Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

We won’t go back.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

T R E 4 5 O N

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

You are here: Home / z-Retired Categories / Previous Site Maintenance / Last Site Maintenance Post For A While

Last Site Maintenance Post For A While

by | 79 Comments

This post is in: 

Just a quick note, and most importantly, thanks to John for his patience, and to all of you for your patience, advice, help, and critiques. It’s a better site because of all of us.

I don’t think most folks realize how much time it takes to read all the feedback and then organize what needs to be done. So I’m moving slowly today as I’ve only tweaked a few things so far. Many more to come.  The rough plan:

  1. Finish desktop site
    • some more font tweaking
    • replacing single recent pots/comments widget with the original pair
    • edit them a bit – font, styling
    • a slight edit or two to comment spacing (right margin)
    • get Quick Links full configured correctly (menu stuff, nothing changes for you)
    • update/add a plugin or two
    • do a thorough go-over of the site back-end to ensure I didn’t miss copying some setting or option from the test server
    • remove credit crap for social media plugin at bottom of page
  2. Work on Mobile site
    • remove duplicate reply that causes threaded comments to appear
    • add date/time to comments
    • add comment number
    • perhaps the up/down arrow controls
    • adjust font sizes
    • investigate why it’s not working or switching on some tablets

And that should wrap things up for what you will see. Once these changes are done, they’ll be committed to our repository and I will work on a few more repository-related things.

I plan to throw up a Site Maintenance post every few months as a forum for complaints or suggestions, but don’t forget the Contact option under Quick Links at the top of the page.

 

Thanks to all who donated, John just paid me and I really appreciate all your generosity!

Reader Interactions

79Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    Thank you, Alain. You have been marvelous. (And appreciate Tommy getting this started.)

    Anything to keep us jackals snarling.

  2. 2.

    Alain the site fixer

    At least I am now no longer a lurker. I’ve been an active, daily reader since 2006/7. As things shift from site maintenance, I hope to share a few posts. Like Hillary Rettig, I am very interested in mushrooms, so I’m planning 2-3 posts with pictures and tales of some adventures I’ve had, as well as recipes!

  5. 5.

    A Ghost To Most

    Thank you, Alain. The site works and looks great.

    Now you need to work on some of us commenters.

  7. 7.

    orogeny

    Just a very minor quibble. The HRs that separate the posts are much lighter than those that separate comments. To me, it makes the posts seem to run together. Slightly heavier HRs would be helpful to my old eyes.

  9. 9.

    Miss Bianca

    ooh, ooh, did you just switch the widgeting back for posts and comments to the old format? Cause I like that!

    Thanks for doing a bang-up job, Alain! I wish I could have donated more.

  10. 10.

    NobodySpecial

    Thanks for all the hard work. I hope you made something out of all that heartburn.

  11. 11.

    TaMara (BHF)

    @Alain the site fixer: This looks really good. I’m not thrilled with the commenter name size (mostly because I often do a quick scan for people I really want to read what they have to say) but I’ll adjust.

    The rest looks so good – font is easy to read, colors are easy on the eyes and the whole layout has a clean, easy feel to it.

    Thanks so much for adding a quick link to recipes and authors in our midst.

    Appreciate all your work!

  12. 12.

    Mnemosyne

    For the mobile site, an “up” arrow isn’t really necessary, because I think most mobile devices let you auto scroll to the top anyway. It’s the “down” arrow that would be really handy, especially for long comment threads. Trying to scroll down 100 comments on an iPhone is literally painful (when you have carpal tunnel issues).

  13. 13.

    Elizabelle

    Recent comments are back! Woo hoo.

    Merci, Alain.

    PS: you write prose beautifully, as well as code, so look forward to what you come up with as a blogpost.

    JCole, irritated hermit with pets that he pretends to be, has assembled a really good set of front pagers (with a blog presidential candidate, too!) to take the load off him, so that he can devote more time to twitter warring (with the occasional post).

    All is well with the world.

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    Thanks, Alain! One observation: There was a great battle about the proper placement of the categories, and I believe the “at the end of the post” folks prevailed, but now the categories are back at the top. I personally don’t give a damn, but it was a long tussle, and some people feel very strongly about it. Just FYI!

    PS: Mmmm, mushrooms! We’re trying to grow shiitakes. Should be ready around Thanksgiving.

  17. 17.

    Alain the site fixer

    @TaMara (BHF): Working on the commenter name. I did adjust spacing so comment date doesn’t stomp on commenter name, so there’s been some progress!

  18. 18.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Betty Cracker: And here I thought the “at the top:” folks won!
    I’ll make another survey and that will dictate it. Tomorrow. I’m cleaning up necessities today!

