As everyone knows, the Sultantheme skin on the SDMB is the print that the Devil uses on all of his smoking jackets and bathrobes. I can only assume that TPTB are being blackmailed into making it the default skin by someone who has information about a shameful secret that TPTB don’t want revealed to the world at large (Note to TPTB: Don’t fret. It’s probably not even really that big a deal.).
Anyway, like all right-thinking Dopers, I have configured my User CP to default to the Straight Dope v3.7.3 skin. This has served me pretty well since the abominable thing first reared its grotesque head.
NOTE THE QUALIFIER “PRETTY WELL.” This suggests that the strategy has NOT been 100% effective. And that suggestion is mighty goddam perspicacious. There are instances when I click on a link that directs me from a SD thread that I have been reading to another SD thread. Almost without fail, the link opens to the target thread with the Sultantheme skin, completely IGNORING my prior specification to open exclusively in Straight Dope v3.7.3. Should I scroll to the bottom of the page, and reset the skin back to Straight Dope v3.7.3, all will be well UNTIL I advance further into the Doper experience by, say, clicking to the next page of the thread, or jumping from the end of the thread back to its forum menu. At this point, the board forces me BACK to Sultantheme. And a part of my soul dies.
I have experimented with this phenomenon enough to determine that it is ubiquitous. It DOESN’T only happen when the thread was created in Sultantheme. It DOESN’T only happen when the person who linked to the thread was parked in Sultantheme. It has happened when I link to a thread that I started. And when Cecil posts a link to a SDMB thread on the Straight Dopers page on Facebook, it happens ALL THE TIME.
SD tech wonks, I beseech you. Is there a way that I can configure my User CP such that Sultantheme CEASES to even be an OPTION? Hear my pleas, O SD tech wonks, and deliver me from this horror!
I mostly avoid the problem by having it run on SultanTheme all the time with my tweaker userscript.
If everyone is sure the problem is the HTTP vs. HTTPS issue, I could easily write a script that quickly swaps you over to HTTPS no matter what. I might be able to help with other issues, too, like forcing the cookies and the URL itself to call for the old style.
Well, it’s not the Devil, it’s Google. Some would argue that’s basically the same.
Google ranks you lower if you don’t have a mobile theme by default. You don’t have the use the [del]Devil’s[/del] Sultanstheme, but as I understand it, it has to be our default or the SDMB won’t show up anywhere near the top results on Google’s searches.
Anyway, there are two issues that folks here have been reporting. One is the http vs https issue. If you are getting here from a bookmark, make sure your bookmark is https. You can edit your bookmarks if not. I’ll forward a note to our admin to make sure that the links that get posted to Facebook are https.
The second issue is to go into your User Control Panel (UserCP on the upper left), select Edit Options, then scroll down to the bottom where it says Forum Skin and select the Straight Dope v3.7.3 skin. I haven’t bothered to do this and I’m not having issues, but some folks are reporting issues with the theme switching if they don’t do this.
Of course, Sultantheme can’t be mobile-friendly if it’s everything-hostile. Even if it was intended to be mobile-friendly, we don’t know if Google deems it to be so.
Unless the techs have missed something on the front page (which is unlikely but hey, anything’s possible) all links on the Straight Dope pages are https.
If you happen to find one, please let us know. And look at your own bookmarks and etc. to be sure they are likewise not pointing to http or to “boards.straightdope.com.”
Sorry for your inconvenience. With the choice in your User CP – that’s supposed to override everything else – this issue should be resolved.
Another thing you could do is set the Control Panel setting both on HTTP and on HTTPS. That might save a cookie for both versions of the site and keep it from flipping even if you do accidentally go to the HTTP version.
I also doubt that Google sees any problem with Sultantheme. The problems aren’t ones that it would detect–spoiler boxes not working in quotes and code tags ignoring line breaks. Those are both technically cosmetic issues.
My address bar reads “Not secure” in bright red letters. (This is the link to this page: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=873373)
I notice that it’s http, not https. I did select v3.7.3 skin but I’m still getting the not secure message. Help?
If you come to the SDMB through an http link instead of an https link then you will continue to be served pages as http (and you’ll probably keep getting that warning). If you got to the SDMB from a bookmark then you need to update your bookmark to https. If it’s a link on another site, well, we can’t control those. All links from the Straight Dope web page should be https.
Note - if the link that brought you to the SDMB is just boards.straightdope.com with no prefix (http or https) then you’ll probably end up being served an http page, causing the warning.
If you change the http to https in the address bar of your browser (then hit enter to reload the page) your not secure message should go away. To prevent it in the future, we need to know how you got there.
If someone has an old bookmark with the http version, then all of the built-in links in the system (like the forum listing pages) will also go to http versions.
If that person then copies and pastes a URL into a link, that link will also be to the http version.
And if anyone then clicks on that link, then they’ll also get the http version, no matter what their bookmarks or settings.
Other sites need not be involved. This can all happen on this site. And we can’t control what users do, but we should be able to control how the site responds: Is there any reason why http doesn’t auto-redirect to https?
My laptop’s bookmark was HTTP. I’ve changed to HTTPS now. My tablet and phone are both secure, which I find odd because I use Chrome as my browser on all 3 and assumed (oops) that all of my settings would carry over.
In how Chrome deals with things, I suspect bookmarks or static links override system settings.
To repeat … check your bookmarks and links. They should be “https.”
And be sure that in your Straight Dope Message Board settings for your laptop(s) that you have the old default checked in your User Control Panel; otherwise the system tends to default to sultantheme, regardless of what you select from the menu on the Straight Dope front page. That setting only works as long as you are ON the front page, then when you go to another page it defaults to whatever setting is in your User Control Panel.
User CP / Edit Options / Miscellaneous Options (bottom of page) / SELECT “Straight Dope v3.7.3.” from the drop down menu box./ SAVE CHANGES
Big thanks to everyone who is so patient and helpful as we work through these changes … especially the ever-vigilant engineer_comp-geek.
WTF is going on with this board today? It was working perfectly fine yesterday, just now I opened a thread and it defaulted to the Sultantheme skin. I was able to change it back by selecting the v3.7.3 skin, but now there is a **huge **white space at the top of every thread:
