Over Easy: WordPress, Disqus and FDL
As everyone should be aware te servers that host FDL had been under attack for around a month or so. Making ti very difficult at best to even connect to the site let alone login, comment and post, Keeping the reader posts at MyFDL inaccessible most of that time and the servers possible hacked to enable this attack. Due to Jane’s absence and likely financial considerations, most of the software support staff that helped to maintain the servers were let go. Thus making any attempt to resolve these issues nearly impossible.
The decision to move FDL to different servers and software wise start from scratch with new software was made. Under the circumstances this was to me the best decision, keeping the posts and comments archived.
The “old site” that everybody seems to miss was based of heavily modified WordPress code, most especially the commenting system. Not only that but similar code was used on the MyFDL servers and to enable the transfer of a MyFDL post to the main site required keeping both in sync. A major undertaking I can assure you.
So MyFDL is no longer for the present.
As you can see by the layout of the current site and the dashboard, much newer and possibly more current WordPress code is being used. Anyone who has put up his/her own blog is or should be aware that there are a number of blogging software packages available. WordPress being the top of the list. WordPress comes in two flavors. Worpress.org which supplies to code necessary to run Worpress on you own servers and allow you to modify it to you own needs. And Worpress.com which contains it own servers already configured and running the WordPress software, making it easier to set up a blog. However though you have a number the themes you can chose from and modify, you cannot modify the code or change much of the other parts. Such as commenting and logging in etc.
Rather than trying to shoehorn the old commenting system into the new Worpress code, the people at FDL have chose to go with an already available and highly use commenting system. Disqus. There is a lot about Disqus I like and some things I am not fond of. I like being able to insert media into comments. I like the little blue bubble next to you name at the top of the comments, that if you click it you get a side panel of the comments you made and the replies. This handy to see who has replied to older comments. I also like the autoupdate feature.
I am not fond of the fact that comments are no longer numbered or that you have to scroll up or down to see what comments have been made. It can get confusing. And since Disqus is it own system on it’s ,own servers, there is really no modifications you can do.
I am willing to cut the FDL group a little slack. I have been in computer systems programming myself for over 30 years and I can tell you, this is not a piece of baklava. Many’s a time I have brought up systems not even this complex. Thought I had tested them 8 ways to Sunday and have them come crashing down around my ears the first time anyone attempted to login.
One last thing. When you cut and paste text from an outside source, please…please…please edit out the typesetting characters. Like the left and right double and single quotes often used by newspapers and books. They often mess up the html style sheets and make the page almost unreadable. Especially on mobile devices.
76 Comments
Good morning, pups. Today we have Brooks, Cohen and Nocera. In “Learning From Mistakes” Bobo tells us that the question, would you go back and undo your errors is unanswerable. He says the question is: What wisdom have you learned that will help you going forward? Mr. Cohen, in “The Presence of the Past,” says not o remember, or to be overwhelmed by memory, are equally dangerous. Mr. Nocera says we need “Chemo for the Planet,” and that instead of focusing on human behavior to reduce global warming, try using technology. Of course the “technology” he’s touting is, at this point, pie in the sky with rafts of unintended consequences such as ocean acidification which he glosses over.
HERE they are, and
HERE’s Krugman’s blog.
The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got waffles with warm maple syrup this morning. I think we’re all slowly getting used to Disqus. I do still wish that links would show as links somehow, either by being colored or underlined. I’ve tried to make it clear by putting links in all caps. I’m off to do some work, but I’ll be lurking from time to time. Have a great day.
Morning all – and thank you to all who have been involved in the maintenance of FDL.
Disqus is a private enterprise with all that entails. Until and unless I update my system I cannot yet seem to get the anti-tracking add-ons to work. So I log in and out. Sigh…
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For those maybe still young at heart (or not so), but definitely thinking about their Medicare statements.
Medicare is becoming the new DC slush fund. Death by a thousand cuts.
From David Dayen via Salon
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/19/another_trans_pacific_partnership_lie_exposed_how_medicare_is_getting_stiffed_in_obamas_massive_trade_deal/
Thus far, I guess Disqus is alright. At least it’s accessible, which is more that I can for the prior system. I’m just pissed that I can’t use oldhippiejan (although in the top right corner it says howdy oldhippiejan). I’ve tried a few suggestions presented by other FDLers to no avail. And not real happy with the up and down sequence of comments. On the plus side, all replies appear in my email, which is nice so I don’t miss nothing. Change comes hard to this old woman, but I’ll still stick around. Ya’ can’t get rid of me that easy. oldhippiejan.