  21. 21.

    gvg

    on desktop firefox 38.6, the back button won’t work and take me back to the home page. On ipad mobile it does though sometimes I have to hit it twice which is a bit odd. my firefox choice is dictated by work as the newest messes something up.

  22. 22.

    Central Planning

    @Mnemosyne: get the carpal tunnel surgery. I had the surgery on both hands. It’s well worth it and the recovery time isn’t really bad. No more tingling or numbness

  27. 27.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    I used to do this sort of work and I wouldn’t have touched this project with a fifty foot pole. Damn fine job, Alain.

  28. 28.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Alain the site fixer:
    1) Thanks for all your hard work.
    2) My recollection is that we won on the categories at the bottom, but as Betty notes, it’s issue with strong opinions. Some of which may have had to do with the proper placement based on how one internetts correctly and a commentariat reaction to that announcement.

    I will sit corrected if I am wrong (even though I’m not : -) ) about point 2).

    N.B. I had an excess of parentheses that have been cluttering up my brain, which has been slightly cleared out.

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    Blah blah blah adding a block quote:

    Most folks realize how much time it takes to read all the feedback and then organize what needs to be done. So I’m moving slowly today as I’ve only tweaked a few things so far. Many more to come. The rough plan:

    More text here.

  30. 30.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Alain the site fixer: I still cannot edit. Which I can live with (grumpily) but it will make for an awful lot of corrective replies to myself.

    FFcurrent/Win10

    Did I say thanks?

  34. 34.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @WaterGirl: PC. It loads at the left edge of page. (link?
    Comment Loaded Successfully appears below
    I edit, and save.
    Comment Successfully Saved appears below.

    Then no refresh, no jewels, no nothing.

    When I revisit the page, my edit doesn’t show. Is that information useful in any fashion?

  36. 36.

    My Truth Hurts

    New updates look great. Site looks the best it ever has in years. Thank you.

  39. 39.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Amir Khalid: should be better, no?

    Was trying variations on the three different controls that affect site column width and was trying to squeeze more room for content. Sadly, it will not cooperate so we’ll stick with this for the time being.

  40. 40.

    RaflW

    I said this on the earlier thread, but will mention again, that comments seem to be getting eaten much more in the past few days than in months prior. Dunno if it’s update-related, but if it is, please get us back to FYWPing being a rare thing.

    Many thanks!

  41. 41.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    Just started the suffer, but will need the return of in house web dude to do any more. Whatever the current FF is – don’t know the version (in house, etc).

  42. 42.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Alain the site fixer: Disabling ABP alone did not fix it. I’ll have to ask what other extensions I might have as my brain is badly broken so I can’t tell you. Thanks for your kind attention to it.

  43. 43.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): And, having suffered the ads, I can no longer eliminate autoplay when I re-enabled ABP here.

    My badly broken brain cannot tolerated the flash of the autoplay, so I will be offline unless and until the in house IT dept will return the player killer to the right spot. That request will not be well received, as the position will be “why the f*ck did you disable it over editing. Can’t you f*cking just make new posts to correct yourself?” And that is not an objectively unreasonable position.

    Thanks for all your hard work. I may try reading on the tablet.

  44. 44.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Alain the site fixer: Sorry Alain, I spoke too soon. A reboot after the un-disable fixed the autoplay issue. Sorry. I am having some neuro difficulty and do/did not mean to be rude.

    Thank you, again, for all your hard work.

  47. 47.

    WaterGirl

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): So after “Comment Successfully Saved appears below” displays, does that ever go away? Or do you just sit there forever unless you reopen that thread manually?

    I have that problem sometimes on my iPad, and the solution is to open “Click to Edit” in a separate tab. I make my edit in the separate tab and press Save. Then I go back to the previous tab that has the thread I just commented in and manually refresh the page.

    Are you willing to try that? If you try it, and doing the edit in the separate tab works, then you have a workaround until Alain can get this fixed. The results of your test would also give Alain a big clue about what’s going on.

    Edit: this is just a hunch, but I wonder if you have the problem because your nym is so long. Would you be willing to shorten your nym temporarily in order to test that?

    Remember, though, your first comment after you change your nym goes into moderation until a front-pager frees you. :-)

  49. 49.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    after “Comment Successfully Saved appears below” displays, does that ever go away? Or do you just sit there forever unless you reopen that thread manually?

    Yes. Also too, new tab edit test failed.
    I’ll try a shortened (or new w/different email addy) and see if that works. Once I get out of moderation, of course.

  51. 51.

    WaterGirl

    @TDVFZW: Did I pass the test? :-)

    Edit: aha, I see who you are now! You didn’t want to take any chances that WP would know you were the same person. :-)

  53. 53.

    Alain the site fixer

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I did just try again and I don’t see the same behavior so I wonder if it’s related to blocking or MBBJ or what-have-you? Is your FF fullscreen? Mine isn’t and the Edit Comment dialog appears in the center of the browser window, so it showing near the edge is odd to me, as well as things not actually saving your edit! Are you running Noscript or anything like that?

