General: Community Beta--Bugs & Known Issues

So like any big site launch, we're expecting to find and fix a few things. Here's our working list of things we're aware of at this point:

• Editing tags - some people are reporting that they can't edit the tags associated with their own blog entries. tagging entries now works!
  
• Multiple entries - some blog entries are appearing multiple times.
  
• Banner image uploading - .gif images will upload properly, but .jpg images won't. (This may be limited to Internet Explorer.)
  
• The blog descriptions field won't currently accept an apostrophy ('). fixed!
  
• The login screen has layout problems in Firefox and Safari. fixed!
  
• Some blog entries are just sitting at the top of the Blogs tab because the recent entries list in the blogs tab isn't handling future-dated posts effectively. (This used to be a problem on the houseblogs.net home page...I guess I forgot to have that fix incorporated in the new blogs tab.) fixed!
  
• Minor flaw: In the profiles list anyone without a blog has a / before the words 'No Blog'. fixed
  
• OK, this one's a bit technical but if I don't put it here I'll forget to deal with it...when a user submits info about their blog (either on the registration page or on their profile page) the 'network' field isn't being entered in the database. fixed!
  
• The 'live search' function on the right hand side has some usability issues.Fixed!
  
• The 'since last visit' filter on the Blogs tab is displaying an error message. Fixed!
  
• The tag list won't accept an apostrophe ('). Fixed!
  
• The 'add to your friends' links in the Blogs tab don't work properly
  

If you encounter any other issues please post them here and we'll check them out.

In flickr, where is my rss feed located? I can't find it anywhere...

john m - Woops, I knew about that and forgot that I needed to fix that css. Thanks, I'll add it to the list.

Oh, and I wanted to say that the new site looks great! Good job.

The photos section gives me the option to save my settings once uploaded, but there is no upload button.

Couldn't see it until I whitelisted the site's images and then whoa. It looked terrible! I put in a temporary one for now that looks better, but HELP.

I created an image that was 125 high by 240 wide, but when I uploaded it, it was big and cropped. Can't I input an image that is smaller and within the 200x280 dimensions like others still have?

Yeah, we have to work out some of the duplicate posts/blogs since we switched to the new version.

When trying to do the "Since Last Visit" filter on the blog listing, I get this error whether using Firefox or IE:

Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/akolson1/public_html/community/extensions/Blogs/default.php on line 286
Unknown column 'MyBlogThisVisit' in 'field list'
Notice: strtotime(): Called with empty time parameter in /home/akolson1/public_html/community/extensions/Blogs/default.php on line 290

I've been logged in, looked at posts, etc. I've tried it a couple days in a row now and still the same error.

Oh yeah, I forgot to post back a confirmation that I did that...

Only rss or index feeds are working for syndication. For some reason, atom feeds aren't working.

The map will return, I just haven't done the work to integrate the map settings in to the new profile management interface.

Is your latest entry 'Paint me, baby'? I see it on your profile page as well as on page two of the recent entries list.

kithouse - It presents the order based on either the 'published on' date in your RSS/Atom feed so if you, for example, save a draft and then publish it later some blogging systems might use the date you first saved the draft.

If you blogging system let's you edit publishing timestamps that's probably your best option.

kithouse - You might want to look in to the particular timestamp and timezone that your blogging software is using.

That said, I didn't provide full detail in the sorting method above because I was being too brief. For the sake of transparency, here it is...

Before explaining how it works, I'll first just say that sorting blog entries is actually more complicated than it would seem. In the past i just used the timestamp published in each RSS feed but then found that people could game that system and by future dating their posts they'd sit at the top of the recent entries list all day.

After trying various systems, here's what the current sorting approach does:
1. First our site normalizes all entries to a single timezone. This is done based on info each RSS feed provides us. (If you're curious you'll have to check how your blogging tool handles it.)

2. The system captures both the 'published on' timestamp in each RSS feed as well as the 'found on' timestamp that reflects when our site first discovers a particular entry.

3. The 'recent entries' list compares those two timestamps for each entry. It sorts each entry according to its 'published on' timestamp unless that time is greater than the 'found on' timestamp (i.e., the timestamp is in the future). This stops any future dating of posts and can sometimes explain why a post appears outside of what looks like chronological order.

The final thing to know is that our site tries to check ever RSS feed every 15 minutes but if a particular feed isn't responsive our site moves on and checks again later. I believe this can sometimes explain why an entry doesn't get picked up immediately after you publish it (sometimes it takes a couple of hours). In those cases, an entry can then appear for the first time somewhere down the list.

You might wonder about other approaches...for example, couldn't we just sort by the 'found on' timestamp and give everyone time at the top of the list? That would indeed put everything new at the top, but it has an undesirable effect when someone new joins and adds their blog...all 15ish posts in their RSS feed appears at the top and pushes everything else down the list.

That said, we're always experiementing so if anyone has a cool formula that could make things better please let us know.

In the mean time, it's been our hope that the new features on this site like 'Friends' and the 'since your last visit' filter can make it easier for people to find the newest posts and make sure they don't miss anything by their favorites.

Sorry for the long winded answer, but I imagine there are several folks out there who were interested anyway.

I can't access the profiles page. Is it down for maintenance?

Aaron, Thanks for getting my blog unparked, whatever that meant. I appreciate it.

Brandy

carabe11a - That should be working now. Can you test it and let me know?

I'm guessing everyone will get that error the first time. I'll look in to how to prevent it, but good to know it's working after that though.

Thanks!

hanjin1 - At this point the search functionality in the Search tab isn't as robust as we plan it to be.

That said, the 'live search' box on the right does allow for better search--especially for blogs.

This isn't a bug...just wondering if anyone else has noticed a huge jump in hits in the last week. I'm attributing it to the roll-out of this new improved site -- but, also wondering if their are season peaks? Now that fall is approaching, maybe more people are spending more time on the internet?

I've definitely noticed seasonal readership stats in the past. Hits go down in nice weather, up in yucky weather. Search terms used to find houseblog member sites change seasonally too.

I'm also having the double posting issue. It seems like mine is happening because I appear to have two houseblogger accounts/usernames- 'collinsburgers' and 'Ralph's House'. I don't know how I have two. There might even be three; my first password isn't working anymore and I never see the same user icon when I'm logged on. This might be due to me registering in houseblogs under my blogger.com username of 'collinsburgers', and then changing my username to 'Ralph's House' while logged onto my 'collinsburgers' profile. I received houseblogger status emails for both usernames, and suspect them as the culprit because one entry on the homepage post says 'Ralphs', while the other says 'Ralph's'.
I'm utterly confused, especially since any changes I've done have been late at night and I can't totally remember them. Is it possible to delete 'collinsburgers'? Is anyone else experiencing this?

Thank you, Aaron, for clearing me up. I'm glad to not be gunking up the works on the homepage. People must think I'm greedy.

Please ignore. Found the answer in the FYI.

Mr. Bungle O
http://mrbungleo.blogspot.com/

(newbie)

May have found a partial solution to the feed weirdness. Blogger Beta is having feed issues:
"The http://*.blogspot.com/atom.xml Atom feeds are returning an “Invalid request URI” error. A temporary workaround until we fix this is to use the http://*.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full URL. — latest update on Saturday, September 23, 2006 "

I tried changing the original feed URL in my Feedburner profile, and that's helped some (at least with Feedburner, which didn't want to update today), but I just posted an update at 2:31pm CDT. We'll see if any of this helps with the out-of-order feed issues :)