MGOBLOG 3.0 sticky for bugs

Submitted by Seth on

We are using this thread to collect all the (fixable) feedback for the new site in one spot, and if you're seeing it on the main page it means I've updated the OP content.

If you've noticed any bugs in the site post them here and if you have constructive criticism we very much appreciate it. The developers are also going to be in this thread. Even if we can't always respond, you're being heard.

UPDATE 8/23/2018:

We met at HUEL HQ today and worked through a lot of things.

THINGS THAT GOT FIXED

1. You are now able to edit your account info (and your avatar) by clicking on your account name while logged in. Eventually your history and more (see below) will be tabbed from a single user page but this was the quick fix for now.

2. The points issue is still the top priority that they're working on. We're one step further and testing a possible fix in a test environment right now.

3. Next week or so we'll have the ability to vote on Diaries and Board posts (the OPs) themselves. Could have launched today but we wanted to move it from where they were appearing but it works on the dev environment.

THINGS WE ARE FIXING

Please note that while this is a priority tree it's not necessarily the order things will get fixed. We have multiple developers who have their different skills and as each comes free from a project they grab the next highest one they can handle.

1. Points problems

The issue seems to be in the module we wrote for counting points:

Voting module.PNG

Now that they've narrowed it down we have high hopes of getting to the root of the situation.

Lastly IF YOUR POINTS WERE RESET TO ZERO please post in here and let us know 1) A little bit about your points history, 2) When you lost them (was it during the transition), and anything else that can help us track down whatever behavior is creating this. We can't fix this because we don't know why or to what class it's happening to.

(new) 2. User permission issues.

So right now at 100 points you should be able to vote and post new threads, and at 500 points you should be able to post diaries and edit wikis.

THIS IS NOT WORKING because of an issue with the core module. We are trying a fix that might make everything work right away.

It's a permissions issue. What's supposed to happen is once you hit a points threshold you are automatically bumped up to the next user level. It's not doing the bumping because of the "Actions" module, which comes with Drupal. Now that we've identified where the problem is we're working on a patch.

2. Embedding youtubes and tweets automatically by posting a link

So because of site security we have to use Oembeds. There is a module for Drupal 8 for this but it's a paid service, which with our volume is cost-prohibitive (like they want tens of thousands of dollars per month so screw those guys).

So we're going to develop something. We would prefer to have a system that automatically turns a link you post into an image or youtube or twitter embed. That's a better long-term solution and putting something in place in the meantime would cost us time and resources we'd rather put toward more permanent changes. It's a high priority so we just ask for patience now to be paid off with a better final product than the old site had.

For now you can still post these with regular html tags and most sites will give you the source code if you can't remember how to write <img> tags in html language. We had the option to change the post-a-picture box in the comment editor with the ability to post a link instead of upload an image to our site, but we didn't want to lose that ability to post to our site since it's a feature we really wanted for the new site.

3. Side rail becoming unglued. 

I've seen it and several users have as well but we haven't had a developer get into it yet because it doesn't happen too often.

4. "Continue Reading" links on front page will jump to the break tag, not the top of the article.

Another thing on the list for a dev to get to.

5. Comments bubble should link to comments

Right now it goes to the top of the article in article view.

6. Voting shows totals not aggregate

We have to rewrite the module ourselves.

7. (new) Latest post timestamp behavior

Haven't looked into it yet but it's a known issue that the latest post says there's something from a few minutes ago and there isn't. It may be bots causing this behavior.

8. (new) Clicking on a comment in a readers' post history should take you to that post.

Moderators need this.

9. (new) Some content is breaking containers

Design issue. When designer gets back from maternity leave we'll get an estimate.

10. (new) We are developing a "User Page" that will be tabbed thusly:

  • Change your user info (name, email, avatar, password)
  • See your recent post history
  • See replies to your posts
  • Your points history

Most excited about the second-to-last one, which is one of many new properties we plan to add that the old site missed.

Things Over the Horizon

1. Showing New comments in a thread as "New"

We got an estimate of big money to rent a specialist in order to build out this module. This is the next big project after we get the points figured out. Personally I wanted to address it sooner but more people complained about points so that got moved ahead. Be mad at the people who complained about points because it's all their fault.

2. Changing Scroll Behavior

We had a specialist look at this and what's happening is a problem with the order things are loaded. When you post a new comment the page DOES take you to your just-posted comment, but then it loads other comments and that pushes your screen down. If you use the up or down arrows it should take you right back to your comment. This is a problem buried deep and got another big expensive estimate to fix. So we have to wait.

