BindleSnitch Community Update
Because of Robert’s abrupt departure, I am worried about what will happen when we encounter catastrophic failures, which are inevitably inevitable. In the division of labor, I designed the site and Robert handled background programming issues. That could be a fatal problem. Because of this arrangement, my own programming skills have atrophied while the underlying structure of the site has become much more complicated.
Here’s one example of the difficulties we could run into. Today, I noticed that I wasn’t able to submit a comment without being logged in. We had installed a system that allowed non-members to post comments without being logged in, but you had to provide a valid email address in order to do that. Well, somehow or other, the data block for the email address has managed to disappear and I can’t figure out which of the 80 plugins that run the site is responsible for that error. I used to know but the developers of the themes and plugins are constantly changing their designs, which makes it more and more difficult to do what were once relatively easy tasks.
So, at some point, we will probably encounter a catastrophic error that I can’t fix. I am not on speaking terms with Robert, which is actually quite upsetting since we have been working together on this project for five, six, or seven years (and, no, I really don’t remember how long we were working together.)
These catastrophic errors usually occur when you have to update a theme or a plugin, and they usually result from mistakes made by the developers that take time to fix.
The next time that happens, there are two things that we can do….hire a programmer to come in and fix the problem (which I really can’t afford, either financially or emotionally) or simply roll back the site 24 hours, which means that we will probably (but not definitely) cost us 24 to 48 hours worth of work.
This means that I have to be more rigorous about checking the website several times a day but, since that isn’t always going to be possible, it will be very important for you to let me know right away (through email or my Facebook page) if there is an outage. This is very important because there is a 48-hour window in which the previous incarnation of the site is available on the automatic backup system at Green Geeks, our hosting company.
Eventually, however, the site will run into an unrecoverable error that I won’t be able to fix because, frankly, I am beginning to have memory issues. Nothing really serious yet, but I am already unable to remember how to do things that I was once able to do quite easily so that the challenge is really a mixture of changes made by the developers and my growing incompetence.
Sorry to go on this way, but I want those of you who have been using this site to know exactly where we stand. I want to keep it open but it is going to be a challenge….unless someone knows someone who knows how to fix WordPress websites that have gone haywire but that will be (a) unlikely and (b) more expensive than I can afford.
So, I guess BindleSnitch is like life. You don’t know where it’s going and you won’t know when it comes to an end until it happens…and neither will I.
Bottom line: I am not going to pull the plug….but circumstances beyond our control will eventually pull the plug for us.
Now if a bunch of folks were to decide that the site is worth keeping up and were willing to divide the cost, I would happily collectivize the whole site amongst the members of the group. That was my intention all along.
Alan Milner
11/24/2020 @ 1:06 am
PS: I changed the restrictions so that visitors can no longer post comments without logging in and they can’t log in unless they join. Anyone attempting to submit a comment while not logged in will receive a message telling them they have to join to make comments. We have had several hundred people who signed up who were clearly spammers but none of them have ever actually submitted an article. I wonder why people do that.
Bitey
11/24/2020 @ 6:09 am
So, ballpark it for us. What might a programmer cost?
Ron Powell
11/24/2020 @ 12:29 pm
Koshersalaami says that you would like this to become a ‘joint venture’.
I’m in…
Alan Milner
11/25/2020 @ 2:57 pm
Ronald, I am posting this reply to your comment to determine where the comment will appear in response to your repeated requests for a stacked comment system.
Alan Milner
11/25/2020 @ 2:59 pm
If you view this on a computer, or even in landscape mode on a smaller device, you should be able to see that the responses are stacked and indented so that you can follow the conversation thread. You just have to be careful with respect to which reply button you click on in order to respond to a previous comment. It must be the reply button immediately to the right of the name of the person to whom you are responding.
Alan Milner
11/25/2020 @ 3:00 pm
I believe this system has a five-level stack and I have the ability to increase or decrease the stack level.
koshersalaami
11/25/2020 @ 6:15 pm
More stacking is great except that we eventually reach the point where our comments are one word wide.
Alan Milner
11/24/2020 @ 1:36 pm
When I was doing commercial websites my rate was $50 an hour but the rates are probably much higher now. Bindle is a very complicated website and it would take a consultant a long time to figure out some of the problems. The bad news is that I don’t know anyone in the business now and there’s really no way to determine how much a specific fix might cost.
It has occurred to me that Robert realized that the site was exceeding our ability to maintain it and that this contributed to his decision to take a powder.
On the other hand, he was really lackluster about doing stuff and I often ended up doing what he was supposed to have done and didn’t, and I figured out how to fix things around as often as he did. Maybe I just hace to apply myself to the task…but that only makes sense if we can recruit others to join in.
Mrs Raptor
12/02/2020 @ 9:18 am
I know a recent college graduate who would probably be both interested and reasonable as far as cost goes. She’s currently doing governmental websites in my area (without hosting because the public library hosts for them) for roughly $600 a year.
