Folks,
I just wanted to give you some warning on the upcoming hiccups. I have to update the site’s theme, and that will temporarily overwrite many cosmetic changes I’ve made recently. Don’t worry – I am backing up all my files and will re-apply the edits as fast as I can! I will be doing this Wednesday, so the site may look a little screwy here and there while things get done.
Theme Update
In WordPress, the theme controls how the site looks – its layout, features, fonts, colors, borders, etc. – pretty much everything visual about the site. The site you see right now is the “current best”, and once the updated theme is applied, we’ll be many steps back. I will try to return the site to the”current best” state ASAP – I will try to incorporate everything I’ve changed in the theme, but I will likely miss a thing or two, and that’s where you come in! I will post an “I think I’m done” post when I truly think I am done. At that point, I will rely on you to post additional things that I missed.
This update is happening because the theme version we have has some issues, like the sidebar at the bottom of the page when looking at posts instead of the home page.
SSL
I will also take the opportunity to enable SSL so Balloon Juice will show up as secure in your browser, and your comments and the things you read on the site will be protected by encryption, protecting your privacy from all but the most-determined forces. This will improve your privacy, and will improve the site’s ranking (and related things).
Final Tweaks
Once the updated theme is set, and the site is back to “current best”, I will post a list of open issues so that you know what is still being worked on. Please remember that at this time, preparing for the new comment system will likely absorb much of my “Balloon Juice time”.
My hope is to have everything fully done and put to bed, including some major behind-the-scenes tweaks to improve site performance, reduce bandwidth load, etc. by mid January. Then we’ll leave the site alone until it demands attention.
New Commenting System
The last major change coming soon is the updated comment system. I’ve worked hard to tweak the existing system, but it has issues as it is just the default WordPress commenting engine with some plugins and the theme layered on top.
Looking to 2016 and the increase in site load from commenters during the election season, I think that this new system will do a better job, even if it is a bit different from the current system. The developers behind this comment system are actively adding new features, so should something not be perfect at launch, I’d expect improvement in a matter of weeks.
I expect this new comment system to be deployed in 2-3 weeks.
Some of the improvements include:
- Improved/enhanced support for HTML in posts
- Many additional buttons for comments so you can underline, italicize, include in-line pictures, etc.
- A notifier that new comments have been made in the post you’re in
- A refresh comments/load comments button to update the comments you see
- Longer time to edit posted comments
- (optional) voting on comments
- “lazy load” comments on page scroll (reduces initial page load for posts w/lots of comments)
- a “read more” button for super-long comments (can you say mclaren?)
- “load more comments” button/link when appropriate
- less need to reload the entire page; the notifier and refresh control only load new or changed comments, reducing the overall load
- All-new layout and appearance; these can and will be tweaked, but the current comment look will not endure
- You will still be able to comment without logging in, just providing your name and email address.
On the down-side, I’m sure one or more features that either works right now, or used to work before the site was redone, won’t work, at least initially. But be patient; we’ll get through this and after the dust settles, it will be better for all users, and that’s an unqualified good!
Feel free to use this post to ask questions, etc. I will try to monitor it a bit this late afternoon but I’m busy IRL away from the pc, so I won’t be hovering! As for any issues already reported, I’ve got a big list and some things (like the alternate approach to block quote visuals) I decided to postpone until the final version of the theme is in place.
Thanks to John, and all of the Balloon Juice community, for your patience, encouragement, and enthusiasm for making this site better. We’re getting so much closer!
Happy holidays to all,
Alain
ETA: Sorry to stomp your post Richard!
NotMax
Strictly personal, but a vote against including voting, even optionally. Vendettas not uncommonly pop up in the comments as it is. Providing a further (and site approved) way to sh*t on people seems counter-productive to discussion.
J R in WV
For a little perspective, if you go to the bottom of the front page, you will see 10 to 14 posts, each with , what, average at a hundred comments or so – and there are well over 2900 pages like that. Millions and millions of comments, thousands of posts. This is why work is being done, not to change the color of the background, or make the typeface control, link, and block quote buttons invisible against the background.
And with all that history, there’s a big election coming, nothing like seeing certain growth in the immediate future… good luck Alain, and company.
Just one more Canuck
@NotMax: agreed
Mike J
Once you have SSL, your host ought to be able to flip the switch for HTTP2. Have them do that.
I wish the prev/next arrows were working before all this starts, but I’ll muddle through. They disappeared when the sidebar went to the bottom.
D58826
How about a sarcasm/snark button :-)
Mike J
@D58826: It’s implied.
