Sunday, January 2, 2011

Slapshots, Jedis, and website problems, oh my!

Meatloaf said that two out of three ain't bad.  What about one out of four?  That's how many of the "complete before Christmas" CFN tasks I actually completed before Christmas.  I think Meatloaf would agree that one out of four is not very good.

I blame two factors for my failure:
1. That guy on the other team with the big slapshot.  I got hit with it on the inside of my ankle in mid-December and it fractured my tibia.  What's he doing playing beer-league hockey when he can actually shoot the puck well?  Ok, a fractured ankle did not inhibit my success much - I'm just bitter about it because I can't play hockey for a month or two.  The real factor causing me to not complete the other tasks was,
2. Website problems.  The one task that was completed, upgrading the journal website software, produced problems that prevented other tasks from being completed either because they required the website or they were lower priority items than fixing this new website problem.

Our friends at the server hosting service we employ upgraded our journal website software to the newest version.  They do this sort of thing very well.  I suspect they are Jedis.  I quickly logged in to see some of the new features available that improve behind-the-scenes journal management.  Cool stuff from the looks of it.  Then I tried to upload some articles (another of my tasks) only to find that I was no longer able to upload files.  No error message telling me why I couldn't upload, or any other information, just an inability to upload files.  Not good.

I tried uploading different file types - nothing worked.
I tried uploading as different users - nothing worked.
I tried drinking hot gin toddies - that worked, but the website still did not.
Time for the online help forums.

I'm no web slouch - I help colleagues create websites and do other stuff that makes me feel young and cutting-edge even if I'm neither.  But when I'm reading through forum topics on website upload problems trying to figure out how I can give a folder a permission (for example), I feel pretty dumb.  And old.  And definitely un-Jedi-like.

Our server hosting friends saved the day by changing certain folders' permissions and now the site works and I am busy uploading old articles again.  There are some issues I still need to address on the website, but at least it's functional now - catastrophe averted.  I'm looking forward to uploading articles and completing the other tasks to get this site ready to go live.  Two steps forward, one step back, all the way along.

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