Friday, March 25, 2016

From the comfy chair


**UPDATE** Hang on, kiddies, thanks to GSMC we're moving to jaysinthehouse.com! Hopefully this fixes the mobile commenting problem. Stuff may disappear a bit as the migration happens so don't panic. I'll be panicking enough for everyone.

**UPDATE DEUX** Migration is complete. Welcome to jaysinthehouse.com!



Well, Blogger has been a big pain in the ass this week, haven't they? Here's the scoop for those of you on mobile who haven't been able to see the comments. Blogger has decided for censorship purposes to have blogs outside the US redirect to country domains. In this case, .ca (although the yesterday I saw .com.au, .ie, .uk and other interesting areas). The problem is that Disqus maps Blogger to one address, usually a .com address.

What this meant was that I had to insert code that would change the urls back to .com. When I did that, the old comments returned but the ones from the last couple of days disappeared because none of them came from a .com address. Which meant I then had to migrate those threads to the .com address.

The problem is (and sorry that I never think to check on mobile) that the mobile addresses are still being written to .ca. So I can merge any comments you make on mobile but as of this writing, you still can't see any of them. I was up until almost 4am last night trying to find a fix with no luck. Heard from the Disqus people this morning who told me I have to "set javascript configuration variables", whatever the hell that is. I'm just a writer who knows basic html!

Anyway, I've posted what I think is the relevant code to them and I'm waiting to hear back.

If I had been able to afford the custom URL that I wanted for this site, none of this would have happened. :(

Which leads me into what was going to be the big news I had planned to announce. You'll see a couple of new buttons on the sidebar. Some of you expressed the desire last week to see me get some remuneration for my work here. Ads were mentioned but I don't want them for three reasons:

1. Ads increase load times and can wreak havoc on phones and tablets.
2. Ads are based on what sites you visit recently. So if I've read a HAES article I'll see weight loss ads for the next week. Or ads for a program I rejected. Sure, you can remove them or indicate that they're inappropriate but it's just a total pain in the ass.

I run an adblock on most sites for exactly those reasons.

3. This is a community site and I want it to have a community feel.

So I'm taking a page from my favourite feminist site and copied her model of fundraising. There's a button for a one-time donation and a button for a monthly subscription, similar to a Patreon model. I prefer this because you can pay in Canadian dollars and you know how much you're giving each month. I've been able to set up the back end to tie in with my existing PayPal business account so it cuts out the middleman for me as well.

Again, this is not an obligation. The option is there for those who requested it.

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The weekend party thread last week went dead when the baseball talk thread went up. So this week I'm going back to just the one thread and seeing what happens.

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I'd also love to have a couple of Expos pieces to go up in conjunction with the games in Montreal. Writers, please let me know if you want these slots.