Here it is! We will be tweaking for quite some time I suspect for both function and aesthetics, but we now have a content management system that does not involve stone tablets at any stage of the process.
Now I just need to figure out how to use it…
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We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
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Well here is the New and Improved Samizdata!December 14th, 2012 |
 93 comments to Well here is the New and Improved Samizdata! |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
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There’s nothing wrong with stone tablets.
It seems OK. But I am deeply suspicious.
Can we have our auto-bold and auto-italics back, please? Or else I’ll start singing again, I have one all cued up . . . . . .
llater,
llamas
Can you have it? Perhaps. I need to know what it did for you, how it was invoked and what it achieved…
I’m just checking to see how well the commenting, with basic text, works, and in particular whether, after this comment, I have to say who I am, again.
In the old comments entry screen, you could highlight text and then hit a ‘bold’ or ‘italic’ key below the text entry box and it would bold or italic the highlit text.
llater,
llamas
And here is my second comment, with all of my details already there. So: good.
I’ll see what I can do.
llamas
Using Firefox, I’ve downloaded an add-on called Text Formatting Toolbar which has all the usual HTML tags in easy to use format.
Here’s italic and bold and blockquote
and link
Hmm, so does it all work?
A minor point: I’d like the word “Samizdata” to be in bigger type, or the individual post headings in smaller type. At present the former is scarcely bigger than the latter As I get more middle-aged, shortsighted and grumpy I like the titles on books, the signs saying “Push” and all similar things to be obvious.
No Blogroll chaps? Just asking.
That is one interesting quotation there. I think it deserves wider spread.
Well, yes it does, ands it went through unsmitten.
Congrats to all on the relatively painless transition. I’m sure there will be mutterings about “things were better in’t old days”, this is a libertarian blog after all 😉 but all in all you have my vote of approval, (for whatever it is worth).
The skeleton of a Blogroll is in the left sidebar, but it requires nurturing by an editorial power. I’ll try prodding Perry in that direction sometime this weekend; also there’s the possibility for creating “Pages” (see “Who We Are?”) above, for such content.
Well, since the rest of you are jumping off this bridge, I may as well try it, so here goes.
Well done. Looks great on an iPhone too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
llater,
llamas
llamas has a point but I know enough HTML etc. that this was never gonna be easy. This is a work in progress. Anyway I assume the “stone tablet” HTML still works…
Bold, italic etc.
Have done a bit of both. Now 31 vs 22 pixels, and I’ve fixed an imbalance in the home-page-versus-posting-page headers, too.
Nice. I use a custom stylesheet on everything, so it actually doesn’t look all that different to before, but it does seem to load faster.
(Click) Ah, even without it, it hasn’t really changed much. Similar, but a bit sharper and more modern. Good job, guys. I like the threaded comments.
Very encouraging what Simon Gibbs says about it looking good on an iPhone.
Byt the way, what’s the procedure for replacing the rotated G with your face, like Gibbs does?
Out of curiosity, which CMS is the new-look Samizdata running (and what was it running, previously)?
Formerly, MovableType 3.2 which should have been disposed of in 2007.
Now, WordPress, bang up to date, with WP-SuperCache and a few other bits of magic.
Brian: Register with http://en.gravatar.com/ using the same mail-address that is associated with your identity.
FYI, the typefaces I’m getting now are substantially larger under Chrome than they were in the old site.
Much more convenient viewing on a smartphone than the old system
I see that you’ve reinstalled the html links. Thanks!
This is strange…A few seconds ago, the page cut off after 24 comments (ending with Michael Grosh’s comments). The count just now bumped when I refreshed the page, so the count is 25 comments…but the added comment is Laird’s, about restoring the html links. My two comments don’t appear; to read those, you have to click on one or the other in the Recent Comments sidebar. (Then you get the whole shooting match–all 27, if that’s the correct number to date.)
