OPEN THREAD: "Bugs" "Turkeys" "Requests"

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

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Posted in * Admin, Blog Tips & Features

78 comments on “OPEN THREAD: "Bugs" "Turkeys" "Requests"

  1. Phil says:

    I’ve had the same problem at SF. Not the most robust search feature in the world. You’d do better with an advanced search at Google.

  2. The_Elves says:

    Phil, Greg is working on fixing the problem with invalid URLs as I write this. It should be soon fixed for both blogs.

    QUESTION: what would be helpful in the search feature? Not sure if there are tweaks that can be made to the system, but if possible, what would you like to see?

  3. Dave C. says:

    I’m glad to see there is now an advanced search option, but I was disappointed that there is not a NOT or EXCLUDE function, which can be very useful. Is there any way such a function could be added?

  4. Pageantmaster Ù† says:

    Dear Worthy Elves

    (1) One of the strengths of the old site was the ability to just scroll back to an article – you knew there was something you had seen around a particular time but couldn’t remember the thread. Is there a feature here (or at SF for that matter) to see the complete blog archive chronologically or have monthly archives one can search through

    (2) Yesterday I noticed that I had to dig out my password; the remember on next login feature did not seem to work as it does on SF but I noticed today that having logged in to SF I was logged in here.

    Neither a priority, but in case it helps. You have done an amazing job getting this up and running just as everything goes bezerk!

    Thanks

    ——-
    As with the old blog, you can use the calendar for each day’s archive. Click on the date you want to see. This elf would very much second the request for a monthly archive!

  5. Phil says:

    I second Pageantmaster. One of the things I don’t like about SF and miss with the old T19 is the ability to click a day on the calendar and see the threads for the day.

    This is just constructive criticism, though. Greg’s done a great job with SF and, now, T19.

  6. Phil says:

    Never mind, I see the calendar now. Was that there a couple days ago? I know it isn’t on the SF home page.

    Thanks, elves!

  7. The_Elves says:

    Something this elf would find useful, since I tend to read almost everything on T19 is to have “scroll links” (is that the right word?) for next entry and previous entry, so one could theoretically start reading one article at the top, and then with one click read the next article (opening into the full text, including comments) and so on down the page, without having to click back to the main page of the blog.

    That also raises a QUESTION: how many entries do we want to show on the home page? We used to do about 20-25 on the old blog. Kendall tends to average about 15-20 posts a day, but that can rise to 30 or more when there is a busy news cycle. (The number of posts also goes up if/when we elves are involved in posting stuff, as in this week when we’re doing a lot of blog admin posts πŸ˜‰ ).

    I hope next PAGE / previous PAGE links would be possible as we had in the CaNNet version of Titusonenine.

    –elfgirl

  8. The_Elves says:

    Another request from the elves, this one related to elfing and comment moderation (Greg, I promise to TRY to be good and not monopolize this thread, LOL! But this was your idea… %-P )

    This is purely a request of something that would be helpful. Before in WordPress, if we were logged in as administrators, we could click on the comments while reading a post to either edit them or delete them. (There was a small edit icon (the letter e) visible to us next to the comment time stamp. One click took us into editing mode of the comment.)

    Now here we have to go separately into the Expression Engine control panel, go to the edit tab, find the comment in question, and then click on it to edit it. It can be a 4-5 click process. Never less than 3 clicks. Very time consuming and click-intensive. Hope there’s a way to simplify the process.

  9. lauren says:

    Elves (#8), I’d like to see less text but more posts on the home page, so ideally we could see all the posts from one day by scrolling down. I’d much rather click the “read more” link than have to scroll through the full text of a statement on the main page. And where are the category links that were on the right-hand side of the old page? I found those more useful than the search feature, and would love to have them return. Thanks so much for all your hard work!

  10. The_Elves says:

    Good news. The search feature bug is fixed. EXCELLENT

  11. Greg Griffith says:

    Kendall and elves,

    re #10 – Lauren:

    This can be achieved by putting less text in the “Body” field and more in the “Extended” field.

  12. Pageantmaster Ù† says:

    #8 Elves – a separate FAQ, archive, detailed search and user instruction page if you don’t want to clutter up the front page?

    Push-me pull-you feature would be great but maybe not necessary as the calendar is a great feature which does the same pretty much as the old system.

