Also, I know a lot of you guys are mourning the loss of the "tracker." Sadly, it just wasn't something the new software could do and was lost as a part of the price of the move.

How much? Seriously. I bet we'd pitch in for it.

Is there no way to get the "new" versus already-viewed comments, too?

Also, it seems like the cookie time-out is happening way too often. Is that the problem, or is it the servers are rebooting and losing all our sessions? I'm logging in repeatedly.

Thanks for this post, too. Keeping us informed is very helpful.

On the front page, this post says there are four replies. But, only the first reply from "cscs" shows up.

Andrew, here's the reason I believe the tracking feature was very important. TheraP did a blog last week that received 130+ comments. Without some sort of tracking mechanism to weed out the new from the old, it's well nigh to impossible to discern what's new and what isn't. My memory isn't good enough to do it, but I'm old and semi-senile ;-) There are other things too I liked about the old site, especially, when you were logged in, the comments were collapsed. I also liked only having the first paragraph or so of a post showing and the Read More link. I do like the new look; it's much cleaner, but I'll go back to what I said before, it's not overly user friendly (I know you can't idiot-proof anything). I know you all have put in a lot of hard work, and I don't want to disparage your efforts, but user friendly should trump everything. Take this as constructive criticism from a user who has formed an attachment to the site (I like coming here). I'm sure there are technical constraints I have no idea about, but the old design had lots of user friendly amenities. Again, hang in there.

Glenn (ges)

BTW, I still can't change my password. Geez, I really dislike being a whiner, but…

Arrggggghhh!! Thirteen minutes later the comment shows up at the same time the newest one does? I really do give up this time. This is too difficult.

The password email came through and I am mostly posting as an experiment to see what happens. Some serious remodeling going on here...

As to the question of what features will or will not be available in this new version, I request some sort of toggle that lets the posts and comments take up the whole page and be free of images when that is desired. Some of the best things I have read here have been pretty meaty and it was sometimes to difficult to follow threads as each reply successively took on the shape of certain ee cumming poems. Giving up half the page from the get go is okay for a quick interchange but not for a substantial argument.

I'm afraid that I have to report that everything about this new format pretty much sucks in terms of what I've experienced thus far.

Logging in over and over and over and then watching whatever comment you finally manage to make just disappear is, to say the least, annoying as hell.

What's the story with the info on one's profile? Can you turn it off or is it just there for all to see at all times?

I may be missing it, but there seems to be no information at all in terms of what you can and cannot or should or should not do regarding the profile, posting, or just about anything having to do with commenting or posting. That's not good. Perhaps I'm missing something.

The layout at the previous Cafe format was, IMHO, vastly superior to the current setup. It was much easier to survey what was out there to read/comment on. The greater prominence of posts from "nonfeatured" writers in this new format is cool but hardly worth all this hassle.

The conversations that previously occured on any given post were connected and made sense though they could be lengthy and labarinthine. Now that really positive feature is just gone? What a pity. I don't see that as a good thing.

I'm just curious what it is that made you all think it was a good idea to "improve" things in this manner? I don't see the benefit when it's difficult to understand, more difficult to take in visually, completely counter-intuitive and generally user unfriendly. Having said that, I'm open to being convinced albeit very skeptical.

Any answers or tutorials about why I'm completely missing the advantages of this are certainly welcome. I am completely open to the possibility that it is me and not the changes that make no sense. I'm eager to have it all explained to me so that I understand, because I really don't understand at this point.

First off, add me to the "old curmudgeon" list.
I have dropped by occasionally to see if there is any hope for anything usable left.
What do I "use?" The uniqueness of this blog has been the level of discourse with a pace and form I understood how to use.
I was one of those rare users, evidently, that cross-posted from my own regular blog. I did that when I had something to add to the conversation, that I had already written elsewhere. I had a selfish reason. I wanted my "friends" to read and comment. Most times they just read it. Once in a while there was a very interesting and rich conversation that took place over several days. Again, it that pace thing.
I got to "know" people and enjoyed it when they commented on any thread, because they had something to say that made my reading richer. I lament because I have no idea how to find out what my "friends" are saying, or if they have left permanently.
Quantity and speed is no substitute for the quality of the interaction in what was a "community." If it is still a community, would someone please take the time to provide a little user's manual so I know how to re-enter?
Thanks for reading my rant.

