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WordPress Transition

By on January 8, 2013 in

Updated  1/11/13

Read Me First! We’ll use this post to document open item, bugs, changes in functionality that people should know about. Please use the comment feature here to discuss any issues you are having.

Briefly

Reset your User Account

You are going to need to reset your password and it is going to need to be a strong one

  • Go here http://bluehampshire.com/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword
  • Enter your username or the email address you used to create your account. If you do not have access to your old email account (really Dean a KUA domain?) Let me know and I can probably reset to a new email address for you.
  • The system will send you an email with a link that will bring you back to the site to reset your password to a strong password you can remember.

Commenting

Once you log in you should be able to comment on posts. Your first comment will be held for review, once it is approved future comments will not be held for spam testing.

UPDATE 1/11/13: Attempting to move to the “Disqus” system for comment. 

Disqus allows

  • “Up and Down” voting of Comments
  • “Flagging” Comments (current set to hide comment if it gets 3 flags)
  • Integration of a persons comments across sites that use the Disqus System
  • Integration of twitter etc.

You may comment via disqus with your Twitter or Facebook Identity if you choose to or you may create a separate Disqus Acct to do so (for privacy or Anonymity  sake). Diaries and Comments are different logins.

Disqus comments are synchronized back to WP for safe keeping, but currently not displayed any where other than the sidebar.

I am trying to get our 130k comment history into Disqus but as you might imagine doing anything with 130k objects is difficult! Our historical comments (even as recent as yesterday) are currently not displaying but they are safe in the database. If I can not get Disqus to Import, or we decide we do not like the Disqus system we can revert back to std WordPress or another commenting system.

Diaries (Posts)

If you have created a diary in the last couple of months* I have given your user the ability to create a new post/diary. There are some things that need to be adjusted within the post creation interface but I think you will be able to figure things out. You can find a “New Post” link in the top Gray bar or in the “Meta Section” in the top right (http://grab.by/iPOI).

If you have not created a diary in the last couple of months let me know so I can give your user proper permissions. Hopefully this will not always be a manual process, but it the safest way to do it right now.

1/1/13 User Photos in Diaries: Some have noticed that some authors have photos in author profile. If you are interested in doing this as well you need an acct at “Gravitar” that uses the same email address as your acct here at BH. There may be some other ways to do this in the future directly here but for now it’s Gravitar.

Open Issues

Thing I consider “Open Issues” that will be addressed as I can.

High Priority

  • Getting old comments into Disqus
  • Figure out “Frontpage” or ‘Featured’ Posts capability/configuration
  • New users can not currently register (to protect from an influx of spam accts) Find Solution/Plugin.
  • Configure User Roles/Permissions

Medium Priority

  • Define Categories
  • Clean Up Tags
  • Revise Getting Starting Page/Instructions

Low Priority

  • There is no replacement functionality for the dedicated “Events”- This was a little used feature of the old site. We will replace it if we find a simple way to do it, otherwise member are encouraged to share their Events via Diary/Post.
  • Purge inactive users
  • Logo
  • Develop Terms of Use Policy
  • Posts that reference images that were hosted on the old Soapblox Platform will be broken. (Images from flickr or other 3rd party sites should work fine) see if there is a resolution for this.
  • Monetization: Adsense vs BlogAds Network. Subscriptions? Sponsorship?
  • More advanced Search Features
  • Consider http://www.joedolson.com/articles/wp-tweets-pro/

Done

  • Askimet Set up for commnet Spam Protection
  • Get Bitly URL shortener set up
  • Post on Password reset
  • RSS Feed
  • Get Custom Google Search Working

Changes you may notice

  • Users do not have access to their “User ID” number
  • Comment Ratings were not converted
  • Promotional Comments are probably gone.

* Users who should be able to post diaries

-Gary Patton
-Ray Buckley
-Hannah
-Rep. Jim Splaine
-William Tucker
-Zandra Rice Hawkins
-The Money Magician
-Susaninrindge
-Kathy Sullivan 2
-Dean Barker
-Frant
-Dave OBrien
-Xteeth
-Susanthe
-Paul Twomey
-Political Chowder
-Matt.Murray
-Beverlywoods
-Elwood
-Cblodg
-Kite
-RealNRH
-Douglas E. Lindner
-GreyMike
-Lenore Patton
-JonnyBBad
-CarolSheaPorter
-BurtCohen
-Chuck Townsend
-CMGately
-Johndejoie
- Caitlin Rollo

  • http://www.timothyhorrigan.com Timothy Horrigan

    I have not checked out this yet, but I am expecting all existing deep links from other sites to break as a result of the change. Has my expectation been fulfilled?

