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Site Upgrade

By Jeralyn, Section Blog Related
Posted on Sun Apr 03, 2005 at 08:23:09 PM EST
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Bump and Update: The site improvements have been completed. The site loads much faster. The comments are now fixed to remember your name and the shortcut buttons in the comments now work in Internet Explorer and Firefox. The blogrolls now are permanent rather than part of Blogrolling. The extended entry feature (when you click more) now begins with the part you haven't read yet, instead of bringing you back to to the top.

Mike Ditto spent over 12 hours on the site and did it all for free. I'd like to send him some paypal money, so if you're a regular user of the comments feature on TalkLeft, please consider chipping in. I could also use some contributions to help with the cost of renewal of some site-related subscription services that are coming due.

********
Original Post:

We've been making some improvements to TalkLeft this week, thanks to Mike Ditto. We're now upgraded to MT 3.15. Mike has also offered to fix our comment template so it remembers your user name and you don't have to retype it every time.

Several subscription services also have come up for renewal. Reader donations help a lot, so if you are able to contribute, we really appreciate it.

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    Site Upgrade | 47 comments (47 topical)
    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#1)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 09:55:11 AM EST
    TalkLeft- It would be nice to have those little HTML buttons show up on firefox also. I find myself avoiding links; hate typing a href= blah blah… and certainly forget bolding anything.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 11:15:58 AM EST
    PW, I agree. I use Firefox myself and while the buttons come up on the entry screen for posting, they don't come up in comments or in the extended entry portion of the screen. I'll see if we can make that work. If you know of another blog that has the buttons in their comment screen, let me know. And thanks very much for your generous contribution! It's much appreciated.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 11:43:40 AM EST
    Ask and ye shall receive. Not today though, I'll look at it in a few days. :-) Search should now be functioning again. It might look a little different because MT has a new search engine. It's purportedly faster and will actually return better results than the old engine.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 12:15:51 PM EST
    Wowza! Nice to see TalkLeft load so quickly, especially the comments. Nice upgrade and tweaks!

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#5)
    by Sailor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 01:04:05 PM EST
    Nice job, seems to even load faster over my 56k home connection.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 01:48:33 PM EST
    Tried to tip with visa debit as visa - paypal wouldnt take and amazon at 2nd step said page didnt exist.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 02:01:11 PM EST
    JCH--I fixed the Amazon link. Please let me know if still doesn't work for you. Thanks!!

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 03:08:25 PM EST
    Ditto; can you check the formatting as seen in the preview pane against what appears when posted? I'm pretty sure what I saw and what was posted were different, and there are some obvious formatting problems in the latest "Friday Open Thread" post. Thanks.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#9)
    by Kitt on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 04:26:32 PM EST
    Hey! I'm using Firefox and the buttons show GREAT! Ohhhh....when you preview, they disappear.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#10)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 04:51:09 PM EST
    Yeah the buttons will show up but they won't work. Unfortunately the methods for getting at text selections and editing the contents of the text entry box are all different for each browser. It will take me some time to sort it out.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#11)
    by Sailor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 05:13:32 PM EST
    Mr Ditto is up against some formidable problems; platforms, platform versions, browsers, browser versions, can all be remarkably different. Kudos to you sir, for even attempting the task. We should all thank TL and Mr Ditto for improving our experience on this blog.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#12)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 05:16:20 PM EST
    I set up a different script for the buttons that should work in all browsers. It works most intuitively in MSIE and Mozilla/Firefox, and has some quirks in Safari and Opera. That will take some debugging, but at least for now you have some options!

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#13)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 05:23:20 PM EST
    FYI: They won't show up on individual entry archive pages until they are rebuilt, and since that takes hours and slows the system way down, I won;t do it until late tonight.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#14)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 05:27:06 PM EST
    Except of course for individual entries that are getting commented on, because MT rebuilds those pages every time a comment is entered. Bing!

