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Archive for March, 2007

Wordpress Community 2.1.2

So, I got in a "fight" on the Wordpress forum while trying to solve the missing WYSIWYG button problem. I posted followups on dozens of topics where people claimed to have the same problem as me. I asked them if they had fixed their problems permanently, or if the problems had re-emerged after refreshing w/o clearing the cache. Evidently, my brute-force shotgun interrogation strategy was not appreciated by the moderators. So they deleted my posts. Oh well.

I doubt the Wordpress community tried to be malicious. But neither did they try to be helpful. They were just "blah". They didn't answer my questions. My interaction with them just sucked away hours of my life. And those weren't even creative hours. See, when I'm on here complaining about Wordpress, at least I'm writing words that I have the potential of reading later. But not so on the Wordpress forum. My words there are gone forever. What a waste.

Well, this is even more "evidence" that I am probably better off writing my own CMS instead of trying to join some pre-existing pack of geek-sheep. Wordpress is not polished enough for me yet. It just isn't. Sure, a lot of people will say "an unpolished diamond in the hand is better than a polished diamond buried in the sand near a camp full of rebels", but I don't know…

I guess it all depends on how annoying the blemishes are. Wordpress's unreliable editing window is super-annoying. Like Jennifer Connelly's character in "Blood Diamond". Super-duper annoying.

Web 2.0 vs DIY

I've sort of come to a decision. Sort of. I might change my mind in a couple days or minutes.

My tentative decision is to forget about other people's Web 2.0 solutions and instead focus on my own web publishing mechanisms. This means (for now) XML, XSL, and vanilla static XHTML. Any interactive elements should be optional and used only for publishing, not for reading. So I will implement my own push CMS, but it's only a "CMS" in the sense that it's an alternative to other people's CMSes.

Bottom line: do it myself. Roll my own. Own, own, own. I'm a programmer, so I shouldn't shy away from coding. Let the youtubers and myspacers latch their greedy sweet teeth to the nipples of Other People's Ideas. Other People's Web 2.0. I don't need to join the rest of the babies at the McTeat.

Wordpress 2.1.2

So I get back from vacation and find out that someone hacked the Wordpress 2.1.1 downloads, which means tons of bloggers are scurrying around paranoid. Not I, because I don't use this blog for anything but complaining about this blog's amount of complaining about this blog's complaining amount. Yeah.

So did Wordpress manage to squeeze some bug fixes into this release? Let's see if the RTF (read the f***ing) editor works.

I click "Visual". Nothing happens. Great. Wordpress 2.1.2 is just as messed up as 2.1.1. Hackers, it's all yours; I certainly don't want it!

Wordpress 2.1.1

Okay, I just upgraded from Wordpress 2.0.5 to 2.1.1.

Hopefully, and I mean really hopefully-hopefully-hopefully, Wordpress won't barf on me like a drunken college chick. Wordpress sure tries to be pretty and sophisticated, and I honestly really like the super-clean look of my blog (but that's partly my doing, not just Wordpress's), but man, when you get to know Wordpress, it has bad breath, bad gas problems, and its hair is matted with chronic clumps of crusty upchuck.

So is the new version's WYSIWYG editor as barfolicious as the preview version? Well, let's try a few paragraphs here, a few bulleted lists there… Let's test this mofo out.

Hmm, paragraphs seem fine. No problem there.

Let's try a list:

Ummm… wait a sec. Where are the list icons? How can I create a WYSIWYG list without WYSIWYG buttons??? I just see bold, italic, a spellchecker, and some weird icons.

Hmm, after I click "Save and Continue Editing", I see all the HTML. And then the Visual tab stops working, so I can't get back to WYSIWYG mode. Argh.

Well, so much for a vomit-free drinking session with Wordpress!

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Update: Other people have reported the disappearing Visual mode as well.

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Update: For some reason, it seems to be working now. I don't know why. All I did was open the error console and now I see not only the bold and italic buttons but also the list buttons. So while they are accessible, I might as well test 'em:

  1. item 1
  2. item 2
  • item 2.1
  • item 2.2
  1. supposed to be item 3. oh well, can't expect too much
  2. supposed to be item 4
  3. ok, i've have enough of this

Well, that was so-so. Hmm… Okay I am seeing errors in the javascript console now.

They are just onBrowserKeyUp errors. Perfectly harmless. Like tipsy college chicks.

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Update: I just tried to edit this again, and got the missing Visual mode problem. This time, I see lots of genuine errors in the javascript console:

  • Warning: Unknown property '_width'. Declaration dropped. Source File: http://tripalot.com/travis/wordpress/wp-admin/wp-admin.css?version=2.1.1 Line: 692
  • Warning: Unknown property '_margin'. Declaration dropped. Source File: http://tripalot.com/travis/wordpress/wp-admin/wp-admin.css?version=2.1.1 Line: 699
  • Error: realTinyMCE is not defined Source File: http://tripalot.com/travis/wordpress/wp-includes/js/tinymce/tiny_mce_gzip.php?ver=20061113 Line: 43 (nice wrapping, Wordpress!!!)
  • Warning: Expected ':' but found '1.3em'. Declaration dropped. Source File: http://tripalot.com/travis/wordpress/wp-content/themes/tripalot/style.css Line: 116
  • etc. Lotsa these.

Very strange. This new Wordpress smells like bile.

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Update: I tried again, and this time shift-refreshed. Suddenly the icons came back. Hmmm. Could it be a caching issue?