D58826
@Mike J: :-)
Mystical Chick
Alain and all involved with this behemoth of a project – THANK YOU for continuing to make this a great place to hang out. I very much appreciate your efforts. Merry Happy to you, too!
Betty Cracker
I like the idea of being able to include pictures in comments. I know some of y’all post links to photos (Bill, Raven, Jeffrey, etc.), and they’re always worth a click, but it would be nice not to have to click to see the photo, especially on mobile.
I’m not wild about the optional comment voting either for the same reasons others have mentioned, but wevs…
ETA: And thank you, Alain.
goblue72
This post would be better if Alain just adopted “The Fixer” as his nym.
RSR
Is there a ‘share’ feature to send a post to twitter (or facebook, etc)? I recall one before, and don’t see it now, but maybe I’m just missing it somewhere.
If it’s on the list for someday, no pressure. It’s really not that hard to do it manually. But one click and done sure is nice.
Anyway, that’s the one thing that’s on my personal list. Otherwise, I’m enjoying the site as usual.
Thanks Alain, John et al.
Just one more Canuck
@D58826: yeah right – like that’ll be helpful
Alain the site fixer
@Mike J: They should come back; the theme is malfunctioning. Rather than help fix the issue, they said upgrade to the current theme version…so off we go. And yes, SSL is step one to http2 module.
Alain the site fixer
@NotMax: I concur but some have pointed out the usefullness of voting. I’m against it personally, so likely it won’t make it to the final feature list!
Snarki, child of Loki
@D58826:
“How about a sarcasm/snark button :-)”
Why would I need something like that? Sheesh!
Hiccups, okay. Just no projectile vomiting please.
kdaug
Silly Alain. You seriously think a single post will hold back the hordes of Tommy-knockers, salivating at the chance to wail, rend, and gnash about the aesthetics of a website?
This is the internet, my friend. Cute, but nice try.
Roger Moore
@NotMax:
Especially if we aren’t going to go to a system where only registered users can vote, which we can’t do without registering users. If anyone can vote, the system can be manipulated trivially, and given the presence of paid political trolls it undoubtedly will be. No thank you.
Schlemazel
Thanks for the heads up. Please let us know when we can start impugning the morality of your ancestors and the quality of you as a person – this is critical apparently because people here can’t accept that everyone is doing their best with the beast and that personal insults are the best way to express displeasure with interim results.
sharl
@NotMax:
Vote for one (or both) of the following:
___ NotMax’s suggestion is bad and wrong
___ NotMax himself may be inherently bad
Hmm, I don’t see what could go wrong with commenter-initiated polls…
Keith G
The plans seem great and I certainly have enjoyed the changes already turned on. The only missing feature would be a Thurston cam live feed with a toggle to switch to a live feed of Marc’s kittens.
Other than that, thanks to you for doing the work of the saints.
Anne Laurie
Thanks, Alain — it’s always helpful to know more about what’s likely to fail next!
I’d say “add me to the list of those who’d prefer no voting option”, except I’m sure Cole will have a Henry VIII-worthy blowup rejecting the whole idea… if not before the implementation, then the first time a circular firing squad breaks out.
And I’m really, really looking forward to a “read more” comments option!
kc
Regrettable.
I take it this means the page will be jumping around whilst one tries to read? Do not want.
max
I will also take the opportunity to enable SSL so Balloon Juice will show up as secure in your browser
Outstanding, sir!
max
[‘Thank you. I, too, think voting is a bad idea.’]
Germy
Jack Handey:
Guards’ Complaints About Spartacus
Gin & Tonic
I, too, vote “no” on voting. I also vote “no” on inline photos. The existing system works fine, and you’ll just slow down page loads.
max
@srv: Why does everyone hate the 1st Amendment?
No one has any problems with the 1st amendment. They do have problems with people paid to be assholes.
max
[‘I assume you’re an unpaid asshole, yes?’]
Gin & Tonic
@Anne Laurie: And I’m really, really looking forward to a “read more” comments option!
I’d prefer a “read less” option, myself.
sharl
I’ll also add my grateful thanks Alain – what a slog it must be for you!
One thing I haven’t bothered to do (yet) is to explore those modification options made possible by The Other Chuck and others, that make moving around in the comments so much easier. Will that still be worth doing when everything is completed? Or will the finalized comment section incorporate most or all of the favorite features currently only available via installation of TOC’s modifying code (or whatever the term is for it)?
Roger Moore
@Keith G:
FTFY.
bystander
@Mystical Chick: Ditto! Thanks to Alain and JC for the great site.
