Category Archives: Website

Luck with me

Attracted the attention of one of the gurus on the support forum, and I have two different solutions.  Both will take care of the problem, but one is more elegant and has long-term benefits, including teaching me a new way to manipulate the base code of the underlying software without actually modifying it — making upgrades simple and painless.

There’s a learning curve, but that’s the way I’m going.  It will take more time in the now, but save a lot more in the future.

In addition, I got some writing done on Lowborn last night and this morning.  Brought it back up to 1500 words after the backspace, and I’m back to where the final action of the story takes place again.  Should encourage me to get back at it this evening after I get home from work.

Had a flash of inspiration that I love as well.  It has ties to the first chapter of the story, the title, and even makes a plot point easier to deliver.

Tickled with that, and irritation at the end of the story not working out the way I wanted was what had slowed me down writing, so that most certainly will give me a boost.

Okay, got to get ready for work.  I’m in major muse mode, so I’ll be taking advantage of that on the drive and during the first tedious couple of hours of work, where I don’t have much to do physically or mentally.  Most of my job is crammed into the middle of the day — fast and furious.

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Spoke too quickly

Yeah, so much for the upgrade going off without a hitch.

All appeared to be well until I went to check one of the shorts pages for xhtml validation and it failed — but not because of anything I’d added.

What is failing is a new script injection by the underlying content engine that isn’t valid code.  Oh, it works — it’s just not valid code in xhtml strict.

Nobody will notice it from a user side, but it irritates the hell out of me.  I spent hours researching and recoding regurgitated code from places like Facebook so the crap would validate and still function properly.

I’ve got a support topic posted on the content creation forum, but that’s always hit and miss.  I assume I’m not the only one who gives a shit about proper validation.  Somebody has probably figured it out, and I’m not afraid to tinker with default files if necessary ( though not having to do that was part of what I loved about the content creation system in the first place. )  The issue is whether any of said people will see the topic on the forum and bother to respond.

I really don’t want to have to dig through the distribution files to fix this myself.  I don’t have the time for that kind of crap any more :S

It’s not really a bug in the product, so I can’t submit a ticket about it.  All I can do is make a suggestion that it be changed in the next update, and that’s even more hit and miss than somebody answering a support topic.

Yeah, I’m a little pissed.  Some of the recoding I did to make junk code like the Facebook plugin on the front page work while validating was incredibly annoying, and all that work is essentially down the drain until/unless I can fix this problem as well.

Paid for an upgrade, and there are some nice features on the backend that I’m pleased with, but it also broke validation in the process.

It really fucking honks me off.

I’ll quit ranting now.  Just had to let this vitriol out somewhere 😛

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Upgrade successful

Upgraded the sofware that forms the backbone of the website today.  Had a hiccup or two, but you wouldn’t have noticed if you were logged in.  It was only affecting guests.

Taken care of now and running smoothly.  Didn’t even have to update the forum skin, despite a major version change.

One other bit of software to upgrade, but it’s less used and completely unrelated to the public side, so I’m not in a hurry on that one.  I can deal with it whenever.

Got more of my backend utilities for the shorts done today, and coded something I’m going to add to the backend of “Latest Updates” to make that process easier as well.

Still no luck writing this weekend.  Just not feeling it.  I did backspace part of Lowborn that didn’t feel right and got started on the new direction this evening, though.  Going to try to get back to that in a few, now that the minor issue with the upgrade is taken care of.

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Almost there on Shorts

Finished the additions and changes to “My Work”, “Latest Releases”, the databases, and backend utilities associated with same in order to have them display my new web exclusive short stories as soon as the feature launches.

It’s looking as if I may finish the coding before I finish the trilogy of Devan stories, so there’s a good chance it may launch with only the first of the three.  That just means the new section will probably update sooner than it might have otherwise, though 😉

I completely forgot about all that nuts-n-bolts stuff last night when I said the “only thing left” was to code the utility to populate the shorts database. Nowthe only thing left to do to finish it up is to do that *laugh*

Then, I’ll do some final testing and remove any dummy elements I’ve put in place for testing purposes.  Once that’s done, I should have the first of the Devan trilogy back from editing, and I’ll launch the new shorts feature.

As you may have guessed, this child still isn’t cooperating with me :p  He’s not even taking naps during the day while I’m at work, and he still won’t go to bed at a decent hour.  On top of that, he’s been a complete wildman during the evening, making anything creative utterly impossible.

But, as I said yesterday, I usually have a window to write in the morning on weekends, provided I can get myself awake enough to do it.

EDIT:  I should probably add that the LST3K section will probably go live tomorrow.  I don’t know why I didn’t go back and finish the last few little bits to launch the basic information site yet :p

It may be because I was hoping to get some of the interactive features working, but screw it.  I’ll get the basic stuff up, and then work on the interactive stuff when I figure out a few things and have time to code it.

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