    • http://hoeferweb.com Mike Hoefer

      The developers said they took some time to make sure that did not happen… it’s part of the reason it took a bit longer to convert.

      Let me know if you come across any issues.

  • NHFlatlander

    Thanks, Mike, for doing all this.

  • GreyMike

    Woohoo! Looking good, Mike.

    Wondering about “get the app” in the header, takes me to hotels.com in the App Store. Is there an app in the works?

    Off to explore the place.

  • GreyMike

    I see, it’s not an app, just a cryptic rotating ad. Shoulda known. The WordPress app will prolly do the job.

    • http://hoeferweb.com Mike Hoefer

      will need to do some adjustment to allowed ads at some point.

  • cblodg

    site looks great. Thanks for the hard work!

  • susaninrindge

    Looks like I made it in… testing 1.2.3….

    • mevansnh

      Hoping I make it too. I guess I can’t create a diary, though.

  • RealNRH

    So far, so good!

  • Pingback: NetRight Daily » Ideological divide crosses into political hatred in New Hampshire

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  • http://miscellanyblue.com William Tucker

    New diary creation worked flawlessly. Kudos for maintaining links to old content. That’s a feat the Union Leader and Concord Monitor couldn’t pull off.

  • cblodg

    How do we change user names, if we were so inclined to do so?

    • http://hoeferweb.com Mike Hoefer

      It’s something I would probably need to do from the back end. Let me know what you would like it to be and I will investigates some options to change.

    • Doug Lindner

      You can’t. But you can change your nickname in the settings, as I did.

      • Chris Blodgett

        Thank you for the suggestion. That seems like the way to go!

  • http://miscellanyblue.com William Tucker

    Ummm, how do I embed a video (using YouTube iframe code, for example)? When I attempt to enter the embed code in the Text tab, it gets stripped out.

  • hannah

    Made it. I see I have two comments waiting. Probably not worth posting.

  • Judy Reardon

    Thanks, Mike, for all your work.

  • Lucy Weber

    Oh, my, Mike. this looks great! Thank you so much for making it happen.

  • Lucy Weber

    And may I kindly have permission to post diaries? And how do I find my old diaries or comments?
    Love,
    Bewildered.

    • http://bluehampshire.com/author/mike-hoefer/ Mike Hoefer

      You now have the power of authorship

  • unhhockey

    The site looks great. One suggestion … some really nasty people are showing up on Twitter using the #nhpolitics hashtag. Perhaps some refinement is needed.

    • http://bluehampshire.com/author/mike-hoefer/ Mike Hoefer

      Or…maybe more Dems and Progressives should start using the #NHpolitics Tag :-)

  • hannah

    Clever ads. 3 people I never had as friends unfriended me! LOL

  • may

    Looking good!

  • Doug Lindner

    So this is new. Looks good, Mike!

    • Doug Lindner

      It says my comment is awaiting moderation. Are comments supposed to require moderation?

  • SethCohn

    Awesome job. As someone who does this stuff for a living, many folks won’t appreciate how big a task this was, and it looks great. Kudos.

    (And despite the complaints from GraniteGrok/etc about the site change messing with links, I know that this swap was in progress before that, and was unrelated. As usual, it’s easier to complain than research for many (nonpartisan issue)

  • Dean Barker

    Congrats, Mike!

    It is really something that you took a six year old labor of love and managed to move it to a new platform without any linkrot. The Union Leader and Concord Monitor could learn a thing or two from this.

    We went a REALLY long time without a major platform change, and this was long overdue. Plus, it enables BH to remain current software-wise in a way that wasn’t really possible with Soapblox, as good as that was.

    Well done.

  • Matt Murray

    I just have to say, Great Work Mike and all of the BH team. I switched to wordpress about 7 months ago and could not be happier. I am also glad you switched because I can start sharing my post a lot easier. I had a hard time cross-posting to the old system and it kept me from posting very often. As you can probably already see, that is not a problem anymore.

    If I start posting too much please let me know.

    MATT

  • Ray Buckley

    Am I correct that there is no longer the like/dislike ability for posts?

  • RealNRH

    Great job with the transition! But I think comment rating is quickly showing up as more than a medium priority, as the Freak Stater assault is, much like their Real Life efforts in New Hampshire, unwelcome and annoying. With the old comment system, it was much easier and more community-oriented to keep nutjob trolls from derailing discussions. It’s a progressive site; spouting crazy Libertarian rants about police officers being thugs and the face of tyranny is wildly off-topic and should be easy to remove.

