Welcome to the new server

Submitted by Admin on Tue, 09/30/2014 - 21:35

Introduction

Welcome to the upgraded website. There is still a long list of items to work on, but the main features of the site are working.

If you find any problems eg information or features missing, links that don't work, etc., please leave a comment below with a link to the problem page, and details of the problem.

If you want to check how a page used to look, you can still see the pre-upgrade website at: http://old.gwulo.com/

Regards, David

Work done

27 Nov Updates:

  • I've made some changes to improve the performance on two of the big pages on the website: http://gwulo.com/place-map-search-OL and http://gwulo.com/list-of-person. You should find these load more quickly.
  • If you find any pages that are very slow to load, please let me know in the comments and I'll see what can be done to improve them.

20 Nov Updates:

  • Timelines are back for Places, so you can see older and newer buildings on a site. Please let me know if any aren't working properly.
  • I've made some changes to the way uploaded photos are handled, which hopefully will stop the errors we've seen. Please let me know if you run in to any problems when uploading photos.

7 Nov Updates:

6 Nov Updates:

  • The first of the overlaid scanned maps is working again: http://gwulo.com/1924-map-hong-kong-western
  • I've hidden the "My Recent Posts" list from users who are logged out, as the list only makes sense if the website knows which user is viewing it. Thanks to Sean for pointing this out.

4 Nov Updates:

  • Moddsey pointed out the the "Places shown" gallery often showed the same photo twice and sometimes even three or four times! I can't work out what is causing the problem, so I've changed it to just show the first three (ie oldest three) photos, plus a link to the page that shows all the photos of this Place. That single-page view doesn't have the problem of showing duplicates.
  • I've also used this changed it to move any undated photos to the bottom of the list. Pre-upgrade they used to appear at the top.

30 Oct Updates:

  • Added "Navigate gallery" option on photo pages, to make it easier to flip through photos in a gallery.

29 Oct Updates:

  • Repaired various problems with the photo galleries that were introduced with the upgrade.

22 Oct Updates:

21 Oct Updates:

  • The Image-Atom pages now show links to add comments.
  • You can now edit your Image-Atom after saving it.
  • I've taken the "Add new comment" forms off the bottom of the page, in preparation for inserting media into text. Click the "Add new comment" or "Reply" links to access the form where you can enter a comment.

20 Oct Updates:

  • I've upgraded the zoomify viewer to the new version. A couple of improvements:
     - It now works on browsers that don't support Flash. This includes a lot of mobile phones and tablets, eg iPad, iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, etc.
     - The navigation window that used to cover the top-left corner of the image can now be hidden. eg view an image, http://gwulo.com/atom/19655. The navigation window is shown. Move your mouse pointer over the image then move it away. The navigation window disappears. Move your mouse over the image again and the navigation window re-appears.

16 Oct Updates:

  • Image Galleries are working again <Click to view>. They are more flexible than the previous version giving you the option to view all images in a gallery and its sub-galleries, or just those in the sub-gallery.
  • Images that were inserted into text are now linked to their pages again. Click the image to visit its page.

14 Oct Updates:

  • Tidied up layout of Person page, and formatting of dates.
  • Note that the "What links here" feature isn't accurate yet, as the site is still re-building the lists of links. It should be finished re-building by the end of this wek.
  • Tidied up layout of photos on front page.

13 Oct Updates:

  • Photos that were inserted into text should now be displayed correctly. If you find any pages or comments that are missing the photo, or show a code instead of the photo, please let me know in the comments below. (The code would look something like [ img_assist|nid=15026|title=View from St George's Court, looking down Kadoorie Ave.|desc=|link=node|align=center|width=320|height=213 ]). 

12 Oct Updates:

  • Photos on Places are working again, so you can see small copies on the main page (eg http://new.gwulo.com/node/2371) and large copies if you click the Place's "photos" tab (eg http://new.gwulo.com/node/2371/photos).
  • When you upload photos you now have the option to upload several files at once, then fill in their details (title, date, etc), instead of having to upload them one by one.
  • When Flickr photos are added to Gwulo, we now automatically record any tags from the Flickr photo, and also record the Flickr author so you can use them when searching.
  • I've used the upgrade as a chance to get the Harrison Forman photos displaying again.

11 Oct Updates:

  • It should now be possible to create a photo, please see the "Create" link in the block to the left. You have the option to upload a file or paste in a link to a photo on Flickr. Please could you try it and let me know if anything is confusing or doesn't work as expected? 
  • The Search Index is now 100% complete.

9 Oct Updates:

  • Today has been spent working on getting "upload a photo" to work. Making progress, but not quite there yet.
  • The Search Index is now 62% complete.

8 Oct Updates:

  • Photos & videos reappear in their new form. For reasons unknown, the new software describes them as 'atoms'. The big improvement is that they are all handled in a very similar way, regardless of whether they are an uploaded JPEG file, a photo on Flickr, a video on Youtube, etc. So when you're editing a page or a comment, you'll be able to insert any photo/video atom into your text.
  • The Search Index is now 49% complete.

