Question Dup———Where have all the blogs gone?

Where have all the blogs suddenly gone?

Have they been nuked?

Can I get a copy of my most recent blog entry? It's the most extensive and carefully crafted online composition I've made in about the last 10 years, and my last backup (of a sort) is days old. Reconstructing it will take at least as long as writing it did, and probably longer.

Plus I just yesterday gave the link to a couple of very important professional contacts, and now look very foolish.

Did I miss an announcement somewhere?

Even a copy of the rawtext from the database record for that post will be a lifesaver if nothing else can be done.

 

Yeah, my stuff is gone too. @big soft moose, do you have any idea what's going on?

 

No worries guy - I'm upgrading the blog system, will be finished by end of day. Everything is preserved.

 

@Also @Friedrich Kugelschreiber I've enabled blog access, so you should be able to see/share. I'm configuring the style and settings, so bear in mind it'll a look different and everything isn't yet fully enabled.

 

Was cautiously optimistic it would turn out to be something like that.

 

Once configured and styled properly I think you'll like the changes.

 

@Also @Friedrich Kugelschreiber since you guys use the blogs more than most, I'd love your opinion on blog layout, features, functionality. Now's a chance improve it (and make sure I don't botch it up).

What is your preferred layout for the global blog home, personal blog page, and individual blog post layout? Please share any thoughts you'd like. I'm going to polish the system up tonight. I strongly believe the new system will be leaps and bounds better, but as is, it's still a significant change. I know what I'd like, but do you like?

Main considerations for me now are 1) layout, 2) categories, 3) general usability.

Do you like the older blog homepage article preview feed style over the "list" view? I have a decent amount of flexibility and style options.

Old:



Current:



One of several options:



I'm still trying to sort out categories. The old blogging system had a lot of problems, but it looks like the new one may treat categories as a global option, rather than everyone being able to have their own categories (still researching). Right now I'm considering what categories to include globally and how to preserve and handle categories of historic posts. How important is being able to set your own categories? I'm looking at ways to preserve personal categories, either natively through the software or through manipulating tags/prefixes.

 

@NWOPD I'm actually still unable to see any blog posts for which I had earlier links, nor any blog-related displays.

I'll see what reactions I can come up with in the wee hours tonight (EDT).

Offhand I would imagine that @Xoic and maybe @Foxxx may have preferences as well.

Looking at the screencaps, I have no immediate reaction. I like having my own categories, but I see how letting the global categories access blog posts is good.

My highest wishlist items would be to have for blogs the much better post composer/editor used in forums. I actually used repeated previews of an unposted forum thread to compose the original draft of this most recent blog post. For anything more than a three-liner, I always use the More Options > Preview route for a forum post, a route which has been unavailable for blogs.

I love that when editing, I can choose whether to alter the date.

I would dearly like a checkbox to enable/disable alerting of edits to subscribed members who have the global "notify me of edits" box ticked. It takes me many edits to get a complex new post right. I'd like to spare watchers from nonstop notification of the minor edits, while letting them know about substantial additions if those happen later. I never do wholesale rearrangement or cuts, but I do add overlooked items, fix formatting slips, etc.

My blog isn't really for discussion. I'm happy for people to question and disagree with me in Forum posts, even about something in my blog. But when I promote an idea to my blog, it's more like an article, and I don't want the distraction of formative discussion. I don't blog about what I wrote for lunch today but about the big conclusions I slowly arrive at.

Have to run now, will look back later.

 

So let's see, @NWOPD . I remember little about how my individual blog page looked, which I can't see at the moment, except post headers were somewhat clunkier than the blogroll option you've captured under "old blog homepage." I'd be happy if the body of my own blog homepage looked like #1 when I looked at it. In fact, I wouldn't mind if every list page in the WF blogosphere looked like that, with possible differences at the top—so that an individual's blog header or whatever would fit there.

My second choice is behind door #3, but I would only want 3 or possibly 4 lines instead of the 8 you're showing.

My issue with #2 is that it's busy (and mercilessly rectilinear) with lots of visually clashing morsels of information but only one line of substance, and that line looks like an even smaller font than it actually is. Part of what's good about #1 (is that really how it used to look?) is the restful, gentle framing, and then the fact that there are 3 lines of preview. It could even be 5 line in that format.