And…my latest, reportorial comment does show on the main page…as # 26. My preceding two, still in limbo, sort of. Also, correction: When I pull up the page via the “Recent Comments” entry, it cuts off immediately after the two Limbo Entries. But I think all the comments preceding mine are there.
I noticed this oddness last night, by the way, with some other folks’ comments. I figured you all were still working out the bugs. Only to be expected, of course.
I don’t believe anyone else has yet mentioned that the HTML tags under the comment box can be selected and dragged into the comment text. It needs some stop (“/”) codes to be really useful, but maybe this feature can be built on.
Are people not seeing the four clickable buttons recently installed above the comment input box?
I’m not seeing the buttons but I have my scripts turned off. There is now an empty space there. I have a related question. I always have my scripts turned off. I try to never turn on scripts that link out to somewhere else and if I do turn them on, I turn them off before I leave the page. If scripts are going to be required to make the site work, what are the bare minimum to read and comment?
Seems much improved over the older format and apparently about time too! I hadn’t realised it was MovableType 3.2 of 2007 vintage – that explained a lot!
The UI (User Interface) ergonomics look as though they are improved also.
Looks like a good CMS (Content Management System).
Glad you have managed to retain the distinctive, uncluttered and easily-read Samizdata layout.
Overall, I would suggest that the transition seems to have been achieved relatively smoothly and with minimal disruption (from my perspective).
A good job, well done.
By the way, in the RSS feed for comments, I would like to suggest that you consider making the Comment Title identical to the Post Title. At the moment, they are not one and the same as the Comment Title takes the format:
[Post Title, the string “by”, the author ID]
(the author ID is then repeated in the comment anyway).
This Comment Title format leads to every comment popping up as a new/unique comment in the feed reader – i.e., the format frustrates the feed reader filter setting which filters out common titles and only displays the latest comment.
The way the Comment Title format is set up in the RSS feed at the moment rather makes keeping up with Samizdata comments a pain in the proverbial, and could be a real put-off for some users/readers (including myself) who have a huge reading workload and rely on automation – the feed reader filtering technology – to ease the burden wherever possible. So this can actually be quite a big deal for some users/readers.
I hope this latter point makes sense. If it doesn’t, then it might be because you haven’t previously needed to make use of the smart feed-reader filtering technology that is available, to ease your reading/scanning burden. The filtering technology can be a major timesaver.
Well done. The overhaul was much needed. Now, to post something.
Now I’ve accessed the posting page (with comments) via the Main Page, clicking on the title…and the two Limbo Comments are in absentia again! As well as your replies, Admin, including the Smite-Cats help. Yet my subsequent to are there, as well as Michael Jennings’, and the stuff about RSS. Very strange. I will go back and see what happens if I click on the Comments to the posting instead of the title.
By the way–may be old news, but I do have the html-tag boxes under the reply box. Very nice!
Nope…not there, whether I click the title (from the Main Page, plain samizdata/net/ ) or the Comments. Even tried clicking forward into it from earlier postings…still no joy.
Can still get to it from the Recent Comments list, but it’s the earliest one in the list and about to drop off. :>(
PS. (Here they go into real Limbo! LOL) Been meaning to say thanks for keeping the old paragraphs about Who We Are. I’ve always loved those for the wry (but not dry) humor. :>)!
Looks nice. I’m sure some people will hate the threaded comments, but they don’t bother me.
Easier to read but looks very much like other blogs now. That clunky blue screen had character.
As a (in-) famous mod on a different site said one day after a major change, “you’ll get over it”
I’m a long time lurker. I agree with Chip, something of the Samizdata character has been lost.
On a technical note why XHTML1.0 Transitional? A strict doctype would be a better choice, also consider HTML5.
I rather miss the large selection of linked blogs that used to be down the left hand side, but in other respects I like it.
Well done, and WP rules.