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#15)
    by Sailor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 05:53:39 PM EST
    Thanks Michael. Tho since part of my job is computer security I wish you would develop code first for more secure browsers. Just a quibble, you're doing great work. Another minor quibble, please treat the 'returns' as new paragraphs.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#16)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 06:35:06 PM EST
    Sailor, I develop on Safari, and then make it work on MSIE. But, a propos, I didn't write these buttons, I just pared them out of a full-blown inline editor that's LGPL'd here. Not sure what you mean about the new paragraphs, can you be more specific?

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#17)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 06:52:58 PM EST
    Ditto; well, I don't know exactly what Sailor means, but I noticed that my paragraph breaks formed new paragraphs in the preview pane, but not when actually posted. Also, the text formatting (italics) I indicated for a particular sentence effected the rest of the entire post (see the 'Misleading Website' thread). Also, I noticed the paragraph break and text formatting problem (bold) appear in a recent post on the "Friday Open Thread" post. Thanks again for being the technical expert who keeps this place up and running. Much appreciated.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#18)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 06:53:12 PM EST
    Preemptively, if you're referring to carriage returns in the comment text entry area, those are parsed by MovableType. One carriage return is converted into a <br />, while a double-return is converted into a <p>...</p> block.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#19)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 07:03:12 PM EST
    Horse: That's because you used funky HTML. There has to be a closing tag for every opening tag, and they can't overlap--they have to be nested. In other words, to get some text, <b>some <i>text</i></b> is OK, whereas <b>some <i>text</b></i> is not. Make sense?

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#20)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 07:05:14 PM EST
    Horse, again that's because to get a paragraph break in MovableType you have to hit "enter" twice after a paragraph. Like this.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#21)
    by Sailor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 07:24:44 PM EST
    M Ditto, I guess I basically meant that previously when we put in a hard return in it was interpreted as a [less than]p[greater than] in HTML. Now it makes a [br]. It still looks the original way in preview and when typed into the text area. I understand the difficulties involved, but if it was WYSIWYG it would be more user friendly for the participants. BTW, was it a glitch or an editorial decision that removed my link to Justcice Bedsworth's column? In full disclosure, I never met the man, but I do enjoy his writings and I was just trying to share them.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#22)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 07:46:11 PM EST
    Ditto - One thing I did notice. The page breaks will break if you go directly to 'post', but if you hit 'preview' you will see your comment previewed as w/page breaks, BUT --- In the comment box you will see that the page breaks have been eliminated - ie ONE RUNON PARAGRAPH. I accept apologies in the form of sincere comments, or $20 bills.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#23)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 08:12:46 PM EST
    Sailor, Respectfully, I think you are mistaken. If you go back to an old entry such as this one, You can see that your comment at 7:35 just has a break, and when I look at the data, there is just one carriage return. That page hasn't been rebuilt since 1/25/05, so I know that it shows an accurate picture of how the data were interpreted prior to my template changes. That being said, see below regarding the current behavior: The Horse: I'm sorry, consider me corrected on the preview sucking out the extra carriage returns. That would be a bug in the HTML::Clean Perl module, which is what we are using to remove unnecessary whitespace from the raw HTML so that the pages will load faster. Good find! On the "misleading website" post though, that was caused because you didn't close your tag, you used two opening tags. On the Open Thread, rocker's post looks as it does because s/he didn't close the tag, in which case MovableType automagically throws in closing tags at the end of each comment so that the brooken tag doesn't mess up all of the subsequent comments.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#24)
    by Sailor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 08:20:33 PM EST
    Horse, wtf!?, the guy is doing his best and you have to admit it's a damn good job. The worst thing he said was that you had 'funky' html. (Quick aside, I wish I had funky HTML, but then I have a dirty mind;-) He is donating his considerable expertise and doing it in front of a live/tough crowd. He's doing a great job, try to find it in your heart to give him a break.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#25)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 08:21:06 PM EST
    Ok Ditto, thanks. Well done.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#26)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 08:29:47 PM EST
    By the by, "funky" is a technical term, not intended in any way to be derogatory. It just means non-standard and having potentially unpredictable results. Sometimes you have to do something in a funky way in order to make something work, because there is just no realistic standardized solution. In that case we refer to it as a "kludge". But if you do something funky that doesn't work, the result is said to be "hjorked". Sorry, sometimes jargon just slips out.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#27)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 08:34:55 PM EST
    To set the record straight, my comment (now deleted) was refering to Ditto telling me to hit 'Enter' twice for a new paragraph... And my 9:21 post was written and posted before I even saw your 9:20 post, thank you very much.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#28)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 08:36:29 PM EST
    Speaking of funky, the change that has yet to be made (but is in effect on my site) that I think will really speed TalkLeft up quite a bit can be found here. There is more than one kludge in there--at least one will stay, and at least one will go by the time it's fully finished.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#29)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 08:36:50 PM EST
    Mike Ditto is indeed a volunteer. Please don't criticize him. He's incredibly generous with his time. I'd like to be able to share some donations with him, so feel free to hit the tip jar.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#30)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Apr 02, 2005 at 09:32:10 PM EST
    [whisper]no, but it is the site that dare not speak its name[/whisper]

