November 30, 2003

Chapter Bug Fixes

Because into every Monday a few bugs must fall.

Some problems with the new Chapters feature that were reported over the weekend, which I’ve fixed:

If you went to leave a note on an entry while reading in chapter mode, the diary reverted to date mode afterward. This has been fixed so the diary will return in chapter mode, where you left off.
If you went to edit an existing entry…well, see above. This has been fixed so you also stay in chapter mode if that’s how it was before you edited the entry.
The “previous” and “next” links at the bottom of the entry list would send you back to your default chapter, rather than the correct chapter. Also fixed.
A bigger one – moving the chapters around would work sometimes, but sometimes it would cause the order to go all woogly. This has been fixed so it won’t happen anymore – however, I had to reset the order of the chapters so we had a clean start point. As a result, you may find that you need to re-order your chapters today. The good news is, now they should stay where you put them.
If you had more than ninety-nine entries in a chapter, the ones earlier than the 99th weren’t showing up in the entry list. This caused the beginnings of long chapters to seem invisible. Any of you who are programmers know that the difference between 99 and 100 is an important one (programmatically and digitally), so you might guess what the problem was (and no, there won’t be the same problem if you go over 999 entries in a chapter – this time I thought ahead). In any case, this has been fixed so all your entries should show up in their chapters now.

I’ve had some other suggestions about chapters, and one I particularly like is the idea of being able to set privacy options on entire chapters. So if you wanted to have a chapter of private entries, you could. I’m not going to promise anything, but I’m going to look into this one – seems like it would be useful.

Only one person so far has said that nine chapters is not enough. As I said before, the possibility of having more is there if I decide to use it. If you have an opinion about this, let me know.

Hope everybody had a pleasant weekend. I know that it’s statistically impossible in a community this size that everybody enjoyed themselves – but you know what I mean. We at least were able to do some Christmas shopping on Friday, and I was glad to see that the happy economic reports of the last few weeks seem to be true – except when standing in the endless line at Costco, then it didn’t seem so great. I’ll leave my dissertation on the fascinating cultural differences between the clients and employees of Hot Topic vs. Bath & Body Works for another day.

The DiaryMaster

Don’t ask me where the word “woogly” came from…I don’t know.

I vote for more than 9.

http://www.woogly.com. Yep. Also, google returned 733 references to “woogly”. Enlightening, eh.

I agree that more chapters are needed for a really organized and varied diary. I already have 10, about to be 11 links on the front of my diary that serve the same purpose. Plus 5 chapters or more I want to use. Problem: Chapters still do Not work on either of my diaries. Can only open the first chapter in that view. Otherwise it goes back to date view. Have reported this since last week.

lol… i was JUST about to ask about woogly.

You could determine, within somewhat acceptable statistical tolerances, a first order gaussian population distribution for how many peope here really had an enjoyable weekend: t=r(sq.rt.)n-2/(sq.rt)1-rE2 Where n is a population sample (>/=32) and r is std. deviation. I am a geek.

Woogly, indeed. Question: Is it beyond the realm of possibility for you to code things so that diaries front pages to be set public while notes are private/friends only, etc? For example, if one had a diary that was OD+ only, yet the owner wanted the front page to be seen so that they could post a message like : If you want a reader’s password, please email me at…” or (cont)

i was wondering whether it would be possible in the entry manager to ‘jump’ to a particular date or entry, rather than having to go ‘back’ or ‘next’ for 30 entries at a time.

“this diary is private, here’s why, and here’s how to contact me”? I don’t know how far the asp. capabilities extend or if this is even an issue, I was just wondering. Several times I’ve wanted to go private but also wanted to stay in touch/not alarm my readers, and had no way to do so. Eh, not like you aren’t doing enough already. I’m proud of your newfound/ongoing attention to the site. 🙂

Dangit, my phone rang and I got distracted. Vendors, eesh. What I meant to ask was, “could the diary itself be limited access but still have the front DD page available to any joe who wanders by?” Ignore that part about the notes. I mean DIARY, not notes. Now I’M all woogly.

I have this strange problem – when I push the “chapter view” (I have date view default) I can only view the first chapter – if I push the next I go to date view again and they won’t appear (the other chapters that is).

🙂 Oh, but that would make me happy, if the chapters could be set private. Or invite only. Or something like that. Good stuff.

i think i’m going to wait before experimenting with these..you’re such a pc whiz..i just love how + things have gotten around here i really do..it’s llike a whole new ball game again and your vested interest is so positive…::she says adjusting her pink glasses::

YeeHaaaaaa!!! Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! For fixing the chapter feature on both my diaries : ) Hugs

Will the delete option ever be back on?? I would really liek to delete my diary. Thanks. ~ Angel

like*

My diary is still not allowing me to add more chapters. It is saying I have the nine allowed although I only have 6…

RYN: Insane_jello_troll and gotthebottom have been leaving me insulting notes as well, so please jump down their necks like you’ve done for me.