(updated) 3. Apps

The process has begun. We might have a couple of light ones first then more developed ones later. FYI the problem with the old apps is they were not built to play nice with the site. If they worked great on your phone that was because they were downloading the whole site before you went to read it, and that was placing a huge drain on our resources and causing the site crashes. We will have apps and I hope to have a timeline in a few weeks. The latest is there's a drupal module we're going to try. Maybe it'll work the first time with no kinks.

(updated) 4. Saving User Preferences

We want comment settings to stick permanently for each user. Right now it resets when you post a comment. This is a BIG fix so it comes after we get other things done.

 

Also they're working on a bunch of functions we need internally, like the process for creating breaks, windows live writer issues, and lightbox for UFRs.

Indy Pete - Go Blue

July 24th, 2018 at 4:12 PM ^

Seth, I had an avatar of UM players holding up the Little Brown Jug.  It went away with the new site change and has never come back.  

http://www.maizeandbluenews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=535:through-the-years--the-little-brown-jug

BTW, thanks for all of your hard work and conscientious communications.

M-GO-Beek

July 24th, 2018 at 4:31 PM ^

Thanks Seth, but I still can't up or down vote anything.  Its a feature I really enjoyed and felt like it helps the community at large figure what is best to read. I cant even see what has already been voted up or down by those that are able to.

Moleskyn

July 24th, 2018 at 4:33 PM ^

Thanks for the update, Seth.

For #6, is it possible to add an asterisk or some visual indicator to a post that has been edited? I'm thinking something along the lines of how Reddit flags edited posts. Just thinking this would be helpful, especially if people can edit their posts after they have been replied to.

House Mother

July 24th, 2018 at 4:36 PM ^

My points didn't reset to zero but have been frozen since the transition with the exception of a few hours when then went increased by about 20...may 3-4 weeks ago.

mGrowOld

July 24th, 2018 at 4:52 PM ^

Thanks for the update Seth.   One thing I really dont understand though is why you guys have to pay extra for HUEL to fix something they obviously broke.  I cant imagine you and Brian said "yes, take away editing, the ability to access for users to see/change their own profile and by all means stop voting from working." 

So why do you have to pay extra to fix it?  Obviously not my business but if I contracted any service and the final deliverable didnt work correctly I wouldnt expect to pay more to get them to make things right.

Moleskyn

July 24th, 2018 at 5:22 PM ^

As someone who is on the vendor side of this type of discussion all the time, it likely comes down to defined requirements (or a lack thereof), and/or native functionality of the new Drupal version. Either the requirements weren't defined to the level that we are discussing now (meaning the developer wasn't building to meet the requirement), or it was discussed and understood ahead of time that the functionality was now no longer native to the new version, and would be cost-prohibitive to implement.

My guess is it's more the former. It's hard to get all the requirements defined up front, and unless you have an agile methodology to incorporate changes later on, it's hard (and/or costly) to change course to add new things to the list.

mGrowOld

July 24th, 2018 at 6:53 PM ^

Or, speaking as someone whose been on the customer side of a couple of botched implementations, the IT firm screwed things up, moved on to their next job and then tried to blame the customer for everything that went wrong.

Our IT department called those "unintended features" during rollouts and it was NEVER EVER their fault.  The phrase I came to know and love was "that shouldn't have happened" whenever the punch list grew by an item.

1VaBlue1

July 24th, 2018 at 7:17 PM ^

I don't think HUEL did things very well, but I'll stop short of saying they said 'screw it'.  It sounds like your IT dept sucks ass, and the director should be fired.  I'll go with the first reply to your OP - it most likely comes down to a requirements issue.  I doubt that HUEL did a top down requirements review of every feature and function, and I also doubt that Brian and Seth had it all listed out.  

Somethings were going to get lost, but they should have been found during testing and a punch list illuminated before the site went live.  Which is the biggest thing that screwed Brian over PR wise - the lack of a release notes file that would have outlined the changes and highlighted a prioritized list of items still in work.  A condensed version of the Beta test report would have been a huge benefit for PR.  We would have known what was coming and what the plan was to get back to ground zero.

As it is, everyone got blindsided with a poorly functioning board right out of the gate.  And it took many of us a few days to realize it was up because we needed to clear cache.  That blindsiding is the SW equivalent of a first impression when you meet someone, and it was bad.