Davebo
@Alain the site fixer:
Perhaps the best WP comment of all time!
RSA
The only reason I’d like voting, personally, is that pretty often I’ll see a comment where I think, “That’s great!” or “Funny!” (like @Gin & Tonic‘s up there) but I usually don’t want to add another comment just to say that. I think that voting is too easy to use for evil, though… Maybe as an add-on with a threaded comment system? (Kidding.)
Thanks for keeping us up to date, Alain.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
Reading less is always an option. Look at the number of posters (myself included) who say more or less the same thing because they can’t be bothered to read to the end before commenting, for example.
Liberal With Attitude
@NotMax:
You know who else disapproved of voting?
Peale
I don’t really want voting. I guess I can handle a like button. Although I wouldn’t call it a “like” anything. It should be a “This!” button.
lamh36
As someone who does like posting pics in comments, I love that idea.
Cool to see what the blog is like after improvements.
Baud
You could base an entire philosophy course on this principle.
SiubhanDuinne
@kdaug:
Saw what you did.
Baud
@lamh36:
More Zoe!!!
redshirt
Great work Alain.
Love everything except voting on comments, and that’s a big NO vote from me.
It would ruin this place, and quickly.
scav
The desire for faster loading and the addition of in-line images seem to run contradictory to me — it would be nice if that could come with an opt-in-out option, or a load-image rather like the load more option.
It’ll also be interesting to see how the heads-up posting, with clean lines of communication and expectations will alter mob behavior. In any eventuality, thanks for this and the efforts.
Keith G
BTW the hiccups are here. I just tried to open AL’s new post and got a 404 error.
Yippee!!
Jerzy Russian
@Keith G: Yes, same here. I had a comment there, and that showed up in the recent comments. The number of comments has increased, so at least a few people can see the post and open it.
scav
@Keith G: I’m fascinated by the people commenting there. Evidently we’re of the incorrect tribe and not let back into the country!
sharl
@scav:
~
This was what I was wondering about. As much as I enjoy looking at images – especially a lot of the stuff people here link to – I could image it slowing things down, or requiring a whole lot more scrolling (though the load more (comments) feature would go a long way to ameliorate that, I suppose).
When Tommy, Alain and (I think) mistermix first started working on this update, weren’t things set up for a brief period so that YouTube vids and the like showed up as pop-ups? Or am I misremembering that?
If you could hover over or click on a link and have the image or video pop up, then have it go away when you hovered or clicked away from it, that would seem a good compromise from a commenter perspective. Not being an IT guy, I just don’t know how feasible/practical that would be.
guachi
Yeah. I don’t want a like button as much as I’d like a “This!” button. I think if you do have one, maybe only allow positive voting and not negative voting.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@sharl:
I also liked the pop-up window for photos and YouTubes and was sad to see it vanish again as mysteriously as it appeared.
Waysel
How about a ‘scroll to bottom’ or ‘jump to bottom’ button next to the ’47 comments’ button next to each front page article? To simplify getting to recent comments- or to evilly comment without reading all those pesky previous comments:)
Waysel
@Waysel: Sorry, I suppose ‘recent comments’ nearly performs that same function. Nearly.
Ahasuerus
Alain –
When SSL has been enabled, will there also be an automatic redirect to the HTTPS instance from the initial HTTP request? Or will we have to explicitly request the HTTPS instance?
BTW, thanks for all of your work on the site. You have both my admiration and my sympathy ;-)
amk
load more comments is gonna be a pita. will only increase the site loading time.
Ecks
I’m not sure I see any real harm in a “props” only voting system, where all you can do is register your pleasure at an awesome post. If it doesn’t change where the posts appear, then there’s not much point in paying people to manipulate it. A “Putin is awesome, you Americans are all teh suck” comment is posted and gets 800 likes in 10 minutes, it’ll lead to a chorus of eye rolling more than real difficulties.
seaboogie
@RSA:
Agreed on the “upvote”…and maybe just an upvote button, a la “Huzzahs!” or “FTW!” because the commenter nailed it in expressing what we are thinking and it
would lead more folks to the pithy quip.
If we want to disagree, then we have to use our words and post a comment, sometimes in that colorful language that our mothers didn’t teach us.
Alain – thank you for putting everything out there in advance, and a nod to Tommy also for undergoing the crucible of the initial roll-out and making it clear why this is a good idea.
seaboogie
@Peale:
.
Great minds….Yep – that’s the term!
Roger Moore
@Peale:
This!