  13. Br_er Rabbit says:

    This suggestion was from JohnG on SF, and I heartily agree and submit it to you as a needed improvement:

    would you consider changing the site so that getting emails when further comments are posted is NOT the default? Or providing that one only gets the responses when the later comment is a specific response to the comment someone has posted? I forgot to uncheck the other day, and nearly a hundred emails later, I felt as though it was going to break my mouse.

  14. The_Elves says:

    Lauren (#10), I won’t presume to answer about the “less text per post” request as that’s a style thing and is mostly Kendall’s call.

    As to categories, our expectation is that they’ll be there on the sidebar eventually, as well as in the posts themselves (filed under “Category A,” “Category B” etc.).

    We’ve already started setting up the new category framework and begun categorizing posts. Now that the search feature is working again, you can already begin to make use of the categories, even before they appear in the posts or sidebar. Here’s how.

    1. Go to advanced search
    http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/search/

    2. Assuming you want to see all posts in a given category and are not actually WANTING to search by a specific key word, enter the word “the” in the keyword box. (there may be some other way around this, but it seems search demands a key word of at least 3 characters.)

    3. A little below, in the weblog box make sure to select Titusonenine

    4. To the right of the weblog box, you’ll see the category box. You can choose from one OR multiple T19 categories. (to choose multiple categories, hold down the control key while you left click on each category you want to include.)

    5. Click on search. The posts for those categories should be displayed. (Of course you can limit your search by date, etc. as well.)

    A few notes:

    A. Although we’re setting up the categories as a hierarchical system similar to what we had on the old blog, the hierarchy does not show up in the search box. Right now, all categories are displayed alphabetically regardless of whether it is a parent category or a subcategory. E.G. Anglican is a parent category. Lambeth 2008 is a subcategory of Anglican. But they appear as equals in this list. We may make some changes to the listing of categories as needed to work around this if it seems like a problem.

    B. As now configured, clicking on two or more categories brings up ALL results for posts classified in ANY of the selected categories. There does not seem to be a way to do a search for posts classified in ALL of the selected categories.
    — i.e. We’d hoped to create several “Meta-categories” including Analysis, Commentary and News, allowing people to select, for example, Lambeth 2008 and Commentary to bring up all the opinion pieces about the Lambeth 2008 invites, and excluding all the mainstream press news articles (which would be filed under Latest News). But so far that is not possible. As someone mentioned above, an “EXCLUDE” option would be nice.

    If anyone is interested in helping us come up with categories, let us know. (Please e-mail us separately on that: T19elves@yahoo.com and mention T19 categories in your e-mail subject line. Don’t post category ideas here. Thanks) It’s a big project, and we want to choose categories that are helpful and match how readers use the blog for information without having too overwhelming of a list, (as perhaps we did on the old blog?)

  15. The_Elves says:

    Following up to Lauren’s #10 and Greg’s #12 re: amount of text to display per post. We elves are already tending to use the extended text section (i.e. including a “read more” link to see the full post)

    Kendall may or may not choose to do so. Some folks may like to see a bit more text without having to click on the longer article. As Kendall posts things now, it does allow one to get a pretty good overview of the day’s Anglican news without having to click on a lot of entries. I imagine readers may be split in two camps on this.

    An idea for a compromise based on something we could do in WordPress (the old blog). We could set it up so the daily archive (clicking on the calendar for a given date) showed only the headlines or the first few lines of each blog entry.

    See here for an example of what that looked like on old T19 for May 22:
    http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?m=20070522
    only the beginning of each entry was displayed.

    In search, we had it configured that only titles showed up. See here for an example of a search using the word Lambeth:
    http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?s=Lambeth

    Greg, what is possible?
    Readers: WHAT DO YOU LIKE?? Let us know!

    My own proposal would be to duplicate that set up here.
    1. Main blog page very similar to the way things are now and as they were on old T19, which does mean some longer entries.
    2. Daily archive (clicking on calendar) brings up short excerpts.
    3. Search leave alone, as it already just brings up the title and date of the posts in question.

    That would mean less work for Kendall. He doesn’t have to fuss with the extended text feature (which means breaking up an entry and cutting and pasting the extended section into a separate section of the publish window.) It also gives greater flexibility to accomodate different blog reading styles & preferences. Those who want to see the “Day at a glance” with a minimum of scrolling, use the calendar.

  16. Greg Griffith says:

    There will likely be little customization of the search feature’s functional aspects – that would mean modifying ExpressionEngine’s core code, and while I’m a better-than-competent PHP programmer, I’m not about to step into the dojo of ExpressionEngine.

