redesign for UCalgaryBlogs

by D'Arcy Norman on December 15, 2009

There have been a bunch of changes, hopefully improvements, over the last few days.

  1. The BuddyPress “social networking layer” was turned off. It didn’t look like anyone was actually using it, and it was causing confusion (2 separate places to set avatar images, multiple locations to post new content, confusion around privacy, and complicating site maintenance and support). So, for now, I made the executive decision to turn it off. It may come back in the future, but not until BuddyPress has had some more time to stew.
  2. A new theme. I’ve switched the “home” theme and am working on building some more useful functionality into it – a handy dashboard to access all of your sites, for starters. I’ll be tweaking the “home” site over the next couple of weeks.
  3. A better “admin bar” – that grey bar that runs along the top of the page. When logged in, it now provides much better functionality, making it easier to get to the good bits of your site, and to create and manage content quickly.

I’ve got a bunch of other things I’m (slowly) working on, and will try to roll out some more improvements over the holiday break.

If you have any questions, please contact me.

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service restored

by D'Arcy Norman on November 11, 2009

The planned database code migration took a LOT longer than planned, and didn’t work out in the end. I wound up having to back out the planned code changes, so we’re back where we started. In addition, the campus database server became unhappy as part of the process, and blocked connection attempts from the server that runs UCalgaryBlogs (and a bunch of other stuff) – so I had to migrate all data to a Teaching & Learning Centre database server so we could use UCalgaryBlogs again.

I’d done testing of the new database code, and it worked fine prior to attempting to roll it out on the production server. I’ll do some more testing (and am talking to the developer of the new database code to help debug the situation). I won’t try to do any further rollouts of the code without some extensive testing – and all data will be safe, regardless.

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Planned database upgrade – brief blogs downtime

November 9, 2009

I need to convert some of the database configuration for UCalgaryBlogs to new library that will offer us higher performance and more scalable database connections.
I’ve tested the new configuration, and it should work just fine. If there are no snags, there should be no more than a few seconds of downtime. If the gremlins decide [...]

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Dashboard should be working again.

October 27, 2009

I think I’ve tracked down the cause of the problem that was preventing access to the Dashboard on all sites. If you’re still having trouble accessing your Dashboard, or with publishing new blog posts, please let me know ASAP.
I apologize for the inconvenience this problem caused. I know it’s difficult when the software doesn’t work [...]

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Dashboard errors for users

October 27, 2009

There is currently an issue preventing users from accessing their Dashboards for their sites – meaning you can’t write new blog posts, or edit existing posts (among other things).
I’m working on tracking down the cause of this right now. Hopefully it won’t take long to debug this.
I apologize for the inconvenience. Thanks for bearing with [...]

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browsing ucalgaryblogs from mobile devices

October 20, 2009

I just rolled out a mobile interface for UCalgaryBlogs.ca – if you’re accessing the site from a mobile device such as iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry, or Android, you should now see a sleeker, optimized interface. It’s not perfect, but it’ll load a LOT faster, and should display a LOT better on the small screen, as [...]

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Server back to normal

October 20, 2009

Looks like we’re back to normal operations here – IT is looking at adding some additional resources to the server to make sure it keeps on chugging along, and I’ll try to monitor it as closely as possible. If you notice anything misbehaving (taking for EVER to load, borking, etc…) please let me know ASAP.

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Server Slowness

October 13, 2009

It looks like UCalgaryBlogs is running a little slower than it should be lately – I’m trying to track down causes of this, and apologize for any problems the slowness may be causing. I’ll post an update once I’ve figured out what’s slowing us down. Hopefully we haven’t outgrown the server already…

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sitewide hiccup with social networking

October 1, 2009

The BuddyPress social networking layer for UCalgaryBlogs was just updated, but something imploded during the update. The data is all still safe, and I’m tracking down causes and fixes. Hopefully everything will be back up and running normally as expected soon.
All blogs should be working normally – the only thing affected is the social networking [...]

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New antispam countermeasures – reCAPTCHA

September 28, 2009

The evil spammers just keep on hitting our little blogging platform. I apologize to those of you who have had the nasty spam comments published on your blogs. The spammers are truly the filth of the internet, and we’re locked in an arms race against them.
They use automated scripts for the most part to publish [...]

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