Penguin Talk: Technical
Posted May 27th, 2006 by Steven Norton
This is a place to discuss and suggest technical changes or issues with the Penguin Talk forum system.
This is a place to discuss and suggest technical changes or issues with the Penguin Talk forum system.
Comments
Comments now public
Since we seem to have quite a few anonymous visitors, which I hope includes a number of BP parents testing the waters, I thought it would be helpful if those visitors could read, though not post, comments on the forums and stories on the site. A lot of the interesting stuff happens in comments, and perhaps being able to read them will encourage people to join.
This does mean that comments are open to the internet, and will be indexed by search engines. I welcome comments and opinions on this. Thanks!
my two cents
I think going public deserves some discourse. We have our kids’ names and often ages posted, our names posted, etc. The site has a lot of potential, and I think it will just take time to get frequent use. It is certainly attractive to just peruse the conversations, but having the comments and personal info made public and searchable means some real privacy issues. May end up having a dampening effect in the long run. If parents/staff from the community actually want to read what is here, they will sign up, I think. Perhaps adding a line that says ’4 replies, log in to view’ or something, would let people know there’s more there if they want to take the time to log in.
BTW, major Thanks for setting this site up, Steve. It is a phenomenal resource that I think will get a lot of people conversing!
Closed again
Well, I finally found the line of PHP code which generates the “login or register to post comments” and I changed it to “login or register to view or post comments.” I also removed access to comments from anonymous viewers, though people can see and post comments as soon as they register without needing prior approval. (Accounts are considered “pending” until given a final OK, which gives us a chance to filter out any inappropriate registrations.)
This is better that where we started, though I’m still not sure if this is the best solution. Any comments welcome!
To open or not to open
Thanks, Pat – I’m glad you like Penguin Talk!
I agree — I hesitated for a long time before deciding to try opening up the site. I guess I was concerned because it seemed a lot of parents had “visited” the site, but had not registered — so they couldn’t be seeing the comments (which is where most of the action is).
The current notice (“register or login to post comments”) is in very small type and does not mention that you (used to) need to do this to see comments as well. Perhaps a better solution is to highlight that. I didn’t actually build the underpinnings of this system (it’s an open-source package called Drupal), so it will take some exploration on my part to figure out how to change that.
I’d like to invite other reactions, so that we can get a feel for how people lean.
Thanks!
New login procedures
To reduce the frustration that is probably caused by the time lag between when someone registers for Penguin Talk and when I can act on their account application, I’ve changed the login procedures.
Now, new users can choose their own passwords and log in immediately; they are by default assigned to an account type with more limited access. They will get an email with a link to click on to verify their email address that will remove some restrictions. I’ll still be monitoring to make sure that new users are a part of the BP community.
Let me know if any problems or issues crop up.
Steve Norton
parent of Jamie (2) and Alida (1)
PTO info tech co-chair
Textile entry enabled
People who would like to format their entries without typing out a lot of HTML can now use the Textile markup system. This uses simple codes, like asterisks for bold, or underlines for italic, and makes it easy to create numbered lists (pound signs) or bulleted lists (asterisk at the beginning of a line). For full instructions, check out the “More information about formatting options” link at the bottom of any comment or topic entry page.
(FYI – I replaced the TinyMCE WYSIWYG system with Textile because I felt Textile was simpler and generated cleaner code. Comments appreciated.)
Steve Norton
parent of Jamie (2) and Alida (1)
PTO info tech co-chair
Email for login
We’e just installed a new module which, among other things, allows everyone to log in with either their email address or their user name. This means you can still use your full name as the user name, without having to remember just how you typed it when you login.
Let me know how this works for you!
Get email notice of new content
All registered users can now “subscribe” to emails that notify you of new forums, comments, etc. on Penguin Talk! Look for the “subscribe” link after the main entry of a discussion forum. You can also get notices of all comments sitewide by choosing the appropriate link from the subscriptions tab in the “My Account” section.
I hope this allows everyone to follow discussions of interest more easily. If you have questions, please post them here!
Steve Norton
parent of Jamie (2) and Alida (1)
PTO info tech co-chair
Subscribing to forums
Steve –
the ability to subscribe is a nice feature, thanks for adding. But somehow I’m not seeing the link. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right place, but I can’t find it!
Subscribing to forums - oops!
Arrrgh! Forgot to check the permmissions settings. Now, all signed-in users can subscribe to forums, forum topics, etc. Thanks for spotting that, Ginny!
Steve Norton
parent of Jamie (2) and Alida (1)
PTO info tech co-chair
Subscribing to forums
Now the subscription link is there! Thanks Steve!
Recent comments
I’ve enabled the display of recent comments, which shows up as a list of comment titles and how long ago they were posted. I thought this might be useful since it isn’t always obvious that there are new comments for the discussion topics listed on the front page. What do folks think? Is this confusing, take up too much space, useful, or what?
Good idea to add recent comments
Good idea Steve! It’s helpful to see where the recent activity is, and how recently people have contributed.
I’ll note also that if you click on your name there’s a little user profile you can fill out that includes a signature that’s appended to every message. It might be worth thinking about ways we can add to the user profiles a little bit, so that Penguin Talk starts to be a useful adjunct to the paper Burns Park Directory (which is great! but hard to update mid-year).
Father of Saul (K, Weinmann AM) and Jonathan (1 y/o)
Aren't modules cool?
I was faced with a problem: we’re having new account applications held for approval, and I wanted to find an automated way to inform people when their accounts were activated. I checked out the user-submitted modules for Drupal, and lo and behold, there it was: “user_status”. This module allows users to automatically be notified when the status of their account changes (activated, blocked, deleted). I ran a test, and it worked as advertised. Now I just have to keep logging on to check for new applications!
Steve Norton
parent of Jamie (1) and Alida (K)
PTO info tech co-chair
Search works!
For those interested: the conferencing system we use for Penguin Talk (Drupal) includes a search function. But it relies on regular commands from a Unix system utility, called cron, to execute the search indexing commands on a schedule. In the shared hosting environment we have, we don’t have the ability to create our own cron schedule items. Intrepid programmers working on Drupal have created a special utility they call “poormanscron” which allows us to have any such automated functions triggered anytime someone looks at a Penguin Talk page (if more than one hour has elapsed).
This means that the site is now indexed for searching, and the index will continue to be updated as people use the site. If we enable RSS syndication feeds in the future, they will be updated in the same way. Thanks to the volunteers working with the Drupal project for working this out.