As many of you regular readers know over the past few weeks I have done a complete migration of the website over to a new Cloud Server. The first week was a bit Rocky and we have some trouble with people being able to reach the side, but now everything seems to be pretty well under control.
I added new features to enable commenting to be a little easier including better threading and editing up to 15 minutes after you first made the comment, as well as the ability to delete the comment within that time frame.
Right now I’m traveling so I’m not able to produce some new blog post for a while but I did want to take this opportunity to ask you the readers what you think of the new changes and what else might need to be done. I may not be able to do everything you ask but I’ll certainly give it my best effort.
Along those lines I’d like to ask you some questions about content. What would you like to see more of and what would you like to see less of?
As always thanks to you the readers, the guest authors, and the moderators for making this website what it is today, which is still the leading climate-related website in the world.
The first level of indentation is needlessly too far to the right.
← I agree.
Concur.
Maybe not fixable.
Anthony – great job! One of my favorite sites.
I REALLY appreciate skeptical commentary on articles or papers of the day – and the folks who drive the assault on reason. ‘From the … you can’t make this stuff up Department’ kind-of-thing. Don’t lose this – it helps keep me informed and aware.
I would like to more see informed commentary on the Models. I can’t quite understand how there haven’t been a crop of models that have been developed that test / use skeptics’ parameters – if not just a way to fend us off. Show us why a lower sensitivity wouldn’t work. Maybe there is but I haven’t seen it.
And because there is such a great body of work on this blog – is there a way (at the start page, in the main menu) to hunt for earlier posts keyed to Titles, Authors and Keywords?
Many thanks, kudos and Boiler Up!
No problems now, thank you! I can even get it on this tablet using Firefox!
Just one thing, not to do with WUWT directly. Since the changeover I keep getting a number of ‘Recommendeds’ which drive me nuts with their flashing lights and rapidly changing pics; not good for epileptics apart from anything else. I can’t see a way of getting rid of them other than what I do atm by expanding the screen text. Is there anyone out there who can give me any hints on how to avoid this nuisance? I tend to put up with most ads in favour of, maybe, giving Anthony some ad income. The same stuff comes up whichever browser I use. The flashing stuff is all the more annoying because I am not remotely interested in the subject matter.
I want to say thank you for something else…. hanging in there. Now that climate science is settled (just kidding) and boring (it never gets settled), most of the old good sites are gone (or are in hibernation).
Somebody needs to do the work WUWT is doing (and the journals are not doing).
So thank you, congratulations, and keep up the good work!
I’m not sure why Mr. Watts no longer allows me to use my own name as the commenter and ha replaced my name in all comments I made throughout the years. “Joe Born” is what I put in the dialog box, but he insists on replacing it with “jhborn.”
Not good.
I don’t know what’s behind that, but I’m sure it’s all WordPress “magic” behind the scene. I expect it has something to do a long forgetten account or something at WordPress.
I already checked on a WordPress forum. They say they have no control over this site. And my WordPress display name is Joe Born. It works on Judith Curry’s site.
Judith Curry runs on wordpress.com I run on Pressable.com, a WordPress subsidiary. You hat have created and forgotten about an account you created for some other website hosted on pressable.com
I’ve done nothing specific to you or your name, it has something to do with your logged on identity. See what Ric Werme said. I have no control over this and it’s related to an account you own, not me.
An update on my Guide to WUWT:
The changeover means that posts have new “IDs”. I use them as the key reference point to a post, and instead of trying to deal with updating them, I created a new database. I also had to change some of my Python code for scraping the pages, and the older posts don’t have comment counts on them. Ah, it looks like when the comment period expires (in two weeks), the comment entry area and the counts disappear.
I have code that counts the comments in a page, but it needs work to scrape the whole page instead of the first 50 or so. I do have good counts for older pages, I may copy those over some day or rescrape those years if I figure out how to read the whole page.
All that’s on “Ric Werme’s Guide to WUWT” at https://werme.bizland.com/werme/wuwt/index.html , see the icon on the right side nav bar.
I have not done much on the HTML guide and other static information on that page or at WUWT test page, I hope to get to that fairly soon. I’ll delete most of the old posts on the test page first. That’s at https://wattsupwiththat.com/test-2/ , see “Test” on the top nav bar.
Thanks for what you do.
The only problem I experience from time to time is that the site hangs and I get the prompt telling me that wattsupwiththat.com is not responding due to long-running script … and I’m offered a button to stop script; it might even happen two or three times on one post. My guess is that there may be ads running or videos loading that causes this.
Just a note to say that the problem with the address in FIREFOX has disappeared, so I can again make the site my homepage. Reading the titles helps me keep up with the thirty years war 🙂
I see a new title for a post here. 🙂
[Edit] Oh wait, Willis already did, I even had it in a different tab…. Yay for edit.
All very good; thank you Anthony for your efforts
I used to read WUWT on Flipboard. Can’t find it there now. So I read on Feedly instead.
Very good. I made half a dozen comments since, although all got the positive score, I think the scoring is a bit of a distraction.
I just down voted you.
Cause I could. Not that you deserved it one bit!
Apparently Dr S didn’t read his comment.
I would love to see an RSS feed
We’ve had one for years, address is in the lower right of the sidebar under “Meta”
Had problems with my I phone ? a 6 with WUWT site. Could not get the list of other sites as each time scrolled down to it got older WUWT stories instead. OK on computer though.
