Posting/PM Word Count

[Chris]

Word Counter @plugin250 Adds a real time (as you type) counter to your forum when posting and also renders V4 enhanced posting tables. KEYS NONE | COOKIES NONE | OTHER STORAGE NONE FEATURES 31 Jan Chris   In its basic configuration, count posts and PMs in real-time (while typing) 31 Jan Chris   Ignore counting the contents of certain tags (e.g. code and quotes tags). 31 Jan Chris   You can configure limits (e.g. "minimum 100 words"), on a forum-wide, category, board or per thread basis. 31 Jan Chris Exempt specific members or groups from individual limits 31 Jan Chris   Staff exempt from all limits by default but can have this exemption revoked in preferences 31 Jan Chris Instantly switch between word and character mode 31 Jan Chris Direct monetary plugin to disburse money based on word or character count TEMPLATE BY ALISHA OF PMT | DO NOT REMOVE CREDIT | FIND IT HERE

The counter is placed at the bottom right just above the posting button.

The user is able to switch between word and character mode at any time.

When a limit is being enforced it will appear on that counter so the user is made aware.

For consistency, limits use the same form validation system that Proboards uses to indicate a problem with the submission and to prevent the actual submission

An element with an id of word-count (can be changed in preferences) is first checked before the counter is created in case a template was edited to provide an alternate location for the count

Older V4 Templates Supported

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Before

After

Configuration

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Compatibility Tab

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The v4 enhanced table is meant to target the old V4 posting tables which were made obsolete with the release of the more advanced bbcodes in V5. These tables are easily identified by the use of a proprietary "[atrb]" tag and would not have been updated automatically when the forum was converted to V5 because they were not officially supported tags. Someone would have to edit and manually convert them to their V5 syntax for each and every post in which you find them.

When editing a post containing enhanced v4 tables, the existence of unconverted tags would throw the count off so the setting is there to render these tags first before starting a count. This can be applied to the preview tab only or can be applied full-time where as long as the plugin is running it will look for these old enhanced tables and render them without having to edit and upgrade them to V5 format. This can come in handy if you have thousands of posts you need to upgrade but don' have the time or manpower to do so just yet.

The monetary option allows you to plug into the popular monetary plugin allowing the poster to be awarded based on the number of words they have typed either as a bonus or as a prorated monetary payout. You setup the ranks, i.e. "this many words gets you this much money" then the plugin uses those values to decide how much is suppose to be given. In proportional (prorated) mode the value that is set in the monetary plugin for each post is used as the high water mark and if the poster does not meet or exceed the highest posting rank that you've set then they are given a proportional sum relative to that value set in the monetary plugin. To be clear, in proportional mode, if the highest rank entered is 1000 words but 500 words were posted then that means the monetary plugin would be directed to payout 50% of what it is normally set to payout.

Advanced Tab

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the settings on this tab normally do not need to be modified, they are there for the rare cases.

• ignore content
  in this section we list tags that have content that should not be counted, by default the QUOTE, CODE and IMG tags are in this list. The V5 version of the image tag need not be in this list but the V4 format places the image url between the opening and closing tags thus appearing as countable content. If Proboards or a plugin were to add some new custom tag that is not meant to be counted this is where it would be added.
  
  
• Word Pattern
  this is the pattern used to distinguish one word from another for counting purposes. It is a regular expression so you would need to know regular expressions in order to construct an alternate pattern. This was added to allow non-Latin based or even made-up languages (e.g. Klingon?) whose characters may not be recognized as characters found in Latin-based languages to create custom word patterns likely using UTF.
  
  
• Post Pattern (default: /(%[wc]c#[-+\d]*)/gi)
  this is also a regular expression that is used to identify whether the person making the post also wants the count to be included in the post. By default it will look for the pattern 1,273 (for wordcount) or 7,133 (for character count) and replace that pattern with a number. Additionally you can add or subtract from the count with modifiers, for example, if you placed "word count: 7,133" in the post but did not want the words "word count" to be included in the count you would use "word count: 7,131" to subtract 2 from the count total.
  