    Re amount of text on the home page: Currently the Summary field is set to display indented and italicized; the Body field is set to display normally, and the Extended field is set to display only in the individual post pages. Within that configuration, it’s possible to have very fine control over the amount of text that appears on the home page.

    Re notification emails: Most people don’t know that they have pretty extensive control over their email subscriptions. Go to your control panel and look in that section. You can unsubscribe thread-by-thread, if you wish. You can choose not to receive comment notifications. You can choose not to receive any email of any kind at all.

    I believe “Smart Notification” is the feature that sends you one email whenever a subseuent comment is made on a thread you comment on; but doesn’t send you any more after that. I believe it’s off by default.

    The reason I wouldn’t change that setting is that I know some poeple prefer to keep track of comment threads that way – they can glance at the email, read the comment, and if they don’t want to respond to it, they just delete the email, and not head over to the site. Otherwise, to keep abreast of comments, they’d have to keep returning to the site.

    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.

  17. Militaris Artifex says:

    I would personally like to see:

    1. Something at or close to a “full boolean search” specification option, even if it doesn’t include sub-selects.
    2. Keep the post numbers, and we should all encourage everyone responding to a post to use them, even if they use the primary one + “et al.” This is a second to #3, Dave C‘s, motion.
    3. I tend to prefer seeing a fair bit of each post, much the way Kendall+ was doing it, over a short blurb and a “read more” link.
    4. Returning titles only from a search works for me.
    5. W.r.t. #15, Note B: Even just indenting the subcategories under their parent would work well, and although it might involve adding a few blank spaces, it wouldn’t involve any programming.

    Other than these minor issues, you have done a marvelous job.

    Kind regards,
    Martial Artist

  18. The_Elves says:

    One more contribution from me, which I’d already suggested to Greg via e-mail on Tuesday when we launched. Figured it couldn’t hurt to consolidate all the requests here.

    I’d love there to be a little iconic symbol that shows up in browsers and bookmarks for Titusonenine (as StandFirm has with its blue/red shield and cross logo). I use bookmarks so extensively that the little graphic eye-catcher really helps me find my place in my bookmarks list.

    This one is definitely NOT urgent. It would be a nice and cool little “perk” of the redesign — but it would be cool, especially with the wonderful new header for the blog.

  19. Militaris Artifex says:

    Well, sorry. I misplaced my note about Dave c‘s comment. It should have been appended to my comment item 1.
    Martial Artist

  20. Militaris Artifex says:

    #19,
    Strongly concur, for precisely the reasons given.

  21. Christie says:

    I would like the width of the columns to be smaller. It is too wide for the eyes to take in at one time. (From an old journalism major)

  22. Greg Griffith says:

    Re: the little icon in the tab. Done.

    πŸ˜‰

  23. The_Elves says:

    Oh too cool Greg! I feel like a kid in a candy shop! But you’ve satisfied my sweet tooth. I’ll be a quiet little girl now πŸ˜‰

  24. The_Elves says:

    #22. If you don’t view the blog as a full page window, the text column will automatically narrow. I often have a left hand column of bookmarks displaying and thus the blog fills up only about 2/3rds the width of my screen. Perhaps try experimenting with something like that?

  25. Janis says:

    I really liked your stated purpose from 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 itÒ€¦.”

    How about having it always show on the main page as a reminder to all as to what you are about?

  26. The_Elves says:

    Janis, #26, we were thinking the same thing. Imagine we’ll do that, perhaps at the top of the sidebar on the right, with the About T19 links.

    By the way, I just thought of a request for feedback from y’all. We’ve done a few “sticky” posts already this week. (Keeping a specific post or several posts up at the top so it is always available. New material appears below. This thread is in fact one of the sticky ones.) Anyone have feedback on that pro or con?

    It’s something we couldn’t do in the old blog (or didn’t know how to do there). We occasionally would change the time stamp of posts on certain threads (remember those Diocesan Convention news updates?) and “bump them up top”, but they didn’t stay on top, they immediately started moving down again when Kendall posted something new.

    Is it helpful to keep important info threads up top from time to time, or would readers rather that we avoid that so you can IMMEDIATELY see what’s new and whether the blog has been updated?

  27. The_Elves says:

    Greg, in the interest of consolidating requests, just thought of another request I’d e-mailed you about.

    RSS feed for comments would be nice.

