Little tech support will be available this weekend. Your patience and understanding is appreciated.
Also, while we are offline, we hope you will continue to offer us feedback on how the new blog is working so far. We really need it.

After too many 18 hour+ hour days at the computer between our real job and all the extra work to design and set up the blog, this elf is signing off for the weekend. We also hear that Greg G. is not going to be online much this weekend. What this means, is that folks with login and registration problems, or other tech questions or problems are likely going to have to wait until Monday for help. Feel free to send e-mail: T19elves@yahoo.com or leave comments here. Just don’t expect a reply from ElfGirl or Greg until Monday.

A tech note:
The two blog admin “Sticky” posts that were at the top of the blog earlier today (Open thread, and Info on the Sidebar setup & Categories, etc.) have all been made “unsticky” — you can find them below on the original dates they were posted. But to make them easy to find, the links are in the sidebar. Also in the sidebar are the links to all three of “Daily Blog Tips” posts from this week. That “blog tips” series will resume again on Monday.

On a pesonal note, a plea for feedback:
After having been online and monitoring or working on the blog for 6-8 hours or more per day most of this week, I feel like I’ve been living, eating, breathing T19 all week. That intense blog exposure has been interesting, and I wanted to add a few personal words before I shut down the computer for the weekend. Firstly, I have really enjoyed the opportunity to hear from many readers who have written needing tech assistance. So many of you have offered words of encouragement and shared how important and helpful Titusonenine is to you. That makes all this hard work worthwhile to know that this is really a ministry to and important resource for many. Our readers and commenters are a huge part of what has made this blog so successful over the past three years. We hope there will be the same kind of lively and deep discussions on the comment threads of this new blog. From all we can see, the move to a new server and new software offers outstanding opportunities to make a great blog even several degrees better. We’re working towards it on our end, and are sure Kendall is too.

It’s been a bit odd that the comment threads have been anemic on many posts this week. It’s probably normal given the switch to new software and the requirement that readers must register in order to comment. But, if there is some feature or design issue that is making commenting difficult would you please let us know?

Secondly, on a related note, I can’t emphasize enough how important your feedback is to all of us involved with the blog, especially as we work to design it and setup various features to make it a helpful and hopefully easy to use resource. Our goal is not blog design for blog design’s sake, but to have the design serve the needs and interests of our readers. So do chime in as to what you want this blog to be. Otherwise, we’ll take the large degree of silence to mean that you all think we elves are perfect and can do no wrong. And that would not be a good thing for our egos!

Oh, and just an FYI for the weekend. Even though elfgirl, (aka the blog-design and membership-support elf) is going to be offline for the weekend, ElfLady is NOT signing off for the weekend. So, mind your Ps & Qs on the comment threads! At least one of us is still watching! 😉

Blessings all, and thanks for putting up with all the posts and deluge of information from us this past week. Until Monday…

As on the old Titusonenine site, we are using a daily calendar here in the sidebar. You can click on the date to quickly view each day’s entries. It’s simple & easy. But right now there are a few small issues with the calendar. Please read this even if it seems to be way too basic to be of interest.

Update: After this post was written and posted, we made some changes to the blog set up that affect blog navigation. There is also more news about the calendar. PLEASE make sure you read all the way to the end of the post for the latest and most current info!

Update #2:
We’ve now added some blog navigation tools to go back and forth between individual articles without returning to the blog homepage, which should be nice especially for long comment threads. See end of full text for details.

On some blogs, one of the most important reasons to have a calendar in the sidebar is to see which days the author has written something. On a day with posts, the date is highlighted and clickable. On a day without posts, the date is fainter and not clickable. For T19, that is basically a moot point. Kendall did not miss a single day of blogging on his old site from the day he launched it (Jan 15, 2004) to the day he shut it down (May 22, 2007). INCREDIBLE!!! Thank you Kendall for your amazing commitment and dedication.

But apart from being able to tell what dates have blog entries, there are 3 big advantages to getting in the habit of clicking on the calendar each day:

1. It makes scrolling much easier with a shorter page to scroll.

2. The page loads faster, with fewer posts to show.

3. You can instantly see any new entries have been posted. In these early days of this new blog, this might be of particular interest, since, as most readers will have noted, we are often making some of the blog admin posts “sticky” — meaning they are held at the top of the page and new entries are posted beneath. Whenever there are sticky posts up top, it may not be obvious whether there are any new entries until you scroll down a little ways. Clicking on today’s date, however, always ensures you will see the NEWEST posts at the top. Sticky posts are no longer “sticky” when you are using the calendar, they revert to displaying on whatever date they were first posted.

