Sorry about that, folks.

Our main server cluster is hosted at the Softlayer datacenter in Dallas.  Yesterday (as I understand it), the DFW area was suffering severe thunderstorms, and our hosting company switched to their own generators in preparation for this, in case the power went out.

Well, the power didn't go out, the thunderstorms passed, and they switched back to utility power.  And then a 2500 amp circuit breaker blew, taking down most of their operation.

We've recovered now; I had to repair the database, but that's completed, so we should be back to normal.

However, because the unplanned outage ran over my planned outage, I'll have to reschedule that.  It's now set for the same time tomorrow: Monday April 16th 6AM GMT.  Downtime should be less than 30 minutes, assuming we don't get any more tornadoes.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:23 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 144 words, total size 1 kb.

I'll be applying another code update this Sunday, April 15th 16th, at 6AM GMT.  This also involves updating a number of the standard templates.  This should only take five to ten minutes, but please allow for an outage of up to half an hour.

This update will fix a number of minor issues like the timeout problem when uploading large files, add some features including archive pages, and bring the post and comment tags properly in line with the documentation (rather important, that one).

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:07 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 91 words, total size 1 kb.

^{[Part 1]}

There's a second way to work with custom CSS - use the template engine.

There are two steps to this:

First, create a folder. Give it a type of "Style" and a name that you find appropriate - let's say "Default", since this will be your default CSS. Set the path to be something like "css/mystyle.css", or "css/mee.nu.css" if you don't want to change your Header template just yet.

Set the index template and page template both to Style.Default.

Make sure that it's not marked private! If you mark a folder as private, only you can access its contents - which is not a good thing for your CSS files (unless you want to try out a new design, in which case it's ideal).

Save your new folder.



Now create a template. Set the type as Style and the name as Default. Make sure you set the content to "text/css", or you may have problems.

Now, just put your CSS code into the template. Make sure it's marked as active. Save it, and you're done!



The advantage of this method is that you can use template tags, including conditional tags, in generating your CSS. The downside is that because the CSS is generated dynamically, it won't be cached by the browser, so your pages will appear just a little more slowly.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:43 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 228 words, total size 2 kb.

Current version.  This will be changing slightly this weekend, to reflect the updated software: The [comment.iphash] tag will become [comment.ip.hash].
more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:18 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 35 words, total size 1 kb.

[Note: This documentation is for the updated version of the system that is in testing right now.  Some features documented here may not work correctly just yet. The new version is expected to be available by the end of Sunday, April 15th.]

Quickly View posts.

Usage [posts {paged|unpaged} {page=n} {count=n} {skip=n} {show=all|publish|draft|pending|expire|user}  {sticky|unsticky|nosticky|stickyonly} {sort=posted|updated|title|comments} {order=asc|desc}]
[posts:here {template=type.name} {options}]

Type block tag, here tag

Data Fields

Text Fields

title, subject, text, keywords, more, memo, meta, misc, abstract, excerpt, notes, custom, tags, reply, warn, mod
{.raw|.esc|.text|.clean}

Info Fields

data, xml
{.raw|.esc|.text|.clean}

Date Fields

date, time, datetime, shortdate, day, month, year

create.date, update.date, start.date, end.date, comment.date, ping.date
[.date|.time|.datetime|.shortdate|.day|.month|.year]

Status Fields

status, type, category, comments, pings, edits, reads, locked, allow.comments, allow.pings, allow.attach, sticky, hidden, defer, expire, flag, ip, ip.hash, filter, number, even, odd, mod.[3|4|5], bytes, kbytes, words, first, last

Display Fields

show.html, show.bbcode, show.smilies, show.macro, show.dict, show.sig

User Fields

author.name, author.nick, author.mail, author.web, author.aim, author.msn, author.yim, author.icq, author.location, author.occupation, author.interests, author.sig, author.hash

ID Fields

id, tid, pid, fid, etid, cfid

Category Fields

category.name, category.desc, category.path, category.nospace

Sub-tags ^[1]

[post:comments]
[post:pings]
[post:attachments]
[post:links]
[post:images]
[post:stats]
[post:categories]
[post:folders]
[post:sites]
[post:next]
[post:prev]
[post:first]
[post:last]


[1] Sub-tags aren't working yet, but these are the ones that will become available for posts.
more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:47 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 134 words, total size 4 kb.

I still don't have a fix for the bug that occasionally causes the application to fail, but I do have a workaround.  I will be running multiple copies of the application so that if any one instance fails, the other copies will take up the load until the failed instance can be restarted - which should happen within a matter of seconds.

I'll be putting this in place tomorrow; unfortunately the change itself requires a brief outage, so the system will be unavailable for up to 5 minutes from Friday 13th April 2:00 GMT.

Right now - you may have seen a brief hiccup - I have put a new and more reliable automatic restart script in place.

This should give us a more stable system while I track down the problem.

Update: The change is in place - five minutes early.  We now have load balancing and automatic failover between three copies of the application.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 158 words, total size 1 kb.

Latest version.  It's a bit untidy, but I'll get it cleaned up soon.
more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 102 words, total size 2 kb.

Latest version.
more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 22 words, total size 1 kb.

Latest version.
more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 19 words, total size 1 kb.

Want to find out who else is here at mee.nu?  Check out our new sites listing!

If you'd rather your site didn't appear on this list, just tick the Hidden box on your Manage->Site page.  (Also, if you don't give your site a name, it won't show up.)

(Sorry about those brief hiccups, by the way; I had to manually restart the application when I applied these updates.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:30 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 70 words, total size 1 kb.