It’s time for us to have a check in session here, because once again the cyber gods are mocking me for their sport. You would think they would get tired of torturing one woman, but no, they seem to enjoy bedeviling me.
So on to our list of problems:
- Newsletter: Are you getting it or not? I personally have not seen one in a week, but the computer tells me that they go out every day.
- Comments: I know that the comments can’t be up voted or down voted. That’s on the list of things to fix.
- Are there still problems with comments not appearing right away? The only delay I know about is when they go for moderation — and a lot get flagged for moderation that shouldn’t but we’ll work out bugs at that level after we’ve taken care of the big stuff.
Anything else? Tell me what works or doesn’t and it will go on The Big List, which we have been chipping away at. At least the freaking 500 error message doesn’t display every five minutes.
Also, the front page is not what it should be, but we will fix the appearance and reconfigure it to introduce more features as soon as we solve more pressing problems. There is a plan in place, it will just take a while to manifest.
Please share any concerns or comments below. And thank you for your patience and for your support, always.
You are the wind beneath our wings.
There’s no notification if there’s a response to a cxomment
That can be fixed. It may not get fixed immediately, because I have higher priorities, but that’s good to know that that’s not working. Thank you.
I am getting the notifications pop up on my pc, even whey I am not online. They tell me when a new story is posted. I have not seen any newsletters. I did re-subscribe after the new platform was in place.
Alright, so you’re not seeing the newsletters either. Okay. That makes two of us. I fear that we are not the only ones.
I have not received any newsletters in weeks and the notifications stopped about a week or so ago. Now I just go to your website every day.
Okay, it looks like nobody is getting newsletters.
When you say “notifications” do you mean 1. Email notifications or 2. pop up notifications? Or both? That’s crucial. Do you see the little blue bell on your screen? You should be able to sign up for notifications with that.
I’ve had much the same experience as Cherl Harrell: no more newsletters, but I receive notifications — on email since I don’t allow any pop-ups — when a new story is published. I also access Politizoom’s RSS feed through my Feedly accumulator, but I would still appreciate a return of the newsletter, which made it easier for me to concentrate on key posts. Thanks for asking!
Okay. The newsletter is the big problem, as I thought.
Still slow publishing comments, AFAICT. (I don’t get messages about going to moderation, so I don’t know what’s happening.)
I have not received emails with the link to the website for a week or so. I used to get the newsletter – at least I think that is what you are referring to. I have not received that for a long time. I key in your website address every day to read the articles.
I don’t comment very often, so don’t have any comments on that.
Thank you for all you are doing to get things fixed.
It is unanimous, that the newsletter generation is only an Evil Lie that the website software likes to whisper in my ear — which I suspected, I just needed confirmation. Okay, folks, we’ll get it rolling and all the rest, too. We are the Little Political Blog That Could, we’re just going up hill right now.
I don’t get any PZ emails at all now, though i did get some after the big change. Dunno if that’s cos i haven’t signed up again, but when there were 2 types of emails it involved much duplication, so wouldn’t want both types anyway. Lately been checking website now & again, which is easy way to see how many new ones there are.
1 annoying thing (that wasn’t the case before the big change), that I’ve mentioned before, is that top-level comments come out latest 1st (I’d prefer the other way round), whereas replies to those comments come out below the main comment, so there is an inconsistent sequence, with some one direction in time, some the other!
…and there’s no delay in comments appearing ?
yes I feel the same way, comments come in okay, but the order is backwards.
Haven’t received any Zoomer emails in at least a week. Used to receive daily summary.
Also, since you migrated the site, only the five most recent posts show up on the right.
There used to be buttons below the list to scroll.
Finally, and probably out of your control, what’s up with the wing-nut ads on the site?
Opening this page got a pop-up “Attention Patriots” to vote on whether or not “Illegal immigrants should receive stimulus checks”, lots of bat-crap NRA ads too. Not very good targeting.
