When forum is hidden, it can never be unhidden

theSquid · April 2012

So at some point I decided to hide every forum on the front page except for G&T, Awesome Posts, and SE++. Now there's no way to unhide the other forums and I can only reach them by searching them on Google.

MichaelLC · April 2012

DisruptedCapitalist · April 2012

I ran into this problem too, but I didn't "Hide" the forum, I "unfollowed" it. I don't know if there is a difference... either way, I can't find the PAX forum anymore except by directly bookmarking it.

peterdevore · April 2012

I discovered a way to refollow to a forum.

Go to the forum overview and copy the link that makes you unfollow a different forum, it will look something like this, but the tkey and categoryid will be different:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/vanilla/category/follow?categoryid=84&value=0&tkey=NC3B44RTGCRX

Now change the categoryid to the categoryid of the forum you unfollowed, according to this table.

    Vanilla Forum Comments and Bugs 78
    Tube's Circus Of Bug Reports and User Issues 23
    Awesome Posts? 63
    The Penny Arcade Hub 84
    Games and Technology 15
    Debate and/or Discourse 20
    Artist's Corner 14
    Help / Advice Forum 22
    Graphic Violence 32
    Critical Failures 37
    The Writer's Block 27
    Social Entropy++ 12
    Penny Arcade Adventures 41
    PAX | The Penny Arcade Expo! 26
    ClubPA Library 18
    Chatlog 30
    Archives 19
    Accumulated Forum Knowledge 24

and also change the value to 1, you will end up with a link similar to this:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/vanilla/category/follow?categoryid=78&value=1&tkey=NC3B44RTGCRX

Paste the link you have constructed this way in your address bar, press enter and you will have magically refollowed that forum.

DisruptedCapitalist · April 2012

Doesn't seem to work for me. Perhaps tkey needs to be different?

EDIT: Aha! I found my own tkey by copying the "unfollow" link and then copying it. Then changing the other two variables fixed the problem.

theSquid · April 2012

Yes that did it. But there should still definitely be a fix for that, I shouldn't have to mess around with parameters as a user.

Abracadaniel · July 2012

This has been further complicated by the forum refresh removing the ability to get to the unfollow link to get your tkey so any forums that were hidden are going to remain as such until then.

Hmmmm.

Ramius · July 2012

Find an announcement within a forum, and view the "Dismiss" link on that. The last segment of that URL is most likely your tkey. Try that with the instructions above and see if that fixes you.

I know this is not the ideal fix, but it is certainly better than not having access.

Abracadaniel · July 2012

I already dismissed the cheevo one

I'll keep it in mind next time an announcement pops up on the forums, thanks Ramius!

Also I found that if I click the "Forum Administration" link it will show the list of forums within that section, including hidden ones (with a darker grey background) but they're still clickable.

Ramius · July 2012

Sorry I wasn't clear above. I mean regular announcement threads that are pinned at the top of a subforums - not the global announcements that show up everywhere.

KalTorak · September 2012

The method above isn't working for me anymore (trying to get the PAX forum back). I tried it once a few months back and it worked, but I can't get it to again.

Abracadaniel · November 2012

Same here. Accidentally hid them today and those links aren't working any longer to make'em reappear.

Abracadaniel · November 2012

SORCERY

IcyLiquid · November 2012

Abracadaniel · November 2012

ty <3

waterbottles · January 10

I apologize for bumping this thread, but I am currently encountering this same problem. It's happened before, and I used he old method listed (with my own unique code), but it no longer works. I follow the PAX forum, and was trying to mark it as read when I accidentally clicked " hide". Are there any new methods I can use to rectify this? I did this to a couple other forums by mistake too, and would like to browse the whole forum again.
Thank you anyone in advanced for your help!

zerzhul · January 10

I was pretty sure this method still worked. I think @Rorus Raz used it very recently to some success.

Rorus Raz · January 10

Yeah, it works.

Ramius · January 10

If it is not working for you for the PAX forum, that is probably because the Category ID has changed. Try using the ID from this list:

<option value="90"> Read This Before You Post</option>
<option value="23"> Tube's Circus Of Bug Reports and User Issues</option>
<option value="84"> The Penny Arcade Hub</option>
<option value="15"> Games and Technology</option>
<option value="91">  Indie Games</option>
<option value="56">  Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern</option>
<option value="35">  MMO Extravaganza</option>
<option value="20"> Debate and/or Discourse</option>
<option value="14"> Artist's Corner</option>
<option value="22"> Help / Advice Forum</option>
<option value="32"> Graphic Violence</option>
<option value="37"> Critical Failures</option>
<option value="27"> The Writer's Block</option>
<option value="12"> Social Entropy++</option>
<option value="95"> PAX General Discussion</option>
<option value="94">  PAX Prime</option>
<option value="93">  PAX East</option>
<option value="92">  PAX Australia</option>
<option value="26">  PAX  Archive</option>
<option value="41"> Penny Arcade Games</option>
<option value="63"> [2008-2012] Awesome Posts?</option>
<option value="24"> Ancient Forum Knowledge</option>
<option value="18"> ClubPA Library</option>
<option value="19"> Archives</option>
<option value="30"> Chatlog</option>

waterbottles · January 10

Thank you so much! That was it, I just had the forum ID incorrect.
Thanks for your quick responses!

Hacksaw · February 10

Having a similar problem. I re-enabled most of the forums, but a lot are still missing. Please send help.

Hacksaw · February 11

Okay, this is weird. All the forums are showing up if I load into the mobile version on my phone, but not the plain version on my PC.

CONUNDRUM.

zerzhul · February 11

So @Ramius has the updated list of codes there, unless they've changed again. You're going to have to be more specific about which ones you can't access since this method of recovery has been proven to work on multiple occasions.

Hacksaw · February 11

That's just it; as long as I stay in Mobile mode, every forum is visible. It's when I go into Full mode that the problem occurs.

Hacksaw · February 11

The only ones that are visible for me in Full mode are PA Hub, G&T, D&D, AC, H/A, GV, WB, and SE++. Everything else is conspicuously absent.

Ramius · February 11

There are a couple other category IDs missing off the list. In this case, they are the categories that are holding the sub-categories. So e.g. you've stopped following the whole "Forum Administration" group that Tube's Circus is under. I've fixed Forum Administration under your account to verify that was the problem. You'll have to fix the others yourself. Here's the category IDs:

Forum Administration: 5
On-Topic Forums: 3
Chat Forums: 8
Forum Communities: 6
Archives: 42

IcyLiquid · February 11

I've added a thing now. At the bottom of the category list, you can use the new UI element to switch to unfiltered mode. Once in that mode, you can re-follow categories.

Abracadaniel · February 11

Can't awesome that enough

:(|)