There of course is also the ease of quickly getting to an entry posted on a previous date. If you know the date you can click on the calendar and browse that day’s entries. This is helpful when you don’t remember the title and a keyword search might be difficult.

IMPORTANT: Mysteriously, several dates in the calendar (currently May 22 – 25) are broken. Even though there are lots of posts for each of those days, the date acts as if there were no posts. Greg is working on that and we hope it will be fixed ASAP. [It appears something is causing the calendar to only display the most recent 7 days of activity. We think it can be fixed pretty quickly now that we’ve figured out the problem.]

Here’s how you can get around the problem in the meantime:

There is a very simple format for the links to each day’s entries. If a given date is broken in the calendar, you can use the following links to get you to the daily archives:

May 22: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/2007/05/22/
May 23: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/2007/05/23/
May 24: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/2007/05/24/
May 25: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/2007/05/25/

Since we are posting this on June 1, it is perhaps helpful to explain how to see the previous month’s calendar. To the left of “June 2007” at the top of the calendar, you’ll see double arrows. Click on those left double arrows and you’ll be taken back to the May calendar.

Finally, while on the topic of blog navigation: we’ve had some e-mails from readers saying that when they login they keep seeing old entries. We’ve added a link at the very top of the sidebar to the blog homepage (i.e. the main page). You can also always get there by clicking on the TitusONEnine logo at the top of the blog. This way, if you login and get directed to an old entry, you can quickly get to the home page and the latest entries. (Or once again, click on the calendar to see the date you are interested in.)

————–
UPDATE 1:

Since first posting this article, we have set up pagination. The main page now displays the 50 most-recent entries (usually equal to 2-3 days’ worth of articles). You can then click on the next page to see earlier entries. All entries from the blog’s launch through today are now available by following the page links at the bottom of the blog.

Hope this is helpful. As always, we welcome your questions & suggestions.

——————————————————-
UPDATE 2: (11:45 GMT / 07:45 EDT) — Another Blog Navigation Upgrade!

We were reading the 100+ comment thread on speaking in tongues this morning. And as we got to the end of that long thread, we thought to ourselves: “Self, you clever elf, do you know what would be really nice? Being able to click to get to the next entry, or get back to the home page without having to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page!” So, being an elf, with all of our wonderful magic powers, we made our wish come true!

Now when you get to the end of an individual article and its comment thread, you will see three links:

Next entry (above): [article name and link] — this goes to the NEWER article
Previous entry (below): [article nameand link] — this goes to the OLDER article

Return to blog homepage [returns you to the blog’s main page]

Hope you agree with us that this is a nice feature!

Note: if you are in the comment section of a “sticky” post that is displaying at the top of the blog, the “next” or “previous entries” relate to chronological order when the sticky post was first written. So if there is a sticky post from May 29 still on the top of the blog today, the other articles in the next or previous sequence will be from May 29, not today, June 1.

For lovers of T19 trivia, we’ve had a post hit 100 comments! The thread on speaking in tongues posted last week hit 100 comments today.

By the way, we’ve sometimes noted on Stand Firm that long threads of 100+ comments don’t always display properly. (MS Internet Explorer seems to handle them better than Firefox). We’ll keep an eye on things here. If you note problems, let us know. So far there’s no other thread that’s anywhere near 100 comments.

UPDATE 3: Check out the new “Blog Admin Stuff” section in the sidebar.
When you roll over each link you get a pop-up description about each post. We are so cool we amaze ourselves sometimes! :coolsmile:

Just a heads up. We’re slowly figuring out Expression Engine templates, tags and modules, and starting to try and setup the sidebar. Feel free to let us know your preferences in the comments.

Note: the May 2007 archive link that is now showing up at the bottom of the sidebar still needs work. It is displaying results from both T19 and Stand Firm. And there is a lot of stuff yet to fix and edit in the Archive Template page. Please ignore the mess for now. Hopefully we can get back to it tomorrow.

Update: We’ve found a way for the category structure to be displayed. You can take a sneak peak here. It is nothing like what the final product will be. (Can you imagine one page with everything Kendall has ever posted by category?! Even after only 1 week, the list is overwhelming. He’s up to about 160 posts already, maybe a bit more.) But it will give readers an idea of how the category structure works and what gets posted where. TONS of work still needed though to turn this into something actually usable.

UPDATE 2: WOOHOO!!! We’ve got category links now working in each post. If you click a category you will see all posts displayed in the category. Sweet!

