Raise the Hammer
This weekend, the Raise the Hammer website will be cut over to a new code base running on a new web server - just in time for our fifth anniversary. We're excited about this transition, as it should provide for more stability and more consistent uptime on a new platform that will allow us to add features more quickly.
The new website will look substantially the same as the current site, albeit with a few improvements in usability and new features (see below). However, under the covers it will be running on a modern stack of web technologies.
The website URL will stay the same - http://raisethehammer.org - but the underlying IP address will change. As a result, there may be some temporary disruption in access to the site while the DNS servers across the internet update with the new IP address.
To minimize disruption during the cut-over, we will disable comments and event posting on the old website before the cut-over begins. If you load a page and notice that you can leave comments, it means you're looking at the new site.
By the end of the weekend, all the DNS servers should be pointing the URL to the new IP address.
Comments and posted events from registered users now support Markdown, a very simple and expressive text-to-html syntax.
Asynchronous comment voting - comment votes are now recorded using Ajax technology without the need for a full page refresh.
Improved user login system - login from the menu under the top logo and login status on Manage Profile menu link. The Manage Profile interface is better organized as well.
Registered users can now edit or delete a posted comment within the first five minutes after posting it.
Registered users can now edit events they've posted.
On the comments page, you can now view the highest voted comments and most commented articles from the past day, past 7 days, past 30 days or overall.
Dramatically improved interface for site administrators. This is more for our benefit than for yours, but it means we can post and update articles more easily.
Better password security.
All legacy URLs (e.g. "index.asp?id=200") will still work, with an HTTP 301 permanent redirect to the canonical URL.
The right-hand menus are a bit simpler - no more long lists of archives by date and category - they're moved to separate pages.
More standardized link presentation across articles/blogs, different index pages, including # of comments.
These are changes we just didn't get a chance to include in the first version of the new code base. The nice thing is that we should be able to implement them fairly quickly once we fix any bugs that show up in the new code.
Threaded comments - I know, we've been promising these for a long time.
Ability to link author profile with user profile so authors can edit their own bios.
More usable page response when an anonymous comment form is posted with errors.
The Traffic Report won't work for now.
Proposed functionality to form ad hoc organizations around a given issue.
The missing features are all on the issue tracker and will be added as soon as possible.
We rebuilt the site, but not from scratch. The new code base is built on the shoulders of the following awesome technologies:
CentOS Linux operating system
Apache web server
MySQL database
Python programming language
mod_wsgi interface with Apache
web.py application framework
python-markdown implementation of the Markdown syntax
SQLAlchemy database abstraction framework
The tools we've used to rebuild the website are all free and open source software. We would like to give back a little bit by releasing the RTH code base under an open source licence as well.
We will do this once we get the site into production, fix any bugs that come up and ensure that the site is stable and functional. (We've already open-sourced some of the code that runs the site.)
While we conduct last minute beta tests on the new code base, you're welcome to see it in action. The content is not quite current, but the functionality is all in place. Please, try it out and let us know what you think.
If you encounter any errors or notice any buggy functionality, please either email the details to us or post the problem on the issue tracker.
i appreciate seeing the tools you're using to build it and what technology's being used - and letting people know what's going on behind the scenes whenever you make a switch.
By UrbanRenaissance (registered) | Posted December 08, 2009 at 11:21:42
Great news Ryan!
The fact that we can now edit our posts alone is a huge improvement, and I'm also happy to see the move towards open source tech. But I was curious why there is a 5 minute time limit on editing. Was that to ensure that people are only editing typos and not changing content?
Also just to make things easier on the posters here, after the new site's up and running I could write up a blog post for the unfamiliar to act as a Markdown cheat sheet, and since you've set up a bug tracking DB, I could write a short post on the kinds of information that should be in a bug report. I'm a programmer too so I know first hand how frustrating it is when you get a useless report describing what could be a serious issue.
By race_to_the_bottom (anonymous) | Posted December 08, 2009 at 12:56:33
Great stuff. can't wait to see the new site in action. Alot of free volunteer projects kind of peter out without ever getting the refinement they need. Nice to see RTH is still a going concern!
By UrbanRenaissance (registered) | Posted December 08, 2009 at 15:58:00
Ryan wrote:
That would also be really helpful! Thanks for offering to pitch in.
No problem, happy to help.
By UrbanRenaissance (registered) | Posted December 08, 2009 at 22:10:12
Yeah I was suspecting that might be an issue, Markdown footnoting isn't all that necessary anyway. Online sources can be directly hyperlinked and footnoting other sources the old fashioned way isn't that difficult. I was just curious to see if it would work.
By seancb (registered) - website | Posted December 09, 2009 at 13:22:52
Have you considered intense debate commenting?
No sense reinventing the wheel.. it is a great system, does the nesting for you, and allows people to tweet their own comments etc, meaning instant free advertising for RTH:
By UrbanRenaissance (registered) | Posted December 09, 2009 at 16:23:16
Another thing I just thought of...
We'll have to amend the Code of Conduct to include things like overuse of formatting options. We want to ensure we're increasing readability. (I'm imagining entire posts written with the Header 1 format or layers upon layers of nested quotes.)
By UrbanRenaissance (registered) | Posted December 09, 2009 at 16:47:48
I would hope that common sense will prevail when people are posting, but as a driving instructor once told me, "Common sense ain't so common."
Personally I think adding to the CoC is enough for now and as you said, functionality can be removed when and if it becomes an issue.
By seancb (registered) - website | Posted December 10, 2009 at 10:34:42
I used to feel the same way. But I realized that the economies of scale of these centralized services mean that they can do a much better job of staying on top of intrusion security, data backup, feature upgrades, etc than I ever could in my entire lifetime. Not to mentio the spam fighting power is unmatchable on a small scale system. I also realized that the time I save could be better spent on other projects and problems that haven't already been solved.
And in the "new internet", these central socially connected services are what users crave, and because of this, their use encourages greater participation and penetration to a wider audience.
Is it laziness on my part? Not sure, but I know that I am now much more wary of falling into the not-invented-here trap: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here)
I also used to be much more wary of client-side browser requirements, and while I still detest needless bloat (esp flash/java), I'm slowly coming to accept that most users have all the basic plugin requirements, and have in fact come to expect websites to make (good, efficient, not bloat-y) use of them.
If I were to expend development energy it would be focussed on mobile browsing. I'd leverage existing tools for the full-browser version and spend more time hand-building a very lightweight small-screen friendly version of RTH that allows mobile users to easily read and comment on stories.
But this is all just me :-)
The comment system here works great, and I'm sure it will only get better - it's all just food for thought!
By UrbanRenaissance (registered) | Posted December 10, 2009 at 10:53:56
Hey Ryan,
You may want to check out the comments I've posted on the beta test site entry "Test Blog" I've discovered a few issues with creating hyperlinked text.
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