  28. Irenaeus says:

    I like:

    — the LARGE FONT, which is better both for reading others’ comments and editing one’s own;

    — NUMBERING comments (like Old T19 and unlike Stand Firm), which facilitates reference to others’ comments;

    — the PREVIEW function;

    — the fact that comments do not TIME out as they did on Old T19.

    If narrower columns (as requested by #22) were to mean a smaller font, I’d say keep the columns wide. Those who find a long line hard to follow might consider focusing on the lines at the top or bottom of the screen, where the margin provides a sort of guidepost for scanning.

    Old T19 had a simple, reliable internal SEARCH function. FWIW, I had more success with it than with its Stand Firm counterpart, which has often turned up goose eggs.

    Stand Firm has a nice feature by which you can exchange e-mails with other users without making your e-mail address available to others.

    I will follow Greg’s advice [#17] to explore the control panel.

  29. Irenaeus says:

    For the Department of Advanced Wish Lists . . .

    For those of us who have cleared cookies from our web browser since we last visited T19, it would be handy to have a log-in link at the bottom of the page—so that when we go to there to comment and find that we need to log in, we needn’t go back to the top of the page. (But this is not a big deal.)

  30. Greg Griffith says:

    Tip:

    Numbered comments are fine, and I might add that to SF, but the comment links here and at SF are meant to help commenters refer to previous comments. Like this… if I want to refer to Martial Artist’s comment at #18:

    http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/3111/#55868

    You can just right-click [comment link] under the comment you want to link to, choose “Copy link location,” and paste it into the comment box. The system will link it automatically.

  31. Greg Griffith says:

    Irenaeus,

    For you… anything… :coolsmile:

    Log out and scroll to the bottom of this page.

  32. The Lakeland Two says:

    Thanks for having the password reset option (emailing help in getting it reset). Being a blonde isn’t helpful.. . And I’ve written down the new one, THANK YOU!!!!

  33. fatherlee says:

    The layout isn’t as good as it was before on my phone’s web browser.
    I don’t know how many people read T19 on their Blackberry or Smartphone, but I always did.

    Now, the text only goes 2/3 of the way across the screen. I think the reason is that the right-hand content doesn’t get bumped down to the bottom. Maybe you could provide a text-only mobile version? That would be so cool!

  34. Greg Griffith says:

    fatherlee,

    Lean, mobile-friendly versions of T1:9 and SF are both in the works.

  35. fatherlee says:

    Sughwweeet!

    Let me know if you need someone to do testing.

  36. ruidh says:

    The emails saying that there have been further responses to a tiopic look like they are coming from Stand Firm. I know that the hosting is somewhat shared, but it would be much cleaner if the code generating the email used a different from address referencing kendallharmon.net.

  37. Irenaeus says:

    Greg: You are, as always, first-rate and first-class.

  38. Greg Griffith says:

    ruidh,

    That’s on my list.

  39. KAR says:

    Somehow more white space might make the post easier to read. The old site and SF used the margins for this purpose. I’m finding the new layout a bit more difficult to read.

  40. pilgrim kate says:

    I’m not complaining, as I’m too inexpert to know what is involved in even the smallest changes, and I’m very grateful for this site.

    However, I, too, preferred the narrower columns, and I’m not inclined to clutter up the page further by making the window smaller by adding a bookmarks/favorites column to my screen. The clean layout of the old site was excellent. Even when the news items were steam-inducing, the graphics were calming.

    Thank you for keeping the opening paragraphs on the main page as it makes scrolling easy. I find the pattern at StandFirm of giving only news headlines less helpful as I can’t decide whether I’m interested in the topic just from headlines.

  41. Karen B. says:

    Greg, it seems Advanced Search is still not working. URLs showing up are giving a StandFirm address and are invalid. Basic Search is fine.

    example:
    http://www.standfirminfaith.com/site/article/3148
    (incorrect link as it shows up in Advanced search)

    versus the correct link as shows up in Basic search
    http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/3148

  42. Greg Griffith says:

    Karen,

    Advanced Search is fixed, but I’d still like to constrain the weblog parameter to T1:9. Back to the manual…

  43. Greg Griffith says:

    Ehh… who needs the manual when you have cavalier assumptions about syntax that happen to work…

    Fixed.