    • GreyMike

      Agree with RealNRH on this, we’re being overrun with representatives from the fact-free fantasy world, because it’s suddenly more comfy for them here now. And per usual, the more they are replied to, the more they post further inflammatory drivel. As to exactly why they want to infest a progressive site, it’s a great mystery to me. I’m not sure who their intended audience is meant to be, but they are certainly not making any new friends or converts here. Are their own echo chambers not fun enough anymore?

    • http://livablemht.org FrankLloydMike

      I’d like to rate this a 4! At the very least, we need a way of removing or hiding troll comments. Beyond that the old rating system provided an easy way to say “I agree” and so on, which was helpful. But the real issue is limiting trolling. We can’t have a meaningful conversation about progressive policy when we’re constantly rebuffing off-topic reactionary comments by people who have little else to do but annoy people.

    • http://bluehampshire.com/author/mike-hoefer/ Mike Hoefer

      I’ve all but decided to move our commenting to http://disqus.com/ as a separate service from wordpress it focuses only on being a good commenting platform. Many sites are using it. NHPR, TPM, Teagan Goddard, hell even Granite Grok. It integrates with twitter etc. and has the advantage over facebook comments of allowing comments without a facebook acct (there for also allowing for anonymity should a commenter choose.

      My only concern is it will likely disconnect comment authorship from diary authorship… So we many loose the unified view of things and if you over think thing (as I am prone to do) it could lead to less of a community feeling… I guess we will have to monitor and see

  • MartyInNashua

    I am also really missing the ability to easily pick out which diaries have replies that I haven’t read (e.g. “10 replies, 5 new”).

  • Bob_Robert

    Very interesting. The Disqus comment system is loading, but it seems to be loading _over_ the prior comments. While the page is loading I can see the prior comments, but then Disqus erases them.

    You have a difficult task, Mr. Hoefer, I salute you for taking it on and doing this well.

  • Chris Blodgett

    Not an easy task, but you have done a great job!

  • hannah

    Let’s see if Disqus works cross platforms.

    • hannah

      It recognized my Google account.

  • http://bluehampshire.com/ Blue Hampshire

    Advertising… Know that I am blocking all the rightwing ads as soon as I see them. They seem to have quite a network.

  • http://www.facebook.com/timothy.horrigan Timothy Horrigan

    Rightwing ads appear on my own website all the time. I don’t mind them too much because I make money when people click on them. (The way these ad placements work is, the web site lends a few square inches of space to Teh Google or a competitor in exchange for a share of the proceeds, if any.)

  • Seth Cohn

    Some will find this funny, but I actually think the old system (despite the moderation system’s flaws) was better. Discus allows too many trolls… (even if I agree with some of the trolls at times). I forsee a return to a more controlled system of commentary, sooner than later.

    • http://bluehampshire.com/ Blue Hampshire

      well see… I’m giving some latitude right now on the diaries that are specifically about the FSP. But banning, flagging, (troll rating) are all part of the disqus system ad can be deployed by the community.

      We’ll try it for a bit and change if we need to.

      The bigger question is can I get 130k or back comments into the system!

      -mh

  • http://twitter.com/DougLindner Douglas E. Lindner

    Upvoting and downvoting will make this the reddit of NH politics.

    Edit: WE HAVE COMMENT EDITING.

    • http://bluehampshire.com/ Blue Hampshire

      Is the reddit thing a good thing in you mind? Re editiing thought you would like that!

      • http://twitter.com/DougLindner Douglas E. Lindner

        I’m not a reddit user (redditor?), but I think the upvote/downvote model is interesting. Is a downvote here intended to signify simple disagreement or trolling?

  • http://www.facebook.com/timothy.horrigan Timothy Horrigan

    You need to put a narrower ad widget in the sidebar. You have a medium rectangle, which is 300 pixels wide by 250 high. If you have a smallish screen the column sometimes gets resized to less than 300

  • http://bluehampshire.com/ Blue Hampshire

    I’ve moved this post under the “About Blue Hampshire” menu item to get it off the home page but work continues and I’m interested in all feedback.

  • Michael Bellefeuille

    I’ve noticed that most people are posting using their full real names. I’ve been doing that on the new platform as well, as it’s something had been wanting to do at the old site (I feel it’s generally better and more civil when people have to stand behind their name in posting online, but that’s another topic). However, I’ve also noticed that some people are using their old handles from the old site (and some who are using their names used them at the old site, too), and I like that I can recognize who’s posting based on their old moniker. I’m debating whether to continue posting under my full name or under the old moniker. Another big reason for posting under my own name is that I can easily do it through Google, without needing to remember another username or password for Disqus. I’m wondering if others have any thoughts on this, and how they made the decision. Also, if you are using something other than your full real name, did you have to create a Disqus account to post under your old username?

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