I do love good graphic images, but on a blog page it's ideas I'm interested in. Gimme text with pleasing but unobtrusive framing. So having the avatars over on the right, although a little unconventional (nearly always a plus for me, as long as it's part of something cogent), fits well.

On a blogroll, avatars are perfect, of course. I don't need 15 copies of my own avatar on my homepage, though I actually like the idea of having some kind of minor eye candy in that position.

I rarely look at a Recent Blog Posts page. In fact, I'm doubtful I've ever seen this "old one" before. I go to an individual's blog when their ideas spark my interest in them, and I go to see what they've considered worth putting into a blog. I'd like to be able to follow someone's blog without following all their other posts. Is that currently possible? I'd certainly follow a small handful if the page for following my shortlist looked like #1. If that page showed nothing new or not much new, then I might click an on-page link to see what's new from all bloggers.

The very essence of maintaining focus (and sanity) today resides in limiting and curating the information coming one's way rather than welcoming in the general flood.

If for some good reason I delete a blog post—which I did once for a post testing formatting or notification or something—I'd like not to forevermore see the little stub reminding me of it.


I really wish we had the ability to create and work on a draft blog post and then publish it later, so that we could do that for several at a time. It would be just like a regular blog post, but a "publish" flag would be unset. And without deleting an already published post, I'd like to be able to do a "limited unpublish" on it that would only remove it from appearing in any lists except the one I see. Anyone who had a bookmark or who was following it would still be able to see it (in line with the general rule about not disappearing content) but I could fix problems or outdated information in it for a while without attracting new viewers to it. I'm talking only about blog posts here.

With that kind of publish/unpublish feature, I could even solicit formative feedback from one or more people on an unpublished draft. Anyone to whom I gave the link before first publication could read it, but it wouldn't be advertised until I published it. I don't think I have an opinion on whether commenting should be possible while a post is unpublished.

 

Thanks for tagging me in this. It was very thoughtful of you, and I really appreciate it when people do that for me.

In @NWOPD I trust.

I don't think I ever used tags or categories that much unless I was posting fiction excerpts / poetry. The only category my blog really has is "Foxxx" otherwise.

As long as people can see the recent blogs on the home page as before, and as long as formatting and what not isn't made all janky or something, I'm not too worried at the moment. But I can't see much of blogs right now, so can't give much more feedback than that.

 

Blog posts are the only things you get notified for when you follow someone.

@NWOPD, I like the old blog style a little better than the current one; the third option that you posted has too much text in the preview for my taste.

For another thing, I post a lot of dumb shit on the internet (although I'm not super active in the blogs)--I'd like to be able to permanently delete stuff on my blog without a trace or the option to restore it. That goes for comments on other people's blogs, too.

 

That's good. I strayed into a list of notification checkboxes tonight which were to my surprise ALL checked, for every little imaginable thing that could ever happen. Some include "whenever someone edits..." including watched threads. I didn't have the energy or time (and was on my smartphone) to go through and think about each and uncheck the majority of them. But as you were the first person who liked my latest blog post, I feared you were getting a new alert every time I fixed another typo or misformat or noticed I had left out a sentence that was in my notes for the new version. With an "unpublished" feature, I would have let it ripen a week as a handful of people close to me gave their feedback.

So when you say "old blog style a little better than the current one," does that mean you can see blogs right now, at the moment you wrote the post? Because I certainly can't see any of that stuff. All my old links still say ERROR, even when I do a full refresh, and I can't find any blog-related links in the interface.

Yeah, I mean, a blog post is arguably different from a thread or a comment in a thread. Maybe an in-between position would be that a blog post without comments could be deleted. Although it looks to me like any blog post can be deleted now, though I haven't tried deleting one with comments. If people know that a blog post is deletable and leave comments anyway, that might also be okay.

 

Anybody who has read at least one of my blogs would fully understand why I also support a delete option.

 

@NWOPD if the prefix of leaf-node posts is going to remain changed to /blogs/ rather than /entry/, how about adding a redirect or a RewriteRule to preserve the viability of /entry/-based links to specific posts under the old system.

And I gather that ownership, along with ability to edit existing posts and disable comments, will be restored later in the weekend, along with some kind of fix for this?

 

@NWOPD when should we expect to be able to make changes to our pre-upgrade blog posts—change their text, their description, their other properties?