    πŸ˜›

  44. Militaris Artifex says:

    I think you need a broader selection of HTML tags available, such as is possible on the SFIF pages. I just tried to use and it isn’t parsed as a tag. I suspect that will fall into the same category. Those are very useful, especially if one wants to footnote something in a post.
    Thanks,

  45. Janis says:

    The Elves, #27,
    Glad to hear you will make your “purpose” visible at all times.

    How about showing/adopting Theolog’s comment policy that you posted May 20? It is most excellent.

    I say YES to the “sticky” idea.

    I, too, found the old layout easier to read but maybe I am just not used to the new look yet. Otherwise, this is a great move!

    Thanks!

  46. Janis says:

    On the other hand the bigger font is easier on the eyes…
    I am in agreement with #29 Irenaeus.

  47. sandiegoanglicans.com says:

    First off, I dig the new site. Great work w/ the transition everyone.

    Since you asked…

    Requests
    Ditto #28, re: RSS feed for comments.
    http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/3111/#55982

    Ditto # 10 , re: smaller teasers on main page with “read more” link.
    http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/3111/#55738

    Very Small Turkey – more like a Pea Hen
    When in control panel, the top nav bar says “Stand Firm > …” but it really takes you back to page of origin. Maybe change it to, “Home > …” or, “Blog > …”

    Golden Eagle
    I see the work has already been done to the RSS feed since the other day, making several templates available on-click and including the top-level domain. This should all make it easier for folks to grab, tag, & syndicate the feed. Thanks! It’s displaying & working much better for me now in my.yahoo.

    Pie-in-the-sky-fun-with-PHP
    Social tagging of content by users as a secondary view of site content. Categories as cloud, configurable by users. Users get their own view and editors learn about how the content is consumed. Perhaps, user-controlled main template. Then, everyone gets what they want.

  48. Greg Griffith says:

    sda,

    When in control panel, the top nav bar says Ò€œStand Firm > …Ò€ but it really takes you back to page of origin. Maybe change it to, Ò€œHome > …Ò€ or, Ò€œBlog > …Ò€

    I’m still hunting down all the places where this occurs – thanks for noting this.

  49. libraryjim says:

    I like not having to do the math, but the “notify me of follow-up comments” button is really annoying. If I don’t “un-check” it, my e-mail box fills up every time someone posts a comment.

  50. Sherri says:

    I disagree with #48 – I think teasers should vary in size as appropriate – some only need a small tease, but others merit more. I’ve been satisfied with the way Dr. Harmon has handled this.

  51. The_Elves says:

    #50, 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

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

    If you have various threads for which you mistakenly had the notify me of follow-up comments box checked and for which you DON’T want to receive 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.

  52. libraryjim says:

    Thanks, Elves!
    Jim Elliott

  53. Militaris Artifex says:

    Greg,
    Any thoughts on my request for recognition of additional HTML tags, posted at #45???
    Thanks,
    Martial Artist

  54. Dr. Priscilla Turner says:

    I am getting duplicate emails notifying me of follow-up comments. Earlier I got only one. Double for all my sins, or something?

  55. fatherlee says:

    When do the links go in?

  56. The_Elves says:

    As soon as we can fatherlee.

    The learning curve for the new software is pretty steep. Expression Engine is much more geared to experienced web-designers, whereas Word Press was a bit more “ready to use off the shelf” — we’re basically making up a new theme and blog design from scratch rather than tweaking an already existing theme. Huge difference, at least for this elf whose tech expertise is only middling. So, please be patient. We’ve sent our wishlist to Greg. We’ll see what he can do when, or what we can do ourselves once we get a few pointers from him.

  57. Militaris Artifex says:

    To The-Elves:
    I have sent a couple of Private Messages to Greg (1 yesterday and 2 this morning, PDT) concerning some mystifying behavior of the rendering engine at SFIF. The emails included attachments (txt & jpg) that illustrate the problems. Do you know if he accepts PMs? If so, I don’t want to “bug” him further (forgive the pun) about “the bug” in the software, but will await further word from him.

    Thanks and kind regards,
    Martial Artist.

  58. Peter in Fairfax says:

    Can I make a request for Kendall’s normal formatting? It would be very helpful if he could put blockquote tags around the news items that are quoting from other sites; I often get confused about attribution of sources. That way he wouldn’t have to put his own comments in italics.

    Cheers
    Peter

  59. The_Elves says:

    Martial Artist (#58), I assume Greg accepts PMs. I know he’s swamped.

    Peter (#59) I’ll forward your request on to Kendall. It may be hard to break him out of his current style after something close to 20,000 blog entries between the old blog and this one!

