Lend Me An Ear

The painting has absolutely nothing to do with anything, other than it showed up in one of my feeds, and I hadn’t ever seen it before, and I really loved the colors and the feel of it. It reminds me of a hike DiaryMistress and I took in Cortona on a lovely sunny day with puffy clouds like this.

I want to say Welcome! to all the new testers who have come into OD in the last couple days. It is great to have you here! Also wanted to talk about a few things that are going on, to keep you all up-to-date.

Site speed

We are aware that posting entries and notes can be slow at times right now. The reason for this is that we are currently importing all the other diary data into the new site from the old data files. The diaries of the people that are here testing were brought in first, but for the last few weeks we have been bringing in all the rest – which amounts to millions and millions of entries and notes. Some other day maybe I will write about the new site architecture – but suffice to say, I was only willing to engage in this project if we were completely rebuilding the site on highly secure, scaleable, and powerful machinery. Part of what that meant was that we have to move all the data from the old system to the new one (rather than just turning the old system back on!).

While this is going on, the saving functions are a little slow – because behind the scenes, there may be thousands of other things that are being saved at the same time. I appreciate everybody’s patience – the data import is about 80% complete, and we expect it to be finished in the next few days. When that happens, you should see much better results when you are posting entries or notes.

Entry editor

Many of you have probably not even noticed that there is a formatting bar in your entry, it appears when you right-click and lets you format your text and add pictures. Don’t worry if you haven’t seen it, because it’s going away ? .

This is why it’s so great to have all of you here testing – we liked that editor toolbar in our own initial testing, but it soon became obvious with other people testing that it wasn’t a good solution. We are currently working on replacing it with an editor that will be “always-on” (meaning, you will see it in the entry at all times) and will provide better functionality.

This is the next large thing that our engineers are tackling, so hopefully you will see that change soon.

Privacy

Many people have noticed that there’s not a Members-Only privacy setting here. This is partly because we knew that during the testing phase the site would be private so only members would get in anyway – so we were able to procrastinate on putting it in HA. We are adding it though – so in the future the options will be Public, Members-Only, Friends-Only, and Private.

Public will mean that anybody who’s not logged into the site will be able to see it, Members-Only will mean that it will only be visible to logged in members of OD.

One of the things we are still thinking about is how much “public” access there will actually be to OD. I am very focused on preserving the community feeling of this site, and there’s a fine balance between having truly public content and how that works out. We will see.

Customization

Several of you have expressed that you would like to have customization options for color, font, etc. for your diaries. This is something we are looking into – I would like to be able to enable this, but it is also complicated technology-wise. We will investigate what can be done, as I realize a lot of people would like it.

This is also something we have to be careful with – because we want people to feel like they can have their own “home” here, but that all of it also still feels like part of OD.

I think that’s it for today, I do want to say just how excited and happy I am to see all of you here and using the site. We have been working on this relaunch for a long, long time – and to see people here, posting and making friends and just using it, is incredibly gratifying. Thanks so much!

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October 19, 2017

It’s all such a thrill to be able to be a part of OD once again. I’ve been trying little experiments with posting videos and trying to play a little with using HTML because, speaking for myself, when writing prose, I find it helpful to use double spaced lines/line breaks sometimes to emphasise What I wish to say and have the reader know there’s a longer pause, etc etc but, having said that, It’s not a huge issue on what you and admin are having to deal with and, your changing the entry editor bar may address that for me. We’ve all been without OD for so long, I’m sure none of us will mind the tweaks and bugs as you bring it all up to par. Thank you DM and admins. 🙂

October 19, 2017

Thanks for that – so you know, single line spacing will be supported in the new editor!

October 19, 2017

Aloha…

Thanks for the update…!

October 19, 2017

I got the Van Gogh (lend me an ear) reference……

October 19, 2017

+10 points for you!

October 19, 2017

Thanks DM. You are handling an enormous task and doing it well.  Again, Thanks.

October 19, 2017

Thank you!

October 19, 2017

Friendship requests..How to initiate and how to add friends ??

October 19, 2017

On your note above…notice the “+” sign…that is for people to add you as a Friend.

October 19, 2017

@icarusknew @thomas IK got it, and I see you figured it out 🙂

October 19, 2017

Just go at your own pace…..most of us are delighted we’re here again. We can hold off on all the “fancy” stuff.

thanks again.

October 19, 2017

Thanks!

October 19, 2017

I was wondering about all of those points. So thanks for reading my mind! (:

October 20, 2017

Ditto Icarus Knew. FiM knew, too 😉

October 20, 2017

Ha! Good for you!

October 20, 2017

Ha, I only found that entry editor toolbar last night – I shall henceforth ignore it! Thank you for all the work you’ve done so far.

October 20, 2017

Good plan!

October 20, 2017

There’s an editing bar? LOL I shall continue to be blissfully ignorant. 😉 Thanks again for all your continued efforts and for the update!!!

October 20, 2017

You’re welcome! and LOL 🙂

October 20, 2017

Just noticed this today… When writing/editing an entry on the mobile site, the Unpublish/Edit/Delete links are a little too close together… It’s pretty easy to accidentally tap Unpublish and Delete.

