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Aug 16 2012   2:46PM GMT

What we’re up to at ITKE: Social media, WordPress and a few bug fixes



Posted by: Ben Rubenstein
Community, ITKE

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Website maintenance image via Shutterstock

It’s your friendly community manager here with a quick update. We’ve had a busy summer at ITKnowledgeExchange, and I wanted to make sure you’re all up to speed on the improvements and fixes we’ve made to the site.

Our Social Media Profiles

You can now find ITKnowledgeExchange throughout the social web. We’re active on Twitter (@ITKE), Facebook and Google+. The conversations are going strong in our ITKE LinkedIn Group, which is open to all. You can also find our favorite IT videos on our YouTube channel, and a growing list of presentations we like on Slideshare. If you’re also in any of these places, please join us.  If you didn’t notice, you can now access all our social accounts using the handy icons in the “What’s New” box on the homepage and on the Blogs page.

Blogs Are Booming

Have you checked out our Enterprise IT Watch blog recently? We’ve been posting tons of new content there each week, from tech history tidbits to videos to infographics to events – and look out for some great guest posts in the near future. We’ve also launched a new blog, Vendor Tech Talk, where interested IT vendors can contribute their perspectives.

WordPress Upgrade
In June, we upgraded the site to the latest version of WordPress to take advantage of all its new features. We didn’t change how the site looks (that’s coming down the road); it was more for ease of use on the back end. We also made a smaller upgrade more recently.

In possibly related news, we have seen a few bugs on the site of late, and are addressing them on an ongoing basis. Read on for more detail.

Things We’ve Fixed:

  • Apostrophes in questions turning to slashes. You may have noticed that when  you submitted a question, any apostrophes in the title/body were changed to slashes. This has been fixed.
  • Duplicate questions and spam in the ‘Unanswered’ section. We do our best to keep on top of spammers who try to infiltrate our community, and get rid of those questions as soon as possible. We recently noticed that some spam questions that we’d deleted were still showing up in the Unanswered section, along with duplicate versions of non-spam questions. As of today, this has been fixed.
  • Header links. When you click on the ITKnowledgeExchange logo in the header of any site, it will now take you back to the site homepage (for a time it would take you to the index page of whatever sub-directory you were in).
  • Login issues. Some users had been unable to log in to the site, especially if they hadn’t logged in for some time. This has been fixed (but let me know if you’re still having trouble!).

Things We’re Working On:

  • Answer history issues. A few users have noted an issue with the answer history on certain questions, where a change is falsely attributed or blank changes are shown when comparing versions. We are looking into this problem and hope to have it resolved soon.
  • Asker becomes the answerer. In a few cases, the person who approves an answer has been made the ‘answerer’ of a question, at least for some period of time. We have identified the issue and are working to resolve it.
  • Points problems. Some users have mentioned that their point and badge accumulations are not reflected accurately. We’re currently trying to resolve this, but rest assured that your points are safe. By the way, we’re in the process of revamping our points/badge system – if you have any suggestions, please drop me a line!

If you’ve read this far, I can tell you’re a committed ITKE member. Thanks! As you can see, we’re always working to make sure it’s in the best shape possible, and would love to hear your feedback. If you’ve noticed an issue that is not addressed here, or have a suggestion or compliment, please let me know (brubenstein@techtarget.com).

Ben

 

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Comment on this Post

Leave a comment:

carlosdl  |   Aug 16, 2012  4:37 PM (GMT)

It’s a pain to add line breaks with the current editor ;-)


 

brubensteintt  |   Aug 16, 2012  4:48 PM (GMT)

You mean when you’re answering a question? What makes it difficult?


 

carlosdl  |   Aug 16, 2012  9:20 PM (GMT)

I have experienced it when commenting questions. With Firefox, there doesn’t seem to be a way to create a 2-or-more-paragraph comment.  Everything is posted as a single paragraph, with no line breaks.With IE, sometimes you can manually add “<br>” or “<p></p>” tags and they work, but sometimes they don’t.This is a 3-paragraph comment.  Let’s see how it gets posted.


 

Ben Rubenstein  |   Aug 16, 2012  9:29 PM (GMT)

Yep, clearly there’s an issue there.

We’ll look into it.


 

carlosdl  |   Aug 16, 2012  9:33 PM (GMT)

Thanks Ben.


 

brubensteintt  |   Sep 12, 2012  8:16 PM (GMT)

Hey carlos – and everyone else. The 2+ paragraph issue seems to have been fixed. Let me know if you still run into problems. 


 

TomLiotta  |   Dec 23, 2012  3:42 AM (GMT)

We can see if it’s been fixed by entering this sentence as the first “paragraph”.And this appears in the [comment] box as the second “paragraph”. (My signature would be the third.)Tom


 

TomLiotta  |   Dec 23, 2012  3:53 AM (GMT)

But I came here to mention the spam comments in blog posts, pretty much outnumbering valid posts. It wasn’t much of an issue until ‘Recent comments’ was added back to the main pages. — Tom


 

Ben Rubenstein  |   Dec 23, 2012  3:49 PM (GMT)

Thanks, Tom. I see that a few posts got through — I’ve cleared out the recent spam, though it might take a little while before that recent comments list gets refreshed. 

Also, it does look like the paragraph issue is popping up again, given your post. We’re working on some other formatting fixes (especially how code displays) right now, so we’ll add that into the project. 