==> Your feedback on sidebar, categories and other blog design elements is both NEEDED & MUCH APPRECIATED. Thanks to those who are offering input and ideas!

As regular readers will know, we elves like lists and data. On Monday, we posted a “Titusonenine Top Ten” list to help those still trying to learn their way around the new blog have an easy way to find the posts that are generating the most comments. (One wag said since this is “T19” it should be a “top nine list!” We might just do that in the future…!)

So, how did we come up with that list? Is it just elfin magic? Or can regular readers quickly see what threads are being hotly discussed? Read on! With the new advanced search features here, you too can be an elf!

Here is how to search the blog for the posts with the most comments yourself, using the Advanced Search feature.

1. Go into Advanced Search (up at the top right near the search box and calendar)
2. For the broadest search possible, enter “the” as your keyword (you can of course limit to some keyword of your choosing, e.g. Anglican).
3. Choose: Search on Titles, Entries and Comments in the pull down menu to make sure you’ll get all posts
4. Choose: Titusonenine in the blog selection menu
5. Choose: Any Category to search on ALL categories. Or limit to the category / categories of your choice. (Yes you can select MULTIPLE categories)
6. Finally, over on the far right choose: “Sort Results By: MOST COMMENTS”

This will give you a list of posts with the most comments EVER (assuming you’ve not limited your search by keyword or category).

You could also limit the date range of your search, example “today and newer” or “this week and newer.” Try it out!

I thought it would be helpful to begin a series of posts highlighting tips about and features of the new blog.

Here’s the answer to a question we have seen several times in the comments: How can I permanently turn off the “Notify me of follow-up comments?” feature? I keep forgetting and now my inbox is full!

We replied to one commenter in some detail here:

Library Jim. Go into Your Account, and the e-mail settings button
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/member/edit_email/
There you will see an option
Enable email notifications by default when you post messages

UNCHECK IT. Once you uncheck it, the “notify me of follow-up comments box” will be automatically unselected.

Also, If you have various threads for which you mistakenly had the “notify me of follow-up comments” box checked and for which you want to UNSUBSCRIBE from future comments, you can go into subscription manager, also in your account control panel:
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/member/edit_subscriptions/

There you can unsubscribe from any comment threads you are subscribed to.

Rather than just tell you how to turn off this feature, however, let me also urge folks to read Greg G’s comment in the same thread, where he explains more about the e-mail settings for the blog and why some folks may want to keep the “notify me of follow up comments” option checked. Most important is his exhortation:

I strongly recommend everyone spend a few minutes poking around in their control panel. You can do a lot to customize the way you experience the site.

Note, what Greg refers to as the “control panel” is accessed with the “Your Account” link, which you can see once you have logged in. You must be a member and logged in to see it. The “Your Account” link is up at the top of the sidebar, above the search box and calendar.

That’s it for today’s lesson. Feel free to let us know what tips and lessons would be helpful. You’ll be able to find all these “Tips” posts by searching on “Blog Tip” or the Admin Category. –elfgirl

Here’s a list of the posts that have gotten the most comments in the past week. Check out any of the discussions you may have missed during the blog transition. Is a “hot topics” category of interest (perhaps for threads of 50+ comments)? or perhaps a regular feature like this entry highlighting the most active discussions? Let us know.

Post Title (Comments as of May 28, 16:00 EDT)

A Note on User Registration and Posting Comments (74)
Speaking in tongues: Faith’s language barrier? (72)
A Statement from Gene Robinson (70)
OPEN THREAD: “Bugs” “Turkeys” “Requests” (54)
Is Everything Fine in the Episcopal Church? (45)
A Letter from Bishop Martyn Minns (31)
Ephraim Radner–Fractured Identity and Broken Trust: TEC’s Invention of Itself (31)
Colorado Congregation Votes to Leave the Episcopal Church (30)
The Episcopal Church ”˜mishandled the debate on human sexuality’ (30)
Bishop Marc Andrus: The Most Noxious Point of the Windsor Report Becomes Reality (30)

By the way: you can search the blog for the posts with the most comments yourself, using the Advanced Search feature. Here’s how:

Go into Advanced Search
Enter “the” as your keyword (Search on Titles, Entries and Comments to make sure you’ll get all posts.)
Choose Titusonenine
Choose Any Category
and then over on the far right choose: “Sort Results By: MOST COMMENTS”

Here’s a link that might work:
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/search/t19results/2fabeeed201ee735f52d70c6d4f29ef0/

Note you could also limit the date range of your search, example “this week and newer.” Try it out!

