I have been busy migrating Crooks and Liars over to the new system and that has taken tons of time. Hopefully after today and a little bug crushing, I will be back to a more normal posting schedule. Meanwhile - check out the new stuff at C&L.
Sorry For The Lack Of Posts
Sun Oct 5, 2008 at 11:01 am
By jamie
Comments
C&L has been one of my favorite blog sites for quite some time. It had a look and feel very unlike most other blog sites...
Unfortunately, I agree with the majority of respondents over at C&L. The new look is too much like any other blog. C&L has lost its look that sets it apart from most other blogs. I know that even though the majority are complaining about the new look, I would be surprised if anything will be done to make it look and feel like it did before the change. As with GW when he refuses to listen to the people, most site developers ignore the complaints after a major software change too...
Change is good if it is an obvious improvement from the past. Change for the sake of change isn't good though. Reagan brought us change and now we are paying an economic price for those changes. Change can either be positive or negative. Progressives shouldn't support any and all change. Only change that leads in a positive direction should be embraced by thinking Progressives. Joe 6-Pack believes in brain dead change. We are better than that...
It's nice that you were able to help with the migration. Perhaps you can also help get the C&L look and feel back that set it apart from other blog sites too...
That's my 2¢ worth anyway...
There are actual performance reasons for such a design. In the old template if something didn't load, like a third party ad or embed, then the entire site wouldn't load. It would then have a chain reaction and the servers would go down. Since the migration, C&L has hit traffic spikes that would have brought the old servers to a halt. With these traffic spikes yesterday the servers didn't even break a sweat. So we are seeing an enormous performance boost.
I just do the actual programming for the site. We had another individual design the new template. That person is one of the top web designers in the world. With this new template it also opens the site up to more devices, such as the onslaught of new handheld technologies, who can now view the site on their devices.
Another reason for the change is that the old template was variable width. With the rising popularity of larger widescreen monitors, this gave a much wider reading area, which is more difficult to read.
It's no mystery that people hate change. When we move Firedoglake over last year we saw the same level of complaint, but everyone got used to it and a lot who complained actually ended up saying they liked the new layout better once they got used to seeing it.
Once we roll out all the features we have planned people are going to love it. Most of them are complete as far as programming, we are just monitoring the servers to make sure they stay happy. We are going to be putting new features in that would have not been possible on the old software. Trust me - I know. I actually tried to do it a year ago and that's when we decided it was time to move to the new platform. We could have done it in the old software, but we would have had to put up three times the ads just to cover all the additional costs related to the hardware level.
I have a hard time believing that one of the top web designers in the world would forget to set the background color. That seems like one of the first things they would set in css or in the database. People who have white as their default PC background color see a white C&L background. Those like me who use a different background color for their PCs see a different C&L background color, which may or may not clash with the font, banner, etc colors. How in the world would a top web designer miss something so basic as that???
Most of us have gotten used to being ignored for the last 8 years by GW and Congress. So being ignored by a blog site and its designers and developers probably won't be the worst that happens to us. I have worked closely with software development too and have offered tech support for various platforms, so I am well aware that the update may correct internal performance problems. I also know that a layout that no one likes can make people hate a site even if it is running quality code underneath the fold...
I once was part of a government project that had millions of lines of code that worked well. The client hated it though. But after adjusting the client interface and doing nothing to the underlying functionality, the client loved it. The look and feel can make or break a site and software...
You might want to take many of the complaints seriously. We aren't complaining simply because we enjoy complaining. Far from it. Most of us have been loyal fans of C&L for a very long time. Most of the complaints I saw are legitimate and deserve more than just lip service. We get far too much from the current administration so you should understand that patience may be running thin for a lot of folk...
I'm just saying....
I see what you mean now. Everyone was saying "black text on white background" when they were complaining about the site, which is what it's supposed to be. The absence of the background color for the body would cause a problem if you have a different background set in your browser.
Actually when the CSS files got aggregated it ended up removing it. It was there in the raw file. I fixed that now so that body's background color is set to #FFF. Thanks.
Yes, the background color is now set to white so everyone will be seeing the same thing. A lot of people were complaining that the white background was too bright for them. I don't mind it but it is pretty plain looking...
Another problem is that during registration, the authorization email never arrives. So apparently the email server is not working or the code that is supposed to send the email has a flawed. Or perhaps the SMTP server addresses that you are using is incorrect...
Using the previous software, you could view all entries for the current day on the first page. Now earlier entries from the day end up on alternate pages later in the afternoon. I have found that once entries fall off of the first page, they aren't likely to be seen again. If you can increase the limit for what is displayed on the page, that might help. I realize that it might slow down the page load a bit, but I can't imagine that it will be that much worse...
Another thing is that each time I try to post, it says that it has determined that I might be a spammer. Since I can't complete the registration due to the missing email authorization, then I have to go through this for EVERY submission. It discourages me from wasting my time and probably does the same for others as well. If I am lucky enough to get the correct CAPTCHA code entered, which can be hit or miss since 2 and Z and O and 0 look the same, then it goes into a Preview Screen rather than submitting the message. So this "security" feature is adding a lot of unnecessary and annoying steps that may discourage people from posting. Since you are using the same software, your site has the same annoying behavior....
We've already had over 500 people register and of them only about 20 (including you) haven't been logged in, so it's most likely caught up in your email spam filter. You can go to:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/user/password
And enter your email address you registered with and see if that email comes through. If not then contact sitemonitor1@gmail.com and tell them - they can assign you a new password and give it to you.
The old software showed the previous 20 posts, it just happened to sometimes be that 20 posts were made a day. It's not a change of the software. Both Wordpress and Drupal give you control over how many posts to show per page. The problem is that C&L does a lot of embed posts and those 20 posts per page were causing crashed on a lot of older systems. Also we couldn't use Digg with all those posts. It caused a bunch of problems and when we had to drop Digg, we got tons of complaints about it not being there.
I guess on the Captcha you are talking about my site. I'm not really that concerned on the number of comments I get. This is more just a little hobby, and the level of enjoyment I got from it severely declined when I had to deal with 100 spams a day. The CAPTCHA is actually generated through a third party server, so I don't have any control over it.
If you have any other suggestions or complaints you want made to the decision maker at C&L (which is John Amato), please voice them over there. They are reading everything over there and deciding what will be good changes in the future.
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