Moleskyn

July 25th, 2018 at 8:55 AM ^

In a project where requirements have been clearly defined and agreed to, these types of discussions (while still frustrating) should be more straightforward: you signed off these 10 requirements, and the system is functioning as intended in those areas. If any of those functions are not working, it's a bug and we'll fix it. If you want to add additional functionality and requirements now that we are live, we can do that, but it will take an additional X hours/Y dollars.

If the requirements weren't clearly defined or agreed to up front, it is harder to draw that line after the fact, but you eventually have to draw it somewhere. Otherwise you end up giving away free time and the scope never stops creeping. 

Every customer wants a Mustang for the price of a Focus. 

mGrowOld

July 25th, 2018 at 10:50 AM ^

I would argue every customer wants their brand new Focus to simply start up and run and when it doesnt they dont want to pay extra for repairs to make it do so.

I'm curious though.  Given this website was public, easily accessable by HUEL before and during the build of 3.0 doesnt the burden of retained functionality fall on them, not MgoStaff?  I.E. points existed on the old site - in your mind does management have to tell the developers "yes, we want that thing that's currently working to keep working on the new site"? 

Because if I was running the transition it would be my assumption that everything I have now I'll have in good working order on the new site UNLESS I've specifically requested it be removed OR the developer has told me they cannot do so for X reason.

Moleskyn

July 25th, 2018 at 11:48 AM ^

Given this website was public, easily accessable by HUEL before and during the build of 3.0 doesnt the burden of retained functionality fall on them, not MgoStaff?

That's a good question. From my perspective, the burden falls on both parties and should be communicated clearly up front. The customer could say "you see the old site? Make the new one work just the same, but make it look nicer." That's very vague, but it's some direction. At that point, it would up to the developer to spend time to document the functionality and break it out, then send the list of requirements to the customer to review and ensure everything was captured.

 Because if I was running the transition it would be my assumption that everything I have now I'll have in good working order on the new site UNLESS I've specifically requested it be removed OR the developer has told me they cannot do so for X reason.

This again falls to communication and expectations. If you've communicated your assumptions, then it would be up to the developer to flesh those assumptions out and tie them to concrete requirements, and for you to confirm that the developer heard you correctly.

The key with running a successful software project is to spend the necessary time up front to dive into the details and make sure you have things well documented and mapped out. Without having insight to the process and discussions, it's hard to say definitively what happened with this rollout. From what I've gathered, it seems to me there was much more of a focus on the back-end and getting that solid, with less of a focus on the front-end user features. Whether that falls to the MGOStaff for not communicating their wishes clearly, or to HUEL for not taking the time to clearly document requirements...only they know. Probably a combination of the two.

Seth

July 25th, 2018 at 1:27 PM ^

The list of requirements was over a hundred but there is no way to remember all of it and eventually we got to a point where we just needed to get a working site up because we needed the offseason to fix all the issues that crop up and if we kept the old site another year it would have crashed like crazy.

I don't think people in this thread understand how much time was spent just getting the things that work working. The points were a nightmare and as you can see from this thread we keep having problems with them.

You have no idea of the security issues a site like ours has. We get direct attacks  as well as  all of the security attacks that any large site has to put up with. The internet is flooded with Bots and scrapers and other nasty things. Then when you put security Protections in you have to make sure all your features can work through them.

1VaBlue1

July 25th, 2018 at 11:03 PM ^

I'm not sure what HUEL knows about security, but this site might help.  I have to hope they weren't going into it blind (i.e.: off the top of their heads based on personal experience).  Putting STIGs (Security Technical Implementation Guide) in place is tedious, but you catch everything known.  They may have done that - I don't have any experience in the commercial world, but they are uber-required in the IC/DoD play space (which is far more stringent than a sports blog ever will be).

Seth

August 8th, 2018 at 2:26 PM ^

I think we're probably right up there with number of attacks and with how directed they are. Student hacker groups can get into big trouble if they target something critical to national defense, but the biggest indie sports blog in the country that covers a team you hate has a big maize target.

BornInA2

July 24th, 2018 at 7:50 PM ^

"We tested this and it seems that points DO change when you vote but it's taking longer to render your upvote or downvote for some people for some reason. Might be a quick fix but it'll be tough to find (something in the java code that's getting hung up). Your votes are being counted, just not showing. If you reload you can see it."

