Nov 03 2005
Reboot Continued
With all the things that went wrong with the reboot design, it’s a laugh a minute over here I tell you.
Firstly, I password protected the site an hour or so before I rebooted on October 31st to allow myself time to get the layout and new pages/etc up without ruining the surprise and filling everyone’s face with errors as things adjusted. This was all fine and funky but as I protected the main domain it protected everything — including images linked outside. This meant that every time someone at a forum I’m a member of loaded a thread with my avatar in they were given a password box. I am sure this got irritating very quickly.
Next was my cock-up with comment moderation. The new system checks the database before inserting the comment to see if that name/email address combo has been used before. If they’ve not posted a comment before, it marks it as unapproved and doesn’t show up on the site. Unfortunately, being the complete dingbat I am, I didn’t add AND approved = 'y' to the query, so someone could post a comment which would go for moderation, and then another that wouldn’t flag as unapproved because they were already in the database.
Third, I uploaded the ‘test’ sidebar/footer on Oct 31st which meant until people could see “test page link” and “filler content here” style lists in the sidebar until I realised and had to make a temporary fixed one (so expect the sidebar to change at some point slightly.)
Oh, then there was the incident with the forms. I forgot to integrate meta tag form injection security stuff into the part of the script that e-mails me comments and data submitted via the contact form, so I ended up with a lot of spammy e-mails attempting to change the headers and BCC spam to other people.
There was also the stupid moment with IPs. I have variables set up with common acronyms/abbreviations so I can just echo them instead of writing out the whole [...] nonsense each time. Of course, one of these just happens to be called $ip. What variable did I apply each commenters ip to? $ip This mean for about four hours each comment was entered with [...] — an entirely pointless “ip”.
However, I think I have finally weeded out all of the bugs. My forms work and haven’t been spammed, comments are going into moderation if needed and the IP issue is fixed. All I have left to do now is fix up my sidebar and make it prettier, and my weblog post on my favourite Reboot designs (probably coming tomorrow.) Let’s hope this is the end of the silly mistakes.
Warning
This post is over 6 months old. This means that, despite my best intentions, it may no longer be accurate. Age, motherhood, experience, loss... these things have all changed me from when this blog was started back in the heady (ha) days of my youth.
As much as I would like to go back and edit 10 years of archives to provide an insight into the 'me' of now — to update coding snippets and revise website advice — it would probably take years to do so (by which point I'd have to start again!) This would defeat the point of keeping these archives anyway.
Please take these posts for what they are: a brief look into my past, my history, my journey.
19 Responses so far
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Well i’m honoured to meet another Jemma Louise! I’ve never met another Jemma spelt the same way as mine! :)
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That’s funny! I’m glad everything is mostly fixed!
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Well that’s a lot of hassle, but well worth it. Great job.
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haha, just think of it as a learning experience :)
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I’m just still amazed that somebody can do this hand-coded CMS thing and make it work. Congrats to you Jem.
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How do you have the patience? *bows to Jem’s uberwebdesign skills* Congrats!
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It seems like no huge undertaking can be done without silly problems and issues coming up. Still, everything looks fantastic.
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Your site is gorgeous, Jem. I’m so happy that you’ve come so far, now I need to learn some more PHP. :D
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Another bug I spotted for you Jem, all your buttons are missing on the link me page, only alt text is displaying!
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Fixed! Thanks Carly :D
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WOW Jem. More trouble than its worh sometimes, eh?? Well if it makes you feel any better, it was worth it because I think this place looks and feels wonderful!!! :)
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Jem, maybe I’m blind, but I can’t find the link to your Q*bee quilt.. lol I’m sorry, I was just cleaning my quilt and making sure I had everyone’s latest patches ;)
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Jem! Did you apply for Review Sites on TFL? Duuuuude, I was gonna apply for that in a few months if it hadn’t yet been built. ;)
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Fixed, Heather! :D
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Hey Jem, I know this is off-topic and I known that this is the second time I’ve bothered you today, but I noticed that your Game Reviews subsection is empty at the moment. I’d like to see reviews for Super Mario 64 (assuming you have played it, of course) and Super Mario Sunshine. :)
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Thank you for the comment on my site Jem! i’m glad you agree with the content being split up! That’s one thing I adore about your site, everything is so easy to use and accessable!
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Man, eevrytime I went to Cock or Lavish on a page you replied on, I got that pop-up password box and it made me wanna cry. Hehehe. Glad to see that everything is back to normal. And I can’t remember if I mentioned it before now or not, but I really like the new layout. For some reason, I always giggle to myself when I see the grey little bubbles at the bottom of the page. Yeah, I probably need mental health help or something but… it makes me smile at least. The only thing I would change is the color/size for the acronyms because they look all squishy and I gotta squint! I don’t like squinting… unless I am trying to be an über-cute anime character. AND I ONLY DO THAT WHEN I AM DRUNK! SO GIMME BOOZE! *falls on floor* *dies* This was a long comment!
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Hey Jem. Your site is looking AWESOME! Congrats on getting broadband too!
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Anytime I attempt to freshen up my design, the similar misfortunes occur. Or my coding will not display properly. Either roadblock seems determined in ruining my revamping experience. Whenever I fiddle with my coding, I typically display a note on my site informing my visitors there will be glitches for a while. I don’t dare try anything quite as complex as you have done in fear of deleting my own database. What can I say, paranoia comes standard. That’s quite a nifty trick, to direct first comments to moderation. However by your descriptions, I doubt I’ll be able to install it properly if such a process is needed. It seems, at least by your blow by blow details, that luck dislikes you a bit more than me. And that is quite the achievement. In some sense. Anyhow, glad to hear you’ve sorted out everything.