 

Ben Rubenstein  |   Dec 23, 2012  3:50 PM (GMT)

Although mine seems to be displaying ok :)


 

TomLiotta  |   Dec 25, 2012  1:37 AM (GMT)

To be clear, the paragraph problem happens for me (and apparently for carlosdl) when using Firefox. With IE, “<P> & </P>” tags are inserted; with Firefox, only “<BR>” tags are inserted. Even if you edit the source, I’ve seen paragraph tags removed with Firefox. I start an IE session when I want multi-paragraph comments (though sometimes those get truncated). You can recognize FF (and possibly other browsers’) posts because of the run-on sentences with no white-space between. — Tom


 

TomLiotta  |   Jan 2, 2013  12:33 AM (GMT)

More on the blog ‘Recent Comments’ list (which I find interesting either simply in themselves or because a large number of comments can indicate a blog post that should be read regardless of its visible subject): Are they manually culled from blogs? And The link between in-memory computing and Big Data success seems to have a messed up ‘Comments’ area. Is there an issue with blog comment entry today? — Tom


 

Ben Rubenstein  |   Jan 2, 2013  2:32 PM (GMT)

Thanks, Tom — comments were accidentally turned off for that Terracotta blog. They should be working now. 

We do manually go through each blog regularly to check for spam/inappropriate comments. 

 

TomLiotta  |   Jan 7, 2013  5:39 AM (GMT)

We do manually go through each blog regularly…
 
Spam comments are irritating in an ‘IT pro’ site. If we can’t manage junk, how can we tell others how to do it? But I was wondering about the relationship between the ‘Recent Comments’ list and actual posted comments. Comments often don’t show in the list, so I wondered if they are manually selected or if some blogs are somehow ‘disconnected’.
 
Tom


 

Ben Rubenstein  |   Jan 7, 2013  2:22 PM (GMT)

That list is dynamically generated, though we do often see some lag time between when a comment is posted on a blog and when it shows up in the list. They should all be there eventually, though, assuming they are approved. Do you have an example of one that did not show up?


 

TomLiotta  |   Jan 12, 2013  12:31 AM (GMT)

During the past 24 hours or so, there are no editing icons available foe ‘Discussion’ text entry. Also, there is no input area showing at all for an ‘Answer’. Those issues show in WinXP for FF 18.0 and for IE 8.0.6001, and for a couple other versions of this on a second laptop that I use.


 

TomLiotta  |   Jan 12, 2013  12:56 AM (GMT)

The ‘Improve this Answer’ button is also not functioning. — Tom


 

TomLiotta  |   Jan 12, 2013  1:32 AM (GMT)

Blog comments, however, have all editing icons and functions available. — Tom


 

Ben Rubenstein  |   Jan 13, 2013  2:30 AM (GMT)

Hi Tom,

Are you still seeing these same problems? I’ve checked on multiple browsers and have been able to see the comment editing icons and the answer functions. 

 

TomLiotta  |   Jan 13, 2013  5:28 AM (GMT)

I am not seeing any difference right now with FF 18.0 and IE 8.0. Went back and tried FF12.0 and IE 6.0 on an older laptop, the one I used for years before this.one, and the same appearance shows up. No edit icons for a ‘Discussion’ entry area, and no ‘Answer’ entry area at all. (I noticed that AndreaF also made a comment that the ‘Answer’ area was unavailable in Recovering e-mails from account after leaving domain , so I’d guess I’m not alone.) However, I also noticed that the ‘Discussion’ entry area now has a lower-right corner widget that I can grab to resize the entry area. This blog comment entry area has all edit icons, but they’re gone if I go over to a ‘Discussion’ item.


 

TomLiotta  |   Jan 13, 2013  5:32 AM (GMT)

Come to think of it, I’m using a different router today. I might think that the icons (or the .js file or some other object that needed to be retrieved) can’t be accessed. That wouldn’t explain why they show okay in the same browser for this.entry area though. — Tom


 

Ben Rubenstein  |   Jan 14, 2013  2:46 PM (GMT)

Thanks for the update – we’re still trying to replicate the issue on our end and will be checking in with Andrea as well. We’ll get to the bottom of this. 


 

TomLiotta  |   Jan 16, 2013  12:57 AM (GMT)

I reset my old laptop to connect through the original router and ran the same way as previously. Same browser, same routing. Still a Win2K laptop, so no known configuration changes other than (a) switching to my alternative wireless router and (b) disabling Java add-on in the two browsers, IE and FF. Still no edit icons for ‘Discussion’, and the ‘Improve this answer’ button is just an inactive .GIF. When there is no existing ‘Answer’, then there is no entry box, just the basic text listing previous members. This.laptop is WinXP with the most current available browsers and all patches; the behavior exactly matches the Win2K laptop.


 

TomLiotta  |   Jan 17, 2013  2:53 PM (GMT)

BTW, my comments entered through FF are now apparently inserting paragraph breaks okay. I just learned that by accident by forgetting to switch to IE for a longer comment. At least there’s no need to switch browsers today. — Tom


 

TomLiotta  |   Jan 18, 2013  7:29 AM (GMT)

I see all the edit icons back again. Of course, I also see the the resizer widget is gone again from the ‘Discussion’ entry box. Ah, well… Tom


 

Ben Rubenstein  |   Jan 18, 2013  2:49 PM (GMT)

Well, that’s progress. I’ll look into the resizer now.