ARTS & FARCES internet

This is the 11th major update to www.farces.com since February 1993, and the most exhaustive. A complete new back-end was installed last month and since then I’ve been working on a completely new front-end, which is now in place.

Important note: There should be minimal linkrot because all of the channels remain the same, with the same URLs/URIs. The only changes were in a whole bunch of new template groups, templates, embeds, global variables, snippets, and nine all too complex CSS files.

There are still a few rough spots and I’ll be working on those over time. It will likely be a while because while last month I had my fill of of MySQL, PHP, and ExpressionEngine, these past several weeks have been all the XHTML and CSS that I want to see for quite a while.

As always, there’s almost certain to be some breakage; please let me know by using that Feedback link in those snazzy new tabs.

Here we go again. Major changes coming. This is the 11th major update to www.farces.com since February 1993. Hopefully you won’t notice anything different for a while.

The back-end is all done and I’ve had about as much as I can stand of MySQL, PHP, and ExpressionEngine. The site is now running ExpressionEngine 2.1.0, and either this has to be the most excruciating upgrade ever or I’m getting older and crankier. Let me just say, dumping and importing databases is within my comfort zone; dropping and importing tables within that database is pushing it; modifying the actual database is way over the line.

This update experience is precisely why I ceased doing IT consulting work eight years ago. The various disciplines within user experience design are all much more within my comfort zone, and I’m finding that things I know are starting to get pushed out by new things I’m learning.

I had hoped to have the front-end finished by now as well, but no such luck. Someday soon.

Whoa, the new image picker in the editor sure is snazzy.

Anyway, there’s almost certain to be some breakage; please let me know by using that Feedback link in the upper right corner (it won’t be there for very much longer).

Membership and comments have been disabled on this website. You’ll need membership login credentials to participate in the wiki; email me with a brief note and I’ll manually add your account.

I’m doing this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is migration to a new version of Expression Engine, the content management software on which Hasten down the wire runs.

But mostly this is happening because the spam problem has become untenable. There’s no real Askimet for this version of Expression Engine, and the Ellis Lab folks don’t seem to be too interested in the problem. It’s become a real problem and I just don’t have the cycles to deal with it.

While I’ve become quite frustrated with the direction Ellis Lab is taking, I readily acknowledge it’s their decision to make and I know where the door is. I’ve got my hand on the doorknob, but I just don’t have to cycles to make the jump to Drupal just yet.

With regard to comments, as John Gruber eloquently stated, “you write on your site; I write on mine.” Trackbacks are still turned on; use them.

We have a full recovery thanks to the wonderful Expression Engine support folks. It was a simple incorrect entry in a single record in a single database table. It’s fixed now and everything appears to be working as expected. Please let me know if you experience any problems.

Just in time for vacation. Karen and I leave tomorrow morning for Lake Vermilion, one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. I spent every summer growing up on a lake in northwestern Minnesota, so this trip will surely trigger a lot of memories.

I wonder what it will be like on a lake that is totally foreign to me. I knew every bit of Lake Sallie‘s 1,246 acres intimately and could navigate it with my eyes closed. I knew where the rocks were and the weeds where the big walleyes hid. I could take our 14-foot runabout through the channel and into Lake Melissa (1,831 acres) by pegging the outboard high enough to clear the rocks, steering by pushing the big motor from side to side instead of using the steering wheel. Wally, the owner of the bait shop used to laugh at my struggles, but I made it every time I tried.

Once across Lake Melissa, and through another channel, I was into the Pelican River and could make it to any other lake in the watershed. Most ventures ended at Detroit Lake, the largest lake in the chain, about 3,067 acres. Mostly though I was content to stay on Lake Sallie—and not just because it was hard work to navigate the channel between Sallie and Melissa. It was a small, peaceful lake, with mostly fishing boats. I could ski wherever I liked, and even on holiday weekends, Lake Sallie never had many boats on it.

Lake Vermilion, by comparison, is a whopping 40,000 acres with 1,200 miles of shoreline, and 365 islands. The plan is to rent a boat and get to know one small piece of the lake really well.

Houston, we may have at least partial recovery. While there are still some problems with the database, I think I’ve recovered the lost entries. Here’s how I did it; don’t try this at home:

1. Ran a SQL query with a record ID that matched the first missing entry. That created a bogus record in the titles table.
2. Through the Expression Engine control panel, I edited the new bogus title and it’s associated entry.
3. Searched Google (it may be evil, but it has its uses) to locate the entry; loaded Google’s cached version in a browser window.
4. Edited the entry in the Expression Engine control panel to match the title, category, date, and time in the Google cached record. (Found a lot of splogs that have stolen my content as a bonus benefit.)
5. Saved the edited entry in the Expression Engine control panel.
6. Rinsed and repeated for each of the remaining lost entries.
7. Backed up the database and promised myself to do so regularly.

There are clearly still some problems, and I have no idea how serious they are. When I try to upload an image, I get the following error:

Notice: Undefined index: last_cache_clear in 
/www/xxxxxxxx/public_html/xxxxxxxx/core/core.system.php on line 944

This is probably related to corrupted/incomplete information in the exp_stats MySQL database table which is also most likely responsible for the error messages I’m receiving in the Expression Engine Control Panel.