...more recent posts
There is now an option for turning logging of your page hits on or off in /editpage. It's off by default. Change it to 'logged' to start keeping track of visitors to your page.
A utility for looking at recent visitor stats will be coming soon.
Wow. I reproduced the "rachael bug" where you try to load the site and you just get a blank page and a 'document contains no data' error. Yuck. This is tied (I now see) to some weirdness in the log out process if you choose to erase the cookie from 'every computer with this cookie'. I think I see how to prevent this. Hopefully this hasn't been a problem for anyone else. (The quick fix is to quit your browser, then delete your cookie file, then restart your browser.)
Steve and Alex and I talked a little last night about how the [new comments] link on the front page sometimes takes you to the middle of a thread, and there will be more unread comments above your position in the same thread. If you go back and reload the home page the preceding (still unread) comment will still be linked, and continuously returning to the home page and clicking on the decreasing number of [new comments] will eventually bring all of them into view. Still, it would obviously be better if the system would take you to the top-most unread comment in any thread with multiple unread comments. I've made a change to this effect, but not sure if it will work. Any feedback as these situations (do or do not) arise is appreciated.
Still working on the weirdo bug that was/is causing problems with the archive (either posts that shouldn't be showing which are, or the opposite.) Tracking this down has basically led me on a tour back through the entire logic of the system. Yikes. It's not a pretty site in there. Spaghetti code I believe it's called. Anyway, made some changes to the /edit and /post scripts. If you were trying to post or edit between 2:30 and 3:30 today you might have gotten some errors or other strange results. Should be working now. Definitely fixed some things. Also got my head around a few more problem scenarios that still have to be fixed. These involve strange combinations of events, but could possibly happen. The best fixed that happened today has to do with deleting posts. Before, if you deleted a post that was showing on a page (say the page is set to display 10 posts) then the page would only show 9 posts. This was a problem in its own right, but also led to other problems if still more posts are added. The probelm would be that stuff at the bottom of the page wouldn't slip into the archive correctly. This should be fixed now. If you have a page set to display 10 items, and you have more than 10 items (i.e., some have already slipped into the archive) and then you erase one post that is one of the 10 showing, you should now still have 10 posts showing on the page (it will now resurrect one out of the archive.)
One of the problems still to be fixed involves changing the orientation of the page (from chronological to reverse, or the other way around.) If you do this, and the end that you are putting at the top contains deleted posts, things will go a little screwey. So beware of reversing the ordering of your page until further notice.
One quick fix for this sort of problem is to set the number of posts to display on page (set in [editpage]) to '1', and then set it back up again to whatever you want. This is like 'reseting' the ordering mechanism of the page. Blah, blah, blah.
Finally getting the "slide show" picture pages working. Feel free to play around with this. Documentation, as usual, will be written real soon now. The short story is this:
When you [create] a new page there is now an option called 'slide show' in the page type pull down menu. Select this, and then in the template pull down menu, select either 'slide show plain' (for no 'posted by...', no comments, and no bottom footer) or 'slide show comment' (for 'posted by..." with comments, and with bottom page footer.) These are just the defaults, and can still be changed in [editpage] after the page is created (in case you want, say, 'posted by...' but not comments, or some other case.)
Anyway, once you create the page, just post pictures to it as if you were making regular posts to a page. The page will be set to display only one post per page, so your first post will become the first page, second post the second page, etc... I made this for pictures, but you could of course use it for text, or a combination of the two.
'previous' and 'next' links will be automagically inserted at the bottom of the page, and if you have more than three pictures a list of the pages will also be displayed (I know that's not clear, see here for an example - I mean the '1 2 3 4 5 6' page controls that show up just above the 'previous' and 'next'.
Comments welcome. There may well be bugs. Let me know.
Always something.
Jim Louis' page alerted me to yet another bug in the system. This one is caused by a change in the new system that is otherwise quite good. Here's the background if you're interested:
In the old system if you deleted a post (or a whole page!) it was actually deleted. I thought that this was not such a good idea, as accidently erasing something (especially a whole page) would result in really losing the data. In the new system I protect against this by not actually deleting anything. When you tell the system to delete something it just sets a delete field in the database so that the system recognizes that that post (or page) has been deleted. But all the info is still in there. Eventually I'll build a trash can system so that you can go back into the trash and resurrect deleted items. This is a good thing (I was especially scared about one of our accounts being compromised and the evil-doer having such easy access to erasing everything.)
Anyway, the probelm was that when paging back or forward (using the '...more recent posts' and 'older posts...' links) the system looks to see how big the window is for the page (the number of posts set in [editpage] for 'number of posts shown on page') and then grabs that many posts either forward or back from where the surfer is. This works fine unless there are deleted posts in the window the system is trying to grab. This was happening on NOLA for the last day. One post on the front page, but then when you tried to go back one page, the next post had been deleted so the system would get stuck. Now I've made it smarter so that it checks for this happening and readjusts itself accordingly.
Anyway, that's probably not too interesting. But I mention it because it is another good example of how subtle problems are all but impossible to find unless your software is actually in use. There is just no way to think about every possibility in some abstract way. Only actual use will uncover bugs. In the open source / free software world they say "with enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow." Amen.
The top level [subscriptions] page now works differently. From that page you can now change the tracking of new posts and comments on multiple pages with one step. The page will list all the pages you are subscribed to, plus your current settings for tracking. Just select all of the pages you want to change to a particular sort of tracking, and then at the bottom choose the tracking style, and it will be applied to all the pages in one pass. This is a small improvement, but if you have lots of sub pages (I don't think anybody does except me) this is very necessary.
Noticed a lot of double (and triple) posts lately. I guess when the system is sluggish this happens more frequently. If you write a post, click 'post', and then nothing happens for some time it is almost always the case that the post went through, and the system is stalled while redirecting you back to the page to view your handiwork. (Why is this so? I have no idea, but this is almost always the case.)
In any case, I added a little bit to the post script so that it checks the present post against any posts you have made in the last 60 seconds. If it is identical it will alert you that it is a double post and give you a link to just take you right to the page.
I guess there might be some crazy situation where you really did need to post the exact same thing? I guess we'll talk about this if it ever comes up. Hopefully this won't be an issue. You can always just wait 60 seconds. Anyway, I hope this is a help rather than a nuisance. Let me know what you think.
Still on the trail of an elusive bug. I know this happens occasionally, but try as I might, I cannot reproduce the event under laboratory conditions. Seems like very occasionaly when deleting a post, instead of actually being deleted the post will show up a bit further back (like if you scroll back using 'older posts...' it might show up on the next page back.) This has happened to me once (I think) and to jim louis. If anybody notices anything like this please try to contact me before you do anything to fix it. I need to see an example "in the wild" to help figure out what the hell is happening. Feel free to call me on my cell if this happens. I really need to find an example of this behavior (6465263857.) Thanks.
Thanks to Steve and then the Wheel for alerting me to a rather serious problem with the [new comment] (but not the [new post]) counters. These were not working correctly under all situations. I think this is straightened out now. Let me know if you sense any other weirdness.