Welcome to BMG 3.0!
There’s lots to talk about, but for right now, the most important thing is to make sure that everyone can log in and resume posting and commenting.
If all has gone well, all existing user names were imported along with their associated email addresses. Therefore, to log in, click the “login” link in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Then click the “Lost your password?” link that is right under the password box. On the next screen, enter your user name or email (note that WordPress does not allow spaces in user names, so you may have to substitute dashes, e.g., “Charley on the MTA” is now “charley-on-the-mta”), and then click “Get new password.” In a few seconds, you should have an email from WordPress telling you how to reset your password.
We anticipate lots of questions, and some (but hopefully not too many) problems. Please poke around, try things out, and let us know what you think. If you have questions or problems (especially with logging in), please feel free to email us at blue@vps28478.inmotionhosting.com.
hoyapaul says
OK, I think I made the transition over. It’ll take some getting used to, but it looks good so far.
MassMinister says
This all looks a LOT like the Herald to me… 🙂
Peter Porcupine says
I seem to have ridden the Tardis to your THIRD format incarnation just fine.
dcsohl says
Looking in the HTML I see hints that the above comment was from Peter Porcupine, but I see no username on this comment. Am I alone in this?
kirth says
You’re not alone.
Peter Porcupine says
.
chrismatth says
Looks great – just saw that my old posts were brought over – WITH COMMENTS! Glad you could do that – hope it wasn’t too much trouble.
Looking forward to BMG III
stomv says
How bout now?
Cite this dood
I eat spinach
indeed
stomv says
the above is:
Title form content
Comment bold
Comment cite
Comment strong
Comment italics (although maybe I screwed that up: is this in italics?)
Not exactly what I expected. Perhaps a bit “too” clean looking?
dcsohl says
If you look at the HTML source of your comment, it does use the ‘b’, ‘cite’, ‘strong’ and ‘i’ tags… I’m not surprised that ‘b’ and ‘strong’ are identical in appearance; they usually are (just as ’em’ [for emphasis] and ‘i’ are usually identical). But for ‘cite’ to be bolded, and ‘i’ to do nothing… is a screwed up stylesheet.
judy-meredith says
S/He would have gotten a 6
kirth says
The font is too thin. If I magnify the screen, the left margin disappears, and stuff on the right goes offscreen. I’d like to be able to change the display font.
Also, where are my comments and diaries? Not in Profile and Settings; not on that dashboard thing.
I see Recent Posts, but not Reader Recommended.
If this is the final product, it looks like it leaves out a lot of what was good about the old site.
kirth says
n/t
Jasiu says
How do you set the little graphic that sits to the left side of the comments? I poked around but couldn’t find it.
I seem to have some sort of moderator options in my account. Across the top bar, I have a “Comments (1)” link which leads me to a page with a comment that is apparently waiting for moderation (plus others already posted).
If I go to my profile, I find my posts, but if I click on Comments, I see the page I described in the previous paragraph.
Just below where I’m typing right now, under “Tips”, it says “Your email is never published nor shared.” Hmm.
No comment preview. I find that feature a necessity in order to check out the HTML formatting.
Jasiu says
Putting spaces between paragraphs didn’t give me separate paragraphs as with the old system. I’ll try two things here:
This paragraph is separated from the previous by a break tag.
This one is surrounded by a paragraph tag and end tag.
smadin says
WordPress uses Gravatars, so if have one associated with your email address, it should show up (for example, mine should appear here). If you don’t, it generates a unique avatar for each account. Looks like the Editors are using the 8-bit generator; it can also be set to generate cartoon monsters, little variously shaped faces, or spirograph-like patterns.
lynne says
thinks the gravitars should be gotten rid of. They annoy me on the other sites I’ve seen, as most people do NOT put a personalized one, and also, I don’t WANT a universal gravitar thanks. I’d like to set one here, using my blog logo thingie that I have, I prefer not to plaster my face all over the internets, but that LiL logo would not be appropriate universally, so sure as heck not going to put it in Gravitar to follow me around everywhere. Better to either have it be an img you upload to BMG, or none at all, IMHO.
Other than that the new digs look OK.
lynne says
BMG – I’m going to second Jasiu’s comment up there – fix your CSS please! A paragraph tag ought to have more margin on the top/bottom to make it LOOK like a paragraph!! They apparently do not in the comments.
Here, here’s the code:
Only the margin-left is being set. It needs a margin-bottom (or a combo of margin-top and margin-bottom).
The reason that the default for p is being overridden to have NO margin (normally a p tag does) is that every element is being reset in the top section:
I am not a big fan of the universal * resets. Ultimately, for things like p tags, it means having to set the basic margins every. single. time. you want to have an instance of p.
Also, I do miss the “preview” mode for comments, as I have no idea if WordPress will strip out half of this comment…and also, the fact there’s no rich text editor for the comments, that’s a bummer…
sco says
Couldn’t you fix that by just using a unique email for your BMG account?
lightiris says
I just mistakenly clicked on this.
