AllAstronauts

Limited to 30 days forward (and a bit back) for both brand new shows and shows returning to air but some rather vague time post-launch this will change. Backlog of features and refinements is already rather long. You know, I already posted a sneak peek of the new thing somewhere...

Another problem solved more or less in the new thing...

The world is full of suck right now and that includes AI bots, including those embedded in major search engines natively now and run by well respected business entities (well... maybe just large nominally well-behaved rather than respected...). They're ignoring standard internet practices because those are merely societal norms and not law and anyways who's going to stop us now so we'll crawl as much as we want, when we want, where we want, in quantities of our own determination, at the random times of our choosing. And yes, that rant is on-point. To wit: search, the site search that not too many people use anyways that should never be interacted with by search bots, is now restricted to members only. For reasons. Server reasons. I'll deal with this tomorrow and put up some hard copulate-off guard rails but it's almost 1am on a Saturday night. What's that you say? You work in IT and you think robots.txt is just misconfigured? Additionally if you find the server offline with a response along the lines of cannot load the page or whatever but its the site giving you the message and not the browser itself, that means the database is down again. I'll catch it up in the morning <including the service restart catches which are apparently not there>. I'd tell you more but its all so horrible and stupid.

Not in scope. At least at launch. I might get the... not sure what to call it, backlog I guess, of shows you previously followed, and shows you *might* want to follow, that thing in for launch. No notifications or anything like that, just a scratch list really. You can just set up a custom stream you know. Select the things you want to keep tabs on and just view that from time to time. The "something new" will be here by the end of February.

The bug is in my ear, based on an earlier post. The follow system, and hence "show" vs. "not show"... well... the follow system is that. We just flag out certain forums as "shows" and treat them differently. So, unfollowing... its all a yes/no, on/off toggle. Definitely nothing for this at launch but I have ideas. That said, discoverability is amped up quite a bit already in the new thing. Honestly, aside from the actual topics, you'll not really be able to recognize or compare all that well, the new stuff with what is here now. I've got a free hand and I like to cook. Not *everything* wanted or needed will be up at launch, but nothing is ever done. You guys will doing a lot of "Can we get this? Can we get that?" post-launch and all my replies to those will probably be yes's or near enough but time/money/willingness will come into play, all this assuming most of us aren't fighting the Crypto Wars in various gated retirement communities and abandoned strip malls by then <Lemon, it's Tuesday...> Probably grab a few testers in the next week or ten days. Then clean-up, upgrade tests on dev with site data, and if there are no show-stoppers, that will be that. Target for launch is end of February.

New thing will have a count. Something to think about down the line but new thing is just the same follows as now. Consider your thought formally noted. This is a solved problem...

How many shows are you following? Way too busy (and lazy) to just run a query directly so figured I'd ask. A spot-check of a random member got me 36 for that guy. What about the rest of you? Just need numbers so I can gauge out presentation for the new Primetimer. That, btw, is NOT happening with the email login changeover on Monday. It's like 80%-ish done, but will never be "done" so it's a question of launch-ready status and that's close. Also no one on staff or ownership has seen a damn thing of what I've done yet so that process has to be gone through as well, once they pick their jaws off the floor...

It could... but... I mean, if you are logged in somehow but don't know your password eventually you'll be logged out anyways and still not know your password. Right? Eh. Maybe I can just stick a derpy link at the bottom of the page.

Yeah, that's why I'm leaning cookies. I mean, I could just pull a device signature and then could store across everything but man.... lots of other things time better spent on.

The screen width toggle button on the bottom of the screen is not a traditionally stored setting, its just a browser cookie, and that means per-device. So your phone has a cookie, your tablet, your desktop, laptop, etc... Anytime your browser flushes those out for whatever reason, you'll lose your choice... until you hit the toggle again which sets the cookie and life continues ever onward. Note these cookies have an expiration date of effectively never so your device will only lose these when cookies get wiped out through you clearing your browser caches or ??? There's going to be a dedicated Primetimer settings button fairly prominent in the new hotness dropping soon. Not entirely sure if I'll stick with cookies or just store the settings for real so you'll always have them no matter what.

I've looked over the upcoming release notes for the next version of this gen of software and checked the support forums and there is nothing on this reported or noted anywhere. So that leaves two options. New hitch specific to the latest iPhone software in which case it will start to be reported and then dealt with in a patch or new version (in which case there's nothing I can do) or... maybe you've got some bad JavaScript hanging around on the phone in which case wipe the caches however you like and try try again. I'd test locally but the newest iPhone here is a 7 Plus so... I do have a newer iPad but not sure if that's the same for browser stuff.

This will be a bit buried but this should lay it out maybe slightly better. Now: You can login with <your username OR your email address> AND <your password> When the next version of the software hits: You will login with <your email address> AND <your password> Your password is not being changed or required to change but what can/is happening to many users is this: Forgot what email they used to register on this site with. Know the email address but the email account is lost/deleted by <workplace, university, ???> Forgot the password to this site completely and are just using the browser saved password or password manager to deal with it. So imagine when this change over happens and the above three points come into play and you did not have warning ahead of time. Forgot email used to register here? How do you login at all? Know the email address? Great. But if you also forgot your password good luck getting a password reset as that will be sent to... Will the password manager apply the right password when you login with an email address and not your username? TLDR; Make sure you know your email address and password before we update the site. That's it. This is at least, MINIMUS, three weeks away. Likely longer. Especially since nothing has been done yet to prep for the change over other than turn the dev site on more or less. BTW, the Google linked accounts should be fine, not sure about the Twitter linked accounts post-Musking. <for those that registered on this site those ways>

Nothing changes. Your username remains unchanged. Just how you login - that's it.

Chiming in here. Staff know there are going to be edge cases where people have not only forgotten emails but have actually lost email accounts and have been just logging in with usernames for eons. You'll be able to ping staff to get stuff resolved (some of you have already begun so...) . No one will need to create new accounts and lose the old ones. Yes, the change is basic net security these days. People can see your usernames and spam login tries with common passwords using your username - not only can they maybe guess your crappy password he says looking at the people needing to be seen but they can also lock you out of your account for x-minutes with bad login tries. This applies to just about most sites these days so if you have not encountered similar email-to-login requirements elsewhere expect to along with mandatory two-factor logins and all that. This site ain't that far into security yet but I could turn two-factor on and just not make it mandatory...hmmm.... No, no one than than staff can see your email addresses so no problemo there. People are just returning from holiday breaks so these changes are not any time in the immediate future. I just turned on the new dev site the other day so that should give you a pointer to where things are. It's no great shakes to convert the old app to the new standards, and minimal work really to do the look and feel stuff. But, as mentioned in other threads, major software version means it's a great time to clear the decks, look at the landscape, clean the kitchen, and look at upgrades and new features for you guys. I'm 99.999% sure some fun API stuff (think: show data and media) I was hesitant to bring over to the front-end due to cost might actually be financially viable and I've got notes from staff and my own notes on changes/maybes and I've actually started puttering with <gestures broadly> the last two days. Mobile users will be pleased as the software more mobile friendly. You'll want to create a home screen link to the website on your mobile device and just treat it as an app that way. No previews yet, just started all this yesterday. Yes, some of you will get an early gander to dogfood this stuff and yell at me and the usual. Dark mode is a native feature, there is a new post editor, and so on, but it's still the same forums you know.

This is all on the server end; dealing with it. Mayhaps there is a wild conflict with the S3 (not AMZ) storage so I moved all the theme/css/js stuff back to the server for hosting. All blessings to Krampus, may this bring merriment to the holidays.