Wordpress Developers
@Waysel: that’s coming
Wordpress Developers
@Ahasuerus: yes all users will be forced to https. Not sure about the effect on RSS though…
Wordpress Developers
@amk: nah it reduces load massively cuz all those other things aren’t loading – many offsite and slow to load resources won’t be reloading. Also, wIll be lazy loading many plugins once the final theme etc. are set. We’ll have this thing purring, or will change and refine until it is!
Alain the site fixer
Sorry just changed my nym when I realized it wasn’t current.
daverave
Not at all for any sort of voting.
Sorta OT but perhaps the BJ commentariat can help me out: I’m not seeing any images in the embedded Twitter thoughts, just the words themselves, which usually works but sometimes I feel like I’m missing the joke/point without the image. I’m running an up-to-date Firefox browser and don’t have the problem in other browsers. Any ideas on a solution?
Alain the site fixer
Site or content blocking plugin most likely. Speaking from personal experience, it’s so easy to dismiss some filtering plugin or setting that ends up making your-browser-specific issues. In other words, other browsers being ok means it’s most likely some addition to Firefox that’s making trouble.
Petorado
If you’re having to re-input all the template design tweaks, you may want to think about installing a child-level theme. That way you can update the theme when needed and not lose all your hard-coded design tweaks and fixes.
Alain the site fixer
@Petorado: that’s the plan. Not how it started but that’s life
Alain the site fixer
@Alain the site fixer: didn’t mean to be rude! But yeah, child site is the plan going forward. It’s just the going forward that will suck, briefly! Lol
The Other Chuck
Is the comment lazy loading part of the new WP version, or is it a plugin? If it’s the latter, could you purty-please tell me what the exact plugin is? Reason I ask is that Troll-B-Gone is going to have to be updated to deal with it, and it’d be nice to have a headstart. As for EBBJ, I presume the fix will be in place to make it unnecessary.
Steeplejack
If voting on comments is introduced, I agree that it should be “up-voting” only, i.e., “This!”
I am ambivalent about allowing in-comment pictures:
1. What is to prevent a boner-pill pusher from putting his spiel in a picture—a picture of text—and spamming the site with that?
2. The plug-in (or whatever) to allow in-comment pictures would have to be fairly robust to (presumably) reformat pictures to fit in the page/comment format. People are going to post everything from tiny cell-phone pictures to huge gigabyte-sized images straight from their cameras, and if they aren’t cropped to the “right” size they could blow the formatting of the whole page. Based on our FYWP experience to date, I am a little skeptical of (a) the robustness of such plug-ins and (b) the advance testing of same for use at this site.
ETA: What happens when someone posts an NSFW picture, even gives a warning, but—oops!—there it is already visible on the page?
The Other Chuck
@kc: It should only update when you scroll to the bottom of the comments, so no jumpiness during normal reading. The idea is you can refresh the thread by scrolling rather than reloading.
The Other Chuck
@Steeplejack: boner-pill-pusher’s first comment goes straight into moderation anyway, like everyone else.
The Other Chuck
BTW, I also vote for no voting. And no images. I really don’t want to see a bunch of facepalm meme pics in the comments every time I come to BJ. I personally vow to nasally violate violently anyone who posts a goddam animated gif. Also consider that we have at least one user, probably more, using a screen reader.
The Other Chuck
@daverave: I find that the tweet embeds only show up in their full glory when you view a post individually, not on the front page. I think that’s either a feature or bug in whatever FYWP plugin is handling those, nothing to do with your end. Now if you’re missing them in article view, in the desktop theme (the mobile theme is irretrievably fucked) then there’s a problem on your end. Check your adblock/scriptblock extensions if you have any.
Steeplejack
@The Other Chuck:
So I make some innocuous first comment, wait until it emerges from moderation and then start spamming in subsequent comments.
Also, if a spammer’s first comment goes into moderation because of an unknown nym—and the spammer presumably is banned forthwith—why, then, do we need FYWP reading all of us legitimate commenters’ posts and nuking them for bad words?
Amir Khalid
On the comment system changes:
How can you ensure that commenters don’t include NSFW material? That would be a problem for people reading the site in the office. Safer to make them link, I think.
One or the other of these is fine, but do you really need both?
I vote: No!
I hope you’re not planning to break comments up into pages.
Just toss mclaren into moderation whenever he/she exceeds, say, 50 lines.
These words fill me with dread.
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
I feel your pain. I have been gritting my teeth through the various “temporary” changes and consoling myself with the hope that when the dust settles I’ll be able to fix most of the infelicities with a Stylish script such as MBBJ.
