# Off Topic > The Water Cooler >  >  MY New Look

## jaslake

Hi Mods and Administrators

I've seen no conversations regarding this Issue. Is it just MY issue or is the Entire Forum for ALL displayed like this?

I've had this Interface for the last two days. Periodically, for about an hour, the Interface will return to normal. But, in the same session, it will revert to the attached.

Is it me or is it the Forum?

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## jeffreybrown

Hi John,

I don't believe it is you, it seems it is the forum.  I had this same issue just after the major crash and then all of a sudden it was back.

FDibbins also had the same issue and with no action taken, it was magically solved.

I found the issue with both chrome and IE, but when messaging with Arlette (using FireFox) she had no issue.

In the end, there must be some bug in the forum somewhere and being way above my head I can't really help any further.

Hope this helps...

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## jaslake

Hi Jeff

I appreciate your feedback. However, SOMEONE knows whats happening. 

Why is it that some Forum Members have unfettered access to the Normal Interface and some (namely me) don't?

The Forum exhibits the same issue on this Laptop using IE8 and another Laptop using IE10.

Very frustrated...

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## Norie

John

A lot of people were getting that 'look' last week, I think there's a thread about it.

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## TMS

Hey, feel some sympathy for FDibbins.  He can't type anywhere except in the title box.  He's been PM'ing me for human contact  :Smilie:

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## TMS

Oh, and when I've edited a response, I get a blank screen ...

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## MarvinP

I've been having those problems for a few weeks now. As I type in the message box it is all Right To Left...  Weird....
It looks like a non left-to-right language has taken over the message area.

I did get some help by setting this Forum to Compatibility Mode in IE.  Things looked a little better then.


I haven't got a reply for my last message in the Forum Experts section of the forum.


When I go to Edit my text here is what I see::
At least most of the Icons above the message box show.  They have all been blank for about the last two weeks..

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## jaslake

Downloaded and installed FireFox...same issue MY New Look

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## TMS

Hey Mr Dibbins, maybe you can do rep !?  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):   :Smilie:   :Smilie:

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## protonLeah

I had that problem for about two weeks.  It corrected yesterday about 3 pm.  I seems to have started at the same time that I noticed data being received from ajax.cloudflare.com when loading the forum.  CloudFlare is setting cookies on my machine as well as the Forum.  When I delete the cookies, I have log-in problems.  Seems that the forum has made  a security "upgrade" but hasn't been able to configure it properly (yet).

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## MarvinP

It seems this "security upgrade" is keeping me from answering questions or dealing with the site correctly.  I guess that is some kind of "security".   :EEK!:  :Confused:   I'm still seeing Right To Left text entered into this message box.  

When Arlette talks about the Tech Team, I wonder if she should just refer to them as the "Team". 

I guess I'll check back in from time to time and see if things work using the latest version of IE.

EDIT:  I just removed my IE "Compatibility Mode" and things looked different.  I can see text Left To Right and the message Icons look much better.  BUT I now have only two lines of text available to type in, in this message box.  I reported this problem in the past.  

Boy - I wish the "Team" would figure this stuff out and let me just deal with Excel problems.....

EDIT - In the last 5 minutes things are looking great now.  My message box Icons are back, I'm typing L to R text and I can see all lines in the message box.  .... The only thing I don't see is those emoticon faces to the right of the message box.  I'll do without them if all these things work...

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## FDibbins

OK Im at home now and I can type in the "quick reply" box.  Before, when I was at work, the ONLY places I could type in were the title of a new thread of if I edited a post, I could type in the "reason for edit" box - and that was it!!.  I could start a new thread, but couldnt type anything, I could use a canned reply, but not see it (let alone edit it), I couldnt even type a PM to anyone, except for the title.

I could see the QR box, but it was just a big box with the blue bar at the top, and the thin blue line going all the way round the outside (like underneath where you would normally type) - there was no "yellow" box with icons (at all).  It was all just white and I could not click on it/into it at all.  I tried shutting down IE, tried a reboot, nothing changed.  OH and the response was slower than a racing snail that forgot to take its steroids!!

Hopefully some of you could pick up on "reasons for editing" at the bottom of some of the posts - kinda my way of communication from beyond the grave lol

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## arlu1201

John,

If you are seeing all the links one below the other, its because the CSS hasnt loaded fully and that could be caused by a slow internet connection at your end or the forum being slow as well.  If you refresh the page, it gets fixed.

Ben,

The servers have been moved to Cloudflare. 

Marvin,

This is the first time i am seeing the right to left thing happening.  Let me know if you see it again.  I will send this entire thread to the tech (sorry, got used to using it) team for a check.

