The latest system upgrade at this point is mostly completed, and the updated version is now "live" on the site. At the moment most of the old features should "just work" although there may be some occasional hiccups while the search index and caches rebuild themselves. You may click a link only to get a completely blank page; hit reload a couple of times and the problem should go away. If that one persists we'll definitely be looking at it.
Oh, yes, the design. This is basically a placeholder. The way in which the original Rampancy design was ported from the old system to the content management system in use for the past few years was always kludgy at best. What's more, that design has remained essentially unchanged, aside from a few tweaks here and there, for nearly seven years now, and more than one user asked if and when we were ever going to change.
We are.
However, the design you see now is not the final version; it is a "good enough for now" variation on a standard CMS theme, and has been chosen for decent readability more than aesthetic sensibility. It is possible that we will re-implement a system that allows site users to choose between different available themes, and if so this one and possibly the original Rampancy theme will be among them, but we are also developing a new visual look for the site.
One of the reasons to keep the content management system up to date is to be able to add new features. Of course, we already know that Rampancy isn't the fastest rabbit at the dog track as it is, so we are going to consider removing site features that are not used often and perhaps offering a few new ones, so stay tuned.
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Comments
Claude Errera
Theme data saved...
...but the old themes (well, rnet3 :) ) seem to be missing quite a bit from the new stuff. I realize you know this (from the wording of the news post), but it might pay to actually automatically reset everyone's theme to slash_black, because you'll avoid a TON of error messages that way.
narcogen
Yup
In reply to: Theme data saved...I know, I've been looking for a way to do that since I installed the module. There's a field in the user table for that value from when this used to be a standard core feature, but the new module isn't using it.
Rnet3 is based on a significantly older way of making themes than the others-- for each of the changes in the theme system between Drupal 4.0 and 4.6, I did "just enough" to make sure the theme worked, and then gradually tried to recover some of the lost functionality. So this time, I'm going to take one of the new themes and try and work backwards to something more "rampant".
I may just disable the rnet3 theme for everybody-- that way, they'll see the site default anyway.
Rampant for over six years.
rapture
Hey Narc:
In reply to: YupHey Narc:
I look forward to seeing where you are going with this.
Once I logged into my account, I saw several DB issues (I guess what Wu was referring to) related to the theme.
What I saw: http://flickr.com/photos/ericatkins/107656245/
After logging in, the RNET3 theme was running. The user panel was "rolled up" and I couldn't access my profile menu. (Perhaps I just wasn't clicking in the right spot.) Luckily, I knew to go to /user to access my profile. I switched over to Slash-White.
I'm actually remaking cg.net right now. I'm sticking Drupal 4.6 and am going to have to get heavy into CSS to achieve the look I want:
http://flickr.com/photos/ericatkins/107392560/
Again, I look forward to the upgrades. I'll probably have to hit you up for advice.
rap
rapture
cooked Gamers . net
narcogen
Theme error
In reply to: Hey Narc:As Wu suggested, I've been trying to find out where the setting is that is keeping people with the old theme. I might just disable it for awhile.
What's the line number in that error-- I can barely read it on the image. 247?
Rampant for over six years.
rapture
Re: Theme error
In reply to: Theme error[quote=narcogen]
What's the line number in that error-- I can barely read it on the image. 247?[/quote]
267 (click all sizes to find other sizes of that image)
http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=107656245&size=o
narcogen
Strange
In reply to: Re: Theme errorThere doesn't seem to be anything unusual about that line-- it's a single-line function for printing the links at the bottom of a news post or comment, and it's the same in that theme as for several other themes that are 4.6 compatible.
Rnet3 is based on Interlaced.
Rampant for over six years.
Claude Errera
United's pretty broken, too...
In reply to: StrangeI thought it was just a missing style sheet - but it seems to actually BE there. (It's hard to actually tell what's going on, because if you've got united selected, loading is REALLY painful. ;) )
I'm sticking with the default for now; it works. ;)
narcogen
Removed
In reply to: United's pretty broken, too...Yes, I see. I thought that would be so simple that it would work, but it, and variations of it, are also not working and I'm not sure why.
I've disabled that one, too. In it's place, I've put in box_grey and greenmarinee. Both should work, I've tested them both out on most pages.
