The End of an Era – It had a Good Run – IOTW Report

The End of an Era – It had a Good Run

Friday, 24 November 2017, 16:00 BFH Uncategorized 33

As many of you know the site was down for an hour today.

It’s very heartening to see just how many people email in a panic, mirroring my own panic, to say “hey dude, WTF?? The site is down,” as they scratch the inside of their forearm. It can be addicting, I know.

What really had me in a panic is that Pagely posted their “Holiday Schedule” and it said that no one would be around. Fortunately there was someone, and he fixed it Toot Sweet. Thank you, Michael.

But he sent some bad news along with the fix.

Hey,

Checking the PHP errors logs for the site “iotwreport.com”, the following plugin “fv-community-news” is causing issues. We have temporarily disabled the plugin and the site is now rendering properly.

-Mike

The bug was…. THE BULLPEN.

The Bullpen was a plugin called fv-community-news that I installed in 2010 on the site. And that is the problem. Developers of these plugins have to do updates as the years go on to keep up with the changes to sites, servers to make sure there are no incompatibility issues. It looks like support for the plugin ended 3 years ago.

For now the plugin will have to remain off, otherwise the rest of the site can go down.

When they are off their holiday schedule I will revisit the issue with Pagely and see if they can assist with testing the plugin again to see if it is stable.

But as of now, we might have to think of that section as indefinitely closed.

BUT, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try and find a substitute plug-in. The Bullpen has been an invaluable section of the site and one that has always been part of our manifesto- that the readers are not just readers, but deputized and entrusted to deliver stories that matter. That section often broke many stories that were immediately shifted to the front page.

Thank you, each and every one of you.

It was an honor system, and let me tell you, the people here are honorable. Over the years I can’t count more than 3 or 4 problems, (if we turn a blind eye to grammar and spelling) ((but that happens on the main page as well!))

Stay tuned.

 

 

 

33 Comments on The End of an Era – It had a Good Run

  14. The broken links in the Bullpen were caused when the person submitting did not drop the “s” off of links with an “https”.

    Maybe Fur will find a replacement that won’t require that extra step. Or, if the old Bullpen software can be updated, maybe they can fix that part.

    Anyway, I always enjoyed the Bullpen. May it return soon!

  16. LOVE the Bullpen. Always have. I’ve often read a story there and then saw that there were no comments and thought, “Can’t believe no one else sees this great story!” And so, I’d comment to try to bring attention to it. Yes, the typos did drive me crazy and for a while I went behind the scenes and corrected them, but I couldn’t keep up. Also, there was a story there the other day with “boobs” in the title and the link was broken. Inexcusable. Still, I hope the Bullpen eventually returns!

  17. I did not panic email but I checked the site every few minutes to see if it was back. This time it was thankfully. Hope the bullpen link can be fixed soon.

  18. Oh, that stinks. The Bullpen was one of those unique features that set iOTW apart. But I get the whole “plug-in that isn’t compatible” thing. Hopefully the plug-in will update and that gets corrected.

  19. Sent an Email to Hillary telling her IOW was trying to do an expose’ on someone who was actually responsible for all the character flaws, medical rumors, conspiracies, and felonies being blamed on Hillary. But IOW site was all buggered up. 5 minutes later you were working! Hope this helped.

  20. The biggest problems I have with IOTWR are the videos and the New York Post links (which invariably hang up because of a “long-running script”). Videos that are on Fakebook NEVER play for me, and most of the other ones will play for a while, then the picture freezes up while the sound continues, then everything stops and I get a black screen with the message “an error has occurred”. I’ve had pretty good results by going into “properties” of the video, copying the web address, and opening it in another window. Then it will usually play on YouTube just fine, but it’s still a pain, so a lot of times I don’t even bother.

    Lately IOTWR has been freezing up and I have to shut it down and re-open it in another window, but that might be related to the “Bullpen” problem, dunno.

  24. I almost took a Valium but I breathed into a paper bag instead.
    I also started to take it personally
    What did I do
    Not agree enough with everyone else?
    LGF banned me too
    Then it came back up
    By then I was in a cold sweat making a deal with God.

  25. It was hard to tell if anybody even visited the bullpen because usually there were no signs of activity, usually no comments, just silence.

    Who knew it was so popular.. At least I usually posted my thanks for the story, often it was just a link that worked for me, or a thumb up.

    My virtue signaling over and out

  27. That’s weird. I had forgotten the site was down earlier. Just went to look for a story there, and >:poof:<, gone like that. Hope it makes a comeback at some point.

    Maybe we'll all sharpen the s off of the http and make better spelling choices. You never know 😉

  30. Thanks, BFH, I didn’t know how to do that. I looked all through my settings and couldn’t figure out what to do. I’m not real savvy with this technology but I muddle through!

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