  
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  In the above example, by adding up the number of words that should not be counted in that template then placing that offset number in the with the pattern described above (e.g. 7,112), it will automatically be replaced upon posting with the accurate number of words actually considered content. Words such as "Template by Jawn.." would not be included in the total since they were removed as part of those 19 words. The template could then be saved with that pattern so it can be reused
  
  
  
• BBCode Max (default:300)
  this is the maximum number of tags the counter will process in any given counting session. This setting exists because the plugin makes use of a function provided by Proboards that identifies and grabs tags, this function however is coded to give up after encountering 100 tags but the plugin needed a bit more headroom to work consistently on posts one may encounter on RPG forums. Set this value too high and it may appear that your browser has frozen or perhaps get a "script is busy" warning message from your browser
  
  
• Debugging
  this is for troubleshooting purposes only. It will log behind-the-scenes messages to the console to aid in identifying problems

To Do

• Add support for quick reply done (version 0.0.4)
  
• Add support for moving the counter intact done (version 1.0.0)
  currently only the number ('.word-count-number') and limit message ('.word-count-limit') can be relocated but features such as user switchable modes are only available if created directly by the plugin and not as a layout modification.
  
• Bogus tag identification on BBCode tab done (version 0.0.2)
  
• Add support for Unicode
  for example the word "naïve" currently counts as two words since Javascript's regular expressions has very limited unicode support and recognizing "ï" as a valid character in a word is not supported by the \w metacharacter. done (version 0.0.5) (regex can now be changed to support unicode using \s metacharacter)
  

Updates

Word Counter @plugin250 Adds a real time (as you type) counter to your forum when posting and also renders V4 enhanced posting tables. VERSION 1.0.5 | 5,590 Installs | 1,827 Downloads Updates 12 Jul Chris (1.0.5) improved multiple instances of the plugin can no longer run in order to prevent limits contention. 12 Jul Chris (1.0.5) improved line feeds and carriage returns no longer included in character counting mode 6 Jul Chris (1.0.4) bugfix fixed debug mode interfering with limits and enhanced parsing 6 Jul Chris (1.0.4) bugfix fixed monetary payout when creating a thread (replying to a thread worked fine) 5 Jun Chris (1.0.3) new can now configure to take instead of give money for posting in certain threads 15 Jan Chris (1.0.2) improved restored temporarily removed feature (naked tags) after recoding a workaround 12 Jan Chris (v1.0.1) bugfix temporarily scaled back naked tags feature to prevent parsing content in code tags. 04 Jan Chris (v1.0.0) new count menu can now be fully relocated if target is also given the class of 'has-menu'. 04 Jan Chris (v1.0.0) improved removed livequery creation observer to conform to coding guidelines and promoted to release candidate 30 Sep Chris (v0.0.626) new (re)added  word count payout using money plugin 20 Sep Chris (v0.0.625) bugfix fixed typo that caused failure in legacy parser and in debug mode TEMPLATE BY ALISHA OF PMT | DO NOT REMOVE CREDIT | FIND IT HERE

• version 0.0.6 (June 15, 2013) - [rev. 24] incremental update to fix an omission where the return value of inArray
  was being treated as a boolean rather than an index in a conditional leading to...
  • [BUGFIX]  limits being improperly applied to boards other than where they were assigned.(thanks SuperChick )
    
  
  
• version 0.0.6 (June 12, 2013) - [rev. 20] incremental update improving on the quirks mode emulation for v4 posting tables. Empty style divs were being ignored and common mistakes such as missing "px" and missing "#" (on hex color) now auto-added so browser does not entirely ignore the CSS rule.
• version 0.0.6 (May 05, 2013) - [rev. 15] adjustments for latest changes pushed by Proboards just before official release date
  
  • [BUGFIX] Fixed a malfunction with precedence order due to changes made to the proboards.data("page") sequence by a recent push (thanks Welshling )
  • [BUGFIX] Fixed a race condition when manually typing bbcode tags (thanks Welshling )
  • newer pagination hooks
    
  • took advantage of groups finally being added to forum search on setting pages
    
  • circumvented 100 loop max of internal WYSIWYG getTags utility which caused a hard-to-trace incorrect count on bbcode tab when counting posts with huge number of bbcode tags
    
  • expanded list of bbcode tags to always ignore during counting (including: style, atrb, cs, rs), pretty sure more will be added later although they could also be manually added by the admin on the advanced page.
    