“Bobo tells us that the question, would you go back and undo your errors is unanswerable.”
Only if you cannot admit your mistakes. So neither Bobo nor any of the GOP candidates can answer it.
I not only have to admit my mistakes, but describe them to a wide distribution list, acknowledge what I SHOULD have done, and then put together a plan to correct them.
Boxturtle (All that while taking abuse for making the error in the first place)
Good morning oldhippiejan. I understand. Let us not forget though, the “old system” was the culmination of years and years of programming by a number of people.
Jan – did you ever try setting up a new disqus account with a different email?
You see it can be done – Alice
Bobo actually got all Baba Ram Dass and told us you never step in the same river twice. It’s time for him to get back to politics because his recent stuff is cringe-making.
But there should be no need to set up another account. Just above the ‘Sort by’ tab is your name. Whatever it shows it should drop down to offer you to access your profile.
Do that – that should be your Disqus page. Find where it says whatever your screen name is. There you can change it and change it again. Just save it each time.
If it says you cannot then maybe you are logged in another way.
But you still could try oldhippiejan with a (invisible) space at the end.
Bobo has been cringe-worthy even since I was introduced to his balderdash. Doesn’t seem to matter what his chosen topic is. If it weren’t for his commentators, his columns would be completely worthless.
Boxturtle (There are better way to wrap fish)
good morning everyone.
Good morning.
“The comment: Mr. Cohen, in “The Presence of the Past,” says not o remember, or to be overwhelmed by memory, are equally dangerous.” reminds me of an interesting chapter in a book from the 60’s, “The Savage and Beautiful Country”, by Alan Mcglashan, that has a chapter “Remembering and Forgetting” in which he contends similarly, except he goes on to point out that the intersection between remembering and forgetting is the point where creativity appears, that if you remember everything or conversely, forget everything, creativity suffers.
That chapter has stuck with me for all these years, giving me “permission”, even encouragement, in allowing both to function unencumbered by ego. A case in point: forgetting a passage at the piano while performing is typically handled with improvisation, where the performer “makes up” a phrase or two to get back to the composer’s writing. So forgetting leads to improvisation. Or at least, offers the possibility of such.
I can’t be the only one who nearly retched at DiFi’s defense of TPP. Interesting how the GOP suddenly “trusts” Obama to do the right thing without seeing what the right thing is. Almost as if they’re getting directions from the people who HAVE seen it.
Boxturtle (Corporate lobbyists, maybe?)
Chris, in my Sunday’s blog, I did just that and you caught it. Except I concluded that the problem was exacerbated because the opening quote is missing. It seems from what you said that no quotes be used at all? Or is the process to remove the quote marks from the page to be copied and pasted, then re-inserted manually?
This makes no sense, and if so, I would call that a bug. A really bad bug.
No. just use the normal ones on you keyboard. I use an external text editor and do a block replace.
OT, but I just wanted to thank you again for sharing your photography with us yesterday. Lovely, lovely stuff.
One thing those who are having a hard time getting FDL and comment to display correctly might try is to change the character encoding on you browser. I have had to do this with a few web pages myself in the past to get them to display correctly.
Worth a shot.
I would like numbered comments again and wonder when myFDL might get back up.
How is that accomplished?
In the case of Sunday’s quote, adding the beginnig quote mark by keyboard wasn’t enough? I need also to erase the copied quote and replace it with the ketboard one? Is this because the computer recognizes where the quote is with respect to copy, enabling the computer to decide to use the opening or closing version?
When you do a “block replace” you are doing what and how?
Says I do not have ‘sufficient permission to access this page’. So what thehellever, I’ll just continue to sign ‘oldhippiejan’ or ‘ohj’.
Thanks again Marion! Most of the comments Sunday were OT, which is fine, so turnabout is fair play!
Both would be nice though for numbered comments a different comment system would be necessary, me thinks.
As far as MyFDL..do not know if they are planning a return in the future or not. I would like it for diaries that are not necessarily political in nature and there for not really appropriate for the front page here.
No Alice, I haven’t tried that. I need step by step instructions because I’m pretty technologically ignorant.Have a damn trak phone I can’t use. Luckily my TV has a simple on/off button. Hope I die before it becomes anymore complicated. Perhaps I should also mention that my patience with gadgetry, and most things, is zero.
