My long online nightmare is over, IdahoFallz.com users can once again access the backend system for writing article drafts and modifying their profile information.
A security hole was identified many months ago that forced me to demote all users to where they could not even create article drafts. It involved a core problem with the backend engine, and the fine folks who tweak that engine said it would likely take until the end of this year before it could be fixed. I tried for months to fix it, and some may have noticed I’ve been pretty grumpy. Usually I was grumpiest after going round and round a few hours with the code, wrestling with it to accomplish the goals. I’ve finally wrought a solution until the backend core gets fixed.
Users can login now and save article drafts. Unfortunately, due to some backend balancing acts, nobody is able to publish on their own right now. However, I’ve added a simple checkbox to notify me when your article is ready to be published. When you feel a draft is ready to publish, check the box and hit save again. The system emails me immediately, and I will publish it as soon as I get the chance (which I’m on here several times daily). So I’ve tried to inject some good to counteract the bad.
Another improvement I fixed last night was finally extracting the ‘Edit Comments’ function that was useful but caused problems for some. The point was that there is a difference between writing in that comment input box and seeing your comment published, many folks noticed an error or wanted to make changes after publishing their comment.
To accomplish the same goal, I’ve provided a simpler ‘Live Comment Preview’ that appears dynamically and immediately below the comment input box. Type your comment, scroll down a hair, and you can see it just about as it will be fully printed. Ta-Da! Let me know if you have any issues with that.
So if you are sick of the articles I’ve been publishing, then please by all means you are free to write your own. Please look at the comment guidelines to see the one topic we discourage, and keep in mind that IFz is setup under a ‘dual-ownership’ agreement whereby you are free to republish your articles elsewhere and I do not share my meager ad revenue and I have the ability to republish works in anthology-style (such as if I wanted to publish a book about running IFz). All of this is in the About section.
So what topics are you going to write about? What topics would you like to see others write about here?
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Gato got runned over by Marcus many moons ago. Be ye daft, 2486? 
Let's have a new poll, alright, Joe?
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Another thing, everyone who is registered right now is still at a level where they cannot reach the article writing section inside. I just finished testing and wanted to announce this. I will go in throughout the day today and upgrade everyone.
Another big problem has been all the spambots that kept registering. Yes, those nasty spambots dropping messages in comments and the chatbox? They hit the registration entry about 100 time more often than even the commenting areas! But I’ve wrought a deadbolt solution to that also.
I will comment later today when everyone’s profiles are upgraded to be able to access the writing area.
Okeydokey, everyone should be at the writer level again and able to access the draft-writing screen and their profiles. If you had old drafts saved, you will find them there again. It should be straightforward to write and when ready to publish you check the box and save it, which notifies me you are ready to publish that article. No more awkward asking in the chatbox 8^).
So what articles do you want to see more of?