The ad issues are something I can take up with Google and I will, but right now I need to focus on getting rid of technical headaches and reconfiguring the front page. But if I see an inappropriate ad myself, I’ll contact Google about it. If you see one you don’t like, you should be able to hit a small blue arrow that points to the right and it will allow you to either 1. report the ad; 2. make another, more appropriate ad appear. I’ve had to do that a few times.
I’ve wondered about many of the ads that appear here too. I know it’s out of your control, and that each ad isn’t “cleared” by you before going up here. Supposedly, the person or team at Google (or whatever subsidiary) simply punches in some info. into one of their fancy, schmancy super “intelligent” algorithms and ads that would interest the average use of this (or any site for that matter) forum and generate clicks on those ads. Sure, now and then something off-base can and will slip through but I agree we seem to be seeing quite a bit of “WTF is that doing on a site like this?” type ads in recent times.
It makes a person wonder if these self professed geniuses at Google are as omnipotent as they think they are. Maybe they need to spend a little less time sucking up every scrap of information they can get on every human being (to create lists that they can sell) and actually analyze it and if they are going to assault us with their constant bombardment of ads at least hit us with stuff that we don’t find ridiculous.
Or maybe, just maybe they could actually PAY ATTENTION to guidance from a site owner/manager about what the site’s theme is and what type of people frequent it. I have a sneaking suspicion that the person(s) who typed in the stuff about PZ either ignored it or fucked up and that some hard core conservative site is getting ads for progressive stuff/causes and asking the same “WTF? questions those of us here are asking!
Let me tell you a practical way to get ads on the site that you find non offensive. Just click on ads elsewhere for anything you like to look at — furniture, electronics, food, anything that interests you. Those ads will show up here as well. Beyond this, I have no idea how Google chooses ads. But I have observed this so far.
I don’t get e-mails. I think I used to, a few months ago. Along with 3-4 others who are on WordPress. Now I just get popups on the right side of my screen about yours and some of the others (some of whom I never heard of, unfortunately). I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a newsletter from you. And yes – usually when I click on a PZ notice a grayish screen pops up with a box asking for a yes or no response – I think. I just X them until they go away. What’s with that? I miss being able to like a comment.
No newsletter and can’t remember how long it’s been since I got one. Like others I stopped getting notices about new stories roughly a week ago. I have however kept getting a pop-up at the top of the screen asking me about signing up for notifications even though I had been getting them! And I’m pretty sure that started before I actually stopped getting them so there’s that. Once logged in I don’t typically log out and when I come back whether using Edge or Chrome I’m still logged in. I noticed yesterday morning I was no longer logged in. Without being logged in there are no vote up/down buttons and I wanted to start using them on comments again. I’d forgotten my password so I went through the process (twice) via Edge but no new email that would allow me to complete the process of getting a new password was sent and yes, I did check my spam folder. Same thing when I tried with Chrome. However, a little while ago I tried again (via Chrome browser) and instantly got the reset email – I had it open in my Edge browser. I got in fine and changed the one the system had given me (tip to folks – copy and paste the one they give you cause it’s easier to sign in the first time that way!) and signed in on Chrome. I then logged out of email and called up PZ on the Edge browser and signed in there too with no problem so that glitch has hopefully been fixed.
One additional issue which might be small potatoes but not to me. In order to use the blue button to “Like” a story I haven’t been able to do so for a long time now UNLESS I do so via FB or twitter. You and everyone else who pays attention to what I write knows how I feel about twitter and there’s no freaking way I’m making the mistake of getting involved with it by creating an account. FB? Well, since I sometimes get a notice of something important with an actual FB friend I haven’t deleted my account but I actively avoid going there. I want as little to do with it as possible. So I’m not about to use that site either. Can’t we go back to before where we simply are allowed to Like something without having to use another platform to do so?
I just sent you an email.
I used to get an email telling me you published.
Now no email and no newsletter to my box.
I also no longer get a newsletter. About once or twice a week, I get an email about a new post. Otherwise, I get popups about new posts, but they do not appear in my email and if I don’t click on them right away, they disappear. For a while, I couldn’t get to the main front page because I would get an error message, but as of today, that at least seems to be working. Good luck with dealing with all these annoying little details. (And thanks for paying attention…smile)
I forgot about this…as often as not when I click on a story, I get, in front of the article, a popup for an ad (a video?). When I click on the X or another “dismiss” button — it keeps changing — it takes a few seconds to go away. Meanwhile, I just want to read the article. So annoying.