  60. The_Elves says:

    Greg, another case where the name “Stand Firm” shows up instead of Titusonenine.

    When one goes into one’s account control panel, up in the upper left hand corner where the website “tree” is displayed (i.e. where you can click back to get to the previous page), it shows “Stand Firm”
    Example:
    Stand Firm > Login
    or:
    Stand Firm > Control Panel Home > Email Settings

    Though in both cases, when one clicks on “Stand Firm” one correctly gets back to the T19 home page. So this is not a big problem, just a case of trying to minimize confusion and help differentiate the two blogs for users.

    –elfgirl

    Ack. Sorry. I see this is the same thing sda already raised and you noted in #48 / #49. NEVER MIND and sorry for the duplicate. It’s been a long few days.

  61. The_Elves says:

    Greg, I may be seconding Martial Artist’s (#58) comment about some weird HTML rendering.
    See my comments #17 and #18 on this thread:
    http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/3228/

    In #17 the italic didn’t render properly
    in #18 the blockquote didn’t render properly.

    The software turned my angle brackets into the &lt and &gt codes, causing the HTML not to render.

    Perhaps it is something in what I was quoting from Cousin Vinnie (the em dash, or the scare quotes perhaps??) that caused the funny rendering?

    When I wasn’t quoting Cousin Vinnie, the software handled my code fine.

  62. Militaris Artifex says:

    Greg & The_Elves,

    I tend to doubt that it is the mdash, as I experimented with that (using only the preview pane), and adding or removing the mdash made no difference in behavior. A behavior I have experienced twice now (once yesterday in preview, and again today (this instance didn’t occur in preview but did in the resulting post) was the disappearance of the balance of a paragraph, beginning with a properly italicized word or phrase. In both observed cases the part missing began the opening italic tag. Hope these snippets of observation are a help in diagnosis.

  63. Greg Griffith says:

    Martial Artist,

    I do accept PM’s, and I see yours in there. Sadly, Karen is right – I’m swamped. In addition to my “real” work, Stand Firm activity generates about 850 emails a day. Most of these are filtered automatically either to the commenatrix or the trash can, but I still get about 100 emails a day I have to at least glance at.

    I’ve seen that weird HTML formatting thing, and I believe it has to do with using the preview. It’s another glitch I’d really like to fix, but it may be several days before I can get to it.

    As to the “Stand Firm” breadcrumb, that’s a more complicated issue. Technically, TitusOneNine is a sub-blog of Stand Firm, but it’s published to its own domain (which is itself an alias on our server – don’t get me started). While there are many things I can customize for the two blogs (the search pages, for example), I’m seeing that there are a few things that are simply going to reflect the organization of the two sites within the same system. There’s very little ExpressionEngine can’t do, though, and I believe I can address this, but it will definitely take a back seat to things like the HTML weirdness, which actually affect the operation of the blog.

    Thanks to everybody for taking the time to explain your observations and suggestions. You’ll see that they get addressed in bursts and lulls, which reflect the rhythm of my work schedule, so don’t think I’m ignoring anything! :coolsmile:

  64. The_Elves says:

    Greg, a question.
    Tried to use advanced search to find all threads where a certain member had commented. (I know how to do it as an elf in the Blog Admin control panel…), but I was hoping it was possible for mere mortals in the regular Advanced Search.

    Is the search on Member Name only for authors of blog entries? Whenever I try to search for various commenters I get this message:
    Your search did not return any results.
    (I was doing the broadest possible search, including comments, not just entries.)

  65. Militaris Artifex says:

    Greg,
    Thanks for the reply. It is really the case that you do a marvelous job, not even considering that you actually have a “real” job which must take priority over the blogs. I just wanted to make sure you had as much info as I could provide.
    Blessings and regards,
    Martial Artist

  66. The_Elves says:

    Maybe this is a problem with my browser, but I can no longer click on all the active days of the calendar for May. The calendar should be clickable from May 22 onwards.

    I can’t click now on May 22, May 23, May 25, and some of those earlier posts have now scrolled off the main page so there is no other way to see them!

    Note to readers. The URLs for specific days still seem to work, even if the calendar does not work for all days!