This is a post I tried to make yesterday afternoon, when there were no replies as yet to your thread, Andrew. But, after waiting ages for the page with my comment to roll over, I got this message:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, domains@stinson.com.au and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

I notice there's an ".au" on the end of that url. Where is that, Austria? Australia? Seems odd.

Anyway, here's what I wrote yesterday:

I want to thank you for all your assistance in getting me re-registered, Andrew, and for your speedy response. You're so right about the feeling of being uprooted when the site was unaccessible, but with such a big change, I guess some bugs are understandable.

There are still a few problems I've noticed. I hope you don't take these so much as criticisms, but rather as an effort to let you know what I'm experiencing, so you can continue to work the bugs out.

First, I'm unable to change my password. I enter the new one, but it doesn't appear to be saved in the new software. I can log in with the one you sent me though, so that's OK for now. And I also am having problems accessing my profile page while logged in. I can start out on a page in which I'm logged in, but if I click on "Profile," I'm logged out when I reach the page. If I try logging back in, I'm taken back to the original page, once again logged in, but trying to access the profile page again in a couple of different ways only leads in a circle.

Even though not logged in, on the profile page I can see the comments I've made in the past, in chronological order, but with the oldest ones first. There doesn't appear to be any way to reorder them, nor is anything but one page of comments accessible. And I also don't see anything that lists any replies to my comments. On the old site, being able to see if a recent comment one had made had any response from another poster was absolutely necessary in order to participate in the conversations here at the Cafe, so I hope that crucial function hasn't also been lost, as the tracker was. I don't think we could have normal conversation without it, as the lack of this function would require us to scroll through long threads to try to follow the conversation. The "new comment" feature also isn't available on the lists of blog posts that appears on the main TPM Cafe page.

Isn't there any way to revive the tracker? Some sort of workaround or something? I really liked it and used it a lot, so it will be missed. There's a lot to like with the new Kos-like design, but the lack of a tracker function at Kos has made that site seem much harder to navigate, and I hate to see it omitted here too. Good diaries at Kos can disappear too easily, that's what necessitates the diary rescues, and conversations seem to be time limited there in a way that hasn't been the case here at TPM Cafe. I think most of us who have come to love TPM Cafe have done so because this is one of the few places on the net where there has been real conversation by (mostly) thoughtful people. The loss of the tracker, the ability to see if there are replies to one's own comments, and the "new post" function all seem to be serious impediments to the conversation that until now has taken place here.

And finally - it may have been mentioned elsewhere - will we eventually regain the ability to rate individual posts? Also, the "preview" function is sorely missed too, as is the text editor. My HTML editing ability is quite limited, so I really hope that's something that's also on the list of features to be returned to us as soon as possible.

I know you've been working extra hard, Andrew, and appreciate it, so I hope I don't sound too critical here. I'm hoping that with time, much of the functionality of the old site will return, and that it's just a question of working out the kinks. Thanks for all you're doing.

Oh sheesh, the site said I was logged in. It says, "Hello Wordie. (Not you? Log out.)" right above the comment box, but when I went to post this it told me I had a comment submission error because I was not logged in. The site indeed is very buggy. I don't envy you, Andrew - there's a lot of work to do still. Hang in there, Andrew.

I appear logged in at last, after only about 20 tries over 3 days (each time laboriously digging through cookies and exceptions to be sure I'm starting from scratch). Still can't access the profile page to change password. I did last night, but the change didn't stick. No clue whether this will post. Maybe I should just forget the place for a week or two to see if it settles out; if not, it won't.

Also, I don't know (since I can't get to my profile) whether it's my settings or lost functionality, but I'm seeing threaded comments and a requirement to use html. Are the options to see comments in time sequence and to use a kind of easy editor gone? I'll see in a minute, I guess, if it remembers which comments I've already viewed.

I'll report on the experiment. I see my comment. It showed up after maybe 10 minutes, rather than right away as with the old site, but it's there. As for the second half of the experiment, I still see just a link to "read more" and to "comments," rather than as with the old site a way to skip past ones we've read, so I guess that functionality is gone. Shame. Again, I won't know if I can get past tagging manually and get out of threaded view until I can get to my profile, if ever.

Hm. I got an error message and then was asked to sign in when I tried to send a comment that I don't see on the thread.

Good luck, guys!

