Let me know in the comments.
11:25am Update – things went very late last night, so this is still a rough draft. There’s lots of tweaking to do, and we’re just getting started on that. Thanks for the feedback!
– Okay. I’ve made a few changes based on Kate’s requirements. A few things though, captcha stays. It will help eliminate the 20/hour spam comments that SDA got on a regular basis. When we have that many spams, we don’t even look at the spam comments to decide if batb’s (as an example) is clean because the url had the word ‘ban’ in it. We just delete them all. So, the captcha will help you too.
See below the fold for up to date changes.
Cheers,
lance
– I eliminated the Movable Type registration option as the email system is borked. You can still use the other major ID providers.
– We’ve moved to blacklisting services on domain/IP’s and Typepad anti-spam as well as keywork lookups, link counts (>2 gets flagged) (looking at you maz2) and standard IP banning. The previous setup of Akismet + keywords + IP bans wasn’t robust enough. This improvement should reduce proxies (read: trolls) and known spammers.
– Some wonky layout issues have been resolved.
– I’m going to work on the left sidebar disappearing issue. It’s all stylesheet stuff with div’s and spans so it’ll take me a while to find the comfortable middle. The old SDA was table based and that was horrendous to edit. FWIW, the sidebar removing itself is sold as a feature so that the main column stays available to the readers without side-scrolling.
– Changes will continue until Kate is happy. To that end there are things that aren’t ever going to change. SDA will always be black on white. We may add some whitespace here and there or a rule but thats it. The general layout you see is what it will always be. Consistency and branding are important, they won’t change.
– Please have some patience with us. Our end is completely different too and we may have some errors (moving to a rich text editor rather than html) for instance. It’ll take a while to get all of the surprises out of the way and to learn the new work-arounds.
– moved the target=_blank to the the main index and archive pages only. Removed it from the html head template. Should reduce all the extra tabs from clicks on the entry pages.
– Removed duplication of the blogroll
– Caching most of the stuff now. Will be slow for the first loader, but after that is only one lookup and a page serve.
– Yes, Black Mamba, the del tag works now.
– re: the captcha. Users signed in with one of the ID providers that SDA supports (see the sign in link above the comment area), don’t get the captcha image.
– Down to 19 validator errors. Vast majority are from links in posts that use a ‘=’ or a ‘&’ in the url. Embedding Youtube and Twitter also clog the validator with non-valid XHTML.
– Search function now works _very_ well.
First comment on the new platform! The site looks mostly the same.
The page is just wide enough that a few letters on the right side are off the display unless one uses the ‘window bar’ at the bottom of the screen to move the block to the left.
Other than that it’s OK. The captcha thingie is a bit of a bother but if it filters spam I guess it’s worth it.
We can reply now? This is weird. I fear change.
The day/date breakpoints on the main page seem to be missing.
The date header appears on individual post pages, but the old system of all of the days posts being bracketed by Date headers isn’t working.
Too white!
This seems like a lot of trouble to go to, what with the apocalypse happening in the next few hours. (I’m testing out the “reply” function.)
Maybe I really am a conservative as I prefer the old site. Most annoying aspect of the new format is the wider screen whereas the old SDA would easily fit onto my laptop screen. Also, instead of launching a new tab, on the new SDA the current tab is replaced with the link. Not a big fan of captcha as it can be incredibly annoying at times although I suppose it will deter spam and people who aren’t too drunk to type, but too inebriated to figure out the captcha letters.
Should have done a screen capture of the old site but I just figured it would stay the same forever. Are there no longer any constants in the world?
Are there no longer any constants in the world?
The Pope is still Catholic
Thanks for reminding me, Black Mamba. Given the circumstances, it would have been best for the end of the world to happen with the old site format. Now I have to worry whether I’ll be going to work in the morning or whether I’ll be living in a Mad Max world where the crystal skulls begin to talk. At least the days are finally going to get longer as these short days are no fun and putting the end of the world at this time of the year will really depress a lot of people. Can’t remember if the Mayans really knew something or whether they just ran out of space on their calendar. When you’re chiseling calendars into stone adding more space is a bit more difficult than adding a few more pages to a modern calendar.
Not a problem, but an improvement:
links are now active w/o html tags…. thanks
Can’t remember if the Mayans really knew something or whether they just ran out of space on their calendar
The Mayan calender is circular, ya know, like a clock. Circles don’t have an end, it just starts another 5000 year cycle.
Oh brother! More codes to fill out . The world has become one big lock.
Much faster loading and refreshing. Captcha is what it is. Good one folks.
I think you only have to do it once, Rev. Aside from the “Captcha” thing, but these ones are legible at least.
I’m having to do the captcha thingie every time for a preview and submit
I guess the Mayan take was all about change…this is the dawning of the age of…5T5x3s
I have to agree with Loki. The open new tab on clicking a link was a nice feature of SDA and I always thought it made the site stand out from the rest.
I see all you other dead people figured it out 2…Crazy…
Just like the millennial apocalypse, all the alleged suspense was spoiled for me when a news guy said he’d already heard from his brother in New Zealand and all was well. There should be a spoiler alert from different time zones!
