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I have not done serious testing, but I believe that preview mode now works for comments. There could well be errors (with the [x comments] comment counters, or the [x new comment] counters on the front page.) Please let me know if you think something is funky.

Also, there is a new page /settings where you can make some adjustments. More options are coming. Right now you can use /settings to manually zero all your new post/comment tracking counters. Plus you can assign a pixel dimension for all your posting boxes. Plus you can set a default behavior for converting line breaks to HTML (you can either have this default to on - checked - as it does now, or you can switch it to always default to off.) Also you can turn off or on the options of preview and pending (future) posts.

I'm sure this is confusing. Any help with the language that might make these options clearer is much appreciated. Also ideas for other settings.
- jim 1-13-2002 7:04 pm [link] [13 comments]

Fixed the problem with "use your own HTML" pages not recording hits for the referer log. Tom brought this to my attention and it turned out to be a little more difficult to track down than I had thought. Turns out that those pages were correctly recording hits, except in the situation where all the content is just put into the template (and nothing is [post]ed.) This turns out to be a reasonable way to build these pages, but it isn't the way I had in mind when I designed it. The original idea is that the format and graphic design elements would be entered on [editpage] into the HTML field, but that you would still post the "real" content through [post].

In any case, it works fine just to make the entire page inside the template. Hits will now record. The only possible draw back is that the search engine won't find text on that page.
- jim 1-09-2002 7:20 pm [link] [2 comments]

Fixed, finally, the 2002 archive bug. This caused problems with the framed view of the archives for sure. Not sure about the regular view. In any case this will be a problem again after 12/31/2012 but if we are still using this code base then this will be the least of our problems.
- jim 1-09-2002 6:53 pm [link] [add a comment]

Well, I was all set to order the new server and put it at he.net when they send me an email announcing that all of their virtual host accounts (that's what we have now - where you share a server with a bunch of other people but it looks to you like you're the only one on it) have been expanded. So as of this month we have twice the storage space and a great deal more bandwidth for the same price.

I still want my own machine, but now that there is less urgency I can't pull the trigger. I'm learning a lot of unix by working in OSX so I'm steeling myself to tackle the server I bought last year but never really used. If I can get linux and everything else running on that box, and can convince myself that it is reasonably stable, then I will just ship that one off. This will be about half the cost of having them manage a machine for me. Of course if something goes wrong it will be my fault instead of theirs.

Not sure what to do. I almost wish they hadn't sweetened the deal. In any case, upload away.
- jim 1-06-2002 7:07 pm [link] [1 comment]

Yeah, the archive broke at midnight. Well, not really broke, but 2002 is not working. I thought that might happen, but I didn't look into it in time. I'll fix it later today when I get my head back.
- jim 1-01-2002 7:31 pm [link] [add a comment]

Our host hurricane electric has a new web based front end for their email systems. I have enabled it if anyone is interested. I'm still working on my own system that will be much more tightly integrated into the tree, but for now this might come in handy - especially if you are traveling, or don't have much control over configuring email software at work.

Anyway, go to /webmail and enter your name and password. Your name is what comes before the @ in your digitalmediatree.com email address. So my name (for my mail account jimb@digitalmediatree.com) is jimb and my password is the password I use to check my mail (not the password I use to /login to digitalmediatree.)

If you don't have a digitalmediatree.com mail address and would like one, let me know. Also I can set the account to bounce all incoming mail to another email address in case you want the dmtree address, but want mail sent to it to show up in your regular (non-dmtree) mail account.
- jim 12-21-2001 10:45 pm [link] [add a comment]

There was a end of the year date bug screwing up the framed archive view. Since December 1 I'm sure, although I just saw it. Fixed now.
- jim 12-11-2001 10:10 pm [link] [add a comment]

I don't think anyone has been playing around with it, but there was a problem with the new comment styles. If you changed the comment style in [editpage] it would retroactively change all existing threads to the new style, but additional posts added after the change to [editpage] would revert to the old style. This has been fixed.
- jim 12-10-2001 6:15 pm [link] [add a comment]

More updates this morning. You can now select from several new comment styles in [editpage]. If you want your page to continue the same just do nothing. The 2 new options are 'threaded w/posting box' and 'straight comments'. Both of these options add a posting box to the bottom of the /comment page. This box acts like the posting box you would get before by clicking the 'add a comment' link at the top of the page. This idea here is that having the posting box right on the page saves one click, and might mean that more people will add their comments to the bottom of the page rather than having threaded replies to a specific previous comment. With 'threaded w/ posting box' each comment retains its own [add a comment] link, and threading is still allowed. The second new option - 'straight comments' - only has the new posting box at the bottom of the /comment page (each individual comment does not have its own [add a comment] link.) No threading is possible. However, no matter which way you set your page (besides 'no comments') old threaded comments will still display as threaded, so any change is only effective forward into the future.

The idea, as I discussed once before, is that threaded comments really eat up system resources. This is definitely not a problem at this point, so use whatever style you want. But if this system ever needed to scale up (in a different incarnation) it might be necessary to limit comments to the straight style. Also someone might actually prefer the straight style, so for them it is now an option.
- jim 12-07-2001 4:29 pm [link] [1 comment]

Note to contributers: while I do back up the entire database (somewhat more regularly now that I have the DSL in the office, say, probably once a week) I haven't been backing up photos. I store photo information (like the mapping between picture id number and actual filename) in the database, but the photos themselves are just stored as regular files on the server. My assumption is that you all probably have copies of these files (since you uploaded them from your machines.) But is this a reasonable assumption? Should I be backing those up too? Just wondering.

Eventually (where that might mean sort of soon) I will add in a way for each individual to download a backup copy of just their page. If I can accomplish this I will add in an option to also backup your photos. Still, it might not be a bad idea to just keep a folder on your machine where you put a copy of any images that you [upload] to the server.
- jim 12-06-2001 10:55 pm [link] [1 comment]