Monday, November 5, 2012

Wordpress Redirect


Please click here to go to my "test" board.

Wait 4 seconds.

You should be redirected automatically to here, a potential Wordpress board that has our posts and comments imported thus far. (As of 11/5/2012 4:45pm CST.)



This is the result of our moderation discussion thus far:

1. We can use the Disqus commenting platform here in order to block trolls, but this solution is highly untenable for a large portion of our community that cannot access Disqus for a number of technical reasons.

2. We can use the Wordpress blogging platform, which provides troll blockage and stronger moderation, but at the cost of some template control. (We have no Wordpress experts on staff currently, so what you see over there is pretty much what we get for the time being -- that template was the closest I could find to our current setup.) We can set this site to automatically redirect there, in order to ensure that the Patheos and Typepad links still steer people to the right site.

3. We can continue here as before, and delete trolls as they pop up.

I think that pretty much covers the range of technical options thus far. My vote, if anyone is counting, is for #2. But we need to make a decision together. Thoughts?

50 comments:

  1. I vote for #2 as well. However, I found that when I went to the test Wordpress blog, it looked a lot like this one for a few seconds, but then reverted to a somewhat different look. Sorry I can't help with the code :(.

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    1. Oh, wait, I just read the post again. If it's supposed to be like that, never mind :).

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  2. It looks really good! The template definitely needs some tweaking, but it's impressive for such a short time!

    I vote wholeheartedly for #2, and if no one else has done it by then, after I get back from AUSA next week I'll start teaching myself Wordpress and take a crack at the template.

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  3. #2 looks like the best available option that doesn't involve burning out moderators. (Who are harder to replace than light bulbs.)

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    1. Agreed. Mods are only human and have limited spoons. We don't want anyone in the community to have to constantly deal with trolls.

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  4. I'm confused, having not been able to read for a week or so because...shit...fan...etc.

    But I vote #2, if I understand correctly what we are voting on.

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    1. Basically, the gist of the discussion leading up to this was:

      1) We had our first trolls on the new site.

      2) We realized the moderation options available with Blogger's default comment systems kind of suck (no way to edit a post, so no rot13'ing or adding comment flags; no way to see IPs so no way to ban problem commenters).

      3) We brainstormed possible solutions and community consensus seemed to be tentatively leaning toward "Experiment with Wordpress and see what happens."

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  5. Ana, how do I get your test blog to not redirect? I don't understand how other people are successfully leaving comments on it.

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    1. The test blog is just demonstrating that redirection is possible and we can do that here.

      No one is commenting on the test blog -- those 7 comments (or whatever) that you see are old; we tested Disqus 2012 over there awhile back on Ramblings.

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    2. Oh, okay. Thank you for clarifying.

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  6. Replies
    1. Thank YOU, Brin. And everyone else, for being so patient and kind and supporting and affirming during this. I really appreciate it.

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  7. I'm trying to create a fourth option but my coding skills are crap and stuff, so probably nothing will come of it, but if people don't mind waiting for a bit we can see if maybe this is one of the few times my attempts at being useful doesn't fail.

    If people can't wait (and some of that depends on the trolls) my vote is for not-1. If the community consensus is 2 or 3 I can live with that, but 1 I am strongly against.

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    1. Yeah, I think #1 is pretty moot at this point, but I thought best to include for the sake of summary. :)

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  8. When do we want to make a finalized decision? My thought would be that if we're doing #2, I can code the redirection from here to Wordpress on Saturday. (And part of Sunday, but Sunday afternoon/evening is booked with a volunteer orientation.)

    On the one hand, I'm not trying to rush anyone to a decision; on the other hand, speaking for me personally, I'm getting burned out on troll posts. I think I deleted/spamtrapped 5 or 6 yesterday, and I wasn't the only one moderating.

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    1. I'm always feeling rushed, so I'd definitely like more time, but what I'd like and what we need are not always one in the same.

      Depending on how much the trolling keeps up I might be able handle more things on the moderation end so that you don't have to, but sometimes I'm asleep, sometimes I'm in transit, sometimes I'm not at a computer. It takes more than an hour to walk home every day during which time I cannot mod.