I actually plopped the new link (using /blogs/ instead of /entry/) into a professional meeting's chat on Zoom today, only to be told promptly by several participants that they couldn't get to it without creating an account. One created an account and still couldn't get to the page. My bad, perhaps, for not anticipating and checking such a thing ahead of time, but quite the embarrassment regardless. I had originally published the post as public, not requiring registration to view. So now I'd like to be able to go fix that and to put in a more readable description for the various list-of-posts pages. (Plus tweak a heading and a couple of paragraphs.)

However, I love the direction the work is going. I see there's already a Preview option for new posts, which was my top priority, and my very own categories even exist in the list now (in last place but hey, I'm the new guy).

 

Mine's completely gone. Think I have almost everything backed up though.

 

They're not yet linked in all the places you'd expect, and I think that although the authors are correct, ownership may belong for the time being to NWOPD, which would explain why we don't see an Edit option in the usual place.

If you go here:

https://www.writingforums.org/search/?type=ubs_blog_entry

and search by author for blogs you authored, you'll find 266 of yours, which I presume are all of them.

 

Ah, I see. I just followed the "Blogs" link at the top of the main page. Thanks!

 

I’ll try to get back to all the details and suggestions this thread by tomorrow night. As of now blogs should be visible and editable. I’ve set up some redirects for old blog pages and entries, so old links should work. Will probably review and modify redirects further. Please let me know if you find any broken old links. I’m not crazy about the blogs/blog and then entries being blogs/entry format, but redirects on this particular area is tricky.

My sincerely apologies for that. There were several permission issues for user groups/guests. Entries should now be available without registering. New entries and edits of old, including entry dates, should be possible. I’ve tested this as a guest and new user account. Old blog home and entry urls should redirect.

 

Function-wise the software appears to us ve some of the wishlist improvements mentioned in this thread.

I believe the new blog has the same or comparable editor as the rest of the forum. With previewing ability.

When you update a post you have the option to “post as update” which alerts your subscribers, otherwise it’s a silent edit.

You are able to delete your blog entries and blog comments.

I agree. I’ll get back to you on that. I’d be surprised if it weren’t given this software.

You can make drafts. However, I believe once published there may not be a way to unpublished without deleting. @Also I will look deeper into your suggestions. The functionality you’re describing is how I’d like to blog.

There may be the option to restrict comments, and allow you to moderate all comments on your personal blog posts. I haven’t fully enabled this yet until I evaluate if it’s a good option.

Incredibly accurate statement, I will try to incorporate this perspective into the UX changes.

 

Now I can edit and preview, but I can't save the edits. My apparently 31,876-character post is over the new limit of 10,000 characters by 21,876.

And while it's now public, which solves my problem (for this time, anyway), I still can't change that characteristic of it.

And all I did was add a paragraph (not THAT long), touch up some formatting, and add a short description.

It's a good post IMOO. At least a few people have found it worth reading 4,400 words on the subject and then recced it.

I doubt that anyone would abuse a higher limit. I rarely write to this length about meta, but this time it seemed worth it.

I'm'a try to leave it open in the editor for a while and see if it becomes postable. As I recall, I can't just save it to a DOC and then re-post it later without having to recreate all the coloration and such.

Hmm, of course I could always convert it to a PDF (up to 500 MB) and embed that in an introduction post.




@NWOPD

 

Well, it's a single blog post—a spontaneous musing then polished—that grew organically to the length its material needed, no-more-no-less, out of a regular thread on this very site. It's specifically 4,422 words. Perhaps I use longer words than some. Of course I can take it elsewhere if the perspective of literary writers is less welcome and the site prefers shorter, chattier material. That's exactly what has happened to the popular fiction market, which has dumbed down (including shortening down) astonishingly in only my lifetime. That makes it harder for any writer, but particularly those of popular fiction, to publish more thoughtful, upmarket work in their own genre.

And it's not like I or anyone else here has habitually overburdened storage with blog posts. Anyway, everyone who knows me in person knows that I practically think in articles. Like I said, this wasn't some deliberately planned publication. There was confusion in a discussion about "what is 'literary' fiction, anyway?" — and to me, that's not a confusing question at all. So I wrote my thoughts on it. I thought that was what blogs were for.

I came to WF in search of a site with chewier content than all these perky little "content-driven" sites full of one-page articles like "10 Steps To Spiff Up Your Writing And Find An Agent—Everything You Need To Know." All they do is drive clicks to advertisers.

But as you wish...