OK, just finished a long post about the new site and my concerns thereof and it disappeared with a script error. The script was apparently triggered because the site had logged me out with no indication.

sPh

Publish error in template 'Comment Response': Error in tag: Can't find included file '/var/www/html/domains/tpmcafe.com/utility-sidebar.php'

Another error. I tried clicking on someone's photo, presumably to see that person's profile, and got this:

Can't call method "blog" on an undefined value at ../../lib/MT/Template/ContextHandlers.pm line 3810.

Andrew:

Here are a few more things you might want to look at. Now, when I click "reply" to a comment in a thread, I'm spirited down to the end of the comments, instead of anywhere near the comment I'm replying to.

And it looks like the "reply" link is entirely java-based - I can't open up a separate window or tab showing just the comment to which I wanted to reply. A separate window or tab was often very useful in making comments in extra-long threads, as it was possible to avoid reloading the entire thread each time a comment was made (to be precise, the entire thread would start to reload when the "send" button on one's reply was clicked, but it was possible to simply shut the window before it finished loading, returning to the previous place in the thread). This issue may primarily be a concern for those who, like me, are on dialup.

Also, I happened to be googling yesterday for some other info (the Hamilton Project), and noticed that many TPM threads that are found by google aren't accessible. Either they return a 404 Page Not Found Error, or the link initially appears to be good, but when one gets to TPM Cafe, the page says, "The user blog you are looking for has not been found." I found three such links through google - there are probably more - and here they are in case it helps: http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/28606
http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/29930
http://housebrew.tpmcafe.com/node/29948

I'm pretty sure those all are fairly recent, and might be of interest to others, even non-TPM Cafe members, and bring more users to the site. It may have something to do with certain areas of TPM Cafe being gone now. I noticed the same thing in my post list under my profile - the first post I made here didn't show, presumably because the Supreme Court Table no longer exists. I hope all the seemingly archived elements of the site will become available again in time.

Regarding the individual members' post lists, I'd like to note that by having each individual post printed in full in the list, the functionality is reduced. It might be better to list only the first line or so, so one can go through them quickly, instead of having to scroll down through the full length of each one. Or maybe there could be two post lists, one as it is now, with full posts shown (but with the chronology issue worked out, so the most recent are at the top), with another area where the individual user could access his/her own posts, using a just single line as in the old TPM Cafe, to see if there have been any replies.

I know you're really busy, Andrew, and I did say I'd be patient, but I'm just being eaten up with curiousity over that "au" at the end of the server url. Did you really relocate the TPM server to some other county? Does the "au" refer to something else? It's the symbol for gold in the periodic table, but I can't see how that would apply. I hope this won't remain a mystery!

Again, this stuff is posted with the intent of helping. Keep up the good work, Andrew.

UPDATED: I tried to post this as a reply to your reply to me, Andrew, but got this:

I'm going to try again, adding it to the bottom of the comments, instead of as a nested reply. Wish me luck. :{

I agree with others who have criticized the loss of the tracking feature. I don't want to have to scroll through dozens of comments every time I open up the comments thread to try to remember which ones I have read and which ones I haven't.

So far, I have had to log in by posting a comment, and can't seem to log in right away to the site as a whole as I could before. When I log in using the fields at the top of the main page, or using the fields on the login page, the site doesn't recognize me. However when I click on "reply" I am taken to some other login fields that do work.

Otherwise, I can't really comment on whether the changes are an improvement or not, since I've been waiting until all the gremlins are addressed before really touring the site.

Just a couple of random nuisances which may be in the process of getting fixed or changed:

When I reply to a comment, I don't see the comment to which I am replying and so have to try to remember it, or open the whole site in another window.

When I post the reply, I am taken all the way back to the top of the thread, rather than the place in the thread where the reply is to be inserted.

My 4:25 comment was posted by clicking "reply" under one of jhaber's comments, but it looks like it was posted by being appended to the end of the list of comments, rather than under the comment I thought I was replying to.

This is probably hopeless, but here goes. I'm really sick of this. I tried to comment on Maggie Mahar's post. The screen at top AND the words above this box (below "Post a Comment") had assured me I was logged in. The comment failed, with the error that registration is required. I went back a screen to her post, scrolled up, and it still greeted me. Then I came to the home page (still logged in), clicked on this thread, and scrolled down to see if I could comment. This time there was a form asking me to log in. I did, but I have no idea what's going on or whether this will work. I'm not even sure I care.

Ahhh for crying out loud! Is anyone able to get their comment posted in a timely fashion? Just let a person know what is going on. Puh-lease!