Travis

Yah, they changed things a bit on how GIMP works. You can check out this post. It is basically the same thing @heppnerguy explained. You do it in the Tool options now.

It might be legit, but just be careful of scams. I get regular emails from people wanting to buy scroll saws from me. Usually a dozen at a time. They always seem to have money burning a hole burning in their pocket.

I used to have it on the bottom of the forum, but it was taking a lot of resources to generate for each user that loads the front page. Now it's under the Activity tab now. Just click the "Online Users" button at the top of that page. I'll bring back Birthdays soon. I have to turn on one feature at a time, then see what impact it has on the website. But I'll put it at the top of the list.

Can you link me to the post? Can you Like other posts? Or is it just being difficult on that one?

I suppose it depends. Would I update the software? Yes. I pretty much had to do that. Being behind on software upgrades will eventually bite you. And It kinda did to me. I wasn't horribly out of date, but it was getting bad and really needed to be done. Plus, if I didn't upgrade, SSV probably would be no more. I'm going to be better with sofware updates in the future. Would I switch servers? I guess time will tell. Right now, all I can think of is how much of a PITA it was. Moving servers is always fraught with problems. I've had to do that twice before, and each time sucked. But I'm hoping this new server will fill our needs much better and I don't find any new issues. --crossing fingers--

Holy Cow! We Made It! We finally made the switch over to a new server! I want to thank everybody for your patience. I'm really sorry it took so long to get things back on track. I know it really sucks not being able to log in, browse, and chat with fellow scrollers. I assure you, I was just as frustrated as you were, and I thank you for sticking by me. Because you're reading this, it means we're on a new server. What does that mean? It means the website will be faster and more adaptive to traffic spikes. We still have to monitor our CPU usage. So it will be somewhat locked down for guest browsers, but I'll slowly start opening thing up for folks not logged in. But I have to be careful, I don't want to get the site suspended again. So I'll be slow and steady. I'm going to also upgrade our service plan, so we have a little more headroom during traffic spikes. It's basically the highest package plan without going to a dedicated server, which is crazy expensive. So I hope it doesn't come to that. Anyway, welcome to our new digs. I'm hoping you don't see anything different, because that means it went well. But if something comes up, you can leave a message in the forum or shoot me a message by clicking Contact Us at the bottom of the forum. You can also email me at travis [at] scrollsawvillage.com Thanks everybody for your patience. While painful, it was necessary and will protect us in the future.

Howdy All. I'm continually working on SSV behind the curtain. We're going to be updating our servers, soon. I put in a request to have it done for us. The problem is, I don't know when it will happen. When it does happen, SSV will go offline for a bit while the data is being transferred. Once it has transferred, we'll be on a new and faster server. I'm hoping this will solve our CPU issues. I'll be monitoring it closely after the transfer. Once things have stabilized, I'll slowly start bringing in more features and unlocking areas that are currently locked down to guest browsers. Just wanted to give you the latest update! The best place to find the latest news and status of SSV is on our Facebook Page. You can find that here: https://www.facebook.com/scrollsawvillage/

Huh. That's weird. Can you post a link to what you were trying to Like? I'll take a closer look.

I've been working all day with a number of engineers. We got to the point of bringing things back to normal. We'll be moving to a new server soon. More to come about that. It may have given me a few more gray hairs, but at least we're back online.

Thanks John! I move the thread over to Pattern Making. You can find that here:

I checked our logs. We got a huge spike in CPU usage last night. I'm not sure what's going on. The only thing I can think of is someone or several someones are looking at patterns. Instead of opening one window/pattern at a time, they must be opening a whole bunch of patterns in new tabs at the same time so they can sort through them. That pings the server to death, and I think we got put into that lockdown again. Now we're in the lock, they are supplying us with server-side cached data, which causes our login issues and slow response times. You can force a refresh on your web browser by using Ctrl+F5. This usually will bounce back your login status. I locked out guests from browsing all of the forums. They can only see thread topic names. They'll have to log in to read the thread. I'm hoping this might reduce some strain on the servers and get our block lifted. The next options get expensive. So hopefully this does the trick.

Man, I thought we were doing good, too. It is slow for me today too and I'm experiencing similar login issues. Let me poke around and see what's going on.

Do you have your screen magnified so the fonts are large and easy to read? I'm guessing that's probably what's going on. SSV is dynamic, meaning that it will change it's layout based on how much screen real estate you have. So if you're zoomed in far enough where there isn't enough room for the menu, the menu and the icons will collapse into those 3 lines that @meflick described. The 3 lines is an icon to represent a list. If you click the three lines, it will list all of the menu items. You'll also have the bell icon, the envelope icon and a signout button also in that menu. To the upper left corner, you'll see a black button that allows you to back out of the forum and category. You can keep clicking the black button in the upper left corner to get to the main page. You can access anything on SSV through the menu (the three lines). If you don't want that view, you'll have to reset your screen back to normal and not so zoomed in. The shortcut for that is hold down the control button and hit the zero button. That will reset your web browser to show you the default size. Then the normal menu pops up that you're used to. To zoom in, hold down the control button and hit the + button. Remember, if you zoom in too much, it will switch back to the display with the 3 lines. To zoom out, hold down the control button and hit the + button. I hope that helps.