  55. 55.

    Alain the site fixer

    @RaflW: Please let me know if that continues. It shouldn’t!

    I am editing some theme files which means overwriting/replacing but that’s almost instantaneous. I can see an error rendering onscreen but I can’t see it messing up the database stuff that stores the comment. So please, use the Contact form and let me know if it happens more than once after Friday! Once these final edits are done, if they continue, that will hint at other issues.

  59. 59.

    Bill Arnold

    Alain, FWIW, I am very very happy with the tighter spacing for comment text and reduced whitespace. (Could use less whitespace before the comment number, but not if it breaks something.)

  61. 61.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Alain the site fixer: FWIW, turning off MBBJ and EBBJ fixed the edit! But – NO offense to you, I like the font and gray/white alternating backgrounds from the css more than the ability to edit. Have I said thank you lately?

  62. 62.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):

    Cool. I have had MBBJ turned off since yesterday, and now that the back button is working again the site is pretty bearable without MBBJ. And I found a workaround to get a (more) readable text font, so I may be able to continue like this.

  64. 64.

    Steeplejack

    Minor note (desktop version, Firefox, Windows 10): Blockquote text is significantly larger than regular comment text—but not all the time. It varies over the course of a thread, but in no pattern that I can discern.

    I wonder if it depends on whether the writer leaves a black line between comment text and the <blockquote> tag.

    Test 1:

    No blank line.How big is this text?

    Test 2:

    Blank line. And how big is this text?

    ETA: Okay, it’s not that. Another theory shot to hell.

  65. 65.

    kc

    It takes for freakin’-ever to scroll to the end of any comments thread. The more comments, the worse it is.

    This was not an issue for me before this re-do.

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    @Alain the site fixer

    META tags at the bottom was the expressed preference by a landslide.

    Resistance to moving tags there (including snippy refusal to even consider doing so) set off a whole megillah which those around to see it well recall.

    Sidebar looking much, much better. Full width horizontal rule separating the header from the content could be made darker to match what you’ve done with other horizontal rules.

  67. 67.

    nutella

    I’ve been impressed that during all the work and re-work of the update all the old posts and comments continued to be available and new posts and comments continued to be postable without any gaps, AFAIK. As an IT person I know that is an impressive achievement.

    Thanks.

  68. 68.

    The Other Chuck

    Testing something…

    Seems edits work fine for me (on Chrome) with EBBJ and MBBJ enabled. What other problems are people seeing, and on what browsers?

  69. 69.

    Steeplejack

    @kc:

    Workaround: Click “Reply” to a comment, which takes you immediately to the “Leave a Comment” box at the bottom. Then erase the vestigial message stub.

    Not optimal, but it works.

    ETA: I presume you are using the mobile version, because the desktop version has a floating down arrow icon that will take you to the bottom of the thread.

  71. 71.

    Alain the site fixer

    @NotMax: I’ll be doing that shortly. I just added a little cherry for folks – buttons with html instructions above the comment form. Hope that helps for those who want to embellish their comments.

  72. 72.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Steeplejack: FYI I tried to add that to the mobile site and it WOULD. NOT. WORK.
    Not sure what the mobile site plugin does but it blocked that all from working. Once I get some feedback on the new buttons under “Leave a Comment”, I’ll add those to the mobile site but for now, they’re a desktop only feature.

  74. 74.

    The Other Chuck

    Another test since the edit window expired… Yep looks busted on firefox with EBBJ enabled. Only thing I do with links is add a “no-scroll” class to all of them, but apparently FYWP and firefox conspire to fuck things up with just that little.

  75. 75.

    The Other Chuck

    Christ, I’d forgotten how irritating it is to work with firefox with all its warnings and dialogs and restarts… anyway let’s see if this worked.

  77. 77.

    Steeplejack

    @The Other Chuck:

    In case you drop back here . . . I was running MBBJ but not EBBJ. Is MBBJ also obsolete now? I ask because, in addition to the things it did for me, it provided a place for me to drop in a snippet of code to get a (more) readable text font (nothing fancy, Georgia).

    It’s no biggie if MBBJ is also dead. I found a workaround in the Firefox options to get Georgia for the comment text font. But I seem to have a nagging memory that MBBJ also did something else that I really needed and am forgetting right now.

    Anyway, thanks for the great work you did on MBBJ/EBBJ. You really helped a lot of people!

  78. 78.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Hi,

    I posted and edited this post (once) and got thrown into moderation for simply changing an Italic tag to an Emphasis tag (around “Illegals”).

    Why? Can anything be done to prevent being thrown into moderation for things like that?

    Thanks for your efforts here. I appreciate it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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