ARTS & FARCES internet

I recently updated the software that runs the core of ARTS & FARCES internet to ExpressionEngine 2.6.0. Like every other major ExpressionEngine point release (this site’s been running ExpressionEngine since the initial release of pMachine, its predecessor) major functionality of the site has failed spectacularly.

In this particular case, registered members—including the ARTS & FARCES principals—are unable to login to the front-end user accounts of the site (back-end, Control Panel functionality appears to be unaffected). To make matters worse, ExpressionEngine’s Wiki module has failed in a most unseemly way. It appears that the product’s code has unilaterally decided to throw a bunch of crap into any Wiki URL. A first access to any Wiki page seems to work, say, http://www.farces.com/index.php/wiki/Category:Technology::Adventures_with_the_naked_Mac_Mini_Server, for example seems to work just fine. But any subsequent navigation to any other Wiki page fails miserably: http://www.farces.com/index.php/wiki/Category:Technology::Adventures_with_the_naked_Mac_Mini_Server::ML-ExpressionEngine_titleCategory:Technology::Adventures_with_the_naked_Mac_Mini_Server::ML-ExpressionEngine for e,xample. In this example, everything after “_title” is redundant garbage. If you manually strip out everything from “_title” to the end of the URL, you can force it to work, but who needs that?

Oh yeah, and since we can’t get into the front-end user accounts, we can’t edit any of the Wikis. Like I said: Spectacular.

I remain convinced that EllisLab, which recently pivoted to a paid support business model, never spends much time—if any at all—testing its releases. In this case, I’ve filed the necessary bug reports (here and here) but I’m done serving as an involuntary quality assurance tester. Aside from that, EllisLab has singularly grown astoundingly arrogant, condescending, and hubristic over the years. Nothing wrong with the first two, by the way, so long as you’re under-promising and over-delivering; but EllisLab hasn’t done that for a very long while.

So, ARTS & FARCES internet is going to pivot to a new content management system (CMS). I’m not quite sure which just yet, but any change is going to bring major, irreparable breakage and one absolute certainty is that all existing links will permanently fail. I’ll produce new, accurate sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz files, of course, but there will surely be some confusion in the interim.

Yes, yes another major ARTS & FARCES internet upgrade. This is the 12th major upgrade since February 1993 (and the first since July 2010). This time all of the upgrades are on the back-end, and if all went well you really shouldn’t notice anything different.

We’ve changed internet service provider, domain hosting, and domain name service (DNS) hosting. Additionally, everything is now self-hosted on a Mid-2010 Mac Mini Server (Macmini4,1) running headless, keyboard-less, and mouse-less. The machine has 8GB of RAM and a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor running OS X 10.8.2 and OS X Server 2.1.1.

Because this one server is now running all of our internal and external services, there’s a lot more that we’ll be doing going forward. For example, I’m totally enamored with Apple’s Wiki service—it’s the best wiki implementation I’ve seen for users unfamiliar with WikiCode.

We also migrated our email system to Google Apps and it’s been mostly seamless. I don’t mind Gmail as long as I don’t have to use the website.

This connectivity/domain/DNS migration has been something of an ordeal because I haven’t had to update our DNS settings for quite some time—and now Network Solutions has this graphical interface that actually makes it a little more difficult. The changes were actually implemented two days ago, but I forgot to delete the default A records so nothing was reachable outside of our network. I still haven’t figured out how to add a TXT record to OS X Server’s DNS, and I need it fairly desperately to create an SPF to prevent email forgeries. If you know how to do this, kindly hit that Feedback link up in the top horizontal menu bar and clue me in.

There shouldn’t be any linkrot. Well, make that any new linkrot; all of the channels remain the same, with the same URLs/URIs.

That said, there’s almost certainly some sort of breakage. Please bang around as much as you can and use that Feedback link up in the top horizontal navigation element to report any problems.

This is the 11th major update to http://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 http://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.