a bug in the cache guest page.

Ahhhh I bet our internal engine turns:
https://www.celiac.com/, into
https://www.celiac.com/ Since having a "," in the URL is not expected behavior. This means our caching engine would see them both as the same thing.

@sadams101 your post reminded me that I forgot to put the link to theme diff tool back in menu. Fixed!

@sadams101 if you are using the default theme just create a new one instead editing the old one. ACP > Themes > Press the one green button "+ Create New" > Then pick "Manual Mode". Now give the theme a name , add a logo etc.. edit what you like and save. 

I would like to point out that, as far as I know, nobody has heard from @newbie LAC since January, is that correct? 
If this is true then I fear that the worst has happened, and he may not be back. If anyone has heard from him please let us know.
I am making contingency plans on keeping this plugin up to date. I haven't tested it in 4.6, but I am having some small issues with certain features in 4.5. I also plan to upgrade to 4.6 soon so it would be good to know it if works.

I would like to point out that, as far as I know, nobody has heard from @newbie LAC since January, is that correct? 
If this is true then I fear that the worst has happened, and he may not be back. If anyone has heard from him please let us know.
I am making contingency plans on keeping this plugin up to date. I haven't tested it in 4.6, but I am having some small issues with certain features in 4.5. I also plan to upgrade to 4.6 soon so it would be good to know it if works.

I tried switching my site to use PHP 7.4 in cPanel but got 500 server errors. Strangely, it worked fine on my test site on the same server, but there is no load or traffic on the test site.
Any ideas about what could be the issue? Does anyone know what PHP.INI settings I should use for things like memory_limit , post_max_size, etc?
PS - I'm using Invision Community v4.5.4.2

I got it going, finally, on PHP 7.4. 
The issue I had is that Redis was not properly set up for PHP 7.4, which caused the 500 server errors. Once I fixed that, it switched over without issues.

It has taken me ~3 months since upgrading to 4.5 (working with @Adlago) to recover my site speed, and eliminate the dozens of W3 html errors inherent in the standard version of IPB, and I won't be stopping until I'm in the 90% area for mobile (I'm currently at 97-98% for desktop). I'm just shocked that these issue continue in the latest versions, and in some ways were actually worse and harder to deal with in 4.5 than in 4.4.

 

For the record I am using the default skin, and not a custom skin. I do have a custom footer, and a custom menu, as well as other plugins.
I think we all know that the mobile site speed scores are what affect rankings the most now. While your home page score looks pretty ok, not great, let's face it, 90%+ of your entire site, like mine, consists of topics, so those are the most important scores for Google site speed ranking. Take a look at one of your thread page scores for mobile, and this is exactly what I saw after upgrading to 4.5, so I'm not criticizing your site in any way:

 
Even the makers of this software, who are using the next version of this software 4.6, are still doing horrible for site speed...see one of their threads below:

The architecture of the site needs to be changed because the CSS loads EVERYTHING for the mobile site, and EVERYTHING for the desktop site. There are many other issues that are causing this, but IPS has promised faster speed scores, but 4.5 and 4.6 are both terrible.
PS - I won't even go into the number of W3 html errors in the software, which also affect ranking. Most are easily fixed as I've done...I reported these to IPS as well, but it's always going to be fixed in their next version (4.6 has even more errors!). These also affect rankings.
https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mcseboard.de%2Ftopic%2F220055-windows-10-kein-reconnect-bei-netzlaufwerk%2F 

It has taken me ~3 months since upgrading to 4.5 (working with @Adlago) to recover my site speed, and eliminate the dozens of W3 html errors inherent in the standard version of IPB, and I won't be stopping until I'm in the 90% area for mobile (I'm currently at 97-98% for desktop). I'm just shocked that these issue continue in the latest versions, and in some ways were actually worse and harder to deal with in 4.5 than in 4.4.

 

It has taken me ~3 months since upgrading to 4.5 (working with @Adlago) to recover my site speed, and eliminate the dozens of W3 html errors inherent in the standard version of IPB, and I won't be stopping until I'm in the 90% area for mobile (I'm currently at 97-98% for desktop). I'm just shocked that these issue continue in the latest versions, and in some ways were actually worse and harder to deal with in 4.5 than in 4.4.