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

  67. Br_er Rabbit says:

    REQUEST:
    In the upper right hand corner of the blog homepage, I see:

    Blog Homepage
    Members: Login | Register

    whereas, in the upper right hand corner of this page, I see:

    Blog Homepage
    Welcome, Br_er Rabbit
    Your Account | Logout

    When I first bring up the Titusonenine url, I am left wondering whether I am logged in or not. Could you display the information that this page seems to know so that it will show on the Blog Homepage? That will also provide a logout button accessible on the homepage.
    Thanks,
    Br_er

  68. Dr. Priscilla Turner says:

    Could I mention again plaintively that I still get every email notification of a new posting to a given thread in duplicate?

  69. samh says:

    2 Quick Things:
    1) I appreciate the Next/Previous Entry links, but is there anyway they could be higher on the page, instead of after the comments?
    2) Is there a way to put a “e-mail this story” link on pages so that we can send an email to someone with a link to a story (and maybe a little snippet)?

  70. samh says:

    Oh, one more thing…

    Is there perhaps a plugin of some kind for EE that would allow comments to be posted by AJAX instead of by submitting a form? I know there is one for moderating/editing comments, I believe.

  71. The_Elves says:

    Hi Br_er, Priscilla and samh.
    Just wanted to let you know we are still monitoring this thread.

    #68: Will see what I can do. But I had nothing to do with setting up the login link, etc. so that may need Greg to do it.

    #69: I’ve alerted Greg G. to your comment. I know nothing about the system that sends out e-mail in response to comments.

    #70: I can probably handle request #1 of #70 (next/previous links) myself.
    Not sure if I know how to do an e-mail this story link. Will see. Not going to be my highest priority.

    #71: I’m clueless. Will let Greg reply.

    Hopefully we can get some of these things done quickly.
    elfgirl

  72. Randy Muller says:

    I was going to write it up, but noticed that Br_er Rabbit noticed the exact same thing I noticed in #68, so I second his remarks in that post.

    Stand Firm works correctly, and I would just ask that this site’s login indicator be made similar.

  73. The_Elves says:

    Randy and Br_er, just to let you know, we forwarded your comment on to Greg G. He thinks the home page login display should be working correctly now. If you continue to have this problem, it could be something to do with what bookmark or cookie you are using.
    http://Kendallharmon.net
    or
    http://new.kendallharmon.net/t19
    Both get you to the blog. But I think only the latter works properly in terms of allowing you to see your login status when you are viewing the homepage.

  74. Randy Muller says:

    Bug:

    The display of the following article

    http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/3751

    is messed up. The text of the comments overflows the right margin, and is written on top of the sidebar text. It is wrong in both IE 7 and Firefox 2.

    Other articles are fine. That is the only one I can find that is screwed up in that particular manner.

  75. Randy Muller says:

    I did a little research for “fun”, and found that the problem is stems from comment #84:

    http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/3751#67941

    Moreover, I determined the cause: The line containing the link to [part of link deleted] global_south_primates_response_to_archbishop_rowan_williams/ is so long, with no embedded spaces, that it causes Firefox and IE to change the width of the whole section, thus overlapping the sidebar and making it unreadable. Although this is the fault of IE and Firefox, and may even be correct behavior according to the RFC, it sucks from a user point of view.

    I suggest a workaround in the php code that is generating this page: Ensure that no line contains more than n consecutive non-blank characters. I don’t know what n should be, but for me, the link being 113 is way too long. I think a reasonable limit is 80 or even 50. The goal is to prevent the whole comment section from being messed up.

    Spaces could be inserted every 50 or 80 characters to break up the line, and prevent the problem.

    Posters who want to post more than 50 or 80 consecutive non-blank characters do so under their own risk!

    (Interesting! I just previewed this text and the long line blows the width of the section (as before), but it does not mess up the rest of the section. So there is some additional condition I have not identified which messes up the whole section. If this were the behavior in the comments of that article, I would consider it acceptable “as is”.)

  76. Militaris Artifex says:

    Randy,
    It would probably just be more direct for posters who want to include a hyperlink to simply get a tinyurl from this site on the web: tinyurl.com. Doing so returned me a tinyurl of “http://tinyurl.com/9xqg6″, which, if you copy it to your browser (omitting the quotation marks) will take you to the same site (Primates Response to Archbishop Rowan Williams.”

  77. The_Elves says:

    When we see long links, we usually try to shorten them. But both of the primary “comment patrol” elves have been off duty much of this week, so it’s been catch as catch can. Thanks for the heads up.

    We’ve shortened the link on the thread with the original problem.
    We’re going to remove the long link in #76 as well to stop the formatting problem on this thread