Report for September

[Mike]

Another interesting month. And after taking a month hiatus, the traffic numbers established yet another new record. But it was by the skin of our teeth, since there were just 14 more visitors to the site in September than there were in July.

We took on 32 new members and 1,223 new posts.

What amazed me is that we carried an average of 924 search engine spiders and bots, per hour, for the entire month. A total of 665,734 search engine bots crawled the site during September. I had some work to do here this morning and when I logged in, I was the only one here. If you don't count the 372 bots that were also here. :wow:

We were getting knotted up in some timing issues between our Donations Tracker and the first of each month, when the bills are due. Transferring funds between PayPal and a bank can take as little as two days and as many as four. And we were really bumping up against the edge of having enough money to make ends meet this month. So the donation quata timing is changing this month. Instead of running from the first of the month to the end of the month, the October quota ending date is going to be 25 October. November's quota will run from 26 October through 25 November. From this month on, we were going to consider the 25th as the end of each month. This way, if we fail to meet the quota, I will still have time to transfer funds from the bank to PayPal to cover the bills. Again, I want to thank those who have generously supported this Web site with their hard-earned dollars.

Welcome to October, everyone!

 

[Mike]

Whew! :hot:

I was this >< close to having everyone up in arms, about 2 hours ago. Invision has fixed another load of bugs in the forum software and has made a new, Beta test release. Now, as anyone with any common sense knows, you never want to use Beta software in a production environment. My question is - where's the fun in that concept?!? I regularly run Alpha, Beta and Release Candidate software, so I generally throw caution to the wind. Just a couple days ago, I finally got a final release of Linux Mint Debian Edition installed on this machine, after running a Release Candidate version for a month. I'm running a version of Mozilla Nightly that was released just yesterday and as I am typing this, it is warning me to get today's version installed. The bleeding edge is where Life happens!

I donwloaded the Invision Beta package and got it ready for upload. That's when I heard someone whispering in my ear. "Better test it first." Figuring discretion is the better part of valor, I decided to upgrade the test site and see how things went. I uploaded all the files and ran the script to upgrade everything to the new version.

I checked and everything looked hunky-dory. I had fixed a template bug on this site, earlier this morning, so I figured I would check to see if Invision had fixed it in the new version. I clicked to start a new topic and saw the bug was fixed in the Quick Reply. I clicked More Reply Options, to check the full editor and that is when things went to Hell in a handbasket. I was suddenly on the forum index page, looking at the Mobile skin. And trying to change back to the regular skin was having no effect. It acted like it was changing and then I was right back on the Mobile skin.

I ended up wiping the directory, deleting the database and starting from scratch. I wanted to know if there was actually a bug, or if something had gone awry in the upgrade process. I uploaded all the new files, ran the installer and everything looked just fine. I clicked to start a new topic and everything was OK. I clicked on More Reply Options and BAM, there was the Mobile skin again.

It turns out the new version of the software wants to persistently set the MobileApp cookie. You can clear that cookie and get back to the regular skin, but can you imagine me trying to explain that to a couple hundred people? Why anyone would have gone aywhere near that code when squashing bugs is beyond me, but it sure happened.

So I wiped the directory, deleted the database and set everything on the test site back up with this version of the software. That way, when the code gets squared away, I can test the upgrade on the test site, before I open Pandora's box on this one. That's a couple hours of my time, wasted.

But at least I don't have an Inbox full of angry e-mails. :wolf:

 

[railroad]

Whatever you are saying Mike, OK. I sit back and take the site for granted. If I am on the computer I come here without fail.
Thanks for all the effort, maintenance, advise and good site. There seems to be just the right amount of arrogance, intelligence,
politeness, etc. Good site, eh?

 

[TubT]

I understood all of that, up to the "I sat down in front of the computer with my coffee" point...