The Other Chuck
@Steeplejack:
Would be pretty nice, but FYWP has no concept of a reputation system beyond “probationary user” and “everyone else”. It’s a blog platform first and foremost, all the discussion features have been bolted on long after the fact.
Alain the site fixer
@Amir Khalid: I knew they would! I do aim to make you happy Amir. Hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised and be a booster from then on!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Alain, thank you for the communication regarding upcoming adjustments. It should go a long way toward reducing angst (etc.) during bumpy periods.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Alain the site fixer: @The Other Chuck:Do I need to update MBBJ (or EBBJ) in order to edit and have the edit load successfully, or is that likely just a current commenting system bug?
The Other Chuck
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): It’s a FYWP thing. The edit popup is horrendously buggy.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@The Other Chuck: Thanks! That was my suspicion. And thank you for both BBJs.
Alain the site fixer
@The Other Chuck: Chuck, I will enact your suggested edits to the avia framework after the update; it seemed to make little sense to do it before. And I’ll be eager to hear any more such suggestions once the dust settles from the new theme version!
amk
@WordPress Developers: I don’t know, dude. I go to such load more comments section in sites like rawstory etc. and find that they take more time than the straight up refresh for latest posts like in bj.
Amir Khalid
@Alain the site fixer:
For a start, I recommend using exclamation points as little as possible.
Betsy
Can you get it back to where, if you click on a comment time stamp at the point where you are in the comment thread, then you can further click on the hyperlink referencing an earlier comment, and when you are done looking at the comment referred to in the hyperlink, and ready to read the rest of the thread, then you can hit “back” in your browser and it takes you to where you initially clicked? Because for me the new site doesn’t do that when I hit my back button to go to the comment that I wanted to make it remember, but bizarrely takes me back to the front page as if I had never clicked on the comment at all.
But if there is another way to pick up the thread where one stopped reading new comments to look back at a replied-to comment, please tell me the easy way.
Betsy
@guachi: This!
The Golux
In addition to a “Load More Comments” button, I’d like a “Load All Comments” button. I’ve always disliked sites that doled out the comments in chunks.
Alain the site fixer
@The Other Chuck: The new comment engine will do the lazy loading and it’s called wp-discuz but that is a few weeks off!
Alain the site fixer
@Amir Khalid: I find written English so boring without exclamation marks – I project enthusiasm, confidence, and excitement verbally, so I try to write with the same emphasis. Be glad I evolved past my fixation with dashes, and a more Germanic approach towards capitalizing nouns and other words of note. Again, written English is so boring with everything ending with periods!
Alain the site fixer
@The Other Chuck: Its a Twitter API problem on their server end.
The Other Chuck
@Betsy: Even Betterer Balloon Juice is a userscript fixes that browser history problem, and Alain is going to incorporate that fix into the new comment system. Give it a try.
daddyj
Sigh. Always late to the party. I’ve made this suggestion multiple times and am going to just keep making it because I have want to help y’all make BJ more beautiful.
In layout.css (line 1448) the rule:
.content .entry-content-wrapper p a {
display: inline-block;
}
…should just be deleted. Anchor tags are inline by default; there is no earthly reason to make them inline-block in text paragraphs, as it causes hideous line break problems when the links are long. Just scan the front page for really long links and you will see what I mean. This is an easy fix to make and will help paragraphs with long anchor tags make sense again! Thanks!
Scout211
I just tried to check an older thread and the links to older pages do not work. I clicked on 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc., and each time the only page that showed was the front page–page 1.
Mac desktop, chrome, OS 10.7.5
Steeplejack
@daddyj:
Put your suggestion in the ongoing “Site Maintenance” thread, found by clicking “About Balloon Juice” at the top of the page (desktop version of the site).
Scout211
@Steeplejack:
This is the only site maintenance thread open for comments and it indeed, is under the “about balloon juice” header. Alain moved a copy of it and it now serves as the only site maintenance comment thread.
joel hanes
Alain
It’s looking better every day.
Thanks for the work — it shows.
Amir Khalid
@Alain the site fixer:
Prose with too many exclamation points (i.e. more than the bare minimum) doesn’t “project enthusiasm, confidence, and excitement”; it just looks childish. Putting an initial cap on all nouns is centuries out of date in English; who the heck taught you to do it?
As far as changes to the comment system are concerned, your enthusiasm for new features should follow what the Juicitariat thinks would be helpful, I think, rather than seek to lead. We can be a quarrelsome bunch, as you may have noticed. Think hard before suggesting features, like voting on comments, that could exacerbate our quarrelsome tendencies.