BTW, the captcha is legible and easy to use, unlike some.
I don’t know if it’s a bug or feature,,,
But if you reply to a comment shouldn’t it be bracketed off and under the original comment?
It would seem more logical that way.
Congrats on the upgrade not crashing.
(or is this the beta version?)
8nkyf9
Thia is horrible…zippy fast, easy security feature and bright white backgrounds…
If you are supposed to have a left sidebar, check the use of of DIV /DIV tags in your main page code (suggest removing them). Some blogging platforms (wordpress is notorious for this) can’t handle them and it interferes with the layout. The typical result is frame display errors.
signed up, it said it sent an e-mail, didn’t
not a big deal, I don’t comment much these days
Turn off comment reply in posts – all it does is encourage commenter flamewars amongst themselves. If you get much traffic at all in a post, it will make the post pretty much unreadable pretty quick. As previous, let commenters manual pick what they want to refer to – it challenges them to take the time to think about what they write, and it reduces flamewar spamming. Think “reply all” in emails…
Captcha is a nuisance if you really don’t have bot-spam issues (yours doesn’t seem to have a re-gen feature, which is an issue for us senior eyes at times).
Ok, just figured out the sidebar issue – platform requires a set minimum width – ie doesn’t auto-format frames. This is a step backward. This might be problematic in some tablets.
Native font size is pretty small too… 🙂 cranky buggers aren’t we, considering what we pay for it… LOL.
I’d say you’re pretty much unreadable, stupid-head 😉
W3C found 92
🙁
Oh no,
Not sure
Has the left side disappeared ? Is there no longer a left hand bar? Has it gone forever?
Don’t like the links not opening in another tab, thats somehow not so good, don’t like Drudge and Breitbart for the same reason, and as I’ve just found out you lose the comment if you navigate away from the page.
I signed up about 5 hours ago and same as dwright not got email, which it said something about?
Is it faster? I don’t know I never had a problem, hope its worth it, and I hope out wasn’t just pandering.
Small note: the Blogroll appears to be repeated, but I like the organization (which I think is new).
I like it all, particularly the improved comments features (Reply, wider carriage and improved hyper-links feature — the latter of should make a big difference on the Reader Tips thread).
IMO, folks should use discretion around Reply (which I think will improve focus, rather than diminish it). I normally find that once one gets beyond one or two replies, flamewar or not, the discussion is generally starting to meander badly. Losing this function due to misuse would be a loss to all.
Seems to work just fine. The initial “loading” of the site is quicker, which is nice.
Looks good, Kate. Always an informative and entertaining read.
Looks OK to me, clear and bright.
Not a huge deal, but I liked the way that comments opened in a new window, rather than the way you go back and forth between the main page and the comments page.
I assume it is a necessity these days, but I don’t like Captchas either. All in all it will still be my favourite blog. Who would have imagined that the word “blog” is still not in the spell check dictionary used with a blog!!
You used to have a horizontal rule between day group of posts. Reader tips are usually the first post every day (somewhere around midnight), and just beneath the post there would be an HR to separate it from all the posts of the previous day.
Maybe you intended to leave that out?
Love the captcha and the reply capability in the comments. Would like for the main content area to flex horizontally to accommodate h-space, but that’s a nice-to-have. 🙂
Test
Just right click on the comments html and select open in new tab, you just need to get used to it. I’m seeing the whole page without any horizontal scroll – maybe it’s a browser thing. Mind you, the text is smaller than it used to be?
On the iPad the comments here are in the centre and don’t start on the left.
I looked on the laptop this morning and they seemed fine.
Presentation on iPad is missing all left column material.
Loads quickly. Minor differences in appearance, not enough to be noteworthy. Still haven’t received the email confirmation of registry/sign-in, so I don’t know if this will go through. Captcha is much easier to read than others that I’ve seen.
All in all, looks good to me. Thank you for being a voice of sanity, and for letting me know I wasn’t the only one yelling back at the radio. Congrats Kate, best of luck with the next 30 million. 🙂
Agreed.
I signed in successfully but haven’t received the e-mail that confirms that I’ve signed in.
batb (been around the block)
Let’s see how long it takes to post a comment — stopwatch in hand.
Feliz Navidad!
SDA, a True MIRACLE in Canadian conservative communication on this plane of Human Consciousness.
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Hmm… still takes around 10 seconds or so for me. Not really a problem, but also not all THAT much different than old system, at least for me.
Lance was up most of the night with this thing, so when he’s had some zz’s, we’ll get more of the glitches attended to. Thanks for the feedback.
Hello tower!
Come in! Come in!
Kate are you there?
Using Firefox 17.0.1
Side bar on left only shows up now when in full page/screen mode for window. Page not automatically resized..
No longer opens a new tab when clicking an embedded link…I liked the old way of opening multiple tabs…
30 pounds over weight, tendency to play too many video games, I swear too much, lazy…
All working well from his POV.
Captchas are a little hard to read and no refresher to generate a newer, easier to read one.
Good job on the system roll-over.