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tuning the well-oiled machine that is the artblog.net content management system

Post #575 • July 8, 2005, 10:52 AM • 21 Comments

As many of you know, I built the CMS for Artblog.net from scratch after a beta version of Textpattern blew up on me and other blogwares refused to agree with my psyche. That was educational, but slightly insane - dammit, Jim, I'm a painter, not a computer programmer. That makes you the testing community, so I need your feedback when things get out of gear around here.

The Browse page is dead. That's a known issue (thanks Alesh), and we have our top men working on it around the clock.

At least once the comment form has returned an error message, causing Oldpro to double-post. I haven't been able to duplicate that problem. Did this happen to anyone else?

Several times I have loaded the main page in Safari to find that the recent articles have appeared twice going down the left-hand side. All of the links in the repeated part are dead. The vertical gray line breaks up in the middle. Has anyone else seen this? It tends to happen while loading this post.

Timestamps on Comments page are totally wrong.

What else do we have?

Real post to follow.

Comment

1.

alesh

July 8, 2005, 11:02 AM

I'm a painter, not a computer programmer

sometimes we wonder...

i had problems with gaps in the vertical line over on Critical in IE Windows (The World's Worst Browser[TM]), but it somehow resolved itself with a little help from re-formating images that spanned the full width of the main column. Very very strange.

I've never seen any of those problems here, though. The only thing that strikes me as even remotely a problem is the implementation of html in the comments. Unclosed tags fuck shit up, and tags in the name field cause weird problems. Would implementing textile be a possiblity? It would make all kinds of things easier on us (like linking), and could prevent some problems?

2.

alesh

July 8, 2005, 11:13 AM

no problem at all, but the tinny little buttons that let you flip pages show as little arrows at home, and as greater-then, less-then (or is that "than"?) at work. same browser and OS. weird.

3.

oldpro

July 8, 2005, 11:29 AM

For once I am having no problems. Don't scare me like this!

4.

Franklin

July 8, 2005, 11:34 AM

Alesh, Jack finally learned how to write tags, and you're suggesting I implement Textile? ;o)

My attempts to strip or bounce unclosed tags haven't worked even with extremely generous help from Hovig, but I want to get back to work on that. You're right - that's a nuisance for all involved.

Oldpro, close your ears. Everything is fine.

5.

mek

July 8, 2005, 4:45 PM

husb has some programming knowledge. perhaps he can help out over the wkend if you still need.

6.

Franklin

July 8, 2005, 8:44 PM

Thanks for the offer, Mek. Most of this stuff is too stupid to consume the time of a real programmer, but I appreciate it all the same.

7.

George

July 9, 2005, 11:19 AM

testing precondition failed error message from IE on Mac

8.

George

July 9, 2005, 11:22 AM

Appears to not like test.html

9.

George

July 9, 2005, 11:23 AM

appears to not like http://tinyurl.com/787pt

10.

Franklin

July 9, 2005, 11:26 AM

George, e-mail me. I'm not sure what you mean.

Timestamps in Comments are fixed.

11.

Franklin

July 9, 2005, 11:29 AM

Browse page is fixed.

12.

George

July 9, 2005, 11:43 AM

I sent you an email with the lines that seem to be the problem

Also a request, couuld we have #000000 for the comments font color instead of #444444 or whatever it is?

13.

Franklin

July 9, 2005, 11:49 AM

I brought it down to #333. Does that work for you?

14.

George

July 9, 2005, 12:00 PM

Franklin, 333333?
LOL (laughing out loud)
whatever, it's your blog.

15.

alesh

July 11, 2005, 9:39 AM

yeah, the browse page works, except for the "more" link on the bottom. Sorry to be a pain about this, but I actually do use it sometimes.

Speaking of which, the Browse page is un-useful for looking for articles that are more then a couple of months old. Google usually helps, but shouldn't the blog have some internal way to access older stuff?

16.

Franklin

July 11, 2005, 12:49 PM

More button now works. Thanks for catching that.

Also, the Browse page now goes through 50 articles at a time instead of 20. I agree, though - we need a search engine.

17.

Todd

July 14, 2005, 12:14 PM

RSS feed isn't working....

18.

Franklin

July 14, 2005, 12:34 PM

Thanks, Todd. I'll get on that.

19.

Matty

July 15, 2005, 6:44 PM

Any thoughts on modifying the time-stamping of comments to be more inclusive of people in different time zones? I'm sure most of you are on EST, but I'm not... being two hours behind makes me feel so, um, 'regional'.

20.

alesh

July 20, 2005, 9:38 PM

I was doubting myself, but now i'm sure: the left and right arrows above the word "Browse" look normal at home, and look like little greater-then/less-then symbols at work. Same Firefox, Same windows XP (actually it's home at home Pro at work).

21.

Franklin

July 21, 2005, 12:42 AM

I'm using Javascript to switch the characters based on what browser and OS you're using, just to mess with your head.

Actually, I have no idea why that's happening. The character entities are & larr; and & rarr; without the spaces.

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