Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's Trouble Updating Profile

This should be very simple but I'm having trouble adding a signature to my profile. It tells me that my date is invalid because it's in the future. Because of time differences, I'm 18 hours ahead of the boards. So I suppose I am in the future.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Tricia

Are you trying to put your date in differently than what's formatted in your profile?

For instances - for Jan 8, 2007 are you using '01/08/07' or are you using '08/01/07'? Try a different format.

Someone else mentioned this not too long ago and that's what made the difference for them.

Hope that helps.

Have you tried deleting all cookies set by this forum?

malu

EDIT: Here is the link Classicalla was talking about.

I might sound a little dumb here, but where would you be setting the date in a "wrong" format in your profile?

malu

Yeah, I see malu. I went back and updated some stuff and it's just asking you what format you want your date in with buttons. Of course I selection M/D/Y, because I'm in the US. If you select something else, does it reject it?
confused
Artemis

It wouldn't make any sense to reject the update if a different date format is chosen, if the options are given. Actually, I use the last date option
MMM dd, yyyy (January 08, 2007)
as my option, and I never had a problem with it.

I think Tricia is having some other problem not related to the date format chosen, but maybe with her computer clock and cookies.

Tricia, could you give us the EXACT wording of the error you got when trying to update the profile?

malu

One last question, Tricia: which browser do you use?

I use Firefox, v.2, and I tried changing my time zone to Sidney's time zone. The boards only acknowledged the new computer time when I completely closed all my browser windows and then opened it again. Also, I erased this website's cookies through the "My profile" link. In all this, I never obtained any error.

Give it a try.

malu

Well, Malu, if you look at the other thread, someone's update was rejected because they were entering the date in the wrong format. If you have your profile set for American date - ie 01/08/07 and you try to enter the date like Europeans do - 08/01/07 then the computer reads that date as August 1, 2007 rather than January 8, 2007, and August is in the future. I was going by what Tricia said the she was being told that the date was in the future.

I understood what you wrote initially, Classicalla. I'm originally from Brazil, and there we use the day/month/year format instead of the American month/day/year format. I can see why it would be a problem if you have to enter the date somewhere and you typed it in the wrong format.

Actually, my initial question was: *where* would you enter this date? If you type it in a thread, it would be read as text, and would be shown as you type it. If you need to enter the information on the profile (for the birth date, for example) you choose the month, then the day and the year from pull-down menus; no date typing required. I don't see a problem in the profile page with dates (unless my browser is completely different from everybody else's browsers, or I'm just being very blind).

malu

I don't know. I've never had the problem. I just know that when someone else mentioned this problem with the date, that it worked once they changed their date format. I don't know the specifics.

It looks the same to me with both IE and Firefox.

Thanks Classicalla, Malu and Artemis for your suggestions and help.

I'm using IE. I have deleted all the website cookies and changed the date format. I still get this message.
I have no idea why.

Tricia

You now have to put in a reason as to why you want to join the boards. Are you doing that?

Hi Tricia,

I went into your profile (using Admin privileges) and just typed in 'test signature' into the signature box and saved your profile. That seems to have worked, in that the software accepted it. Now, of course I wasn't doing it on exactly the same basis as you would, because I was logged in as me and not you and the profile screen I get isn't the same as the one you get (this screen is the one where Admins get to set things like nfic access and so on).

Anyway, it seemed to work for me, so you could try it again now. If you still have problems, in the short term why don't you email me what you'd like to have as a sig and I'll enter it for you? We'll see if Annette or Elena can figure out what's going on afterwards.


Wendy

Hi Tricia:
As far as I can see, you set the date with + or - hours number. So in the little box put 18 and see if it gives you the right time.
Hope this helps

Artemis

Hey, Tricia, just one last comment.

Could you check if any (or all) of the fields in birth date is not correctly filled? Remember that it is asking for your BIRTH date.

Did you set the year as your birth year (NOT 2007)?

I tried either setting one of the fields as the default one ("Month", "Day", "Year") or the year as 2007, and got the same error message as you.

malu

Thanks for the help everyone!

Wendy added a signature for me.

Tricia

Hey, Malu, I didn't think you even had to set a birthdate, but I might be wrong since I put mine in.

Apparently, it doesn't show as required, but if you don't set it at least to a date before today, in my case it gives the error message Tricia mentioned. Maybe it's a glitch in the system, or related to the nFanfic forum (you need to be at least 18 years old to access, and the board checks your age through this feature, maybe?).

It seems to work when you set a date earlier than this year.

malu

EDIT: Something else that calls my attention: the birth date is not required, but there is a check button that says "Allow others to see my birth date?" that basically does nothing, since I can't find where this information is available to anybody else (the directory doesn't show that information).

Actually, it does. You have to actively tick the button to allow others to see your birthdate - the default is for it not to show unless you do.

My guess would be that a very small number of new members actually check the box, so most new memberships showing on the directory won't show the birth date. I suspect only a tiny fraction check the box and have it showing and that most new members skip right over the box, probably without even seeing it, let alone checking it.

Currently though, out of the five new members showing in the directory, beatles88 and ladyred both have their birthdates showing and the other three don't. So those two must have checked the box when they joined and the others didn't.

LabRat

I have the box checked, and it doesn't show for me.

malu

EDIT: Never mind. :rolleyes: Was looking at the wrong place.