  • improved entity conversion to combat discrepancy between preview and bbcode count when modifying posts created in V4
    
  • added caching for better performance
  • improved quirks mode emulation for rendering V4 templates on experimental tab.
  • modified bTable option of ATRB tag to optionally be a jQuery selector used as $(tag).closest(selector) method for determining parent/target which conceivably could be used to set any properties/styles on elements (not just TD/TABLE) currently unsupported by Proboards
    
  • minor changes to settings UI
  
  
• version 0.0.5 (Mar 27, 2013) - Added experimental support for V4-style "enhanced" tags for a more accurate count when using those posting templates
• version 0.0.4 (Mar 19, 2013) - Added support for quick reply, switched to $.inArrayLoose (not core, PB custom method?), fixed discrepancy between visual and bbcode when displayable smileys are present in visual tab
• version 0.0.3 (Mar 17, 2013) - [BUGFIX] jquery's children() skips text nodes on visual tab in Chrome so switched to contents() which is guaranteed to return text nodes and also made a small change to previous update bogus tags workaround to also ignore bogus tags that are inside ignored tags on bbcode tab
• version 0.0.2 (Mar 10, 2013) - BBCode tag is checked to see if simply a number or has a non-alphanumeric and placed back into text pool to be counted if deemed to be bogus.

Other Versions

• Latest (nightly) (Jun 15, 2013)
• version 0.0.6.17 (May 11, 2013)
• version 0.0.5.80 (April 24, 2013)
• version 0.0.5.xx (Mar 27, 2013)

[Welshling]

ok i am testing this in chrome, and will have numerous firefox users and a few IE users for you in due course.
xlovesucksx.proboards.com is the forum where it will be used, and will be back with more info for you shortly xD
Just wanted to post now, so i can find this thread again ~pets participated button~

[Welshling]

Chris double postage :/ sorry um I have this on two rp forums and wondered is there a way to disable the PM/Message counter?

In the alt target id, would i put in there 'post' and would that make it so it works in posts only and not in messages?

xlovesucksx.proboards.com one of the forums, thanks in advance.

[Chris]

May 3, 2013 0:10:13 GMT -8 Welshling said:

Chris double postage :/ sorry um I have this on two rp forums and wondered is there a way to disable the PM/Message counter?

In the alt target id, would i put in there 'post' and would that make it so it works in posts only and not in messages?

xlovesucksx.proboards.com one of the forums, thanks in advance.

Hi Welshling, If you enter nothing in alt target id then the id of "word-count" is used by default, so to disable the count on conversations then edit the posting page and place the following highlighted line in the location indicated.

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If you did enter something in alt target id then change the id used in the template accordingly. Also since the plugin automatically unhides the target when it finds it that nested structure is needed to keep it hidden.

[Welshling]

May 3, 2013 9:35:33 GMT -8 Chris said:

May 3, 2013 0:10:13 GMT -8 Welshling said:

Chris double postage :/ sorry um I have this on two rp forums and wondered is there a way to disable the PM/Message counter?

In the alt target id, would i put in there 'post' and would that make it so it works in posts only and not in messages?

xlovesucksx.proboards.com one of the forums, thanks in advance.

Hi Welshling, If you enter nothing in alt target id then the id of "word-count" is used by default, so to disable the count on conversations then edit the posting page and place the following highlighted line in the location indicated.



If you did enter something in alt target id then change the id used in the template accordingly. Also since the plugin automatically unhides the target when it finds it that nested structure is needed to keep it hidden.

Dang, i added the piece to the templates posting page area as you suggested. the alt id was blank and yes it was set to count words. But i went to test a Private message on one of my accounts (not staff) and it is still asking for 250 words.

Imprintation is the main admin of Love sucks.

[Chris]

May 3, 2013 12:52:28 GMT -8 Welshling said:

Dang, i added the piece to the templates posting page area as you suggested. the alt id was blank and yes it was set to count words. But i went to test a Private message on one of my accounts (not staff) and it is still asking for 250 words.

Imprintation is the main admin of Love sucks.

That is definitely a bug since it is not supposed to be enforcing limits on conversations which is why I assumed you meant you wanted to get rid of the number display. I see from your forum source on xlovesucksx.proboards.com/ that you're running v.0.0.5 can I have you confirm this and is this also the case with v0.0.6?

--
I just updated the plugin (link in first post) to prevent it from enforcing limits on PM pages and sorry for that mixup.


If you wish to make the edit to the plugin rather than reinstall then find the following section in the JS component and add the red

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code:

//members, groups and staff can be excluded from limits so check
	if ( !/_(conversation|message)s?$/.test(proboards.data("route").name) && $.inArrayLoose(user.id, plugin.settings.exempt_members) == -1 && !isExempt("forum", {
			exclude_members : plugin.settings.exempt_members,
			exclude_groups : plugin.settings.exempt_groups
		}) && (!user.is_staff || plugin.settings.limit_staff)) {
		$.each(proboards.data("page"), function (key, value) {

[Welshling]

um dumb question, where's the js component please?

