...more recent posts
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.
The 'build a template' option in /create (the script for creating new pages) was not working correctly. Specifically, it wouldn't work if you put anything in the style sheet box (which is pretty necessary if you are building a template.)
Should be working now.
Rewrote most of the /log script. This is what always happens. I can't really tell how to write something until I am able to use it. This presents a sort of chicken and egg problem that occasionally keeps me from writing anything at all. The thing to do is just plow ahead and try not to think that probably you will throw out your first design. Or if not completely throw out, at least seriously rework.
Anyway, now in /editpage you just turn logging on or off. On the /log page you will now see a pull down menu at the top which will be set to whatever style you have for that page (complete; without your hits; without any member hits.) You can change the style with this menu.
Also, and this was the bigger change internally, you can now see the /log of any page you have the ability to post to. The system will remember the style of log settings for each person seperately (so I could have /treehouse/log set for no member hits, and someone else could have that same log set to show the complete record.)
Possibly the red numbers (which denote new hits since you last checked that log) will be incorrect for your first look at the log under the new system. But it will correct itself on subsequent looks.
As might be expected, the /log script was not operating exactly right. I believe that it was O.K. if you had the logs completely on, but it definitely wasn't working right for either of the other two 'on' possibilities (logs (but not you) and logs (but not members).) It was recording the hits, but it wasn't displaying correctly in the new dratfink inspired 1/10 style where the 1 means 1 new hit since you last checked your logs out of a total 10 hits from the given referer.
Possibly it wasn't working with the complete log option either. I'm not sure.
In any case I'm pretty sure it's working correctly now.
Been playing around with the /log pages. Instead of just showing every hit, now it displays refering pages ranked by the frequency of referers (I know I keep spelling 'referer' wrong, but that's because it is misspelled in the W3C spec, and now everyone misspells it that way.) These totals are true for the time range specified at the top of the page (max 30 days, but they haven't been on that long.)
If you have turned the logs on (through /editpage) then the system is keeping track of every hit to your page. But now there are more options in /editpage for how you want these results displayed. "No logs", obviously, doesn't keep track of anything. "Complete logs" tracks and displays every hit. "Complete logs (but not you)" tracks every hit, but doesn't count hits by you in the tally. "Complete logs (but not members)" tracks every hit, but doesn't count hits by any members including yourself. Switching back and forth between any of the three versions of logs won't change the totals, just how those totals are reported.
The system is set by default to only keep records for 30 days. It checks for and purges any older records every time you look at /log (after you look though, so if you don't look for some time you will see everything on the first look, and then only those within one month afterwards.)
The googlebot was spoted this morning on (at least) my page, so maybe they are starting to index us again. Not that anyone really cares, but I thought I'd mention it.
There is some very crude output from the new logs visible at /whateverpage/log. You can only see your own logs, and you won't see any of your own hits (unless you are not logged in to the system when you hit your page.) Just shows the referer (if there is one) and the user agent (browser and operating system and maybe some other info about the surfers computer.) A * means it's not a registered user.
This will all change. And yes I know that's not how you spell referer, but that's the way it got written up in the official w3c spec, so that's how people spell it.