I didn’t want my other WordPress gravatar associated with this site & user name, so I just used a different email address for this account and it seemed to do the trick.
lynne says
…the way Lowell needs more Good Ol Boys. ;-P~
lynne says
The * reset also screws up blockquotes, and everything else that by default has any padding or margin (and several other attributes) so you’ll need to override those in the CSS as well.
It might be the reason for the italics not working etc.
shillelaghlaw says
They look like mooninites. And I hate mooninites!
kirth says
It’s a big help.
kirth says
Please put a link to the main page at the bottom of all pages.
sco says
I’m glad to see the transition went smoothly. I’m sure you’ll tweak the look and feel as people poke into the dark corners of BMG 3.0
Seems like the site is loading up faster, too.
jkleschinsky says
Thanks for all your hard work!
dcsohl says
Where do we set our time zone? I’m seeing all times 8 hours later than what they are. So a comment I made at 8:21am says I commented at 4:21pm. I don’t see a timezone option in my profile page.
Also, are our BMG accounts WordPress.com accounts, or something separate and different? How can I connect the two (if at all)?
Jasiu says
Sorry if I’m dwelling on the negative, but you asked for feedback. I’ll start with a positive: I like the recent posts and comments side-by-side near the top. For the rest, I’ll see if it is possible to format a bullet list.
The Recent Posts do not display the author name.
I really don’t like the all-caps for the authors’ names as they appear in the mainline posts and comments. Other places within the site use the case-sensitive versions. Can we get that everywhere? Somehow, it just feels more personal like that.
Is there any way to get the number of “new” comments for each posts (relative to the reader) displayed as in the old system?
massmarrier says
Thanks for all the effort (now will RMG follow?)
I’d like a little bigger headings and maybe a fatter body font. Against white, they can be hard to read for long.
On my first post, I found that what we old folk call carriage returns leave a div tag. This does not put a space in the resulting post. I pasted br tags to fix that.
David says
As you can well imagine, we have a lot of details still to work out. We will try to get to all of these issues as quickly as we can. Here are a couple of answers:
– There’s no comment “preview.” However, unlike in Soapblox, you should have the option to edit comments once posted.
– We will investigate the formatting issues and see what can be done.
– Unfortunately, the Soapblox feature that identified “new” comments turned out to be quite difficult to replicate. We are hoping to fashion a substitute, but that remains a work in progress.
Keep ’em coming.
lodger says
so far so good. my avatar might be TMI.
judy-meredith says
but maybe I’ll get used to it
Jasiu says
I made my Gravitar disappear. I’d suggest you email me if you want to know how, but I can’t find any sort of contact info on people’s personal pages. Am I missing that? Anyway, I simply defined a Gravitar that is all white.
I really prefer the HTML flexibility of the old system. Maybe it will be the same here, since the listed tags and attributes don’t seem to work.
Pablo says
Here I am, playing in snark-infested waters, and there’s no little rating button to give somebody a 3 for worthlessness. Oh, how I loved that button!
David says
– We are working on the font size, which does seem on the small side. We’ll be doing some testing, so stay tuned.
– The author’s name now appears in the “recent user posts” list.
– Still working on comment preview and editing. We have had to disable editing temporarily to resolve another issue, but we are hoping to have it back on line fairly soon.
Jasiu says
The Recent Comments identify the author but not the post to which they are attached.
I’m very happy with how quickly the site loads now.
karenc says
and it looks great!
dcsohl says
There are CSS overrides for many of the popular browsers today… Firefox has “Stylish”; Chrome has “Stylist”… and I don’t know about other browsers but I’m sure they’re out there.
At any rate, I’ve taken it upon myself to do some CSS tweaks to make the site a little more readable and presentable. I offer no guarantees, especially since the site’s own CSS is likely to still be in a state of flux, but I will attempt to keep my additions up-to-date and attractive when using one of these extensions.
You can find my CSS override code here.
Ryan says
Likes: Quicker to load, easier to read on mobile platforms, not Soapblox
Dislikes: The standard “this is going to take some time getting used to” line of thought, the site is a little bland from a design standpoint, looking up our comments to see if someone replied seems a little trickier.
Questions: On that last point, am I doing something wrong? There’s a “Comments” tab up top, and when you click it, you see recent comments… but is there a way to find your own? That’s always how I’ve found whether or not someone has replied to mine, by going to the “your comment” link on the old BMG and seeing if there were replies.
David says
as of now, there isn’t a way to do what you describe. There are some features of Soapblox that have turned out to be difficult to replicate, many in the area of manipulating comments. We’re working on a substitute, but as of now we don’t have one in place. Stay tuned!
liveandletlive says
I really liked the old one. Larger,darker print. So easy to navigate except for the advertisement issue toward the end. Congrats though, I hope it is everything you hope it will be.
David says
hope that makes it easier to read.
liveandletlive says
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liveandletlive says
Very hard to break old habits. I will most certainly miss the rating system. I rarely downrated, but it was nice to throw out a six when I heartily agreed with someone.
David says
Yeah, we’re working on that too. Stay tuned!
Tyler O'Day says
I’m digging it. Now when does BMGTV come on the air?