The css section i am looking at, at the moment.
Or am I supposed to be in the layout templates section?

Thanks again and yes its version 0.0.58 Beta

EDIT: V6 has now been installed, i could still use your expertise here Chris because the forum 250 minimum words isn't being recognized on one of my member accounts. The staff are exempt on all areas, which is awesome. help? xD
xlovesucksx.proboards.com

[Welshling]

ok update... The word count, is counting just fine in the allotted categories and isn't working in the ones named (which is how i want it)... but its not enforcing the 250 words in those categories, so you one worded posts can be made.

PM's are fine, hunky dory here

Also in the Forum tab, i have allotted it to be 250 and just edited the categories where i don't want a word counter placed, but again its not enforcing in some of the areas. EG. I have named a parent board and allotted 250 in it, but in the sub-board its letting us post one word and its not counting the words in the sub boards.

So do i have to name all the boards to get it to count? And is there a way to enforce the limit is met please?

[Chris]

May 8, 2013 2:16:29 GMT -8 Welshling said:

ok update... The word count, is counting just fine in the allotted categories and isn't working in the ones named (which is how i want it)... but its not enforcing the 250 words in those categories, so you one worded posts can be made.

I am looking at the settings for this plugin on your forum and I am seeing a forum-wide min-limit of 250 words with exceptions (min limit set to 0) made for categories: 3, 4 and 6.
Additionally there are exceptions for boards: 79, 80, 39, 54, 64, 33, 35, 51,7 59, 70, 68, 20, 26, 75, 74, 73, 72 and 71.
I have no immediate knowledge of which number corresponds to which category or board but it makes sense to assume those boards listed would be inside the categories that were exempt else they would be governed by the forum-wide rule of 250 in the first place.
Now if I am understanding you correctly the categories that were exempt no longer enforce a limit which is how it is supposed to work, if you set the category to 0 then that is a stronger rule than the one set on the forum tab and all the boards within that category will inherit that 0 unless thy are given their own exceptions to override the category exception that was put in place. It is very similar to CSS where competing rules are weeded out depending on how specific they are, here category beats forum and board beats category and thread beats board (the more specific the rule the stronger it is).

With that in mind and depending on what you're trying to accomplish the plugin's exception system offers several ways to get there with the deciding factor being the amount of work that has to be done. If for example you wanted 1 board in each of the three categories to have no limit then it would be easier to place an exception on each of those three boards (to override forum-wide rule) rather than setting an exception on all three categories then placing exceptions on 50 boards except those three (to override the category rule).

May 8, 2013 2:16:29 GMT -8 Welshling said:

PM's are fine, hunky dory here

woohoo, raise the roof!

May 8, 2013 2:16:29 GMT -8 Welshling said:

Also in the Forum tab, i have allotted it to be 250 and just edited the categories where i don't want a word counter placed, but again its not enforcing in some of the areas. EG. I have named a parent board and allotted 250 in it, but in the sub-board its letting us post one word and its not counting the words in the sub boards.

So do i have to name all the boards to get it to count? And is there a way to enforce the limit is met please?

The plugin does not try to determine parent boards and I am not sure if that is even possible in a plugin (I'll take a look) but yes each board is judged on its own merit with category then forum being the only heritage checked for inheritance. It also sounds like you desire an option to not show the counter at all unless there is a limit in place, if so that could be an added feature, something like "do not show counter if calculated limit is 0"

Is the "its not counting the words in the sub boards" quote saying the counter does not show up at all in sub-sub-boards or that it counts just not enforce (inheriting rule from category)

For Reference this is what I see regarding settings for this plugin in your source

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code:

{
	settings : {
		"alternative_target_id" : "",
		"default_mode" : "words",
		"ignores" : [{
				"bbcode" : "quote",
				"html" : "div.quote"
			}, {
				"bbcode" : "code",
				"html" : "code"
			}, {
				"bbcode" : "img",
				"html" : "img"
			}
		],
		"word_regex" : " /\\b[\\w\\-']+\\b/g",
		"bbcode_max" : "300",
		"limit_type" : "min_length",
		"limit_threshold" : "250",
		"exempt_members" : [],
		"exempt_groups" : ["1", "2"],
		"limit_threads" : [],
		"limit_boards" : [{
				"board" : ["79"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["80"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["39"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["54"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["64"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["33"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["35"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["51"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["7"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["59"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["70"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["68"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["20"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["26"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["75"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["74"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["73"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["72"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"board" : ["71"],
				"limit_type" : "min_length",
				"limit" : "250",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}
		],
		"limit_categories" : [{
				"category" : ["4"],
				"limit_type" : "none",
				"limit" : "0",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"category" : ["3"],
				"limit_type" : "none",
				"limit" : "0",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}, {
				"category" : ["6"],
				"limit_type" : "none",
				"limit" : "0",
				"exclude_members" : [],
				"exclude_groups" : []
			}
		],
		"enable_enhanced" : []
	}
}

[Welshling]

Ok so the Out of character areas, we don't want a limit on those categories so yes i put 0 in those categories.
(need to know, Getting to know you & Out of character)
In the forum tab, yes i set it to 250 thinking it would over ride the need to add in each and every board... I went back into the boards and deleted all the above settings, to see if this would combat the "forum" over ride .
So all we have in the settings now are the Categories where we don't want a word limit. and in the Forum tab, that is still set to 250 (so this should over ride the categories not in the Categories tab right?)

If you can view the forum, when you're online again next. All the categories are allowing one worded posts since I edited the settings.

So all categories aren't enforcing the 250 rule, the Out of character ones are the only exception to the enforcement. But all seem to be counting the words, just fine. (though i only did one word in each category to test this again)

Finally for the time being, could you explain the "experimental" tab please? as plainly to me as possible >.< Chris thank you

[Chris]

Hi Welshling, could you try setting the limit type to "minimum words" or "minimum characters", I'm thinking the type of "none" is throwing something off and will investigate further once I am done with my current tasks.

As for the experimental tab it is there as an attempt to first render v4 posting templates for a more accurate count. As you know those legacy templates show up under V5 with arms and legs missing or attached to the wrong parts of the body which in turn skews the counts for that particular post. When you enable that tab it runs an extra process before counting in order to determine what is text and what is HTML (preview tab) or BBCODE (bbcode tab) so only the text gets counted. If enabled it will also run when viewing posts and render any legacy posting templates it finds since many have complained how it is an overwhelming task to manually convert hundreds if not thousands of templates accumulated over years of V4 use.

Going from quirks mode (v4) to standards mode (v5) means literally thousands of mistakes which were auto-corrected by the browser will no longer be corrected so this is experimental and more than likely will be scrapped if the discrepancies become insurmountable.

--

My original guess appears to be right, I recall adding the "none" option but it becomes blurry on exactly what the purpose for that was. The notes within the code suggests it is a way to provide a short-circuit nullification of inheritance (i.e. override and apply a rule-free environment to any affected descendants -- setting a number of 0 in this case is pointless since it is never evaluated) without having to specify any details about what exactly is being nullified but the way it is currently implemented actually makes it nullify all cases rather than the specific structure to which it is attached. I suggest you specify an actual limit type until that feature is untangled

[Welshling]

Ok Chris I have now set the Out of character categories to "Minimum Words" and set the limit to 1.

I'm off to test it out again, to see if it will enforce the limits in these areas and lets hope the 250 in forum over rides the remainder of the site.

After testing the 250 "forum" isn't over riding the areas. So now I am going to add the category titles we want the enforcement of 250 words in. >> done that now testing again... in the post pages in one of the categories where we want the 250 words, it says "minimum 1 words" so now i am adding in a few boards, parent boards as well as sub boards just for the category (bon temps & shreveport) xD and setting those individually to 250 and its still showing minimum 1 words in the post area >.<

---

ok now its not letting me post a huge post. I am typing it in on the post page and using v5 divs. but its not counting the words, after i set the minimum of 250 into the boards :/

So for now, i am disabling the post counter again. until you get back to me.

---

EDIT... never mind, i used the quote button and forgot to remove the quote tags >.< it is counting just fine lol

[Former Member]

After looking at the codes and going @-@, should I even download this?

I mean, it needs to be to set and use easy for novice computer users IMO but it's just IMO.

[SuperChick]

After upgrading to this version, the plugin still isn't working on my site. The first one I used seemed to, but with subsequent upgrades, they have not. My members cannot post anything less than 500 words! There is a single board with that limit. The rest that have a limit are at 150. The problem is within at least Firefox to Chrome. Please help!

www.marvelheroesrpg.proboards.com/

[Chris]

Hi SuperChick, thanks for the report and do you have a guest postable board I could use to see what is happening?