I want a damn number to call to talk to a human being and walk me through it.
oldhippiejan
Bobo is defending the decision to go to war by being disingenous first he asks would you go back in time to kill Hitler but tries to confuse us with all the good things that came from WW2 as if those things would have never happened without WW2, might not have happened faster without WW2 in some cases, never mind was WW2 worth the price of those good things? I recall an old episode of Dr Who asking the same thing about the Daleks.
Next its one thing to ask to fix your own mistakes if given a chance its another to ask to fix an other’s mistakes by killing them (false equivlancy)
“There’s a fable going around now that the intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was all cooked by political pressure, that there was a big political conspiracy to lie us into war.”
Niger Yellow Cake was not a WH made up story? Colin Powell’s Aluminum tubes that could only be used to make WMD UN speech, Al Quieda and Saddam worked together etc etc. Bobo is now rewriting history.
I did also. And I also wondered what is really going on because it would seem that to sink POTUS, the GOP would sink TPP, but not so. That makes me very suspicious, and were I a dem in Cingress, I would be digging really, really deep at this point.
But he is absolutely brilliant at being so consistently bad.
Bobo tries to excuse Jeb by never mentioning Jeb and succeeds in boring us all
Good morning cmaukonen. I get that and I can put up with most of the changes, but damn it I’m oldhuppiejan here. ‘social misfit’ worked for the other account but not here. I wouldn’t call my ‘Lola’ ‘Jack’. after 6 years. oldhippiejan
Why do people even pay attention to him. In fact why does he even have a job ?
Two wings of the UniParty™
The number of lobbyists in DC.
http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/
In 2014 there were 11,800 lobbyists for 535 congress critters.
They spent $3.24 billion.
It is the best Congress that money can buy.
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I obtained two volumes of E.S. Curtis prints – they are amazing. I need a time machine. I was born in the wrong century.
Deciding that is a tough call. From the basic nature of FDL, my blog, the food blog and the art blog are not appropriate for the front page. If they are, than so many other diaries may be also. OTOH, they serve to keep the front page fresh, especially week ends.
It’s a tough call.
On Firtefox you have to got to customise the tool bar and add the icon now {{sigh}}. Then when you click on the icon a drop down menu comes up and you can choose which encoding you want.
Under chrome it’s under the more tools menu. Do not know how to do it in Opera though.
For some reason I have patience with this stuff. I just keep poking until something good happens or I break it. Or both.
Don’t hope to die, hang in there. We love you just the same no matter what the trinkets say.
Thanks for this info, Alice X. I had no idea about this, No damn wonder it’s such a big damn secret. Well they’ve raided social security, so next comes Medicare. Damn, this pisses me off. Where the hell is the democratic party. Never mind, I know. In the pockets of those who own them. oldhipppiejan
Indeed !
I’d really love to question Bobo in public about that fable. I’d start with the British report about fixed intelligence. Then I’d move on to curveball and Judy Miller.
Boxturtle (Suspects he’d flounce off in a huff if questioned)
How fortunate! I have but one print, from the tissue set he produced. The vellum’s are worth even more, but I could afford the tissue print. OTOH, the delicacy of the tissue prints has it’s own attraction. Even with today’s digital printing, I doubt the quality done on tissue, can match those prints.
I also felt my birth to be in the wrong century, but now, since I am here in both the 21st Century and the new millennium, I consider myself fortunate. The only one upsmanship would be for a person born, say 1898 or 99 to still be living in 2000! Three centuries and two millenniums!
Alas, the Dems in congress are simply waiting for “sweeteners” from Obama before supporting TPP. We used to call them “bribes”.
I don’t think anybody needs to dig much. All you need to know is how desperate ObamaLLP is to keep the details from the citizens.
Boxturtle (Why cant’ Obama put this much effort into good things?)
Hmmm, this would be a good subject for Camera Work.
Bobo’s job is to revise history for the benefit of the Corporate wing of the GOP and the benefit of the NYT’s own shattered reputation. And he’ll be employed at that for a very long time.
Boxturtle (I wonder if Hillary will ignore Iraq because of her YES vote)
Took less than 24 hrs to get those!
I think it’s much, much more arcane than sweeteners, or at least, I used to think so!
I did it but which character encoding? The choices seem to be based on language.