Can I please-pretty-please have the URL for the mobile version to use on my PC – or, the next best, a printer version? What can I do, I am a minimalist…
Also, the new-post-e-mail-notification seems to only work for a specific contributor – is there a way to subscribe to all new posts other than an RSS feeder?
Thanks in advance.
OK, a revision of my previous comment: I now got Natalie’s new post in the e-mail even though I didn’t subscribe specifically, so that issue is settled. Also, the entire post is in the e-mail message, so no need for a stripped-down online version, other than for comments…Did I mention that WP rules?
BTW Slartibartfarst: love the Gravatar ID, and quite pedantically so:-)
For what it’s worth, Chip, I still see the lovely blue. Well, now there are two shades of it.
We still have some tweaking to do but things have gone well… Alec, otherwise posting comments as ‘Admin’ is THE MAN.
Oh and the sidebar links to worthy blogs *will* return in the not too distant future.
We use WordPress, we use Atahualpa.
Questions regarding HTML are best directed at the owners of those two platforms.
Perry: I saved most (all?) of the text / hyperlinks of those and will provide you with source material for you to selectively edit into the WordPress “Links” feature.
Alisa: the mobile version is selected/provided on the basis of how your Browser identifies itself. If you have a browser that can pretend to be (eg:) an iPhone, you can get it immediately that way. Firefox (User-Agent plugin) and Safari (Developer Menu) at very least can both do this.
Do you have a more specific need due to visual impairment?
Eureka! Thanks for the user-agent tip – live and learn.
No, nothing specific, just an ingrained dislike of bells and whistles:-)
It works – I am now iPhone3:-) BTW, comments are not threaded in mobile version (at least not on iPhone, either real or virtual) – not that I mind.
Quite correct; the threading is an option, one of the things Perry will need to decide is whether he likes it. See the editorial policy for reference.
Don’t be silly – I have that framed in several copies and strategically placed on various walls throughout my house. Like, duh:-)
I run a script blocker, too: allowing “gravatar.com” is enough to enable the buttons.
Thanks, PFP. I also see that a “Preview” button appeared overnight. It just keeps getting betterer and betterer.
Also this demonstrates that – after 5 levels of comment depth – the software is configured to inhibit Replies because otherwise the indentation would get too silly… Just so folk are aware that this is intentional.
The only problem I have with threaded comments is not having worked out an easy way to quickly identify new comments. So far, I have scrolled through the meta-thread visually scanning for new comments in the sub-threads. Is there a method, hack or plugin to make that easier? I like threaded comments if it weren’t for missing new comments that occur ‘up the thread’.
I’ll look into it. Threading is a tickbox option, easily turnoffandonable
Two more things: I’d like to be able to show the full article less comments on the main page (which we could do before) and also be able to change the page style on the individual article pages to black type/white background (which we couldn’t).
However, most of my ‘readability’ problems have been fixed with the larger type, for which much thanks.
Regretfully I’ll have to class the RSS-renaming as “wontfix” – firstly, the code is part of the WordPress codebase which I am trying not to fork; there’s already one Samizdata-specific tweak I have had to make and will have to find a plugin to workaround, else I will be updating WordPress manually which is not viable long-term.
Secondly changing the existing format would be making assumptions about how everyone uses their RSS readers; put differently, the RSS feed is doing exactly what I would reasonably expect.
Alec, is it possible to subscribe to comments via e-mail without commenting?
Not yet – there seem to be plugins offering that kind of functionality, but I am unconvinced that they do what we want and are suitably free / unencumbered by hassle.
OK, thanks – keep us posted. And again, job well done.
Looking good on my Padfone, mobile and non-mobile versions both. Thanks for all the hard work, Alec.
The blog roll will reappear, do not fear 😀
@Alisa: Thanks. I quite like it too! I had not considered that it might appeal to the perceptive.