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## arlu1201

FDibbins,

I asked for your IP to be unblocked.  Please check again once you are back at work and let me know if the issue persists.  Never seen these issues before.  I hope its not a new hacking attack in the process.

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## FDibbins

Arlu, the "slow connection" - mine or the forums - is exactly what it felt like yesterday, like it was taking so long to load everything that it just gave up and showed what it could.

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## FDibbins

oooo....k here we go again.  Chrome is once again reporting malware on the site.  I had a feeling that it was never fixed properly the 1st time, and that we have been having lingering problems because of that

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## arlu1201

Can you please upload the screenshot, FD?

I opened the forum page in chrome and not seeing anything.

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## FDibbins

here you go.....

Not sure which others, but is was definitely from this thread...
http://www.excelforum.com/excel-form...-criteria.html

I got the msg when I 1st tried to open that thread, then closed chjrome, opened back up and tried to open that thread - got the malware warning again.  Im not saying its FROM that thread, just that I tried twice to open that 1 and got the msg twice

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## arlu1201

Thanks FD.

After asking you for it, i got the same one in Chrome and now in Firefox.

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## Fotis1991

> Hi *Mods* and Administrators
> 
> I've seen no conversations ...




Hi there.

I just want to clarify(as i get also some PM about this) that Moderators have no competence in this.

As you noticed most of us have the same problems.

We can do the same as you. Report the issues.

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## TMS

See what happens when you take things out of context ...





> Moderators have no competence



But then, it seems, neither does the Tech Team ...

The site was down, for me at least from early morning till just after 4:00 p.m. GMT.  I got in very briefly before it went down again ... just back around 6:30 p.m. GMT.  And all the time, there was a message saying the site was being defragmented and would be off air for about an hour.  Must have much longer hours in other parts of the world.  Oh, and I also got a message about cookies and headers for a short while.

I notice that we now have the option to "like" a post.  Could that have anything to do with what's going on?

TMS


Edit: and there was a brave attempt to double post this ... but I got it!

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## TMS

OK, I think I'm going to go away for a while and sulk quietly.

This is a disaster!

The forum is horrendously slow.
Every post I reply to tries to double post.
Posts don't show up in my Control Panel.
Posts don't show up in the post count in the New Posts ... but if you open the thread they're there.

Just a few clues that we may just have taken a few strides backwards.

When I hover over a post, I see an option to like it.  Is that functionality we needed?  At a time when there's shed load of nasty stuff to shovel away ...

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## FDibbins

I have been told by Admin that the site is still being defrag'd but also that we had another malware attack.  I think I too will be taking a break from here for a while

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## jaslake

Received this error message twice today

Once when trying to view an attachment

The second time I was trying to open page two of this Thread





> header('HTTP/1.1 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable'); header('Status: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable'); header('Retry-After: 17200'); // in seconds print "TEST123"; 
> 
> 2:10 PM EST



@Fotis1991

And report it I did...see Post #1

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## newdoverman

I just got kicked off while trying to reply! Message said that I wasn't logged in (I was) and to refresh and try again.

All kinds of strange thing happening today including error messages about headers missing, database defragging ...come back later, errors going from page to page.

Weird.

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## jaslake

I appreciate the Banner



> We are recovering from a malware attack. Some forums might be inaccessible and post counts might not register. The forum could be slow as well. Please bear with us as we work through it. 
> An update will be posted once we are up and running.



Now we're communicating.

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## MarvinP

I clicked on the "Like" word  on a first posters question and I wonder who got the "Like"?  Do we now hit Facebook or Twitter and need a Like link to show how much we like a question or answer?

I still can't see the icons above the message box in my display.  It has been like this for a week or so.  I've learned to hover over the icons and after a second the function will bubble up.  I guess this is our new method.  

Now I wonder if this will really be accepted as a post and if it will try to double post it.  Here goesssss.......

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## Kyle123

Most of the symptoms are purely down to insufficient spec of the server with the current configuration/implementation of the site, however with particular reference to the "new look":

This isn't a moan, merely constructive criticism and some (hopefully) easy to understand possible explanations for the issues - so I reckon I'm fine posting this here.