      As for when we need a decision by, I don't know. This weekend for a deadline seems like things are moving pretty fast. I know 2 is generally preferred so far, but have we had someone who really knows wordpress show up yet? Unless I missed something we haven't even talked about how well it handles multiple author blogs. Maybe it's great, maybe it's not. I certainly don't know.

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    2. I think I can answer that one, at least. Wordpress *does* allow multiple authors, and in fact allows them with more variety and flexibility than Blogger. Blogger has only two roles: a limited Author role that can do barely anything and a god-mod Admin role that can do everything. Wordpress has several more roles, which I like: http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/

      As a platform, I really like Wordpress and I've tried multiple times to make it work for me as a blogger. I personally kept coming back to Blogger because I like that the Blogger templates are HTML, which I can speak with some fluency. Wordpress is CSS, which I don't speak anymore*, which means that I'm largely limited to pre-set templates unless/until I learn more.

      The other deal-breaker for me with Wordpress is that you have to pay them in order to use a custom domain you already own. That mattered for redirecting people from AnaMardoll.com because I didn't want to abandon my custom domain or pay Wordpress $18 a year to use it, but it doesn't matter so much in this case, as we don't have a custom domain.

      I think there's a good case to be made here for keeping some momentum going. If we don't post anything for a month while we work out our moderation plan, I think we're going to see attrition of readers. I'd honestly rather just bite the bullet and move over and get things in a "finalized" state so that people can feel comfortable and not like it's all in flux. (Especially now that we have name-stealing sock-puppetry going on. That's a PAIN.)

      But what's most comfortable for my personality type is not necessarily true for everyone else.

      ---

      * I knew CSS relatively fluently, oh, 10 years ago. But I've not used it since then and it's gone from my brain.

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    3. (It occurs to me that "I really like Wordpress" clashes with my earlier statements about hating Wordpress. It's complicated because Love and Hate aren't really mutually exclusive for me.

      Basically I love the *idea* of Wordpress but hate a lot of the actual implementations enough to keep me with Blogger. The HTML/CSS divide is a huge hurdle for me if I wanted to recreate my site *as is*, nickel-and-diming people on the custom domain is just plain crass, and the Dashboard could and should be easier to navigate in my opinion. All of this has kept me from switching over from my existing platform.

      But with Google racing to the bottom when it comes to site operability, the Wordpress dashboard is annoying me less than it used to. And the new template I found -- this nice red one I have going -- looks enough like my Ramblings site that I'd be lying if I said I weren't tempted. Ah, well, best not to fix it if it isn't broken.)

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    4. Wait, Wordpress is CSS? I can do CSS! Not expert by any means, but I can muddle my way through it well enough to lay out a blog, methinks.

      Also, looked at the user roles. The existence of the Contributor level alone makes the move worth it, IMO.

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    5. Froborr, I sent you an invite to the site. If you look under Appearance --> Custom Design, you'll see the CSS editing tools, such as they are.

      (Obviously we should test all things on a test board first.)

      I *think* we have limited control over what we can change unless we pay the $30 a year, but I'm not sure how this meshes with the fact that free boards are allowed to upload any theme they want saved from local disk.

      So theoretically you could make a theme on your local computer and we could upload that for free; it seems like the fee is just for using their editing and previewing tools. I think. Not entirely sure.

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    6. Doesn't storiteller have some Wordpress background?

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    7. Thanks, Ana! I will try to recreate the layout we have here, and then we can discuss and tweak from there. However, I will not be able to work on it until Monday; is that okay with everyone?

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    8. I can do some moderating in the next few days. I can, since I'm an Author, right?

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    9. I do have experience with Wordpress, but it's limited to tweaking a set template. I can't customize them past having a custom banner, but I know all of the writing tools and some of the mod ones. I wouldn't say I'm an expert though. Last time I tried to modify Wordpress in CSS, it was a complete mess.

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    10. If the difference between getting more goodies and better troll-prevention is $30/yr, I can certainly help with the fiscal end of things even if I can't code my way out of a paper bag.

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  9. And now we have someone pretending to be someone else. Yay! (Don't look for it, spamtrapped.)

    For the record, I haven't personally gone around asking, but I think it may well be the case that all of our mods do have severe chronic disabilities. Certainly all of the ones I know the status of do. Yes, that includes myself.

    I make no secret of this fact, so I think you need to up your research Trolly McImpersonator.