Thats just it the GOPers think he is liberal, we think he is conservative, everyone thinks he is boring. The guy costs the NYT readers and Cred more people Mock Bobo like Marion in Savannah than quote him, Krugman I quote. The goal of Propaganda is to reach readers and convince them of your case not drive them away the NYT heck newspapers across America are losing readers because guys like Bobo spread hate (Bobo vs Krugman feud about Reagan being a racist, lie (Bobo claiming we were not lied into war by the WH) and of course just being wrong a few months before the economy collapsed Bobo was writing about how unfair it was Bush was not getting Cred for the great economy. I think Bobo has a job because the NYT thinks Bobo is effective at spreading propaganda but the NYT does not check to see if thats true with reader surveys.
Should we be saving all our myFDL articles to our computers while we still can?
I should have been more clear that they are reproductions in volumes from the library. I can’t imagine what originals would be worth. The other week when a used book vender had one on his outdoor stand, I couldn’t afford that.
I just window shop.
My dear aunt was born in 1899 and made it to 1999. It is funny, she had been a nurse. And a hypochondriac. She outlived them all.
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So I started playing the piano some, the soundboard was totally asleep but started to sound better the next day. In a month if I keep it up I will be up to playing at playing Mozart. He is good for the imagining. If one doesn’t count the two or three measures he will throw in somewhere that separate the artists from the rest. Then after a month I will need two hours a day to stay even.
That is usually when I quit.
The one, huge advantage of Disqus is that now, I leave my e-mail open and wait for a signal that a response to a comment has been posted, and Disqus takes me directly to that comment. Then I can also browse all the comments.
Puzzle: Why is Disqus flagged as a misspelling, on Disqus?
Inquiring minds want to know!
Can you revise history if nobody pays attention…except to mock.:)
They are and also some ISO standards as well.
Maybe FDL can have a post where we brainstorm fundraising ideas?
I would just try a few out until the page looked right.
OY…why can’t web page creators just use the normal 128 character set and stop trying to be clever and funky ?
I wonder just how many differnt things we can prove about that fable? Also can we complain to the NYT about Bobo lying I’m sure if we dig we can find Bobo writing about Niger Yellow cake,Colin Powell’s Aluminum tubes that could only be used to make WMD UN speech,the British report about fixed intelligence. Then I’d move on to curveball and Judy Miller.
Maybe we can sue the NYT for knowingly lying us into war to raise cash for FDL?
My only comment is Thanks for All the hard work behind the curtains. Then again if you can give some $$$ to FDL I’m sure that well help. I’ll be doing that tomorrow when I receive my SS.
“Bobo tells us that the question, would you go back and undo your errors is unanswerable.” They are not errors if you have no desire to fix them. Of course in an objective realty you can’t avoid errors by denying you ever made them unless your a 3 year old, a totalitarian ruler or the propagandist for a totalitarian ruler. Also Notice Bobo never hesitates to point out what he thinks are our errors.
Good idea.
I got a bit more ambitious. I decided to see what it takes to do the Brahms “Ballade, Op 118 #3” I can’t get through the first 6 measures! The right hand fingering is counter intuitive, but necessary to even get through 2 measures.
However, if you do master those first 6, you are on your way. They are a complete statement of the work.
I love this kind of challenge, even as I never get to play it competently, or even completely. Keeps the mind and hand active and forces co-ordination.
He specializes in shaming the poors for lolling around on the couch instead of working, and engaging in sexytime that he doesn’t approve of.
I looked and have been playing with the difference between Unicode and Western. I don’t see anything obvious to this observer.
Trinkets say. Great phrase!
BTW, I have been reading her name as oldhippiejean, not jan. Somewhere I was certain it was jean, but now I’m not so sure!
in terms of the attacks you are suffering, the first place I would look at disqus and whatever has infected our discourse. I have had many run ins with this service, I have caught comments being manipulated and deleted without attribution many times. One commenter who claimed she was sitting on the discus moderator’s face while she (it) conversed with me told me to go kill myself. The main aim of these shithooks seems to be they are christianists, who will lie and hate. I avoid disqus sites as best I can, I will certainly avoid FDL if you go with disqus. My hope has always been your independence from that particular infection, I guess it’s not to be. I will no longer contribute to your site, which is a huge shame that the kocks have ruined you. One of my main concerns is that disqus is a Trojan horse, to be used for disinformation when a crisis occurs. Please be aware of this infection when you are ready to spend your money to support liberalism; disqus sites are no longer liberal.
if FDL goes with disqus please cancel my open credit card with your site. While I understand this may seem counter intuitive I will not support any site that uses disqus, ever.
Um, Disqus was not the comment software when the attacks commenced, but rather,part of the answer to them.
In Opera, Alt>Page>Encoding. The default seems to be Unicode UTF-8 which shouldn’t present any problems.