Um, no, sorry. My points have been at 5082 for many weeks now (is the rendering longer than a month?). Pretty sure I've reloaded pages in that time. Maybe something is getting lost in translation between HEUL and Seth? Do you guys have a tech-savvy coder-type person in your camp? If not, you *really* need to ask for one. There must be a ton of them here.

It is NOT entirely up to the customer to define their needs. You can't define what you don't understand. When someone has a house built they don't tell the plumber how and where to run the pipes. If a bathroom gets finished and there is no plumbing in the walls for the fixtures, that is not the fault of the new owner. "Oh, you wanted water to come out of that faucet? Yeah, you didn't say that."

Unfortunately you guys are going to end up back in the same cornered boat in a few years running the site on a bastardized and obsolete version of Drupal with a bunch of custom code that may not (probably won't) move to newer versions. Unless you specified that in your RFP. Guessing 'no' on that.

Voltron Blue

July 24th, 2018 at 8:00 PM ^

Maybe this is my user error, but if you're not going to do an app, can you please add a favicon for mobile devices?  I recognize this is anal-retentive, but it looks like sh!t right now.  On a related note, please reconsider the decision to not have an app.  Apps are so much better.  I'll pay extra beveled guilt for it.  

MGoFunkadelic

July 24th, 2018 at 8:45 PM ^

testing youtube embed

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jk5u20AuXkE" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

ok, i've tried dropping the embed code from youtube in both the normal comment box and after hitting the source button to no avail.  anyone having luck posting embeds?

 

 

chatster

July 24th, 2018 at 9:55 PM ^

Funniest thing I’ve seen yet on MGoBlog 3.0:  Human Element’s banner ad that’s running on MGoBlog 3.0 tonight:

Did your brother’s friend’s nephew build your website?  It shows.
Let us show you how it’s done.

And no, we won't give him an internship.

There must be a person at Human Element whose brother's friend's nephew built MGoBlog 3.0 during his internship with the company.

chatster

July 24th, 2018 at 10:15 PM ^

Embed Eureka!

1.  In the comment box, click on the Source button.

2.  Enter the text you’d like to insert, if there’s any text that you’d like to insert before you insert the embedded video.

3.  Type <oembed>URL</oembed>.  NOTE: You insert the URL, NOT the embed code, as you would’ve done when using the previous version of MGoBlog.

Here's the video of Karan Higdon, Tyree Kinnel and Chase Winovich interviewed on the Big Ten Network:  <oembed>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgbAYfn1Xpo&t=0s&list=PL2RRF9GtC9s3Q0Aq03b1Ley8J9fNrOB5A&index=39</oembed>

chatster

July 24th, 2018 at 11:12 PM ^

Apologies if this seems too simple.  I hope that it works for you.  Having been born during the Truman administration, I can empathize with you. 

1.  When you look in the comment box, you’ll see a line of “buttons” at the top of the box.  At the far right on that line is the Source button.  Left click on that button.

2.  You’ll notice that the remaining buttons on that line are no longer available to click on.

3.  If you’d like to insert text before you insert an embedded video, type the text.

4.  Next go YouTube and find the YouTube video that you’d like to insert in the comment box.  You’ll see that there’s a bar at the top of the screen that should show the URL code for the video.  That’s the code that usually begins with “https”.  Left click on that bar to highlight the code.

5.  Next right click on your mouse to reveal a drop-down menu that should include the word “Copy”.  Left click on “Copy”.

6.  Return to the MGoBlog comment box and below the text that you’ve typed, on a separate line, type <oembed>.   Next, immediately next to <oembed>, right click on your mouse to reveal a drop-down menu that should show the word “Paste”.  Left click on “Paste” and the URL code should appear.  Next to the URL code, type </oembed>.

7.  Finally, click on the Save button.

xtramelanin

July 25th, 2018 at 6:02 AM ^

i was just able to do this in today's 'there are' thread. yee-haw!  

i will try one now for a picture.  

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1920&bih=943&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=GEpYW6vTCKXHjwS57bO4DQ&q=michigan+football+helmet&oq=michigan+football&gs_l=img.1.3.0i67k1j0l9.10163.10163.0.13568.1.1.0.0.0.0.103.103.0j1.1.0....0...1c.1.64.img..0.1.102....0.qNaQzE6Zxbc

 

chatster

July 24th, 2018 at 11:48 PM ^

Sorry that I can't embed a video of how to embed videos on MGoBlog 3.0, but I suspect that there are many MGoBloggers who will have those skills and be able to post the video you've requested.  I hope that my previous description helped you.