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#31)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Apr 03, 2005 at 02:00:00 AM EST
    A huge thanks to Mike Ditto. The comments now remember your name, and the hot buttons work in Firefox and Internet Explorer. It took him only 12 hours, with constant carping from me and you readers, the man deserves a medal. Alas, all I have is paypal. Show some *heart* for making your commenting lives easier.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#32)
    by pigwiggle on Sun Apr 03, 2005 at 07:32:33 AM EST
    Nice job with the site improvements!

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#33)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Apr 03, 2005 at 08:42:33 AM EST
    Michael D - Tis a dark and lonely life the IT person has... But not thankless. Thanks and good luck! Jim

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#34)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Apr 03, 2005 at 09:54:37 AM EST
    Oi! Lonely and competitive! I've been called a "kick ass programmer" by several of the inventors of desktop publishing, including a Carnegie-Mellon Ph.D., but I haven't been able to find steady work in almost three years. Hence the whole going back to school for a career change bit. It's not a terrible place to be... At least I have all the toys from back when I was raking it in, and I've managed not to become homeless since when I was working I had no time to spend my money and had saved up quite a bit. That being said, the money's all gone after 3 years, so if you're wanting to acquire some stuff, please consider buying some of mine. :-)

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#35)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Apr 03, 2005 at 10:40:44 AM EST
    Micahel D - So you're a Quark alumni. So is my oldest. Has Fred moved it all to India yet? (Now there would an interesting book.)

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#36)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Apr 03, 2005 at 11:50:06 AM EST
    Oh yeah? Small world. Of course the whole world revolves around Quark... If you didn't work there, you know someone who did, and if not, everything you read that's of consequence is made in QuarkXPress (5280 (I assume, since Dan Brogan is also a Quark Alumnus), USA Today, Time, Newsweek, Playboy, Hustler, the NY Times, etc.). It's mostly in India. I had to train my replacements (yes, plural). Fred's mantra was 'you can get ten hard-core Indians for the price of one fat, lazy, stupid American'. At least that's the mantra he took up after the week following 9/11, when he required everyone in the company to attend one of several three-hour Fred diatribes on how we deserved it for overthrowing the only democratically elected Arabic nation in 1954, accompanied by a side diatribe about how stupid we were for thinking Iranians are Arabs. I hear they have staffed up a bit in Denver because as it turns out 900 inexperienced Indians were not turning out as much work as 60 qualified Americans. Go figure--a million monkeys at a million typewriters does not The Complete Works of Shakespeare make. That's not a slight at Indians in the least...just at the idea that a bunch of kids with a 2-year "masters" degree from some trade school who have never seen a Macintosh before and can barely speak anything but Punjabi are going to be able to create and support the software that kept Apple alive for 10 years.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#37)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Apr 03, 2005 at 05:37:49 PM EST
    I made a small donation...keep up the good work!

