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.
Problems????
It’s the end of the world !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hows THAT for a problem !?!?!??!?!!!!!
*runs in circles, screams, shouts*
Jim spake thus…
“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..”
What Jim said in FF 17.0, and in Chromium too…
Too “Canadian” looking, somehow.
Hey man! I’m dressed like a turnip! And I resent being forcibly dragged into the 19th century!
“too white,too Canadian”
where’s my smiley emoticon?
Congratulations on your server upgrade.
I would echo the left sidebar is completely vacant on the browser Chrome Version 23.0.1271.97 m.
Wooden shoes, wooden head, wouldn’t listen…
When loading the page with IE 9.0.12 the left sidebar magically appears.
Frohe Weihnachten und Vrolijk Kerstfeest!
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
The initial load is not noticeably faster – still much too slow.
The Left-hand column is blank on Chrome mobile (running on Android (4.1)/HT TouchPad).
I also miss having links automatically open in a new tab, but one can right click the link and force it so no big deal. I have to say this was one of the more seamless transitions I have seen. All of the “big” guys have had much worse troubles than you guys did. Still has a distinctive look and adds bot protections etc. Well done Lance et al!
end of the world *runs in circles, screams, shouts*
–
I am playing banjo and square dance music until the end of the world.
* when is it ever going to end?
end of world dumb asses
test
The new tab on clicking a link feature you used to have was good. No new tab is bad. Others have made the same comment. The justification of the new screen is such that when I enlarge the font for my failing eyesight I loose part of the screen to the right. Finally, I liked the live gopher you had last night. He/she had his two front teeth for Christmas — that was endearing.
IE is perfect. Firefox: no left side, not centered, no separate comments window.
The signin does not work for me via moveable type. I registered but didn’t get an email.
Kate
Left side bar update for Lance
Reading a few of the comments above, I’m using Safari in Lion OSX 10.7.5 on a Macbook Pro, re comments earlier about the lefthand side missing, IF i go to fullscreen then I get the lefthand column/blogroll.
Still no email thingy after signing in though seems I’m not the only one.
dumb clod, should read comments,click zoom out everything works on Firefox
Fast load on both my lap top and my android mobile. Fast links no longer open another tab and save a step in my mobile os to get bck to the main page. On both Explorer 9.0 and Google Chrome v23.0 the side bar does not show up.
Update: When I submit I get a connection error like a time out but it only takes seconds. When I go back to the commet thread I have to reload the page to see the added comment. Also the Captcha device is unintelligable on a smaller mobile screen
Hmmmmm, looks fine on my end. Signed in with Yahoo.
No left column on iPad. Same problem as others with Firefox 17.0.1. New font is much better though.
Signed in with Google and so far so good. Like the reply option. Does seem to load faster.
In Chrome, you can open a link in a new tab by clicking the scroll wheel.
cheers
Archived comments don’t work. I get a message such as:
Page Not Found
Page not found – /archives/the-tolerant-le-102.html
text seems a little wider/larger and not as subtle as it used to be (viewing on safari using a mac) – it’s a little jarring and ‘in your face’ – maybe this was an intentional style change though?
Captcha is what it is – what happened to that captcha alternative you were sponsoring , out of curiosity?
Checked it again. Comments prior to Dec. 21 don’t load.
It IS the apocalypse! (Or the dawning of a new age — we were erstwhile irrelevant).
;=)
My browser based rss reader (netvibes.com) isn’t picking up new posts on the SDA feed (atom.xml) anymore at all. Granted netvibes is kinda crappy but I’m trying to NOT give all my ‘business’ to google.
Also as noted by previous posters. On my netbook (1024×600 rez) the text of posts runs of the right hand side of the screen unless I scroll over each new SDA window that opens.
The ‘new-window’ function on the click of each link or ‘Preview’ is very annoying.
.
I like it…snaps up in an instant.
nold, don’t feel bad. Dumb Clod II here, zoomed out and now the left sidebar is back.
When I clicked to reply to nold, another, a third, totally blank tab opened up, I went back to the thread tab, scrolled down and there was the reply to nold.
Minimalist is better. When hitting the end of page button the comments page goes way down to to the end of the sidebar, instead of to the end of comments. Annoying…but, whatever, it’s your blog.
Loads a little quicker than it has for awhile, only improvement that I see. The geeky stuff is just…geeky stuff.
The font is too small and the style of font choosen is hard to read for me. I prefer Arial.
FF users.
Open your tools, and select “open link in new tab”, if it isn’t working.
Otherwise, the only problems I see is Obozo is still El Presidente for life, and the eco-nazis didn’t sacrifice themselves for the Mayan Gaians.
Oh well.
Merry Christmas, Y’all!
Testing auth methods.
Looking very good so far.
I like that you didn’t change the appearance of the page, change for its own sake is not a positive IMHO.
Captchas suck, but are a necessary evil these days. I have them at the Soapbox too. Otherwise the spam and trolls just take over.
This comment is being done on Win98 with Seamonkey, I’ll have a go at the Playbook and iPad later.
A- 🙂
It does still seem to be performing quite slowly. I’m not complaining – I don’t care in the least – just feedback.
If this sentence has a line through it, we have the strike function I have always yearned for.
I also need to test whether we have to embed the links:
http://tinyurl.com/7n6mv2r
“Captchas suck, but are a necessary evil these days. I have them at the Soapbox too.”
Yes, but these ones here are legible, Mr. Phantom. 🙂
“change for its own sake is not a positive IMHO”
Que no haya novedad.
Well possibly my ‘complaint’ regarding missing text on the right side of the screen is a browser issue (bleeding edge chromium)? I did a ‘Ctrl+-‘ which ‘zooms’ the window to ‘90%’ and now all the text is there, plus all the stuff on the left side of the screen (adverts,links, Best of…, etc.), which was totally missing from view, has magically appeared. Hmmmmm?
.
Down to 19 now and they are all in links or poorly formatted blockquotes. (user training with the editor).
It should be noted that if you use one of the registration tools…you get no captcha.
In other words, SDA is trusting the UID’s from the ID sites that you’re not a spammer. So if you don’t like captcha’s, sign-in.
You mean
like thisMamba? del works now.My father used to tell me “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”
New font sucks tornado scale.
I know you have bigger fish to fry but Times New Roman et al???
Test.
1) Still haven’t received an e-mail to confirm my sign-in.
2)I use Firefox to open SDA and have no problem with the left-hand side bar.
3)Wait time for site and comments to open is still slow.
Congratulations on your new site, Kate and Lance. I hope it works better for you.
This is not a problem, but is there a way to get the comments to display most recent at the top like many forums do? If not then how about a link back to main at the bottom of the comments?
Should I resubmit my sign in info or just be patient?
batb, resubmit. I killed the movable type login as the email system is borken (provider issues). You’ll have to use one of the main providers.
Thanks for your response, Lance.
However, oh dear. I’m a dummy when it comes to something as simple as doing a sign-in. I have no idea which provider to use — or whether it would conflict with my sign-in status at another site. That’s just one of many reasons I’ve loved SDA: It’s been so easy to make comments on which, I realize, has made countless headaches for you and Kate.
So, I’ll continue to comment using the Captcha. No big deal.
Strike?
Strike?Now I’m confused…