John Tehan says
Nice looking place you’ve got here – I’ll be poking around…
Christopher says
How do you get to the front page once you’ve logged in? I have had to retype the URL.
Is there still a way to see your own comment list?
Have we lost the comment rating feature?
nopolitician says
I hate to interrupt the love fest, but I think this eliminated some major good features of the prior software but did not replace it with any new good features. I do not think this is a success story.
The comment rating system is gone. I liked that a lot.
The “new posts” feature is gone. That was a critical feature of this blog.
The “recommend” feature is gone. That was another positive feature that was very important to the success of this blog, in my opinion, because it was a meritorious and semi-democratic path from a diary to the front page.
The readability of the posts is worse.
The names of the posters are less prominent, and in all caps.
The avatars are a distraction.
This mostly isn’t a case of nostalgia or resistance to change. The old system was simply better due to those things I mentioned above, particularly the identification of new comments in a post, and the “recommend” feature.
noternie says
I like the ratings, new posts and ability to recommend.
The font here is too small, especially on such a white, white page.
The avatars should be an opt in thing. Too many people won’t go through the process of setting it up on another site. And the autoavatars are uuuuuuuuuuugly.
I rally like that format tips are right there V, but I have yet to figure them out.
David says
1. Comment ratings are, for now, gone. We are working toward implementing something analogous, but did not think it was such an important feature that it merited delaying the launch.
2. I don’t know what you mean that “the ‘new posts’ feature is gone.” The “Recent User Post” list is on the right-hand sidebar, just as it’s always been.
3. Nor do I understand why you think the “recommend” feature is gone. If you are logged in, there should be a “Recommend” button at the bottom of every post, and there is a “Reader Recommended” list of posts on the right. No change.
4. Please clarify your readability issues. There are lots of formatting tweaks that can be implemented; in general, though, I find this site to be much more readable.
5. Names are no longer all-caps. They seem entirely legible to me.
6. We’ll see how the avatars work out – that’s obviously a WordPress thing that we had not experienced before. Work in progress.
7. “New” comments turned out to be difficult to replicate. We are working on a substitute.
I hope you will give the new system a chance! In many ways, it is far superior, and we will be continuing to improve it in response to user feedback.
Mark L. Bail says
I don’t know if this helps.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=comment+ratings&sort=
petr says
What’s the point of gravatars? They serve no purpose other than being a big ugly lump of pixels somehow attached to my name without my consent. I come here to read words, not to do some sorta silly pixalated internet version of finger painting. Dumb. Please consider removing, or as someone posted upthread, making them an optional frob. Please.
Also, the single biggest change, and the most crucial to replace, IMHO, is the identification of new comments. This was the single biggest feature that allowed me to quickly pick up conversations after absences of only a few hours. Without it, I fear spending too much time trying to determine when comments, and specifically replies to comments, were entered. Without identification of ‘new’ comments, I posit that you’ll find that threads will fritter out much sooner than has traditionally been the case at BMG… and for comments that receive multiple replies, the OP will be at a disadvantage and won’t get the opportunity to reply to all, should they be deserving or requiring of such.
From an aesthetic point of view, the suppression of the soft blue more prevalent on previous interations of BMG is jarring. There is too much white space here and the white itself is a rather strong glaringly white, color. This has the effect of overwhelming and sharpening the font to the point it seems smaller than it actually is (even though it isn’t that big to begin with…) Consider softening the white and the re-introduction of the traditional BMG colors, at least at the borders. I think that you will affect a pop of the font if you do this…
Wait… wha..? No preview!???!
SomervilleTom says
A gravatar is a bit more than “a big ugly lump of pixels” — it is a tracking beacon. Each time a comment containing the gravatar is added to a blog (like BMG), a record is made at automattic.com (the company that created them). These records are, in turn, made available to site admins (see http://automattic.com/privacy/):
“Automattic also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on WordPress.com blogs. Automattic only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that blog commenter IP addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog where the comment was left.”
Perhaps the editors might be a bit more explicit about why these gravatars are used and how the resulting logs are protected.
Jasiu says
No value added, distracting, possible privacy issues. Please, editors, let’s just get rid of ’em.
Jasiu says
Maybe I’m just being thick, but how do I edit a post once I’ve created it (or a comment if that is possible)? Thanks in advance.
I’d also like to chime in regarding the new comments feature of the old site. I could repeat everything petr said, but I won’t. It has always been the main way I used the site: Looking for new posts and existing posts with new comments. I can’t count how many times I’ve searched on the string “[new” in my browser.
SomervilleTom says
I’ve used wordpress blogs before, but only as an admin.
When I go to my profile and then click “comments”, I see *all* the comments on the site, rather than just mine. When I’m an admin of a WordPress blog, each comment has a toolbar on the bottom (while the cursor is over it) that allows me to edit that comment (as well as other admin tools like “Unapprove”, “Spam”, and “Trash”).
Since I’m a mere mortal on the main BMG blog, I think I’m not allowed to edit either my comments or those of anybody else.
This makes a “Preview” feature rather more urgent, I think.