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#38)
    by Che's Lounge on Sun Apr 03, 2005 at 09:42:24 PM EST
    A breath of fresh air for my clunky HP. Thanks Mike.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#39)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Apr 04, 2005 at 06:50:39 AM EST
    Great improvments! Thanks Michael. BTW, I've been trying for a week now to figure out why the comments don't show up on my home computer. Running Mac OS 9.2.2 with IE browser and 56K dialup. Added memory to IE but that didn't help. I'm going to make some calls today but just wanted to check for any advice out there.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#40)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Apr 04, 2005 at 10:39:00 AM EST
    mfox, How much memory have you given Internet Explorer in the Get Info window? What version do you have? What kind of a Mac are you running? If you have a 350 MHz G3 or higher you should really be running Panther. 9.x is completely unsupported by Apple except for the components of it that are necessary to run the classic environment under OS X.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#41)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Apr 04, 2005 at 11:05:22 AM EST
    Thanks, Michael. A Technophobe I'm not. I just allocated 36K to Explorer this weekend. I have a Mac G4. I think what I really need to do is switch to OSX which is already installed. Will check out Panther. Great Job, BTW - once again!

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#42)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Apr 04, 2005 at 01:13:46 PM EST
    Michael - Maybe you can help on this one, please. I am locked out if write my comments in AOL, but everything works fine if I use MSN Explorer from Bellsouth. Problem has come and gone in the past. This time it looks as if it will stay. Thanks

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#43)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Apr 04, 2005 at 01:23:17 PM EST
    Yikes! Yeah send OS9 to the curb. Your days of manually partitioning the application heap are over. I mean don't get me wrong, we loved OS9 in its day... But Panther (OSX v.3) makes OS9 look like Atari and it makes Windows XP look like a pile of horse manure. Max out your RAM though. It's unbelievably cheap right now, I just got 1 gig of laptop RAM for $50. Craig just maxed out our dual G4 and I think he paid something like $14/gig after rebate at Office Depot. OS X is much happier with at least 512 MB of system RAM. And on OSX you'll get all the latest and greatest internet stuff like the Safari browser, and then people like me don't have to go try to hunt down a system CD to install OS9. :-)

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#44)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Apr 04, 2005 at 01:35:59 PM EST
    PPJ, AOL might have JavaScript either turned off or its security settings might be too high. At its core, AOL is just Internet Explorer with a different user interface, so there's nothing inherently different about the browsers that should cause a difference. It has to be a setting. I don't know what the AOL equivalent of the "trusted sites zone" is, but you might try adding TalkLeft.com to that zone in AOL if you can find it in the preferences. You might also consider deleting any TalkLeft cookies. AOL might be caching the old TL server's IP address and seeing that the site's IP doesn't match the cookie's IP and throwing a winger to prevent spoofing or something. Now, that's assuming that you're talking about some problem you're having on your local machine, as opposed to getting a message from the server that your IP address is banned or something. Let me know!

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#45)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Apr 04, 2005 at 03:58:00 PM EST
    AOL might also be set not to submit forms except on secure connections. Adding TalkLeft.com to the "trusted sites zone" should fix that as well.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#46)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Apr 04, 2005 at 04:06:20 PM EST
    Can readers with technical questions please take it to e-mail? Personal computer issues are not for the comments section. Bandwidth is expensive. Also, Mike's time is valuable. Please don't inundate him with questions about your computers. He did TalkLeft a favor by upgrading the site. He's not an employee and I'd like not to overburden him so that I don't feel guilty about asking him to help out in the future. I'm sure he would say he doesn't mind, but that's just his nature.

    Re: Site Upgrade (none / 0) (#47)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Apr 04, 2005 at 07:32:04 PM EST
    Woo hoo! I'll just add one more comment-- PPJ''s problem was fixed by cleaning out his old cookies. So the moral of the story is that if you are having problems with the site, try cleaning out your cookies as a first step. TalkLeft has moved servers several times in the past few months, and the cookies were broken for quite a while. Bottom line: Stale cookies taste bad. Don't toss your cookies, but do toss them out.

    Site Upgrade | 47 comments (47 topical)