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    1. Oh, good, it was just someone abusing the choose-your-name feature. When I got the comment email, my first thought was that someone's account had been hacked.

      Thank you, Chris.

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    2. Actually, I don't have severe chronic disabilities, only moderate ones. ;)

      On the other hand, I can't access Blogger controls from work, so I hardly count as a mod.

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    3. I'd probably classify mine as moderate too.

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    4. Ooh, and unlike Blogger I actually *can* access the Wordpress moderator tools from work! Major plus for me there.

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    5. Nope, no chronic disabilities or even moderate ones. However, I do have great empathy for those who do, unlike our name-mooching deleted commenter.

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  10. How will the redirect affect RSS feeds?

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    1. Blogger has a setting that allows us to redirect the RSS feed. Thank you for the reminder; I probably would have forgotten.

      http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-switch-from-blogger-to-wordpress-without-losing-google-rankings/

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    2. Also, wordpress supplies full post and comment feeds by default

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  11. It sounds to me like option two is one we should move forward with, because the tempo of trolling appears to be increasing, and with the same viciousness a the trolling from typepad. I would love to see what sort of custom cookery could be done in the long run. Also, CSS, I do speak it, although probably not much more than the basics.

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  12. Thanks, Ana! I will try to recreate the layout we have here, and then we can discuss and tweak from there. However, I will not be able to work on it until Monday; is that okay with everyone?

    I would personally prefer to move over sooner than that and work the template later.

    I think what we have over there now is functional, and once we're over there and can carry on conversations without constant trollage, we have leisure to work a CSS, load it to a test board, have a conversation, take a vote, etc.

    That is my opinion.

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    1. Although I don't know what Chris is planning, and whether he would like us to wait. That was why I asked about timing above, and whether a final redirect from here to there to be instituted this Saturday was alright with him (and everyone else)?

      Again, not trying to rush anyone. Just wondering what thoughts are re: timing. :)

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    2. Agreed, unless anyone has major visual issues with the new template, which I don't.

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    3. I actively encourage people not to count on me so if everyone else is in favor of going over this Saturday then go over this Saturday.

      I have projects meant to be done years ago that are still in the "Well I made a prototype of one component out of materials that can't hold the weight as a proof concept, and (at least a year later) a second prototype of the same component out of materials that can work in the long run as a next step, but I need to make two of that component plus several other components that I don't even have final designs for," phase. (And don't even get me started on the image interpolation project.)

      So while I might like more time to try to create a fourth option, I wouldn't base decisions on that and everyone else seems to be in favor of "move forward now". I'm not going to stand in the way of that for more time to work on another project likely to fail/burn out/indefinitely stall.

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  13. Sorry. Barely been here for the past while. Trying to catch up. (Also moving house this week.)

    WordPress.com is a blogging platform, free for *.wordpress.com (ad supported, though), and paid for your own domain (which may also have ads, I believe). It has a large though limited number of available themes and plugins.

    WordPress.org is a site where you can download the code for a blog and put it on your own webhost. This gives you access to a wider number of themes and plugins, and guarantees no ads you don't want. But it would require paying for a webhost. And, if payment stopped at some future point, the site would go down.

    I dunno.

    TRiG.

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    1. And now I see that this explanation of the different flavours of WordPress has already been given, and far better explained, by storiteller on the How Then Shall We Moderate? post.

      TRiG.

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  14. <meta content='4;url=http://slacktiverse.wordpress.com/' http-equiv='refresh'/>

    In other words, wait four seconds, then redirect. Is there any reason for the four-second wait?

    TRiG.

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    1. None; arbitrarily chosen for this demonstration.

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  15. Obviously, I prefer Wordpress because I'm comfortable with it and I can manage it on the same platform as my own blog. I support a plain old redirect with no lag.

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  16. New question: Say someone's got a link to an existing post (maybe they thought the thing on square dancing was really worth sharing) does the redirect redirect to the copy of the post at the Wordpress site, or just to the main page at the Wordpress site?

    I'm guessing the second, but I really don't know about any of the technologies involved.

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    1. The article I found and posted... somewhere? the earlier thread?... mentioned per-page redirects as a possibility, but I haven't tested them or dug deeply yet. I'm going to try.

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