I am not signed up for email notifications bcz I check in on PZ every day. Also unaware of any up/down voting on other comments (unobservant I think). I use PZ recommended because the site is configured for my Android device, and can navigate to front page, recent, etc. I doubt this helps but do appreciate the contributors and the opportunity to comment at times. Good Luck!!
I haven’t gotten an email notification in weeks but do get the pop up notices. I don’t sign in but just click on them and they open. I’ll start signing in. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a newsletter so maybe I never signed up? I did comment twice in the last two days and they both appeared quickly.
Just tried to sign in and it appears I don’t have an account. Tried to set one up and never got a password in my email. I’ll try again later.
Haven’t gotten the newsletter for a long time. Since before the tech problems started.
Was getting emails for each article, that stopped a week or two ago. Tried to subscribe again and got an Email Already On File message.
Posting comments doesn’t seem to be a problem, but if anyone is responding, I don’t know about it.
I’ve started keying the URL into my browser and going from there.
Cheers
We’ll get the newsletter up and running, hopefully by the end of this week. I would like to get it out sooner, but one thing I’m finding with the technical issues on this site is that things resolve when they resolve and not before.
Hello there. I figure there’s probably no need to comment on this, seeing as a dozen others appear to have already done so… but I as well haven’t seen a Politizoom newsletter in a long time. Despite repeatedly subscribing, I haven’t recieved a newsletter since the server migration a short while ago. Since then I’ve only recieved individual story notifications via email. I was fine with that, but this too has now stopped, I no longer get email notifications of any kind from Politizoom. I don’t mind having to use my bookmark to get here, I just thought perhaps this extra info might help in some regard. Best of luck with these technical issues. I would be lost, myself.
I don’t know what the relationship is between the newsletter going down and the email notifications going down. But I am hopeful that by the end of business on Friday we can have these things solved. It has not been helpful that the freaking software program is saying that the newsletter has been going out. I know I haven’t been getting it, and obviously I’m in the majority here.
Thank you for reaching out about the status of the new web host and functionality. It shows you care about your patrons/members. After the migration to the new server I was unable to sign-in to my account to post any comments. Vic fixed that on February 8 for me. Since the migration to the new server I also stopped receiving E-Mailed newsletters, but continued to receive E-Mails with New Posts published through February 28. Since Feb. 28th, all E-Mails ceased notifying me of New Posts. Not a big deal for me since I go straight to the website when I wish to log-in to read posts. Since February 8, I’m able to up or down vote on all comments and I currently continue to have that capability.
Like everyone else, I not longer get nothing from you in my email.
And the site is so agonizingly slow it takes forever to load reminding me of AOL dial-up in the 90s! This is especially annoying with the pop-up ads, which are confusingly designed anyway so you have to stop and think for a second out what to clic on to get rid of it. And when you do it’s so slow you find yourself hitting seething again to make sure and then god knows where you end up.
It takes forever for my posts to appear (and no, I’ve seen nothing about moderation — I deliberately posted some short, innocuous posts to check the system). Sometimes they don’t appear at all. And without being able to respond directly to a post or to update (or downrate) anything, there’s little interaction or discussion anymore.
The posts are still well-written and entertaining, when I finally get them to load!
I haven’t seen a newsletter in several weeks. Comments seem to publish right away when I comment. The one thing I dislike is ads that block trying to get to the page. I appreciate everything you are doing.
No emails since Feb 27, but I’ve bookmarked the PZ home page and use that to access articles. If I can, I check several times a day to make sure I’m not missing an article. My comments seem to post immediately though, the few I’ve written anyway. Thanks for this check in. I’d been wondering what was happening. One good thing through all this: few to none of the tRumpers invading our space!
to be honest, bless you for putting up with this. I check in once or twice a day. The content is worth it. I will be hanging in while you work things out. all the best