Sequence of comments is my only quibble, but more than happy to live with this in exchange for a site that works!
Jan, try this. 1)Hover over the avatar next to your name on any of your comments. 2) Click “Edit profile” in the popup. 3)That takes you to your Disqus “Account” page. Click “Profile” on the left above “Account.” 4) Type oldhippiejan in the name slot. Then click save at the bottom.
If you can make comments here you are logged into Disqus. I think you’ve been trying to change your name somehow through WordPress–which won’t work.
Not all of the different language encodings contain all the same characters, especially those like accented letters. You shouldn’t see a difference unless you know to look for a used character that isn’t represented in the encoding you’re browser is using. In Unicode, I believe, any encoding other than UTF-8, such as UTF-16 will start a block of text with a “byte order mark,” which is a string of characters that tell a program what the encoding is. I had a friend who was doing a website where all his pages had an odd string of characters in the top left corner. We puzzled that out to be a BOM (byte order mark) due to the encoding he was using with his editor.
or something like that
Hello, Jimbo
I work here. Disqus has not “infected our discourse,” whatever that is supposed to mean. It was not in use until a few weeks ago so it is not why FDL was under attack. Plus, there have been no reports here at FDL of anyone’s comments being “manipulated and deleted without attribution.”
I don’t know who you are interacting with on Disqus, but if anyone is “sitting” on a Disqus moderator’s face and telling people to kill themselves while suffocating the moderator and/or receiving pleasure, this is very newsworthy. It’s even more newsworthy if this moderator is a “shithook” who happens to be a lying and hating Christianist. So, if you have documentation, we are eager to see details of this wild tomfoolery at Disqus.
How does moving comments from a website to a third-party hosting service suddenly make that website “no longer liberal”? Also, I was unaware that the root of all evil in crises could be somehow traced back to Disqus.
We have decided to go with Disqus so you should probably choose to avoid FDL and stop supporting it.
I’ve been interacting with some form of disqus for a couple of years. When did the attacks commence? I am not saying disqus has done anything, what I’m saying is from experiences I’ve had when on sites that use disqus. I’ve seen comments manipulated and censored, enough so that a clear agreement might be made for the purpose of the activity, the topic being manipulated. I’ve been writing comments about this for months. I very much hope what I experienced was (is) an anomaly, but I need to be convinced that my belief that disqus might be a Trojan Horse is false. Also, I’m not saying comment software is necessary for attacks, you’re suggesting that. Straw horse? What you appear to be saying is that disqus is now part of the operating software, not just comments? Or, disqus itself is running the sites? You sound like one of the geniuses I had to deal with who I thought were disqus. Say hi to AA for me
look what I just found, “If Disqus shuts down, hundreds of millions of comments would be wiped away from a wide range of sites, since by the very nature of the service, comment content is not being managed locally by sites implementing the service”. You can figure that out.
Oh boy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disqus
If I no longer donate to help support FDL or visit the website it’s because I no longer trust your site, expressly because you have chosen disqus and because of my past experiences with disqus. I notice also that many so called ‘liberal’ sites have installed links to ‘newsmax’. Will you be following suit?
‘there have been no reports here at FDL of anyone’s comments being “manipulated and deleted without attribution.’ There are now, not on your site. .
Let me be clear, those things have happened to me on sites that use discus. I don’t know that what happened is attributable to disqus or disqus employees, but I was led to believe so. And if they are disqus employees, does disqus stand behind them for what they say and said, and did, with the censoring? The actions taken by those folks whom I believe are disqus employees are in accord with far right thinking, very far right, hence my concern about the Trojan Horse. If this thinking is common with disqus employees, is it what disqus believes?
if you have ties to disqus perhaps you should specify that.
I think she addressed it recently, she said she made a mistake.
I have never been a member of AA nor am I an alcoholic.
We’re actually probably going to be getting a special box with links to World Net Daily content. They are willing to pay us a pretty decent amount each month, and we can use the money to keep us going.
Who was sitting on a Disqus moderator’s face? Do Disqus employees lead you to believe these things because they are trying to worm inside your brain and get you to stop thinking liberal thoughts?
yeah, you’re one of a couple of others that do this, according to what they told me, just like you. According to Wikipedia then you will no longer have control of the contents of comments, and the pos you are dealing with will manipulate and censor just like they do on other sites. I understand your situation and I regret it because FDL has been one of the first sites I visit each day for many years. I have a credit card on file with your site, please cancel it.