The particular problem here is caused by the css stylesheets timing out with certain requests (not loading) - css tells a page how it should look and it never loads. You'll see that the main style-sheet, lives here:



```
Please Login or Register  to view this content.
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The number at the end of the url is a time stamp, in this case (Thu, 03 Oct 2013 12:19:11 GMT), a time stamp is often added to the end of a url in this manner to "bust cache", whilst this sounds bad - it's useful for web developers who want to change the layout of the page. As your browser will store all style-sheets by default when you load a page (so it doesn't need to request the same ones over and over, it makes the page load faster) if any changes are made to the site design in the css, you won't see them since you will be using a locally stored style-sheet. 

The downside of this approach is that each time the time stamp changes, your browser must request a new version of the css and code on the Excel Forum server must execute (and remember it's not performing well anyway) to determine whether you have the correct style-sheet each time the css is requested (by looking at the time stamp). If you request a copy that forces the server just to send css without checking that you have the latest version, by removing the time stamp there is no need for the same code to run on the server and you'll probably find that the page is returned - it certainly was when I had this problem recently. If you are having problems, you can test this by navigating to 


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Please Login or Register  to view this content.
```


 and checking whether the css loads (not that it will help the site display any better  :Wink: ).

Why this site really needs to cache bust all the time is a bit beyond me, the design hardly changes on a daily basis. It makes the site load slower and puts a greater burden on the web server. Whilst we're on the subject of optimization, the site could use a load of it, generally to make a site fast and responsive, you cache as much as possible on the client (the users of the forum's browser) and do it in as fewer requests as possible. If you look at the source code, you'll see that this site requires all these downloading as separate requests:



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Please Login or Register  to view this content.
```


Put simply, all these linked resources should be grouped together and compressed,  all the JavaScript and all the css could then be downloaded as 2 documents, rather than 17 (plus a load more if you aren't running at least IE8)

All the JavaScript should really be loaded after the HTML as well.

As to why some people are affected but not others - thee could be a variety of reasons, but I suspect that all the cache busting isn't helping much.

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## Simon Lloyd

Just as a bench mark for you all the forum is loading supper slow for me right now, while it was loading I ran a broadband speed test and i'm getting 31.8 Mb/s download and 19.1 Mb/s upload so as you can see my connection is fairly fast.

@Kyle123, I pointed out a few days ago that the css isn't loading and it appears the cloudflare is to blame, those js files you showed, some of them cannot be moved as the vbulletin software simply wont load when they are (I've tried it!) but some can be moved. If they are setting the server to cache a lot it's to try and save on requests, the trouble with doing that is with a forum this busy when it does update the cache it's a huge cascade effect, much better to use a cache accelerator and set the expiry times for the headers...etc a lot lower.

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## jaslake

For the Moment...NOW WE'RE GETTING THERE!! A few minor idiosincrancies...nothing I can't live without.

Hope it lasts

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## xladept

@Jaslake - I had that intermittently one day last week, among others, and I'm finding the forum quite slow.

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## MarvinP

Hey xladept,

I just clicked on the LIKE for your above post.  Check your notifications to see what it does.

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## Tony Valko

Just an observation...

With all the "technical difficulties" that this forum faces on an almost daily basis, it's a wonder that there is a dedicated base of members (aka "regulars") that spend so much of their time here.

I salute you!  :Cool:

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## FDibbins

Biff, seems you are becoming 1 of us?  *resistance is futile!!!*

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## xladept

@MarvinP - there's a likes received tab and it shows one like received???

I just liked your post :Smilie:

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## jaslake

@Tony Valko

Your Observation is right on point



> With all the "technical difficulties" that this forum faces on an almost daily basis, it's a wonder that there is a dedicated base of members (aka "regulars") that spend so much of their time here.
> 
> I salute you!

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## jaslake

Things are good this morning...knock on wood.

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## FDibbins

yup, and not too slow either  :Smilie:

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## jaslake

> yup, and not too slow either



...and not too slow...

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## jaslake

Kudos to the Tech Team...been a pleasure to work on the Forum ALL day.

Although, must admit, looking for continuity...will mark as "SOLVED" tomorrow.

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## snb

Apparently you are able to consult the members list ?

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## Simon Lloyd

> Apparently you are able to consult the members list ?



Errrr....are Unable, its been disabled again!

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## xladept

@ Jaslake - All day?? High Irony.  I couldn't make anything work right after I read your post :Frown:

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## jaslake

Well, I'm crawling through mud this afternoon...slow response time...

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## FDibbins

Just got on, and it *seems* ok so far

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## jaslake

Things appear to be fine later this afternoon, early evening...

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## xladept

And so it seems :Smilie:

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## jaslake

Smooth Sailing today...

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## jaslake

There are some things missing but...doin' good...

I should point out Ozgrid seems to have similar issues...

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## Norie

I've started seeing a few strange things tonight.

For example this thread, and others, seem to be in some weird format - I'll try to post a pic, some sort of printer-friendly thing?

Also, things seem very slow.

PS I notice jaslake mentioned OzGrid and the last time, today, I visited they do seem to have similar problems.

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## jaslake

@Norie

I've marked the Thread as UnSolved...please do this



> For example this thread, and others, seem to be in some weird format - I'll try to post a pic



I've had an issue with OzGrid for the last two days...

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## snb

Ozgrid had some malware, it has been removed; Google didn't do a new scan, so the Google messages are outdated.

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## jaslake

This morning Ozgrid appears to have been cleared by Google.

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## Tony Valko

Is anyone else experiencing strange forum display behavior?

I don't see the Excel Forum banner at the top of any pages.

I don't see any avatars.

I don't see buttons to take you to the last post in the threads.

I don't see any "green squares" under any user names.

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## jaslake

Yep...looking at your Post on this Thread I see the same items missing.

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## Tony Valko

Additional info...

When I reply in a thread I do initially see *MY* avatar and *MY* "green squares". However, if I navigate away from the thread and then return I can no longer see my avatar or "green squares" (or any other avatars or "green squares").

Also, no smilies!

Are we under a malware attack again?

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## arlu1201

Did you try clearing your cache, logging out and logging in again and then checking?

I see all the above which you mentioned and i am using Firefox.

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## FDibbins

I'm using chrome, and for a short while, I had the same as Tony had,  It seems to have gone now, I could not see the green squares, and there was no "on-line" indicator at all next to members names.  I was going to start a thread, but it "fixed" itself, so I figured it was a server "slow-down" where I work.

At he same time, if I went back to view threads in a forum, it would "flash" the contents real quick, then for a few seconds, all I could see where the posters names and NO thread titles, then after a few seconds more, the screen would "bounce", then everything displayed normal again...again, I put this down to the server where I work, because that too seemed to sort itself out after a while

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## FDibbins

OK maybe I spoke too soon.  Forum seems real slow, and there is still an apparent "bounce" when it finishes loading a page (I am at home now, so I know its not the work server this time)

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## xladept

I'm OK so far today.

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## snb

The page refreshing (all kinds of strange movements) is horrible: this phenomenon started some 8 hours ago.
Probably the 'tech' team woke up.

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## Tony Valko

> Is anyone else experiencing strange forum display behavior?
> 
> I don't see the Excel Forum banner at the top of any pages.
> 
> I don't see any avatars.
> 
> I don't see buttons to take you to the last post in the threads.
> 
> I don't see any "green squares" under any user names.



I'm experiencing this display behavior again.

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## jaslake

@ Biff

Same View for me...

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## FDibbins

Everything looks fine for me (IE), now and then the screen "jumps" when load a new thread

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## FDibbins

OK I spoke too soon.  I am seeing taht on some threads - but not on all....this thread looks fine (still "bounces" when loading though)

edit:  seems very intermittant though, almost like its a "slow loading" problem

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## newdoverman

Everything has been perfect for me on EF for the last week. I am using IE10. I guess that I've been lucky.

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## Pete_UK

I'm also using IE10, but I get similar to what FDibbins describes in Post #65 - intermittently (but more often than not), the screen "bounces" between two or three states before settling down, i.e. more space between posts, then bunched up but with no avatars, then expanded again, then settling down. This also happens when I select lists (i.e. New Post list, or Forum list, or UserCP). Each state lasts a couple of seconds or so.

Pete

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## FDibbins

well described Pepe.  Also, when I glick "New Posts", the page loads with just the OP's name and no thread title for a second or so, thenm the title appears, the screen bounces, and then settles down again

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## alansidman

No issues.  Running Chrome on Win 7.

Alan

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## Fotis1991

Same issues as Biff & John in Posts#62-63.

Regards

Fotis.

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## FDibbins

I have no idea if this is in any way related to the malware attack that we had, or the server change, or just coincidental, but ever since we had that attack, the server has never been "quite right".  Seems to me that since then, we have been having all sorts of little glitches, 1 after another/recuring

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## jaslake

I'm not having problems with Functionality or Navigating the Forum nor response time (that's relative to what it has been recently). It's that "Things" are missing as compared to the past. Perhaps these "Things" have been eliminated to prevent Attacks??? If so tell us...if not "What the Hey?????"

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## Pete_UK

@FD:

I agree, and I hate that we WASTE so much time from our lives putting up with the slow response times - I've taken to logging out and trying again a couple of hours later.

Pete

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## jaslake

Using IE8

In all Forums
There's no longer the File Attached Icon...
There's no longer the Subscription Icon...
There's no longer the Code Icon...
There's no longer the Copy Code Icon...

In Commercial Services
There's no longer Locked Icons...
There's no longer the File Attached Icon...

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## TMS

Back to normal ... ?





> Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting T_VARIABLE or '$' in /home/eforum/public_html/includes/functions_cforum.php on line 518




TMS

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## arlu1201

Some backend settings were changed to take care of the above issues which you have reported.

Please let me know if you still face the issues post this change.

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