If you still have trouble registering or logging in after reading this, feel free to write the elves. Please do NOT write Kendall or Greg. Our address: T19elves@yahoo.com

UPDATE 2: Note for AOL users, Greg gives some tips especially for you all here. But we know many are still having trouble. If you write us elves we can register you.
Let’s take a look at a few things you can do to help complete your registration:
1. Remember that registration requires you to sign up, and confirm your registration with an email that is sent to you by our system.

When you sign up, be sure and double-check the email address you provide. If you provide an incorrect email address, your confirmation message will never reach you.

2. Be sure and check your “junk” mailbox, or your spam filter.

The confirmation emails our system sends out occasionally get stuck in your junk folder or your spam filter. If your confirmation message doesn’t show up within a few minutes of signing up, check these places.

3. If you forget your password, please try the system’s “Forgot password?” link first. It’s found on the login screen, and you can also click here. A message will be sent to you that will enable you to recover your password. Again, check your spam filter or junk folder if you use this option.

4. Remember that if you have a Stand Firm account, you can use it at TitusOneNine, and vice-versa. There is no need to create separate accounts.

—-
Update from the elves: We went through the “pending members” list and tried to send e-mails to about 10 folks whose names we recognized as past T19 commenters who appeared to be stuck in “limbo.” In 4 cases, it appears the e-mail address you’ve left is invalid. In two cases it may just be a typo (gmaill (two ls) instead of gmail; or mwn.com instead of msn.com) We’re doing whatever we think of to help folks register, but you MUST have a valid e-mail address. Again, if you need help of any sort re: registration or login, give us a shout: T19elves@yahoo.com

Update — June 1: We’ve made several changes to the blog “pagination” and navigation system overnight. You can learn all about what’s new in today’s “Daily Blog Tip” entry.

An open thread for all reports of “bugs,” and “turkeys” (definitions below) and requests about the blog function & setup.

The Background:
We found a bug with the search feature this morning. It is being worked on and should be almost fixed as I type this. [The links to blog entries which showed up in the search results were giving an error message when one clicked on the article title. Should be fixed very soon we hope. Thanks Greg!] UPDATE: Bug is fixed. Greg rocks!

The Request
Since we made this switch to a new blog quite quickly, there is still a lot to do and you all get a chance to give your input. We need input from you all in three areas:

1. Bugs.
(Something that is not working. It is supposed to do one thing, but does another.)

2. Turkeys.
(Something that is working as it “should” but which is not well designed or helpful, and thus perhaps it can be improved)

3. Requests.
Just that. Your requests. Pure & Simple. The new T19 is still a tabula rasa in some ways (example: the side bar). There are many features we haven’t even begun to work on or set up because we’re still working on the basics, and at least for us elves, still learning the software and what’s possible. What would you like to see here? What features would enhance T19 and make it the truly helpful and powerful resource that we would love it to be?

Many extra pairs of eyes and suggestions will be helpful to us. So, go to it. Many thanks!

— Elfgirl

We thought it would be helpful to create a “blog admin roundup” post with all the links to this week’s admin posts in one place.

Here is a listing of all of this week’s Blog Admin posts with key information to help folks get up to speed with the new blog. I’ve grouped posts into 3 broad categories.

1. Welcome / Blog Overview
— Welcome to the new Site (by Kendall, Tues. May 22)
— This is the new Titusonenine Site, A blog purpose reminder (by Kendall, Tues. May 22)
— Bloggers please update your links to Titusonenine! (elfgirl, Wed. May 23)

2. User Registration and Commenting
— A Note on User Registration and Posting Comments (Greg Griffith, Tues. May 22)
— 15 or more pending members (elfgirl. Tues. May 22)
— Update from elfgirl re: sign in and comment problems (elfgirl, Wed. May 23)

3. Blog Features and Troubleshooting
— OPEN THREAD: Bugs, Turkeys and Requests (elfgirl, Thurs. May 24)

As always, feel free to contact the elves with any questions: T19elves@yahoo.com

Greetings all. As I warned last night, I had to be offline most of the day. I’m now back online (though fading fast) and have waded through 20+ requests for help with registration or login or comment problems which were sent to the elves e-mail address or recorded in comments on various threads.

If you wrote to us with a problem, you should have had a reply from me, and I think in most cases I’ve figured out solutions to the various problems.

