phone and acces to RV Forum

[BobNSam]

Just recently visited the forum using my W8 phone and was presented a screen with only an admin sign in screen (darn my log in didn't work). I found later that an iPhone does the same. Page says select login at top off page...nothing there.
Has something changed, I use to log in here with no problem.
thanks.
Bob
I did get to the site by selecting a link on page which led to a "you must sign in to access page".

 

[Tom]

Bob, it sounds like you were on our web site/portal here. Only Admins are allowed to log in there. The note above the login in the lower left of the page says:

Admin Login only. To access our message boards, click the Enter RV Forum link in the menu near the top of the page.

If you click that link, you'll come right here to the forum.

 

[BobNSam]

That was the message given on the page but there was no "Enter RV Forum" link presented at the top of the page on the phones tried. Top of page was empty except for banner with logo and "The friendliest..." message. There is also a picture that can be clicked to toggle through some pictures.

EDIT Yes, the link Tom provided looked like same page without the menu options below the top line message.

 

[RVn00b]

I had that same problem on my Android a couple of weeks earlier.  Once Tom talked me into scrolling down and ignoring the BIG HONKIN' Admin-only login and instead using the teeny weeny plebian login, it was easy-peasy.  ;D

 

[Tom]

Bob, looks like you had the phone in portrait mode (i.e. 'vertical'). If you rotated the phone 90 degrees you'd see the menu.

 

[BobNSam]

Sorry, tried portrait and landscape, same result. Curious. I don't have an Android phone to try. I tried on several phones. Get when directly entering "www.rvforum.net"; redirected to "http://www.rvforum.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=123&itemid=104".

 

[Tom]

The redirect is correct; It takes you to the Home page of our web site/portal. The address for our forum/message boards is: http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php

 

[kjansen]

Thanks Tom,  I notice I had the same issue.  I don't use my iphone much as my computer is so much faster.

 

[MikeCoke]

I think I just figured it out. I do not read the forum on my iPhone it is just too small but Wendy does all the time.
Here is what I found out.
On the iPhone if you just type rvforum.net in it takes you to the you mentioned.
From that page scroll way down the page until you see 2014 Rallies then click one of the rallies listed like Moab, UT rally. It will then load The RV Forum Community page and there you can sign in.
Also if you Google RV forum it will list Many different RV related page but our page it at the top and from there click where it says The RV Forum Community it will also take you to the page where you can sign in.
Do Not click RV Forum above www.rvforum.net.

The below Pic shows what I said.
Hope I made it  clear enough
Mike

 

[Tom]

It's really quite simple;  rvforum.net is the domain and I have that url set to go to the Home pags of our web site. This hasn't changed over the last 10 or 12 years, including when we were hosted on Compuserve and were using their forum software. The Home page of the web site has links to various parts of our site, including these message boards.

If you look in the top left of the page you're reading, it says 'The'RV Forum Community', partly to distinguish these message boards from other parts of our site (such as the forum Library and photo gallery). These words show up in search  engine listings of content within our message boards and, yes, there will be many such listings. The url for any such content will be of the form  rvforum.net/SMF_forum/... because our forum software (called SMF) resides in a directory of that name.

Similarly, our Library runs on software called joomla, which resides in a directory of the same name. So, urls for library content will be of the form rvforum.net/joomla/... and, again, there will be numerous such listings in search engines.

A similar story for our photo gallery, which runs on software called Coppermine Photo Gallery and which resides in a directory called 'coppermine'. urls for the various albums and photos are of the form rvforum.net/coppermine/...

All the above is subject to change if/when I replace any or all of the software with different platforms, and depending on what redirects I decide to set up.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Tom is intimately familiar with the structure of the site, but to most of us it's all just "RVForum". The Community, i.e. the forum itself, is really the heart of things and it might make for a better member experience, especially for newcomers, if the Community page was the landing zone and everything branched out from there.

 

[MikeCoke]

Tom it has to be something with some smart phones and the iPhones. When the URL www.rvforum.net is entered those phones take you to this url, 
http://www.rvforum.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=123&Itemid=104


and the below menu does not show up on the page on the iPhone and some smart phones.

[font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Mike[/font]

 

[Tom]

Mike, that's the correct page and url, i.e. it's the Home page of our web site. I set a redirect that takes you directly there if you put www.rvforum.net in the address line of your browser. This is a WAD, nothing to do with iPhones or smart phones, and it's been that way for a number of years, although the numbers in the category/item ID part of the url changed when I installed upgraded software last year.

I'm looking at the menu problem on Chris's iPhone as I type, and it's a template issue that I've seen with this template on another site. In that case, I merely moved the menu (actually, duplicated it), which I'll do here when I get a chance.

The menu displays just fine on my Samsung Galaxy S3 phone, but only if I hold it in landscape mode. Again, this is a template issue.

FWIW the template I'm using is supposed to be "responsive", i.e. it's supposed to adapt to different devices and screen formats, but it's not behaving as it should. I'll fix the menu issue, and I'll talk to the 3rd party template developers about a software fix from their end.