I think the way you spell his name is Insane Jello Troll or something. They have been leaving worse notes than I have, but I have been deleting them. Please do something about them as well.

Well, I already know I’m not typical, but I also think that 9 chapters is not enough. I divide my diary by season and I have already used most of my chapters. Enjoy your Christmas preperations!

Hello. I apologize, but I would like to complain about the “server errors”. I get them quite often, and they are beginning to anger me. I nearly always get them when writing an entry, and after writing a 5500 letter entry today I’ve had enough. Please, I beseech you, fix your bloody server!

Hello, once more. I apologize about my very recent last note. I figured out the problem. You see, my diary is kind of an “RP diary” in which I write about the past and such… just to gather ideas for a book that I someday hope to write (for now I use Patrick O’Brian’s MASTER AND COMMANDER Characters) Anyway, perhaps you could make it so that date is option? Also, how do I get Chapters?

Will there be a select all option avalable ever for past entries? If you were not planning on it I think it woild be great! I know I would like to make most of my chapters from the same time and having 800+ entries I am lazy!

Thanks, I was waiting to see how it worked when someone did chapters view! I’m working on fixing mine up to do this

hey. just a few suggestions.. i think you should try and devise this system where we could have “friends” in our profiles, like links to our OD friends’ journals. and it may be too complicated, but maybe everyone could get a little picture that could be their ID, like when i write a note in someones journal there could be a little picture by my name?? just a few sugg. :o) <33

thank you

Just wondering why JohnIrish is alllowed 2 entries on RC when other people are only allowed one?

Hey i was wondering if you could help me out, in my diary entries lately i have written, i have written it out with heaps of spaces saved it and there are no spaces between the paragraphs i put in, so i have one big huge paragraph and no spaces *sobs* its driving me crazy! its never done this before…help!!

You know what? My STUPID sister is back on OD harassing me. She’s got her diary to “favorites only”; she read my diary and leave me NASTY notes, but because she’s “FO” I couldn’t block her sorry ass (until she left me a note). You know what you ought to do? If people want their diaries to be “FAVORITES ONLY” then it should mean JUST THAT! They can ONLY see & leave notes for their favorites.

Is it possible to adjust the ‘FAVORITES ONLY’ feature? I had not changed my diary to Favorites Only, because I thought that once you did that, you could only READ YOUR FAVORITES, as well as only being SEEN BY YOUR FAVORITES. The current way doesn’t accomplish a thing except for give diarists on “FO” ability to lurk and note bomb without recourse. Was that your intent?

(sorry to repeat, but I edited it a bit) Is it possible to adjust the ‘FAVORITES ONLY’ feature? I had not changed my diary to Favorites Only, because I (mistakenly it turns out) thought that once you did that, two things happened: 1. You could only be SEEN BY YOUR FAVORITES. 2. You could only READ YOUR FAVORITES and no other diaries were available to you. (cont)

It turns out that there are diarists on this site who are on “Favorites Only”, yet they have the ability to read all public diaries as if there were no restrictions. I think this is unfair. The current way it is configured offers ‘protection’ of a sort to the people who decide to put their diaries on “F.O.”, but what about those who do not? (cont)

What about those of us who receive note bombs and ill-will from diarists who are on F.O., but we cannot access their diary to respond because we are not on their favorites list? (cont)

Let’s say, hypothetically, there is a diarist who gets pissed at another. Diarist A goes to F.O., and Diarist B no longer has access to that diary. Diary A, however, can leave notes and tell lies and harrass and do whatever they please to Diarist B, without any recourse or action to stop them. (cont)

The only response available to Diary B is to start complaining to you until you delete Diary A. In my opinion, Favorites Only is not the improvement I think you were shooting for. Was that your intent?

Okay. I’m done now. Thanks for listening.

Wasn’t sure where to email this, so thought I’d leave a note. My “issue” is that I don’t think I’ll ever want an entry of mine to be available for Reader’s Choice. Is there a way to set it to automatically default to NO instead of checking the box every time (yes, I’m lazy)? Thank you! OD is the best diary site I’ve used. 🙂

ok, i wasn’t really sure where to leave this note, since you don’t have an entry pertaining to my problem…uh, whenever i log into my diary and then go to my diary, the top menubar is kind of messed up. theres the pull down menu, and them there are these links to my favorits and random diaries underneath. how do i get rid of that? your help is greatly appreciated, i am totally lost on this. thx=)

Hey thats SO cool that your a guy. There are like five guys on OD that really know how to use a computer. good luck

My DOD won’t update, what’s the deal?

What am I supposed to do with suggestions? Just email them? Or can you set up a form like you did for errors. Anyways, it would be nice that an entry marked as Reader’s Choice actually got some notation on the entry itself. Also, you should parse out the html stuff like you do on the front page for the RC pages. Right now I can see style code.

this is a test note.

I love the fact that you are being so much more personal!! Makes you seem real!!!! We appreciate you! =)