If you’re still having trouble, do let us know. Our e-mail: T19elves@yahoo.com

But for tonight, this elf needs to sign off and get some rest after 20 hours at the computer yesterday and all-day meetings today. Catch you all tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll be able to solve any continuing login / comment problems quickly in the morning.

Just a reminder. If you’re one of the dozens of bloggers who have links to Titusonenine in your sidebar. Please update your links! The new link is: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/

This is a test to see if it is possible to use the new categories I have created.
1. New posts. How to categorize.

In the PUBLISH section, when you have finished a post, look for the CATEGORIES tab up top. (the third tab from the left, after publish form and date.)

If you click on the categories tab, you will see a window with ALL the categories. You need to highlight any category you want to include. (Hold down the control key and left click on various categories to highlight multiple selections.) Any chosen categories will be highlighted in blue.

2. When you’re done, scroll down a bit and save or publish your post. (Submit or Update, depending on whether the post is already saved and published or not.)

3. What happens. So far the categories do not seem to be showing up in the public blog page. i.e. I see no “filed under Anglican” or “filed under Admin” type listing. And so far no links on the sidebar to click on a specific category. We’ll get there. Hopefully the categories will somehow be embedded in RSS already and Technorati searches, etc.

4. What IS useful so far and already working is the view post list. If you go to the EDIT Window from the Admin home, you’ll see a list of all the recent posts. Notice at the top of the list, you can filter the list by categories. Try clicking on Admin, for instance in that Filter by Categories box, and then click the blue search box. You’ll see only the 5 entries filed under Admin.

Note that in this list, there is no distinction made between parent & subcategories. They all show up at the same level. So “Anglican” or its subcategory “Lambeth 2008” in this instance are equal. There is no heirarchy here. (I believe there IS elsewhere since the categories clearly display as parent / child)

If you’ve tried to register as a member and have not yet received an e-mail confirmation, feel free to contact us. Our e-mail: {encode=”T19elves@yahoo.com” title=”T19elves@yahoo.com”}

We note at least 15 users who have registered today whose membership status is listed as PENDING. We will be glad to help. Do make sure to check your spam filters to see if the information is there. It will probably be under the address contact@standfirminfaith.com (we hope to change this and have a unique contact e-mail for this blog ASAP).

As you have noticed, because of traffic, the server on the old site simply became unable to handle the blog reliably so we had to move. My intention in the short term is to move the new material here but to keep all the old posts at the old site for research, review, etc.

Comments will follow the same policy here as before (see especially: here), with this difference: in order to comment here you are going to need to use a real email address. As I have said many times I prefer that you do NOT use anonymity for commenting, but if there are strong reasons for you do to so for now that option is still open.

I am sure there will be bumps along the road, and I appreciate your patience and understanding.

——–

The elves second Kendall’s plea for patience. We are on a VERY steep learning curve with the new software. There are many questions to answer and all sorts of tweaks to make, options and preferences to establish. We’ll try to give clear guidance soon about how to register, comment, etc., as soon as it becomes clearer to us as well.

Comments on posts at the old blog will probably be open all this week. After that it is likely that we’ll close all comments there to prevent future spam problems. As far as we know the plan is to keep the old blog online either indefinitely, or until it can be copied over to another site as an archive.

We’re keeping this post up top for awhile since it contains important information. Check for newer entries below. Also don’t miss what Kendall has written about the new site and his comment policy.
————

Hi everyone,

We’re excited to have the new T1:9 up and running. I wanted to mention that everyone who has an account at Stand Firm is ready to post comments here – just log in using your usual user name and password.

If you don’t have an account, click the “Register” link over on the right. Three important reminders:
1. You may register 100% anonymously if you wish, by creating a Yahoo!, HotMail, or similar account, and using that email address when you register here. A confirmation email will be sent to whatever address you provide – that’s why it has to be a real address.

2. The confirmation email that gets sent to you sometimes get caught in spam filters, so if you don’t receive it within a few minutes of registering, please check your junk mailbox.

3. There is a known problem with AOL users who attempt to register using the web browser AOL includes with their service. If you receive an error message telling you you’re not authorized to register, please use another web browser. I recommend downloading Firefox (it’s free). Log on to AOL as usual, quit their web browser, then use Firefox to complete your registration.

This is a big change for Kendall, the elves, and me, but I’ll be working hard to make the transition as smooth as possible for them, so please be patient!

– Greg Griffith

A blog purpose reminder
Here is a reminder of the purpose of this blog when it was started in March, 2003:

A free floating commentary on culture, politics, economics, and religion based on a passionate commitment to the truth and a desire graciously to refute that which is contrary to it”¦.