I’m working on the theme (fonts, font sizes, colour, masthead, images, sidebar). Everything will go back to the way it was. The old theme was a customization of a supplied theme, and so, on the upgrade it was overwritten with the standard supplied theme.
I may go back to the old site for a bit to export it, rather than rebuild it. As I noted yesterday, upgrades have a way of mucking up the best laid plans.
Part of the issue is the size of SDA. 29k entries, a touch shy of a million comments. The vast majority of SDA is static because using a database for all of that is ridiculous when there are no changes to the content. Due to that size, rebuilding the website takes a _lot_ of time, like greater than an hour.
So it isn’t a simple, change once, rebuild, change something else, rebuild kind of exercise.
FWIW, the reason for the change. We knew about the update and had plans to implement it, but not the reason. When the exploit was published that forced my hand.
Don’t forget the Tip Jar.
I already miss the dead gopher.
No pressure but this is the most important website in our Solar System. It just doesn’t look like SDA without the dead gopher. Did he have a name ? ?
The vast majority of SDA is static because using a database for all of that is ridiculous when there are no changes to the content.
Please tell me you’re not storing all of SDA’s data in flat text files on disk.
29,000 entries, the average comment seems about 300 bytes, let’s round up to 500 to cover metadata, “a million” comments is about 500MB of data. Dude, I could run that on my phone.
Due to that size, rebuilding the website takes a _lot_ of time, like greater than an hour.
You’re doing it wrong.
Oh, wait, Movable Type is written in perl. Never mind, that explains everything.
Gopher broke? I like the new look, but like the others above, I want the gopher back.
No, you jackass, it isn’t stored in text files.
It’s built into text files when the site is rebuilt.
I understand you know diddly-squat about network optimization.
I understand you know diddly-squat about server based applications.
I understand you know diddly-squat about server load.
I understand you know diddly-squat about high-availability.
Just save your technical experience for the T1 support group you belong to, okay?
Looks good.
Oh no,
Lance I’ll trust you to be working on it, but the Gopher, the Banner thats part of our heritage.
The rest tweak away, but the Gopher …… carry on like that and sooner or later some one will want to change the flag.
For what it’s worth, I think folks should be offering to buy you a beer if they want to be helpful. I can’t imagine the hell you are finding yourself in…something about original intention of draining the swamp, but finding yourself up to your ass in alligators!
Thanks, peter, cheers.
The theme issues w/ SDA aren’t a “problem” as much as an annoyance. They are for the most part, easily remedied, they just take time and they are non-billable hours.
I also have an email problem with a client and an oracle report issue with another client and those issues are primary.
Too much red. With respect, red is the color of: Liberals, commies, and flags that wave in front of things that convey the message danger or anger. Maybe not a good color for a reply button, that anger part.
I liked the comments button opening in a new window better. Now I have to right click and select ‘new window’. I never liked ‘tabbed browsing’ and have it turned off in my browser options.
Putting the commenters name at the top of the comment is GREAT.
Kudos up for that.
Consider Daniel ‘Reamed’! 😀
I do like the name of the commenter at the top of the comment.
Surely the gopher, whether it is dead or alive, is female. I was able to become aware of this without Premier Wynne’s grade school instructions. Cheers.
Jolly decent of you Lance to keep the site running while you work on it.
Not to take any more of your time at this difficult stage. We’all appreciate everything y’all do to keep going.
The Brian Lilley connection-Super!
Also appreciate the diddley-squat comments to confirm gender definition of “our dear gopher” ;)))) Cheers;
Oh, son. I am disappoint.
I’m not going to throw down with you on the thing I do for a living. If you’re running Perl-based anything off of a data store that’s “rebuilt into text files” during an upgrade that necessitates an hour worth of down time, I’m pretty sure high availability doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Be SURE to add the blogroll back in that was found on left-hand side..as well as all the other comments/pics that made the site eye-worthy..
Love what you’ve done with the place but…..FOR THE LOVE OF ALLAH PLEEEZ BRING BACK THE GOFER!!!
AGW RIP.
Choo-Choo* has resigned two positions.
…-
“Pachauri, who is also the director-general of New Delhi-based environment think-tank The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), has taken “leave” from the post.”
http://www.yespunjab.com/national/national-news/item/63072-pachauri-resigns-as-ipcc-chief-takes-leave-from-teri
*”He belongs to the Special Class Railway Apprentices, 1958 Batch, an elite scheme which heralded the beginning of mechanical engineering education in India.[5] He began his career with the Indian Railways at the Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi.”
http://tomnelson.blogspot.ca/2013/01/railroad-engineer-and-ipcc-chief.html
On our slow internet connection the site is working much better with the changes.
I was having issues with the link between our web browser and your site. When clicking back to our browser the window would reduce in size but that issue has been fixed.
