Folks,
I just wanted to give you an update on the new site progress. tl;dwr*: It’s been slow going but will launch soon.
In more detail, I’ve been working on a number of necessary back end improvements, reducing memory load on the server and in your browser. I’ve also been tweaking things with the new theme and working on a number of to-do’s. With the very valued help of Major Major Major Major, we have some new and/or improved things coming soon as well. Exciting!
So that all said, I’d planned to get the launched before the holiday but this was overly optimistic. A lot of my time and attention the past two and a half weeks has been sucked up by estate and related legal/accounting duties as well as lots of time spent driving to and fro. That stuff is mostly in order so I feel pretty safe saying that the new theme should launch late next week. I have pushed back my escape to nature until it’s launched for a few days and the initial dust has settled.
Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!
Open thread
* too long; don’t wanna read
Corner Stone
Any chance we can kill or swap out stackpathcdn?
schrodingers_cat
Are we going to get the Edit function and long lived cookies that save login info.
Platonailedit
Thanks, Alain. Don’t forget to fix the remembertron in the bj version xxx.
Elizabelle
Thanks, Alain. All the best to you this holiday weekend. Appreciate all that you and MMMM do.
Platonailedit
For these
jackalsanimals? Don’t.Lapassionara
Thanks, Alain!
randy khan
Thanks. I know this is tedious, annoying work (but at least not entirely thankless).
Aleta
I regret your escape to big nature will be delayed; hope you get there soon. (I’m about to leave it, but wondering WHY.)
Spanky
Thanks, Alain! We really do appreciate it, even if i seems we bitch all the time.
(Well, we DO bitch all the time, that’s a given.)
Yarrow
Thank you, Alain.
westyny
Thanks for all your work, Alain. One question: The site has been overly slow and hiccuping on my cell phone browser since the craziness of last week. I don’t think I’m alone. Enjoy your weekend!
Ohio Mom
Deep appreciation for all you do to keep this place running.
Also wishing you luck with your executor duties. I remember my mom’s estate and the worry about doing it correctly when we were clearly over our heads, not being lawyers. But we got through it and you will too.
dnfree
Echoing the thanks for all you are doing, especially with so much going on for you. The combination of grief and estate responsibilities is much more wearing than a person would realize if they haven’t done it. Take care of yourself too.
Alain the site fixer
@Corner Stone: Why? It’s doing a good job and is the rebranded MaCDN.
Alain the site fixer
So for the mobile site blues – I removed the old mobile site and then removed the sidebar/video ads from the mobile site. Besides that, it should be working ok. I’ve not been on the site much the past week so I missed any issues if there were some.
And yes, remember/cookies/edit comments is very important.
Thanks for the well-wishes, I’m going to try to fix one or two small things on the new site and then it’s a few hours of real-world to-do’s and then hopefully some more tweaks before evening. Have a great holiday to all!
Corner Stone
@Alain the site fixer: Anytime my loading of the site is choking I see *.stackpathcdn.com trying to load. I have used software to block it from loading and it always loads faster without it. Of course the layout, features, etc suffer, and my tests are not definitive. Just wondering if there was something more streamlined that might be available.
Aleta
@Ohio Mom: @dnfree:
Well said.
Neldob
Merci, Alain.
MattF
@Aleta: Yes. Grief is a lot more than “I’m sad”. Do your best, and that will be good enough.
Omnes Omnibus
FWIW the up and down buttons are not working on my phone. Latest version of Safari on an iPhone SE.
Alain the site fixer
@Omnes Omnibus: I just tested on my 6s+ and they work fine. Are you blocking JS or anything like that?
@MattF: Indeed. Sometimes it’s truly crippling. When I get a bunch of things done and have an unprotected memory, it’s only a few moments of crying, but sometimes that brief wave of grief wears me out for a few hours and I’m pretty useless.
Doug R
Don’t know if anyone else has mentioned the ABC/WaPo poll. He’s at 36%, his lowest EVER. He’s at 60% disapprove, with 53% STRONGLY disapprove, his HIGHEST ever.
He’s at 3% support among African Americans, with a Margin Of Error of 3.6% LOL
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trouble-trump-disapproval-high-63-back-mueller-half/story?id=57507081
Alain the site fixer
@Corner Stone: Where in the US/World are you? There are CDNs throughout, and so the one you hit is supposed to be close to you. That’s all transparent to me and you, it just happens.
I wonder if there’s anything special about your configuration such as, did you hard code anything in hosts or otherwise re: balloon-juice.com?
Omnes Omnibus
@Alain the site fixer: Not blocking anything.
oatler.
tl;dr will be the Mark of the Beast for Gen Y.
Alain the site fixer
@Alain the site fixer: That is weird. Most content should be coming from the CDN (pictures, html, css, JS, etc.) so the load on the main server is reduced and everything is much quicker for end users everywhere.
Let me know in a week or so if things don’t improve (via email) and I’ll dig in. It should be a simple thing that improves your experience greatly but it sounds like that promise is being failed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Doug R:
People are calling this an “outlier”, but I think just a week or so ago there was a poll (Gallup, I think) that had him at 38%. Off to google
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Gallup, 39%, August 12.
debbie
Thanks for all your work. I understand the reason why, but my aging iPad really misses the mobile site. It seems to be rebelling against the eleventy billion graphic items on every page.
Jackie
@Alain the site fixer: Alain, since you removed the mobile site option, when I refresh the comments, instead of it refreshing and the comments continuing from say #50 onwards, it takes me back to the very beginning. I have to scroll all the way thru again. It’s very frustrating when the comments get into the hundreds. Will that glitch be fixed?
California Stars
Alain, thanks for keeping this thing running. Hope you can get some R&R this weekend. For what it’s worth, when the site isn’t working on one of my machines, I just take it as a sign that I should really stop bopping around on the interwebs/obsessing about our horrific political situation and get some real work done. And, in order to keep getting paid, I require that sign pretty often, so no complaints here…
RedDirtGirl
Merci bien, Alain!
Doug R
Canadian Court of Appeals rules against Trans Mountain pipeline, says Federal Government failed to adequately consult with First Nations:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/trans-mountain-appeal-ruling-first-nations-duty-to-consult-1.4805694
Major Major Major Major
@Jackie: I’ve always had to select the time stamp below the latest comment and then reload.
J R in WV
Hey, hope you get out into the wooded hills and trout-filled streams as soon as you can.
It is restorative to wander among the older trees in the mountains, and the rock outcrops like the bones of the earth. Take a couple of pictures and tell us about getting out and around the countryside — you can use that Balloon-Juice Travelog feature, kinda, maybe. That’s a joke, supposed to be. ;-) see!!
Seriously, do take some time off for yourself, it’s important to relax once in a while. That’s why we have Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanks…. well y’all get the point.
Doug R
@Jackie:
A trick I use is I try to remember an uncommon word used in a comment near the bottom and do a “search in page” with my browser. Or I search for my nym, if my comment’s near the bottom. Or even search for “50”.
Corner Stone
@Alain the site fixer: Greater Houston Metro Area. I saw your follow on comment but don’t spend any time on it. If it’s not being reported widely then there’s no reason to waste time rabbit holing.
I don’t have anything hardcoded but am using the same laptop I have used to access BJ for years. So maybe it’s got a Ghost of Site Rebuilds Past hidden in there.
Amir Khalid
@Alain the site fixer:
It might not be a location issue. I used to get the stackpathcdn problem too, and I’m all the way out here.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Alain the site fixer:
Not all the time, but there are significant stretches (here in NoVA) when StackpathCDN is the big drag on page loading.
Desktop site, Win10, Firefox.
Jackie
@Major Major Major Major: That works!!! Thank you!?
NotMax
Paws crossed the new theme is a better choice than what Josh Marshall did at TPM, where he recently took a perfectly usable layout and turned it into a mish-mosh of navigation frustration.
@Steeplejack
Ditto on stackpath bogging things down. Win 7, FF (pre-Quantum version – 56 point something). Nudging Privacy Badger to block cookies from stackpath remedies the tortoise pace.