Admin Post: Technical Issues with the SWG Archive

[dawn_felagund]

Recently, our webhost made some upgrades behind the scenes. Unfortunately, these upgrades have created some issues with our software, eFiction, and several errors have been reported that we are in varying stages of working on. We are aware of (and working on) the following errors:

• Some site functions (including replies to comments) return a "Not Acceptable!" error. We are waiting on our webhost to whitelist our domain so that this error is hopefully fixed. (This should be fixed. PLEASE let a mod know if you see this error.) ETA: Psych! It's back. It's like a horror movie killer: It won't stay dead. I've put in another support request with some language this time about this error not being something I'm willing to tolerate having to address every few weeks/months forevermore. We'll see what they do. ETA2: My support request/mild threat seems to have gotten the response I wanted, and the error is done again ... for now? Please report it if it comes back!
• Comment and other email notifications are not being sent. The contact forms to PM authors, therefore, do not work either. Please note that this includes password resets, which are sent via email. Contact a mod if you need your password reset. We are investigating this issue. This issue should be fixed. Please reach out if you know that you are not receiving notifications that should have been sent.
• The site sometimes posts duplicates of stories, comments, replies, and chapters. I believe this might be due to a slow response from the site and people clicking multiple times because they think the first didn't register. Please click only once; it will go through, I promise. I do know that the struck-out issue was happening, but duplicates post sometimes for reasons that aren't anyone's fault. If you need something deleted, feel free to reach out, and I will handle it for you.
• Special characters were not displaying correctly. We managed a partial fix; currently, special characters do not display correctly if the story was added in HTML (versus rich-text/TinyMCE) mode. Switching TinyMCE on (under Account -> Preferences) and ticking the box under the story field to use the TinyMCE editor, then posting/reposting the story will fix this problem. If you need help from a mod fixing your stories, please let me know.

We rely on our members to report errors. We cannot fix what we do not know is wrong. If you are having a problem with the site, it is most likely the site, not you and not your system. Please report problems by reaching out to us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. We're also reachable over all of our social media, but email gets the fastest and most reliable response. Thank you to those of you who have reported problems so far.

We are aware of the problems above, but if you run into one that is preventing you from using the site as intended, please reach out. We will do our best to find a solution or a workaround from our end.

The larger takeaway from this, though, is that we need to move away from eFiction faster than our plan to do so next summer. We have been working on a test site with new software for some time now, and Dawn and Russandol will be intensifying their work on this in the weeks to come with the hope of transitioning the archive away from eFiction as soon as possible. We thank you all for your patience and regret the inconveniences caused by the latest upgrade.

Comments

[heartofoshun]

It drives me nuts that one has to completely change websites constantly. I wish there was a way to avoid that. Oh, well! It is not me doing the work.

I have not noticed any of the above problems, but I still have the editing issue--disappearing the title or something when I correct a tiny typo in the text. Can't remember exactly what it was now, but it always happens to me.

[dawn_felagund]

We've had eFiction since the site opened in 2007--we haven't exactly been "constantly" changing websites! :D The problem is that the developer who was working on eFiction no longer maintains it, so it has not kept up with other tech upgrades, and we've known for a while now that we will need to switch but were hoping to do it on our timeline, not someone else's. It's increasingly obvious we won't have this luxury.

We're switching to Drupal, which is not built/maintained by a single person and has a much broader support community and should work for us into the foreseeable future. This decision was made, in part, because we don't want to change software ever, much less constantly. It's a huge amount of work and pain for everyone involved. I am hoping this is the first and last software transition we have to make until we are able to access websites directly in our brains and have to upgrade to whatever we need to keep up with that.

The title bug happens if you have a special character (including punctuation) in the title. It's an eFiction bug so will not be an issue once we switch to Drupal.

[heartofoshun]

Yay! Well, that sounds good.

[hhimring]

I think this is probably just a variant of the "email notifications not being sent" problem. But I just got an error message when I tried to contact a commenter through the contact function (it did not include "not acceptable", just a simple error message).
I was just trying to say thank you again, just in case they hadn't received my author's responses to their comments, so no need to fix anything in this case in particular.
But I thought that I should let you know, just in case.

[dawn_felagund]

Yes, I think you're probably right! I'm going to ask Russa if she can troubleshoot the email thing, which is the only problem that continues to plague us. I was hoping to have the site rebuild done--or close to done--by now. Alas, work! I don't know why I thought the beginning of this school year would be any different than the previous eight I've survived but ...

Anyway. Thanks for reporting it! I'll add it to the list here.

[thrihyrne]

I was just on the site this evening trying to reset my password and got the message about my email not being sent. :( So sorry it's beingn a pain!!!

[dawn_felagund]

I just emailed you with a reset. :) Sorry for the inconvenience! I am very much looking forward to the new site being ready!

[thrihyrne]

Thank you so very much!! I'm all re-set and thrilled to be accessing this resource and also planning to write some more stories that may be archived here. I appreciate your assistance!

[wolfe-guardian.livejournal.com]

Recently tried to send a PM, but it did not work. Has there been any progress on that end?