Thanks.
No big deal but it would help to put the author back of the bottom of the post as it was before.
Hey, bring back the small dead animal pic!
Oh for 5hit’s pity sake people; here, take a hit.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pAc5WIgmrsE/VHIQci-xiDI/AAAAAAAAxdg/WNiApkpwwjE/s1600/small%2Bdead%2Banimals.jpg
Hmmmm…. We should vote on one of several choices to name the Small Dead mascot. Perhaps a fee will be involved to ensure political incorrectness and profitability.
I would offer “Happy Jack” as my initial suggestion.
**** Remember pocket gophers cannot be gender sorted by visual inpection.****
Hey, a nerd duel…lol
look into mongodb. it’s suited to things like blogs
Yes, bring back the gopher and text logo, but holy sh*t, upgrade the rest of this effin place. The site looked like something out of 1995. It’s not change for the sake of change. The way people consume content has changed. Think mobile. I’m reading sda on an iPhone right now. I often do. It looks like sh*t. Responsive design is a good thing in many cases. This is one of them. There’s no point in being stubborn. It IS broke, fix it. Sorry to be crass, but y’all need to get with the times.
Thank you for the gopher fix !
He looks like “Elliot” to me ?
The dead gopher HAS to go back up. Along with the “Road Kill Diaries” script.
Improving stuff is good. But WRT the brand; “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”
The new format was unexpected, but I like it okay. The font and other characteristics are fine. I used control-(plus sign) to make the writing larger, as one person helpfully suggested in another thread. The Captcha still works, as it usually does for me. I definitely agree though that it’s preferable to have links open in a new window. I don’t care about the gopher one way or the other.
.
Small Dead Animal ….
AKA Richardson’s Ground Squirrel
AKA flickertail,
AKA Dak Rat
AKA G04
.
Get rid of the crappy Iphone. The original site played fine on my Android device ( in full PC mode, no mobile version required) – scalable, seeable. Pandering to Iphone is pandering to children.
When you change the width of the window in which you’re viewing SDA (IE browser) the website doesn’t shift with the width – it stays full screen so you have to scroll across to read it.
Uhh… Hi there, another IT nerd chiming in…
Yes, bring back the gopher and any other associated branding! That’s a no-brainer. It’s called identity and branding in marketing-speak.
Yes, SDA has been living in the past for a long long time, though I had thought that was due to Kate’s origins being on dialup an needing a speedy front end for that kind of connection. Of course those days are long gone.
Responsive design, a good hosting package, and a decent back end are all requisites these days. With a site upgrade required – and now transitioned to MT 5.2 (hey you should secure that info leak), why stay with MT? As of v6, MT is no longer open source /GPL. And MT5.2.x is EOL on Sep 30th, 2015… (unless you’re paying for the MTA version, which does not appear to be the case…?)
Is MT really a worthy platform to put more effort into? WordPress now auto-updates for security fixes within the minor version. That’s a technology worth switching to, IMO.
And hey, this community has many voices, some are tech folks. Why carry the entire burden by yourself Lance? Surely the input of other tech nerds would be a welcome thing. I think the kids call it crowd sourcing. Or something.
And also on your to-do list might be to speed up the time it takes to complete the post process. It’s always been pokey here. The current captcha generator also can produce hard to read images, causing further posting delays…
Nonetheless, it’s nice to see some freshening up of the place.
Cheers!
That’s an IE problem (check your configuration). Auto-scales just fine in Firefox.
When you change the width of the window in which you’re viewing SDA (IE browser) the website doesn’t shift with the width – it stays full screen so you have to scroll across to read it.
Yes, pretty crappy compared to the old design. But, I guess you get what you pay for…and bring back the gopher…and maybe a dead cat. We could show those witches in the other post a thing or two, swing that around in the graveyard by it’s tail…à la Huck Finn…:-)
The comment handler in your code is not working right. When the user posts a comment its screwing up the html – look for missing DIV codes – wordpress is suscsptible to this problem when articles in it posting. After posting, I get the following rsult: red background around the gopher image in the header, all of the text is centered down the page.
Looks more like a CSS issue with the entire site being subjected to text centering – see the sidebar. Probably an incorrect call from CSS or an inappropriate placement of a center tag.
Seems like a struggle…
That’s an IE browser problem… The fun thing about IE is that it doesn’t follow the agreed-upon standards for HTML code…
Don’t use IE. Using SRWare Iron
Lance
Thanks for returning the gopher.
Have a deserved break, cuppa char n’ginger nut. (if you’ve got them in Delise).
I know you’ve lots to do so will wait for the links opening in separate window for another day. 🙂
Cheers
Is the gender of said dead “gopher” one of the six genders that the crazy lady in Ontario endorses and will teach the next generation?
Hey how come the site has reverted to the old format: