I’ve consulted with the house-elves here at SoG, all of whom have equal share and voice in what goes on, plus vacation and sick time (no pay, because even I don’t get paid for doing this), and we’ve come up with the following problem.
We love the design here, brilliantly done by Chad at Frontierwebdesign.com. However, we’ve run into some technical problems that are exceedingly annoying, and so we’re considering a theme change. The problems are:
- Frequent comment loss:  I’ve gotten multiple E-owls from people who tried and tried to comment, and the comment wouldn’t show up. No idea why this is or how to fix it.
- Firefox issues: When a comment thread starts to go long, Firefox can’t handle the page for some reason. Since I greatly prefer Firefox to IE or Safari, this is quite a problem for me.
There are others, but these two drive me nuts. So I’m starting the search for a new theme. I don’t want to pay for one this time. If anyone knows of a pre-existing theme that would work well for this site, please point me in that direction. I’m hoping for something with sidebar widgets to make things easier here. OR, if there’s someone out there who knows that those two issues above are easy fixes, let me know by E-owl.
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I am trying (and not entirely succeeding) to learn about all of this stuff, and I’m very curious as to why a theme would cause these issues — you’re saying that you think you’d switch to a different theme, different code, but the same host, etc., and these issues could go away? That seems strange to me. I agree about Firefox, though I generally don’t have time to read long threads of comments so I haven’t encountered that particular issue (but I can see why it would be a problem).
There are lots of free templates here: http://www.oswd.org/
But you probably knew that already.
I don’t know either. I just know I don’t have this problem with my other blog, which is hosted by the same webhost.
thanks for the link. I was not aware of that link before!
I don’t know if this is diagnostic or not, but when the comment is submitted but doesn’t post, the display flashes, as if refreshing, and then goes “home” to the top of the post. If is is submitted and successfully posted, I just see the comment appear at the bottom of the post.
When it doesn’t work, it’s almost as if the “Submit Comment” button is acting as a “Go to the top of the post” command.
hmmm…I wonder. Do you use Firefox, primarily?
No, I use Outlook Express.
When I had my Magical Enchantment site up, I considered paying for a layout but the prices were too steep. I was either going to teach myself how to create a Wordpress theme or just go for a free one. Before making any changes, I would go to the Wordpress website and post your problem in the forum like you did here. Usually people respond quickly (within hours) and they usually are very helpful. They were helpful to me when I had a problem. Otherwise if you need a free theme, just google Wordpress themes. I must have gazed at thousands of themes and some of them did catch my eye but I guess I’m very picky. Hopefully you are not.
I know you said that you don’t have this problem with your other blog but maybe it is a problem with your host. Also did you ask Chad about the problem?
Johnny, yes, I sent Chad an email. He’s usually quite busy, and it takes him a while to get back to me.
I might just try the Wordpress forum.
And yes, I’m very picky. I always get a headache looking at theme after theme after theme, and then thinking about all the adjustments I’ll want to make using the little bit of CSS I know.
Travis,
I have a theory about why some comments are getting lost.
At the bottom of each post appears the “Submit Comment” box. When you click on it, it highlights, and then, usually, posts your comment.
Beneath the “Submit Comment” box are two links. They are identical except for the final destination: the one on the left (RSS feed for comments on this post) ends with /feed. The one on the right (Trackback URI) ends with /trackback.
I tried clicking on each. The /feed link sends you to a running text version of the comments in that post, embedded in some code. The /trackback link sends you to the top of the post.
Guess what happens when you put some text in the comment box, and then click on either link. The /feed link sends you to the running text/code and you can get back to your comment by clicking on Back.
But if you click on the /trackback link, it sends you to the top of the post. And your comment disappears. Which is exactly what happens when you write a long comment, click on Submit Comment, and your comment disappears.
I am wondering if in some way longer comments end up “writing over” the Submit Comment command, or somehow move the cursor to the /trackback link.
You have to understand, I know nothing about programming, or programming languages or code. I’m only trying to describe what I see.
That, my friend, is probably a brilliant diagnosis.
Now, how to fix it…
Speaking again from a position of ignorance, I think that the solution might be to increase the size of the “field” which contains the comment. Maybe there is a limitation to the number of characters – including spaces – which it will hold. So that anything beyond that writes over the “Submit Comment” command.
When you found this “theme” (I believe that’s what it’s called) did you get instructions as to how many characters each comment could hold?
It may have to do something with the length of the thread. As far as I see, I can comment on any topic, but the “Is Harry a Horcrux†post, which is the most popular with over 800 replies.