OKA ‘the nosy’:-)
OKA ‘the nosy’:-)
OK, please disregard the above comment: I posted it in mobile mode as a reply in one of the threads, but as mobile comments are not threaded, it appeared here. I reposted it in the correct thread now, so all is well, other than the superfluous comment above. This should serve as a reminder to anyone who may comment from their phone to keep in mind that comments in mobile are not threaded, and so they need to be formulated accordingly. I’ll go hide in shame under the blanket now.
@Alec: Thanks for at least considering the idea, anyway.
Yes, it would be making assumptions, based on further experience, about how about how users actually use their RSS readers – including this user (i.e., me) – those assumptions probably being different to the assumptions likely to have been already incorporated into the AS-IS design.
Similarly, the RSS feed is probably doing exactly what one would reasonably expect, given its design and the underlying assumptions built into that design.
By the way, it may be that another aspect of the same issue might have cropped up in the comment in the thread below by @Midwesterner: December 15, 2012 at 3:17 pm
– where he says:
Alec–Are you folks moderating long comments or something? The two missing comments (plus your reply) I keep whining about are still in absentia; and I just tried to post what I thought was some rather interesting info on the history of the swastika.
My subsequent short comment agreeing with Mr. Ecks’ observation on the school shootings came through fine, however.
I would e-mail you privately about this, but :>( I’m failing to figure out where to find your e-mail address.
Thanks,
Julie
Looks like it got incorrectly marked as Spam. I’ve restored it. Hopefully this should not reoccur.
I suspect the reason for the automatic spamming is due to multiple links being embedded in the post, plus words like Nazi.
I will have a word with Perry, tomorrow, regards whether regular commenters might like to register for permanent ‘Subscriber’ usernames on Samizdata, which would provider greater autonomy.
Oh, Alec, thanks so much. I’ve tried everything I can think of!
I hate the threading just as much as I thought I would…for the same reasons. But THANK YOU for restoring Preview.
Really, this is an excellent effort, and you were/are so quick about it besides! Bless you! :>)))
–J.
We can chat about it when you roll up at Festung Samizdata but basically… yeah, something along those lines would be great.
Alec: I tried to use the formatting tools on iPhone, but for some reason only the closing tags appear.
@Alisa: It is possible to subscribe to comments without posting, but you have to do it for yourself rather than expect the website to do it for you. For example, I have been doing that for several forums and blog sites for years. The Samizdata site is no different.
You could do this too by subscribing to the RSS feed for the Comments, and getting them all delivered in your feed-reader – as I do. I currently use Google Reader, but others are probably just as good. The reason I settled on Google Reader (in Firefox) is that it has some excellent add-ons that greatly improve on its otherwise rather basic filtering tools – e.g., including one such useful tool as Google reader Filter for Greasemonkey (https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/23671).
An issue for me (see comment in the above thread) is that Samizdata comments do not seem to feed through in conformance with the same labelling standards that one finds in many/most other forums, making them currently difficult to filter in any useful fashion.
I am still playing about with the filters and exploring other approaches to see if I can get a workaround to this issue from my (the reader’s) end, rather than expect that the site Admin. fixes it (which he understandably seems reluctant to do).
@Midwesterner may have a related point with the same issue (see the thread above).
From a website’s perspective, the probably bad thing about feed-readers is that you can read a lot of what you want on a website without actually going to the website itself – unless you want to read more about a certain post or comment thread, or post a comment. Thus, the website probably doesn’t get all your “flypaper clicks” to support advertising revenue as they otherwise would if you were always having to wade through the confusing mass on the website.
The really good thing about using a feed-reader (used with good filtering tools) is that it can usually be a tremendously useful timesaver – of your valuable time. Your reading material is served up to you on a plate in the Reader, grouped in whatever order you have chosen, for you to pick and choose by scanning headers/labels and then clicking on those items you want to read more of. We only have so much spare time or cognitive surplus, and I’d rather not waste either on wading through clutter and trying to scan/read everything useful on a website. I rarely actually visit a website unless there is something I want to do whilst I am there – e.g., to seek help or points of view for some debate or resolution of an issue, or make a point, or to communicate something that might be of help/use to others (as in this comment).
