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a reflection on the suckiness factor of the new TPM Cafe

It is improper to tell me: <i>you may use HTML tags for style</i>, and then let me discover that this is only half-truth, after submitting a post with HTML tags, that I cannot re-edit.

If there exists in reality the concept of karma; PHP devotees may someday awaken to a very dark day indeed.


Comments (10)

As I have said many times, the ability to re-edit posts is at the top of our list for things to do as soon as the bugs are dead.

Andrew, thanks for the notice/response, and please understand that I am not one who is going to run away from TPM Cafe, because of a codebase change. I can and will adapt to the changes, but I am also able to grasp at a bit of the underlying processes intuitively, which gives me a leg-up on the adapting.

In regards to the post that caused me to publish this thread: I used the

 HTML to achieve a format I desired with a part of the post: preset linebreaks, and a different font to set it apart as obviously quoted text.  It got published as intended, except that every hard linebreak coded inside the 
 tag added an extra 
into the post. This struck me as being the result of a post run through a PHP routine, but I have no way of knowing if this thought is correct, or if this is correct, exactly what I can expect from this PHP routine without first trial and error experimentation.

I understand why it would be stupid from a security POV to expose PHP code directly to the web. I am fairly well-versed in HTML, XHTML and CSS. My PHP ability is weak, although I have in the past, with effort, hacked PHP code when it was imperative, but it is not something I do for amusement. I am also not one to stay angry long, nor hold personal grudges, so I am already amused by all of this, but others who have been loyal TPM Cafe members, do not have the advantage of my perspective. Their frustration is liable to be much greater, and longer lasting than mine.

A couple of final notes: is there any way for me to purchase from amazon dot com, using a TPM Cafe id string, which the site could derive income from? This needs to be some sort of universal method, and not just specific book titles, as I doubt that that TPM Cafe is likely to be hosting authors of software manuals and other arcane tech content, which is primarily what I purchase from Amazon. There are creative methods of funding websites that presently remain largely unexplored, which do not also come with a class-based censoring of users. Also, if you know any decent deserving folk, who are in the business of selling political satire products, I may have a rip of the RNCC 2008 convention logo that is salable (although less than tasteful), and am willing to give it away to an entity who could use it properly and commercially. Let me know and if curious about the image, let me know where i can show it to you without publicly posting it, as to many back-traceable threads, spoil the web_pseudos...

cheers

damn HTML tags run through a PHP processed routine. As I mentioned, it's presently all trial and error, and the mono spaced fonts in my previous post came about becuase I did not escape: <pre>.

See, I can intuitively grasp at the underlying process, and also adapt.

I begin to wonder why this department still exists. BTW, Andrew, any news on password/login bugs?

Andrew, it would help if you gave more updates on what's going on with the Cafe. Your last few posts have been political, and I'm sure if you have time to blog about Obama, then you have time to give updates to the site.

This isn't meant as snark, just that people (old users and new users) are getting pretty pissed at the site. I would like to tell you when you last posted about the site update and bug fixes, but, irony of ironies, the archive links are broken.

Ok, fourth attempt to post...

Unfortunately I really don't have anything to update you on. Our tech people are trying to fix a variety of things (including adding a server), but none of it is done yet.

I don't blame folks for being frustrated, I am too. But I unfortunately can't make solutions come any faster through my frustration, I just have to wait for our tech partners to come up with fixes.

Today I found something I wanted to say! So, I checked the top of my screen, it said "welcome hoppycalif2". I went to the bottom of the screen to "Post a Comment". It said "Hello hoppycalif2. (Not you? Log out.) Since this is me I typed my post, hit the "SEND" button and got: "to post a comment, enter your name and password". With a sigh, I did so, and got something like "name and password do not match, try again". So, I erased the *** and typed my password again and hit "SEND". The screen shifted back to the original screen. Who knows whether my comment was posted or not? It will be about 5 more minutes before I will know.

So, here goes again....click "SEND"...

I'm back! The screen said "Internal Server error". Let's try again....

i'm back again! Golly, this is fun. Another "internal server error". Well, having all of this fun just keeps me here, so lets try again....

Great news! While waiting I opened another window and found my first post of the day actually did go through. Lousy news: this time I got "movable type an error occurred". I'm just ecstatic now! But, one more try....

One more "internal server error". New tactic: I will copy this and hold it to try again later. I'm not sure I will be able to contain my joy though.

Ok, it is now 25 minutes later. Lets try it again:

Hoppy, you have unintentionally provided me with a bit of information, which I can use in your post. thanks.

If you are in the camp of persons who desire to have access to some of their past content at TPM Cafe, which presently remains inaccessible to them, let me know, and I try to help you pull it from where it probably resides in caches and archives. If you do desire to do this though, it is important that it be done ASAP, as the content in the big web caches is not static, and will eventually be discarded from them. After that, one need deal with the Internet Archives site, which can be a frustrating experience.

I think it's great that this format gives you more ad revenue. you guys deserve it.

It would stink if you lost the readership for those ads. I don't like to complain, but after a week and a half, perhaps you need a new team of experts. These don't seem to have any sense of urgency.

workerbee, there is probably much more labour being put into this effort than you realise. I for one do not envy anyone who is faced with the difficulties of a codebase change, which they did not see coming, and are largely the result of an application of the great variable: the user.

I suspect that too much reliance was given to a function which claimed it was able to leap over tall building and outrun fast trains when it translated code between two open-source content management systems. I would hope that those responsible for working through this at TPM are also documenting the hell for potential future usage by others who are trying to get open-source systems into a place of permanence on the web.

Damn you to hell, Web 2.0!

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