Rampant for over six years.
narcogen
I think I know
In reply to: Re: Theme errorI think I know where the problem is, and it isn't necessarily in the theme, it may be somewhere else.
The URL in your image there is http://rampancy.net/user. If you're logged in, the system should automatically detect your usernumber and append it, and bring you to your user profile page. It seems it didn't do that, even though the login block shows you are logged in.
If the value for $uid is null, but the system thinks you're logged in, it can't figure out what links to put in that bar, so the value of $links becomes null, and the implode() gets a bad argument.
I've disabled Rnet3 now anyway and set all the users who had selected it to the new default. When I figure out how to fix Rnet3 I'll put it back.
Rampant for over six years.
narcogen
New Features And Known Issues
I won't front-page this, but for the few that have questions or problems, or just the curious, I'll give a more detailed rundown on some of the immediate and near-future ramifications of the last system upgrade here at Rampancy.
There are some key changes to the user login and registration system-- some as a result of the upgrade, and some as a result of gradual changes made over the past few months that were not specifically announced. Unfortunately, many of them were aimed at limiting abuse of the comments system. It is now quite common for all kinds of content management systems to receive constant abuse by scripts attempting to post links to sites in order to increase their search engine rankings. The only surefire way to eliminate this completely is to disable comments by anonymous users-- something we've only done on a few occasions and only on a temporary basis.
Barbarians At The Gates
Some of those scripts are sophisticated enough to either attempt to complete user account registration themselves or attempt to masquerade as a known user. To combat this, there are a few changes to the registration system:
In addition to those, there are four other modules solely devoted to keeping automated junk comments and other abusers off the system. Some of them will just unpublish such comments when they are detected, and others will ban your IP address.
To Login Is Divine
So much for the abuse-related changes. The other changes, fortunately, are geared more towards trying to increase convenience for the user in spite of these requirements.
The user login and account registration block is now at the top of the lefthand column and is "collapsible"; this means that until clicked, it takes up only a single line. If you are logged in, it will display your username and a link to logout. If you are not logged in, it will display a link to "login/register". Clicking this link will expand the block without reloading the page and display a login form.
In this login form, you may enter either your username OR your e-mail address, in case you cannot remember your username. The form also provides a link to register a new account if you do not already have one and to request a new password if you have forgotten yours.
These changes should lessen any confusion about whether or not you are logged in (which affects what content you can see, as some site pages and features, such as downloadable files, are only available to users who are logged in) without take up too much screen real estate.
I Can See Clearly Now
One of the side effects of the upgrade was that some of the images in the image galleries lost the links to their thumbnails. This only became apparent when the "random images" block was activated, as when the thumbnail could not be found, the full-size image was placed in that block, rendering the page practically unreadable. I believe I've fixed all these such images so far, but there may still be more, so bear with us; and if you find one, you don't need to send us a screencapture-- just click on the link (whether it loads or not) and give us the URL that the oversized image linked to. We'll track it down.
There was also an issue earlier with the "stats" link displaying an error on cached pages and for anonymous users. That should be addressed now, so if anyone sees an error on that page again after today let me know.
We All Theme For Iced Theme
I've also made good on the earlier threat to allow users to once again choose their own theme. You can do so by clicking the link for "my account" in the lefthand column and then choosing the "edit" tab. Choices currently include the default theme, called "slash black" (due to its similarity to SlashDot's design), a blue variant of the same, the old Rampancy default called "Rnet3", and another theme called "united". Not all of these have been worked over as thorougly as the current default theme, so not everything will look right. If you have a problem, let me know what it is and what theme you're using and I'll take a look at it.
Seek And Ye Shall Find
Awhile before this last upgrade, the site's search index got borked and couldn't be fixed; the site would get less than halfway towards rebuilding it before stopping. This meant that search results were pretty incomplete. The new search function is not as feature-rich as the old one (as it does not allow for separate searches of comments and stories) but it does serve up better results. Apparently the next iteration of this function will be a big improvement, with better results, better results filtering, and the ability to handle SQL-like search queries. Until then, the keyword browser (called "category browser" in the lefthand column or "keywords" in the menu across the top of the page) allows for complex combinations of keywords to help you locate really specific information, like whether there are any Rumors about Halo 2 coming to the Macintosh, for instance.