“There’s nothing wrong with stone tablets.
…………… But I am deeply suspicious.”
Agreed……..
Especially with the requirement now to have JS running to be able to comment…… This is a step backward.
Perry said……
“Now I just need to figure out how to use it…”
Bravo Perry…… when you come up with a great project and have no idea how to run it you have demonstrated a leading prerequisite for a high level government job. You should get a hold of Guido Fawkes ASAP to see what openings there are in Whitehall or Westminister………
Jeeez…….
@Shaun: If you actually try, you will find that you don’t need Javascript to make a comment. You need it only if you’re too lazy to type any markup that you need. Also, the point of bringing in an expert (me) is precisely to address these details.
Thus: deal with it.
@All: Following Midwesterner’s hint, I have switched-off comment threading for a trial period, to see if the typical commentariat find the chronological flat thread easier to navigate. Y’all have a decade of experience of that, so perhaps it’s easiest to retain the old way. Do please let us know what you feel.
@ Slartibartfarst
One thing which may (?) please you about WordPress is that (prettymuch) anything can be made into an RSS feed by appending “/feed/” to the URL.
For instance the RSS feed for comments specific to this post is at http://www.samizdata.net/2012/12/well-here-is-the-new-and-improved-samizdata/feed/
UPDATE: I’ve added an “RSS This Page” widget on the right, to help with this
My take is the previous version of the site was superior.
It had a firm air of Britishness to it. The front page was full of usefull info without being clogged up or clunky. There was a natural flow to the page scrolling down and off to the sidebars. Font sizing, style and spacing seemed natural to its position and intended useage on the page. The whole site was pleasant to the eye, offering encouragement to continue reading articles and wanting to return……. much like the British school teachers of old, presenting their teaching materials to their students with vigour, drawing the students to expand their knowledge and horizons.
The new version is crude and clunky, indifferent to what is on offer. Both sidebars look more like space fillers, especially the right sidebar, than something of use. The alternating background colours for each comment says that management suspects its readership has difficulty differentiating between the finish and the start of each comment. The current version is all I would expect from a couple of script kiddies playing with their Linux box.
Further up in comments Admin declares…….
“Now, WordPress, bang up to date, with WP-SuperCache and a few other bits of magic.”
…… the only thing bang-up-to-date here is that Samizdata.net has finally joined the general decline of the once great Great Britain.
I wonder if Admin was around these parts a decade plus ago ??
http://web.archive.org/web/20020717121017/http://www.samizdata.net/blog/
Sad really………..
Bravo. I can almost hear the strains of Nimrod swelling in the background. 🙂
But I am also certain that Perry will reinject the Britishness you seek, once I fully hand over the reins.
Slartibartfarst: yes, I am well-aware of the RSS option – problem is, I dislike RSS for all kinds of reasons, most of which are of purely personal-preference nature. That said, I certainly do not expect the site owners and admins to cater to all or any of my personal preferences. I just asked a question and got some helpful answers (including yours), that’s all:-)
BTW, that formatting problem I mentioned above seems to only occur on the real iPhone, not on the fake one in FF (which is not surprising, of course)
Admin wrote……
“@Shaun: If you actually try, you will find that you don’t need Javascript to make a comment. You need it only if you’re too lazy to type any markup that you need. Also, the point of bringing in an expert (me) is precisely to address these details.
Thus: deal with it.”
Any Engineer worth his salt, when handed a foreign object with a brief to design and build a superior version of the foreign object, would necessarily take the time and make the effort to understand the design, construction and performance envelope of the foreign object. This reduces the probability of the new design being infected with an inferior performance.
If Admin had bothered to take the time and make the effort to review the design and construction of the previous version of this site, he would have been astonished to discover that no Javascript or Ajax rubbish was required to preview or post a basic comment at this site. Indeed, provided that commenters did not use some bug infested browser, HTML was available to allow commenters to indulge embelishing their words.
