...more recent posts
The automatic userland (weblogs.com) notification system is pretty much in place. This is a little ahead of schedule as userland is not switching to the new system until October 23, and not turning off the old crawlers until November 1.
I'm still not sure if you need to sign up at weblogs.com for this to work. My guess is no, although you definitely won't show up in their index until the 23rd if you are not signed up. We'll sort that out on the 23rd and I'll give some more instructions, but basically all you have to do is turn on 'notify userland of updates' in [editpage] and then give your page a 'page name' right below that (this is the name that will show up in the weblogs.com index - so it might not be the same as your page title.) If you turn it on now you'll see lots of debug code after you post, but I'll trim that down when everything is working correctly.
Some database server problems this early afternoon (eastern time.) Not sure what it was. The good machine elves seem to have fixed it up pretty quick. Keeping fingers crossed. Sorry for the troubles.
It's always been possible to link to a specific post on any page here. Just add '?xxxx' to the end of any url where xxxx=the id number of the post. You can find the id number by mousing over the [add a comment] link and noticing the first number after /comment/. So, for instance, this post could be permanently referenced by /systemnews/?10172. Also, you can link to any particular day (or month or year) you adding /date/yyyy/mm/dd/ (or /date/yyyy/mm/ or /date/yyyy/) to the end of a URL. So /tommoody/2001/05/ would give you all of Tom's posts for may 2001.
But none of this was ever made clear to an outsider (or to an insider for that matter.) So now I've added links (permanent links) on each post. The link is the word 'posted' in the bottom line 'posted by:...'. I think any reasonably savvy weblogger type would immediately figure out what that link is, and what it is for.
If anyone objects to this change let me know and either suggest something better, or if you just don't want this at all I'll make a way for individual pages to turn this on or off in [editpage].
I think I've figured out the google problem. It's the same thing that is causing a very infrequent problem where certain browser / OS combinations are not able to view pictures on the site (this is very rare, but it lead me to the problem.)
Working on a fix.
Some snafus between 6:35 and 7:05 pm if you were on. Sorry. Doing some tests. Trying to clear up a problem (which is actually two problems.) Should be back to normal now.
I learned yesterday that for one person at least the posting and editing boxes do not wrap the text. So when they are typing in a post, if they don't hit return, the text just keeps going in one line, and horizontal scroll bars appear at the bottom. This is not the way it is supposed to work. Does anyone else experience this behavior? Please let me know as well as the browser version and operating system. Thanks. Sorry if this is happening a lot. Very difficult to work that way.
The domain name www.digitalmediatree.com was set to expire one week from today (August 14, 2001.) That will mark the second anniversary of the site (well, in one way - I guess there was nothing there yet on the day it was registered.) Seems like only yesterday. Anyway, it is now renewed.
I'm finally getting to work on the search script. I'm wondering if people have any feelings on this issue. Here's what I'm thinking about doing:
There will be two types of searching. Regular search will happen from the bottom of each page as it does now (assuming search is enabled in [editpage]). But instead of taking you to a results page it just reloads whatever page you are searching from (with all the graphics and all the sidebar stuff) but instead of displaying the regular content it displays all the posts that contain the search phrase.
One potential problem here is if you search on, say, 'e' you will probably get every single post ever made to that page. That could be big. So maybe it will only display as many results as you have set for the page to display normally (the 'window' setting in [editpage].) Or maybe the search results window will be a new setting in [editpage]? Either way, if you get tons of hits for a particular search you will just work your way back through them with the 'older posts' link at the bottom of the page.
Also there will be an advanced search. This will happen from a seperate page accessible through an 'advanced search' link either next to or under the search box at the bottom of each page. From the advanced search page you will (eventually) be able to search either one page or all pages (is there a need to search a subset of all pages - like treehouse and artifax but nothing else?) You can choose to search through comments as well as top level posts (you can't search comments now.) And you can limit your search results to fall between certain dates. Maybe you can specify a certain poster as well. I'm not sure how these results will be presented. Can't really use the page layout like I'm proposing for the regular search because you might get results from mulitple pages.
I'll get to work on the regular first, so maybe the questions on the advanced search will work themselves out as I go. Any input is appreciated.
/admin script is finally updated, although probably some problems will be found with more testing. It now acts more like /subscription (I mean the top level http://www.digitalmediatree.com/subscription) where you can make changes to mulitple entries (for /admin this means for multiple users) at one time. Much better.
Not so important for our uses here, but good for other implementations.
This will all be clear one day when I write some documentation.
This is a first attempt, so probably the whole implementation will change, but you can now have some control over the size of fonts. I did this for Steve who can barely read the 'posted by:' lines because they show up too small on his machine.
If you go to /system/prefs you can change the size of both the regular font and the smaller 'posted by' font. Leave the top box empty (or type default) to not alter the page font. Type in a point size followed pt to change the page font to a specified size. 12pt will get you 12 point type.
The bottom box is for the 'posted by' font size. This defaults to 'smaller' (that's how it is set now - this just makes it one step down in point size from whatever you have your browser font size set to.) You can change this to a specific point size. Probably something around 10pt or 12pt is what you want.
Feel free to experiment. Only effects what you see. Unfortunately, at this time, it won't work for pages which have their own style-sheets specified (arboretum, tommoody) and it won't work on dratfink.
Hope that helps Steve at least.