Eric

44 minutes ago, BulldogTom said:

Personally, I don't like the donor label at all.   I wish it would go away.    Not my site, so not my call, but I would not want anyone to feel uncomfortable that they are not a donor.   I usually give one time per year, and when that label came about, it was a few months before I hit the button.   I felt kinda weird as one of the regulars on the board without a donor designation.   

I hadn't considered that, thank you for pointing it out.  I'll give this some thought... I'm not going to make any changes hastily, and will probably look to you folks for feedback before doing anything.

1 hour ago, jklcpa said:

@Eric do the donations have an expiration where the "Donor" designations shown in green revert to "Member"?

When I click "Donate" and then "Manage Your Donations" I can see two of mine made after you automated the tracking, and there is one from Nov 2018 that still says "Active".  There's another one that is also "Active" that hasn't reached its one year anniversary.

No, they don't expire.  I believe it says Active because it's basically treated as a subscription... but since you're not really receiving anything in return for the subscription (aside from my gratitude!), I don't take any actions to "deactivate" the subscription.

Pacun sent his recommendation a month ago, but I felt like it would seem like a money grab so I didn't do it.

I've installed an update that had become available while I was away on vacation.  Also did some database cleanup.  Between that and marking everything read, hopefully the issue goes away!

Moxie says Happy Independence Day

Done!

Alright, I'm feeling motivated.  I'm going to move the site later this evening.  The transfer itself will be very quick.  I probably won't start it until after 10pm eastern.

2 hours ago, Catherine said:

I know you will take good care of us, and I have NO idea whatsoever about all the DNS commentary.  

DNS is like the phone book of the internet.  It ties names (atxcommunity.com) to numbers (67.255.188.166).  If your ISP has a crummy DNS server and doesn't refresh its phone book properly, every time you go to atxcommunity.com, you'll get the wrong number and see the old site on the old server.

When I start the migration, it'll be late in the evening. I'll shut down the site and replace it with a message that says something like "we've moved to a new server.  as soon as the internet does its thing, you'll see the site again" and then follow that with my contact info.  If 12 hours goes by and you're still seeing that, then your ISP has unreliable DNS servers.  Luckily, it's pretty painless to change two numbers in your router's configuration (although all routers are different so finding them can sometimes be tricky) so that you can use some nice, free, fast service from a 3rd party that you don't even have to sign up for.  As an added bonus, they'll respect your privacy more than most ISPs.

13 minutes ago, Abby Normal said:

I'm only basically familiar with DNS but I did install the Cloudflare android app and I may try updating my home modem with the Cloudflare DNS addresses.

I started years ago using Google's Public DNS because I had a crummy ISP.  Cloudflare's service is faster, and I prefer not to put all of my privacy eggs in one basket so I switched.  If there's some down side to using their service, I have never encountered it.

I'm moving my sites to a new server this month.  Sticking with the same host, but I need a little more speed and flexibility.

I had planned on making the ATX Community one of the first few sites to go, but it looks like you folks are dealing with enough website-related turmoil for the moment, so I'll hold off and save this site for last.

When it is time to move, there will be some minor downtime--I'll need to shut down the site during the move which will take about an hour, and then it'll be another hour or two  (give or take) for the domain's DNS settings to propagate.

Inevitably, there will be one or two members who won't see the new site for an extended period of time because their ISP's DNS servers are garbage. In cases like that, I highly recommend using a 3rd party DNS service for your entire network.

• Cloudflare DNS (I use this for my home network (router configuration) and on my cell phone)
• OpenDNS
• Google Public DNS

I'll post again with an update as I get closer to the end of my site transfers.

I agree.  The difference between SSD/NVMe and an old-school mechanical HDD is night and day.  I also don't think there's much of a difference one way or the other regarding reliability.  The only benefits I can think of for a HDD (besides dollar per GB) is that when they do fail, there's a better chance that they'll fail gradually.  An SSD is more likely to die all at once, offering a much worse chance at recovery in those situations.

Regardless of what type of drive you decide on, if your data is important, you need to have some kind of backup solution.  Both types of drives can die without warning. I personally use 4GB HGSD HDDs for long term storage and backup, and Samsung NVMe drives for everything else. 

8 hours ago, jasdlm said:

Also, many thanks to Judy, moderator extraordinaire.  

Seriously, thank you Judy.  

Can everyone take a look, maybe refresh the page, and let me know if any weirdness they noticed before has been resolved?

If you still have issues, try logging out and back in again, or clearing cache and logging in again and re-checking.

There has been a maintenance release for the forum software since the last update, so I'm going to apply it in a little bit.  I usually try to keep from running updates during tax season unless they're security related or unless there are problems that people notice.

There will be some brief downtime, but shouldn't be more than 15 minutes.

I'm sure the only reason this exists is so they can add some AI buzzword bullet points to the marketing materials.

10 minutes ago, Possi said:

I use Taxwise. I'm glad you posted. Where do we send money to support this site? I can't remember from last year!

 There's a Donate tab at the top with a number of different options, including payment by check if that's something you would prefer to do.  Going through that whole process allows me to know who's donating.  Before, it wasn't always easy to know which member was making which donation.

Hi folks,

Just a reminder for those who may have recently transitioned to a new tax software provider from ATX--we have vendor-specific forums for questions related to non-ATX software.  If you use some software not covered by these forums, please let me know and I'll consider adding them!

Thanks!

22 hours ago, Medlin Software said:

It should be kept updated as part of the normal Windows update process.

Lately, part of the normal Windows update process is a chance that your OS will no longer be in a bootable state upon completion (or half-completion) of the installation, with potential for data loss.

Keeping your system updated is important, but it's hard to blame the average person for being leery of updates given Microsoft's recent track record.

2 hours ago, FDNY said:

And of course Happy Festivus to the secular minority who celebrated on 12/23. 

I've got alotta problems with you people.... and now, you're gonna hear about it!

Thank you!

I think all that's left is improving the automated emails that go out.  And if anyone can think of a better group title than "Donors" then suggestions are welcome.

...But I wanted to mention that I had removed the Donate tab at the top of the site for a few days while I worked on a new system for collecting donations with an option to support recurring donations (suggested by @Catherine and @JohnH)

The primary goal, though, is to finally be able to associate every donation with the person who made it.  Before I usually had a good guess based on name or email address, but since the whole PayPal process happened outside of the website, there was no  definitive way to make the connection between donation and donor, especially if a check was mailed.  So now, no matter what method of payment is used, as long as you go through the checkout process, the site will create a record of that donation and associate it with your account.  This also allows me the flexibility to add some minor benefits to the accounts of those who donate, like increased file attachment quotas, inbox size, etc, which is more of a gesture of gratitude than something of any actual value.

If the ability to pay with PayPal is requested, I will look into implementing it as an additional payment option.  

Recurring donations can be cancelled at any time from the Donate > Manage Donations page.  Card info can be updated/removed from the Donate > My Details > Cards page.

Please let me know if you find anything confusing about the process or the way things are set up.  

Fine print: This is all PCI compliant. No credit card information is stored on my server.  All transactions are processed by the Stripe payment gateway, and transmitted over an encrypted connection.  I have implemented similar systems for hospitals around Maine--this is all up to industry standards.

On 10/23/2018 at 4:34 PM, Catherine said:

Which reminds me -  @Eric is there a way to set up recurring donations to the forum?

I had considered adding the feature. From the development angle, it's the kind of thing I'd have fun building.  I'm a big fan of automating tedious/repetitive/boring tasks, or just things I would tend to forget.  And from a user perspective, it's something I would take advantage of too.

But I don't know how I would communicate the addition of the feature without making it sound like I'm asking for money.  So the anxiety of that situation is the reason I haven't added anything like that.  I think I will now, and blame @Catherine for its implementation 

3 hours ago, JohnH said:

I've always followed the theory that my odds of wining the lottery are roughly the same whether I buy a ticket or not.  

You can still write down some numbers and check them against the winning pick, though.  That way you can still experience the thrill of participation and the disappointment of not winning, but without paying for it.

I don't mind building computers, but I would feel badly if a component were to fail.  I think you're better off buying from someone local, or from Dell so that you can get service if something goes wrong.

For the laptop, if the requirements are 17" and Dell, you have a couple options.  XPS doesn't come in 17" which is unfortunate because the Dell XPS laptops are really high quality and feel great to use--great keyboards, great trackpads, quality materials and finish.  In my past experience, the Inspiron laptops feel like cheap flexy plastic crap, but maybe they're better now.

You could also get Alienware, which has been owned by Dell for a while.  They're obnoxiously styled to appeal to Gamers, but it's what's on the inside that counts and a computer that's good for gaming is generally also good for heavy workloads of any kind.  

It seems unimaginable that you wouldn't be able to configure a laptop with an SSD instead of an old spinning disk.  If you have trouble configuring the laptop the way you want online, then maybe it's worth calling them to order over the phone.  

On my own computer, I use VeraCrypt for encrypted drives, but I've heard Windows 10's built-in Bitlocker works well too.

My feeling is that the antivirus software from the major companies is so bloated and intrusive that it often causes more problems than it prevents.

Whatever you do for encryption, make sure you learn about what is available for recovery methods and implement them before enabling the encryption.  

57 minutes ago, Pacun said:

Eric,

Is that per second, per month or per life?

Haha that's messages stored per inbox