At Steve’s request, I’ve turned off the threaded comments and reinstated the “numbered comments”. This means that if comments are held up for moderation or deleted, references to comment numbers will go astray.
I’m also experimenting with a new plug-in to enable commenters to preview their comments prior to submission. This should help all of us who struggle with bad speling, bad html, bad paragraphing ((c) Steve McIntyre 2005) and just bad language which on second thought, you’d like to change.
If anyone has further suggestions on weblog modifications then please add comments to this thread only.
Climate Audit 
27 Comments
One of the best Bulletin Boards I have access to is EliteTrader.com, which allows a poster to edit the post up to some pre-set time. Take a look…
My previous wish elsewhere to use a different font and color for comments on comments
And of course my wish that when you return to the main menu from a thread you return to where you were rather than the top of the list. (I assume this either requires either cookies or a database on your server to store for a while where a given visitor was at when last going to a particular page.)
John, the automatic preview is rather neat.
I second Dave Dardinger’s point.
And I’ll third Dave’s point.
Thanks for turning off the threading!
The preview comments works (the preview appears below the comments box).
What I’d like to add is some buttons for html like bold, italic, underscore, blockquote and hyperlink to the comments box.
I’ve now added such extra functionality.
Now you
canmake things a bit more interesting!By the way “lookup” is to search a dictionary.
Test
[Mr. Burns] Excellent! [/Mr. Burns]
I would also add the RSS feeds appear to work much better now (seems to get all the comments). Good job John.
Help, I’m being blocked by the you-know-what.
Thanks for rescuing me. Now let’s see if it still blocks new messages…
Nope, great!
pictures of hot babes?
How about some off topic section. Where we can chat about Canadian mining stocks or options pricing, etc.
John, for some reason I now cannot access climateaudit with this url http://www.climateaudit.org
I can only connect via something like this http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?cat=1
This doesn’t seem right. Any ideas?
Michael,
Can you describe what happens, or what symptoms you notice, when you try the usual link?
Yes Jerry, I get this message:
Error establishing a database connection
This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at localhost. This could mean your host’s database server is down.
* Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
* Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
* Are you sure that the database server is running?
If you’re unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.
I think you’ve probably hit when the mySQL database has been temporarily locked when its being backed up by the hosting company.
I cannot replicate your fault, so there’s not much else I can say.
Michael,
Based on your, and John’s, responses, let me offer a wild guess:
If the problem still exists, you might try deleting the cookies entries for climataudit.org from your PC, if they exist, and then try again.
Re 18 and 19: Thanks John and Jerry. I don’t think it has anything to do with database locking – it’s been a persistent error for several days now. I’ve cleared cookies and cache – no luck. I’ve also tried both IExplorer and Firefox – same error in both cases. I’m stumped – it seems I’m the only one with this problem?
Michael,
It may be that some others have the problem, but have not thought of a circumvention such as you had, and thus cannot report it here.
I have emailed a suggestion to John, but I suspect that it might work only if your clearing cookies bypassed the problem at least once each time you tried it.
I wouldn’t give up hope yet.
I really don’t know except that if your ISP is using caching, then that might be screwed up.
Michael,
Are you using a bookmark (favorites in IE) to access climate audit? If you are using a bookmarked link have you tried just typing in ‘climateaudit.org’ into the address box?
Re 23: Yes, I’ve tried that. I’m using Firefox as my default browswer – IE only for windows updates.
I’ve tried connecting via another computer and get the same problem – maybe John’s #22 is the problem?
The simplest working url is http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php
I’d like to know what is the search path/criteria, and how it is affected by archiving. I would like to have extended search capabilities — by poster, by date, as well as a “string search” capability.
Michael,
It looks like a DNS lookup problem. When I use a bookmark in Firefox the DNS is taken from my local machine. When I type in the address a DNS lookup request is sent to my ISP. If there is a problem with your ISP’s DNS server it will affect everyone on their network, you might want to contact them.
A preview button (and new page) is more effective then the onscreen asyoutype preview.