In one way modern software development and government share a common trait….. how to pile on as much rubbish as possible while wasting as many resources as possible and still comeup short with a better product to do a simple operation, yet get the customer/taxpayer to payup.
Sad really……
Count me as still undecided on threading. I keep all of my active threads open in tabs (which is one reason my computer is so slow) and I’ve tried a system where I note my place in the meta-thread, then speed scroll to the top and slow scroll back down checking the posting times in the last entry of each nested comment. When I reach the spot in the meta-thread where I left off, I read sequentially.
Clunky, yes. But there are a lot of benefits to threaded discussions that I haven’t fully explored. Archively and distraction-wise, they are nice for isolating off topic dialog from the author’s topic without active intervention. Just a technical question, is it possible to make threading a tick box on the article creation page? Then contributors could work it out and market forces would prevail. 🙂
I do like the idea of allowing regulars to register for a password and then getting expanded privileges or commenting scope per the spambot. But definitely keep the stone table mode functional. I’ve already tried, admired, and then turned off the scripts to make the buttons show. There are very many (some quite good) sites that I don’t comment on because of a registration requirement to comment. As long as registration is an ‘added-privileges’ option, then I’m for it.
I really like the recent comments part of the front page and I watch it closely. That said,
does something important on a front page. I read it often. It is something first time visitors should see right away while they are still trying to figure out what they have stumbled into. Even the lyrical cadence of the laundry list suggests to people that they might find what they are looking for even if they aren’t sure what it is called.
I see the trade off between that prime real estate going to “latest comments” or to “who we are” as being a priority choice between luring in strangers or conveniencing us regulars. This cuts to the question of whether the blog’s priority is that of a think tank “developing the social individualist meta-context for the future” or of a recruiting and outreach forum seeking to “infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property.” Shading that scale is something that only Perry can do.
While I don’t feel strongly about it, I generally prefer not to have the threading. The reason is the same problem I had with the old smitebot system: the comments (whether threaded or released from smitebot purgatory) appear up in the thread, and since I tend to pick it up where I last read I often miss the later additions. Perhaps the new “Recent Comments” section will help with that, but since they only show who commented, but not the substance, it’s difficult to remember whether I’ve read it or not. It will take time to get used to it.
BTW,I appreciate the disappearance of the Turing code. That won’t be missed!
I am also leaning toward the notion that threading is better in theory than in practice.
And the sidebars are by no means ‘settled’ into their final form, it is more a case of ‘suck it and see’… some changes already planned.
Alec & Perry: We have no (NO) threading (currently anyway)–thank the Great Frog as well as A&P!; “Who We Are” AND “Recent Comments” on every page (thanks to Mid for bringing it up); no (NO) separate page for comments that appear on the Main Page–and the postings there, once clicked upon, take you to a standard Posting Page; PREVIEW!; html boxes (YAY!) as well as the clickable html instructions….
Life is sweet indeed.
Turns out I do much prefer the single, darker blue; but a little tilting of the screen, depending on ambient light, solves that problem quite nicely. And I do still miss the frogman’s take on Ernie G. T-shirts. LOL!!
Bravo! GREAT JOB!!! :>)))))))))
@Alec: Thanks re the note about feed references. I didn’t know that about WordPress (/feed).
As it stands, I had put these two feeds for Samizdata in my feed aggregator as:
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/index.rdf (this is for the posts)
http://www.samizdata.net/comments/feed/ (this is for the comments)
I still haven’t got the filtering of the comment titles to my satisfaction though, so am fossicking around the ‘net for a solution. I probably won’t be the only person with this issue, and I bet someone will have sussed it somewhere. Shall let you know if/when I find anything useful.
The main feed URL has changed (check the sidebar) but the old one will still work, due to magic.
Yep, thanks. Fixed it now.