7 Oct Updates:

  • Not much visible progress today - a day spent chasing bugs. 
  • The Search Index is now 40% complete.

6 Oct Updates:

  • You can view & create Diaries and their pages, see links in the Directory block on the left. 
  • The Search Index is now 35% complete.

5 Oct Updates:

  • You can view & create People, see links in the Directory block on the left. 
  • The Search Index is now 31% complete.

4 Oct Updates:

  • You can view & create Places, see links in the Directory block on the left. On the map of Places you can now choose from any of the Google maps: Physical, Normal, Hybrid, or Satellite
  • I've just deleted the first piece of spam from the new site - they didn't take long to find us!

3 Oct Updates:

  • You can view & create forum topics, see links in the Directory block on the left.

2 Oct Updates:

  • Enabled compression on downloaded content, which will help pages load faster in the browser.

1 Oct: Updates:

  • The layout of the page now adjusts to better fit the screen you're using. The biggest change is for smartphones with small screens. On these the sidebars are moved to the bottom of the page, below the main content. That pushes the "What's new" link to the bottom of the screen, so I've added a "What's new" link to the menu at the top of every page.
  • The ability to draw & embed maps is working again, eg see /comment/13956#comment-13956

30 Sep:

  • There is still a lot to do before the upgrade is finished, but here's an early look.
  • You won't be able to create new pages yet (image / person/ place/ etc), though you should be able to leave comments on existing pages.

 

Comments

David,

I've followed your instructions to the best of my ability. I started a new comment window and tried to add an image of the C.E. Warren advert for A.R.P. black out materials that I had mentioned in my previous comment. I uploaded the image twice, but it didn't appear on the screen as it used to with "Create Image". So it must be somewhere, but I don't know where. If you can find it, or tell me where to look for it next time, I'll add the source, date and a comment. Let me know where I've gone wrong.

Jill

David,

I couldn't see my above message to you in "Recent Posts" this morning and assumed that I must have lost my connection during the process of trying the new method. As I thought you hadn't seen my query, I decided to upload by the old "Create Image" method. If I hadn't lost my connection after all, why couldn't I see the image after I had uploaded it by the new method? I clicked everything in sight but couldn't make it appear. There must be another step. Guidance please!

Jill

 

Hi jill,

Please can I confirm that the "new method" means clicking the "mountains and sun" icon on the right of the screen, and that the old "Create Image" method means clicking the "Create" link under "Images & photos" on the left of the screen?

Regards, David

I've just successfully uploaded a photo the new / "mountains and sun" icon way to check the web server is ok.

When you click the "mountains and sun" icon, a window titled "Source" pops up. From there please follow the instructions for "Upload a single photo - basic" at http://gwulo.com/node/2076

The place where it might be confusing is the third pop-up window, titled "Options". It shows the new photo you've just uploaded, so it is tempting to think you've finished and click "Close Window". But if you do that the photo is discarded. So instead you must scroll down to the bottom of that  "Options" window and click the "Finish" button. Only then is the picture added in to Gwulo for all to see.

If it has been uploaded successfully, you'll see it shown at http://gwulo.com/tracker and at http://gwulo.com/view-atoms

I hope that solves the problem, but let me know if you're still having any trouble.

Regards, David

I've set the user-interface for adding tags back to the way it used to work. So now you type in tags separated by commas, and new tags are created automatically for you.

(After the upgrade it changed so that you entered a single tag per line, and you could only use existing tags but not create a new one.)

Please let me know if anything isn't working as expected.

Regards, David

I've added a "Current condition" field to Places, where we can record if a building is In use, a Ruin, or Demolished. Later this will be used to add dates into Place titles. I'll also use it on maps to distinguish between the different building conditions - so red markers for demolished, orange for ruins, and green for in use.

Following on from the "Current condition" feature mentioned above, the map of Places (http://gwulo.com/place-map-search-OL) now shows each marker in a colour that reflects the condition of its Place.

Most of them are black, which means the "Current condition" hasn't been set yet. If you've made any Places, please could you edit them and set a value for their "Current condition", then their marker will update to show the correct colour.

David,

I used the tag "CE Warren" in my post on WJ Webb Anderson. It came up as a triple tag with "The Towers" and "Evelyn Warren" which weren't relevant to the post. I tried to delete them by using the 'Edit' feature but they popped back again. Could you please delete them and separate them so that they can be used as separate tags?

Regards 

Jill

 

Hi Jill,

The problem comes from an earlier post (Riding to Hounds at Fanling), where you typed this into the tags:

Evelyn Warren; the Towers; CE Warren

The website assumes you want all that text to be one big tab. I've split them up again.

Two tricks to remember with tags:

  1. Separate different tags with commas
  2. Where the tag already exists, type a few letters, wait for the list of matching tags to appear, then click on the one you want.

Regards, David

Thanks David. I realised that the problem was with the earlier linked tags. I thought at the time that semi-colons would have the same function as commas, as with multiple addressees in emails. Commas from hereon!

Jill