Alan Milner
12/02/2020 @ 9:54 am
I was just thinking about you yesterday, wondering how you have been surviving through all this shit we’ve been going through, so it delighted me to see your name pop up here. Robert’s departure has left me without any sounding board to bounce ideas off. It also left a hole in my life since I spoke with him almost every day for more than five years. I will reach out to this person to introduce myself and explain the situation but I really don’t have the funds to hire anyone and I am reluctant to ask anyone to support BindleSnitch because I have failed to generate any revenue from the website. I tried to recreate Open Salon, as I said I would, but it appears that I have missed the mark. All of the elements are in the design but some of them are so clunky that I don’t even use them myself. My partner, Satya, wants me to focus on my poetry but I haven’t published more than a dozen poems since OS folded because I don’t believe that I write the kind of poetry that people publish these days. Hell, I don’t even read contemporary poetry myself because I think that most of it suck. I read new poetry and – except for the stuff that people were putting out on Poetry Jam – I have no idea what they are talking about.
Don’t be a stranager.
Mrs Raptor
12/02/2020 @ 10:47 am
I was trying to not be a stranger but two elections and a damn pandemic got in the way. Now we have a moron who doesn’t even know enough about voting to vote babbling about “irregularities” and his minions threatening election officials and I am beyond annoyed at the constant damn threats.
And to top all that off my blood sugar keeps dropping like a rock and we can’t get it UP high enough to hit the normal range reliably so I’m dealing with the shakes and whatnot.
Having fun aren’t I?
Alan Milner
12/02/2020 @ 11:09 am
I’ve been dealing with low blood pressure myself which, combined with high blood sugar, causes weird brain fogs. I am putting salt on everything to try to increase my blood pressure, even though I know that salt doesn’t actually increase blood pressure. I keep glucose tablets around for a quick hit when the brain fog hits. For some reason, it seems to have a positive effect and believe it or not my blood sugar – for me – goes down when I ingest pure glucose.
I am on pins and needles until we see what happens in Georgia. It is bizarre that the one state will determine what the next four years will look like, and even more bizarre that the state is Georgia, so I guess you could say that I have Georgia on My Mind. I actually considered moving there so I could vote but I couldn’t pull it off.
Alan Milner
11/24/2020 @ 1:43 pm
Here’s an example.
I really hate the member pages. They are ugly and awkward. I came up with an idea that would involve giving each user his or her own custom-designed page but I can’t give users the ability to construct their own pages without also giving them the ability to fuck with the design of the entire site, which would ve disastrous if “someone” would want to do us harm.
Setting up member pages would require a lot of work from me but that’s not the problem. There are security issues involved in protecting member pages that I have to work out.
Then again – and this just occurred to me – I need to promote someone else to key master status so that if I ever get locked out of the site, which has happened, someone else could let me in. (I will tap my son, Asa, for that particular job since he is a software developer but unfortunately not a WordPress developer, allthough he could step if we have a lockout. He does some very high-level shit I don’t even understand having to do with managing satelite systems.)
Alan Milner
11/24/2020 @ 3:49 pm
It is getting dicier. Right now, I cannot edit any of the pages. The site is operating properly but I can’t make any changes to the design, and maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know. This has happened before but Robert fixed it then. I am going to have to try and get him to tell me how to fix this again. I will keep you all up to date through this thread.
koshersalaami
11/24/2020 @ 10:18 pm
Don’t worry too much about the member pages. We want a reliable place to talk and maybe to access our old posts. If we have questions about other members we can ask them.
Alan Milner
11/25/2020 @ 10:34 am
GOOD NEWS: Robert replied to my email and gave me the key I needed to unlock the editing system. I am going to share it with you all so you can remind me of what to do the next time we run into this. The trick is the TURN OFF the PUBLISH PRESS plugin. For some reason that I can’t figure out this plugin turns off the editing function. The Publish Press plug is what controls the checklist on the new post form. The checklist is necessary to preserve the uniformity of the post format. Then I have to remember to turn that plugin back on again.
To answer Kosh’s comment, we may or may not want the member pages but there are other things we may want to change that require the editing capacity, so this was important.
Myriad
11/25/2020 @ 1:19 pm
I am willing to kick in some $, but cannot & will not apply my (also declining mind) to the technical stuff (I grew up with pen & ink, and thought typewriters were fantastic technology – reminds me of my late husband, who built & repaired cars in his youth but railed in frustration at the modern computer models).
koshersalaami
11/25/2020 @ 6:13 pm
I think Alan assumes he’s not getting technical help from us. I don’t know about that stuff at all. I don’t know who does.
koshersalaami
12/02/2020 @ 12:01 pm
Alan,
I’m probably speaking for everyone here – Everyone, please correct me if I’m wrong – when I say that any money we put into this is not predicated on a return because we’re not looking at this as an investment but as a service. We’re essentially offering to share the rent so you can afford the keep the landlord from foreclosing, metaphorically speaking.