October 20, 2017

@kvetch that’s a good point, will take a look at moving them a bit apart.

October 21, 2017

Love the painting. Reminds me of that starry night by Van Gogh which I’d know nothing about if not for, coincidentally, both my daughters adoring it and wishing to paint it one day. 😉

So far, so good. No snags. Love the look!

October 21, 2017

I’m so so so happy to be here…. have I said that before? oh yes!!

October 23, 2017

Thank you thank you thank you….a thousand thank you’s….I’m hoping I am just overlooking a spelling checker? I’m like a kid I want to giggle I’m so happy to be home…still not in the swing of things..but I love that we were an exclusive group. I like the idea of public diaries and member only diaries…I felt there was a niche that I could really feel safe in. I never went on any of the public diaries….there were some very bizarre titles….Hope you have a great evening !

October 23, 2017

@ollie you’re welcome! I’m glad you are so happy to be here!

For spellchecker, we are actually expecting that to be something your browser does for you – but there is a current problem because we have an editor bar that launches on a right-click when you are editing an entry. This blocks using the browser spellchecker, oops! So we are working on a new toolbar that doesn’t use the right-click, and then you should be fine using your own spellcheck. Thanks!

October 23, 2017

@thediarymaster alright thank you…

October 23, 2017

I definitely think less is more when it comes to an editor. I really like the control of being able to manually indicate when I want to bold something, add a link, etc. One of the things I noticed is that if you then want to copy your existing entry, you can’t get the formatting you entered back because even in the edit window, it’s just bold, or a link, etc. When really what I want is the ‘raw’ text.

October 29, 2017

Noted, and we think the same thing about the editor – we are going for something that provides functionality, but isn’t terribly complicated. Thanks!

October 23, 2017

Quick question, I posted my first entry today. Am I supposed to see it come up on the home page? I don’t know if it is public or not since I haven’t gotten any notes yet. My setting is set to public.

October 27, 2017

Hi @offmychest and welcome back! You should see it on the front page, yes – as long as your diary and the entry are set to either public or friends-only!

October 23, 2017

@thediarymaster I thought you might like to check this out in your spare time 🙂 It’s a column on Tor that’s doing ‘summaries’ of the Silmarillion (partially in an attempt to make it more accessible) but it’s pretty funny/clever 🙂

https://www.tor.com/series/the-silmarillion-primer/

October 24, 2017

Thanks! I will have to take a look. I love Silmarillion, but anything to make it easier to digest is a good thing 🙂

October 24, 2017

I just want to say again: Thank you soooooooo much for bringing OD back. I still have a lot to learn about using it, and a lot will change as you work on it……but none of that bothers me at all…..because I’m just so grateful to be back here. It’ll come together and we’re all in it for the great ride it is. It just feels so good to see names/friends here that I hadn’t seen for so long. Sorry for all the drippy mushiness but I’m just so darn happy about OD! 😀

October 25, 2017

@marieelena you’re so so welcome! It’s great to see how happy this has made the people who have come back!

October 27, 2017

Is there a way for me to have the fonts in the diaries, mine and others darker or bolder or blacker? lol Sorry the font as it shows on my screen appears “faded”.

October 27, 2017

So far so good dude, I am have a blast and then some… but there are a few things missing that made OD the amazing site we always loved.

1) All Diary Notes: That was one of the best features of OD. The fact that we could update ourselves on any added notes by going to one collective page. Checking each entry to read new notes is not fun… we need the all notes page back.

2) Diary background. We need the ability to at least pick or create wallpaper behind our diaries cause everyone as the same color looks bland. I’m sure you’re working on it but people being able to decorate or change their backgrounds is what made OD fun.

3) The Circles. I realize you’re just testing them out… but the real test would be to bring back the circles that always had heavy traffic. Health & Fitness isn’t a good subject to beta test the circles.. you really want to test the system, bring back Film, Sports and especially the Politics circle.

Just a few ideas… I know you guys are working hard and I appreciate it.

My Best,

October 29, 2017

Thanks! Glad that you are enjoying yourself.

1) We are definitely bringing back the All Notes list, Engineering is working on that now, so you should see it soon.

2) We are looking into whether we can enable changing of backgrounds/colors for people, I would love to have it to make it more like the “old” OD, but it’s also complicated from a user interface perspective, so we will see.

3) Yes, we are planning on adding more Circles for sure – thanks for the suggestions. I will probably post an entry asking for suggestions.

Thanks!

November 29, 2017

That has to be a Van Gogh!! I LOVE Van Gogh!!

November 29, 2017

@Butterfly4Him you’re right! One of my favorite Van Goghs.

November 29, 2017

@thediarymaster : Oh yes!! Mine is “Starry, Starry Night”

November 29, 2017

@butterfly4him we have a puzzle of Starry, Starry Night that is one of my family’s favorites 🙂

January 28, 2018

I know this is an older entry, but I’m just getting acquainted now that it’s back up and running…as for customizations. I vote NO NO NO! Unless there is a way to completely, 100% disable seeing other people’s customizations, that is 😉

January 28, 2018

@wewereinfinite thanks! That’s kind of the way we are thinking about it too – I think it would be important to be able to turn it off.