@RangerJay What web browser are you using? Did you try closing your web browser and relaunching? I'm wondering if something got hung up.

@stevan I got you squared away. Thanks!

Hmmm....I'm not sure what you are seeing. The site isn't that much different from the old site. The navigation menu is pretty much the same. All the forums are still there and in the right order. The upper right corner is slightly different, but not that much. Here's the rundown of the upper right corner: Create button. That's new. Click that to create a new topic, upload a picture, or update your status. You can ignore that and do it the old fashioned way, just like our old site. This is just a shortcut. Bell icon. The old site had a icon of a person in a chat bubble. But this is the notifications. Think of it like a doorbell that tells you when someone commented on a photo or a thread you started, liked one of your posts, or mentions you in a post. It operates the exact same way as the notifications worked on the old site. Envelope. That's the same as the old site. That's where you get your private messages. Works the same way as the old site. Avatar and your Name. The old site only had your name. If you click your avatar, it goes to your profile (The old site, you'd click your name, then choose profile). If you click your name, you can choose your profile, account settings, a few other settings, and sign out. The signout button used to be on the old site, but now it's located under you name menu. Just click your name, then choose sign-out. Here is the old site: Here is our new site: Not sure how helpful that was. Windows 10 has a tool called Snipping Tool that will take screenshots. This video shows how to use it. That way we can see what you're seeing and help get things sorted out.

Hmmm...I wonder if it's one of the Google Ads. Is the back button working regardless if you have adblocker on or not? Trying to figure out if thats a separate issue.

Hmm...I'm not having trouble with the back button. It's responding the way I'd expect it to. Anybody else having troubles? If so, I can put in a ticket with the software company to investigate. There is some javascript that is loaded when you log onto SSV. It keeps track of user sessions and updates any notifications. The banners at the top and the Google ads are loaded via another service. The only other thing I can think of is if you're using Avast while browsing. I know Avast has caused a lot of grief to SSV members. I find once that's switched off, the issues go away. Not sure if that applies to you or not. The site is being throttled by our hosting provider (which is the reason behind the upgrade). We're trying to reduce the server load, so the restrictions can be lifted. But if you're visiting at peek hours, you might see some delay. With that said, I haven't noticed any severe lag.

If you click your avatar (or anybody else's), you'll go to their profile. On their profile will show their activity feed which shows their posts. The other tab says Albums, which is where you can find their pictures.

On the iPad, it looks different if you hold it horizontal or vertical. If it's horizontal, you get the normal menu. If you hold it vertical, the menus collapse to save screen real estate and the menu items are located under the 3 lines in the upper right corner. If you're on a phone, you only get the 3 lines because there isn't enough room to put the menu. The themes are really dynamic and adjust according to how wide your display is. The new theme doesn't offer the desktop version on mobile devices. The old site allowed you to switch to the full version, but I don't see that this one will let you do that.

I was able to get the Articles section working again. It took a bit, but I was able to recover it. Articles are treated a little bit different than before, but everything is there. My next step is to make it pretty and easy to navigate. But until then, there's a great resource of scroll saw articles.

The nice thing about the signature, you can change it whenever you want. And all of your posts will reflect the new signature.

It's been a while since I was in GIMP (I typically default to Photoshop), but it looks like they treat their brushes differently than when I originally made the video. It looks like the Brushes palette is used for shapes and brush properties. Now, they are setting the size based by using the Tool Options. So try this: Make sure your Tool Options is open (Windows>Dockable Tools>Tool Options) Make sure your Brush palette is open (Windows>Dockable Tools>Brushes) Select a round brush int he Brush palette. Make sure it's doesn't have a soft edge. You can find out by double clicking the brush and checking that the Hardess is set to 1. If it's not, either select a new one, edit it (if you can), or create a new brush. Then in your Tool Options, set the size to 3px or 5px (I prefer 5px, but it's what you're comfortable cutting at). Also, make sure the Opacity in Tool Options is set to 100. You should be able to use the tool and get the proper widths. Let me know if that's not what you're looking for.

That's a good idea. I'll have to see how I can set that up. Thanks!

I think you might have to update your shortcut/bookmark. The old site used to be www.scrollsawvillage.com/forum, now it's www.scrollsawvillage.com/forums (has the S at the end of forum). As a result, it will give you the message you're reporting.