Only you can help yourself there…
No technical problems, saving grey text visibility. The ability to edit the typos after posting is a great improvement, the limitation on that not (no second chance/time limited?). Miss the comment list on the RHS that WordPress had (too much detritus to check email notifications of all replies. but facility is still there on WordPress native server account. But details compared to the value of the well studied occasional gems of insight from people with facts and a scientific and engineering discipline amongst the opinions.
Agree on too light text colour.
My first site to visit each morning. I really appreciate the wide variety and quality of articles, and which are easily digestible and enlightening, as are most of the comments.
The occasional ad-homs seem to be put in their place very quickly by other commentators.
The edit function has occasionally not appeared, usually when I realize that I have spelled some word incorrectly, or phrased a comment badly.
I would like the comment section to be in the same font as the main article.
Anyway, thanks to you all for such an important website, Anthony and moderators, and please keep going!
I welcome the changes you have made and appreciate all the efforts made to achieve them.
I particularly like the fact that on refresh new comments in a thread are highlighted in yellow, so it is easy scroll down a long thread and find these new additions (taking care not to touch them, as the yellow highlight then turns off).
The editing function is very good, however I posted a comment with 4 links and found that it went into immediate adjudication with no option to edit.
I hope that you will look again at the voting scheme you have adopted. If a contentious comment receives as many positive votes as negative ones then the sum total is zero. I would prefer to see both positive and negative votes recorded (as Jo Nova does), rather than just the sum of all votes cast.
“I particularly like the fact that on refresh new comments in a thread are highlighted in yellow, so it is easy scroll down a long thread and find these new additions (taking care not to touch them, as the yellow highlight then turns off).”
Yes, the highlighting of the new comments makes it so much easier to find the new comments in threads. Very much appreciated.
+++++ many ! I like to see the whole score also .
“I particularly like the fact that on refresh new comments in a thread are highlighted in yellow, so it is easy scroll down a long thread and find these new additions (taking care not to touch them, as the yellow highlight then turns off).”
This yellow-flagging isn’t happening on my new-ish Mac with Safari 11.1.
Seriously this is a huge improvement.
Outstanding niggles:
I cant seem to post videos
The style sheet needs work. Colors and fonts sizes are pretty rubbish.
I’m disappointed I can’t just copy an image I have say in a file as .jpg or .png and then paste into my comment. Chasing the url etc. is a bit beyond me.
Also I would like to be able to copy a section from someones’s comment and paste into mine for subject reference. Repeating it by hand is a bit of a pain.
Otherwise am happy with the migration and extremely grateful to one and all who have given me such interest, tickled my little grey cells and given me the opportunity to put in my meagre influence.
Particularly Anthony who has made this all possible.
Regards to all
Alasdair
There’s no forum I know of of where you can just copy and paste an image.
I vote up^2.
In general, I think the new site is great. Two problems I suspect may be due to my ancient browser (Opera 12.6) and feeble PC (Via C3 CPU) Or perhaps to what I perceive as the Internet’s slow descent into chaos.
1. The text editor is very slow. Backspace, right and left arrow are painfully slow. Not a problem on other sites or with the old editor.
2. Clicking Reply doesn’t often work. The button highlights when the mouse is positioned over it, but clicking it – quickly, slowly, double-clicking … whatever … is usually ignored. OTOH The Edit button seems to work fine.
If it’s just me, that’s fine. I can always try a different browser. I’ll try that later today. But if the problems affect others, then I guess they probably need to be looked into.
OK, I’m trying Firefox now. The Reply button worked OK (Sample size one). Editing is better than it was with Opera. Still clunky, but definitely better.
You make the best argument for getting a computer upgrade ever written in comments here.
Don, I am very confident it is your computer that is the problem:
“Two problems I suspect may be due to my ancient browser (Opera 12.6) and feeble PC (Via C3 CPU) Or perhaps to what I perceive as the Internet’s slow descent into chaos. ”
Consider getting a new one, you will be amazed at the change.
As with any new system it just takes a while to get used to it. I think most of us have now made the adjustments. You train us well Obi-Wan.
Don’t like having to click through to read the whole story in wordpress
Gosh I’m so sorry for that terrible inconvenience. But, that’s the way it is.
Comment sort should default to NEWEST.
Site shouldn’t refresh EVER unless I specifically tell it to. The site just refreshed in the middle of me making a BRILLIANT point about the ice sheet research. Now I have to try and replicated that fleeting thought.
HI Anthony,
Most of my concerns posted here and on nearby threads seem better now.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/open-thread-trying-out-a-new-comment-system/#comment-2370390
I still cannot seem to post images – just the url’s.
It is unfortunate that the old wattsup url’s no longer work – but at least one can find the article and search for the post.
“All-in-all, it’s kinda sorta OK I guess – he said grudgingly.”
Image test:
http://www.woodpilereport.com/photos/Willem-Claesz-Still-Life-16.jpg
you have to use https, unfortunately not all websites support it.
Why cannot I not see any entries on Tips and Notes?
Because there are none. They go to email now.
Well, let’s see if image link works in the top level: http://www.woodpilereport.com/photos/Willem-Claesz-Still-Life-16.jpg
By the way, the pages load a lot quicker now than they did before. So far, I like the new way things work better.
Let’s try the img tag:
Let’s try an image tag with an https address instead of http:
and without the img tag:
I do miss Jerry Pournelle’s writings.
So that’s it. You have to have an https address.