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Mystery changes of template
 
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jtjohnson



Joined: 21 Nov 2005
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 6:32 pm    Post subject: Mystery changes of template Reply with quote

John:
I removed the the posting you suggested below - with its except -- and that didn't fix the problem. I removed another piece posted in recent days with an except, and that didn't fix the problem. I finally removed a post that had a URL to a graphic on the NY Times site, a PDF that should pop up. THAT fixed the problem.

I don't know what this means in the larger picture of the BlogHarbor code, but I pass it along for what it's worth. It would probably violate copyright, but the next time I will capture the PDF or image, save it to my BlogHarbor account and then link from the blog posting to the file instead of worrying about NYT scripts or whatever.

Thanks again for your quick response.
Tom

*******************************************************************************************
Tom-

Just so you know, our accounts have your address as
'analyticjournalism.blogharbor.com' ... You can do URL forwarding of any
domain name to that address if you like, but our system knows your
address only as 'analyticjournalism.blogharbor.com'.

In any case, the problem is likely due to the fact that one of the
articles on your Main Page has some unmatched HTML tags. You probably
have an article which uses a summary, and the summary opens an HTML tag
like a table, and never closes it. That's one reason you need to be
careful with automatically generated excerpts, if you're using complex
HTML (or copying HTML from other sources) in your articles it's almost
always going to be better to create your excerpts manually.

I think the problem is this article

http://analyticjournalism.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/
2006/1/4/1589345.html

Remove the excerpt and your problem will disappear. Then compose a new
summary for the article.

Hope this helps, if you have any additional questions about this, please
post them to our community forums site at:

<http://forums.blogharbor.com>

John Keegan

--
BlogHarbor Support Team
support@blogharbor.com
http://www.BlogHarbor.com


>From: J T Johnson <tom@jtjohnson.com>
>Date: 1/5/06 2:30 PM -0500

>Hi --
>
>RE my blog: www.analyticjournalism.com
>
>Sorry to bother you again, but suddenly my three-column blog template
>has changed to a two-column layout. I don't think I did anything
>unusual in any recent posting, but I can't even see the log-in links so
>I can get to the management dashboard.
>
>Suggestions?
>
>Thanks,
>Tom Johnson
>
>--
>==============================================
>J. T. Johnson
>Institute for Analytic Journalism
>www.analyticjournalism.com
>505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
>http://www.jtjohnson.com tom@jtjohnson.com
>
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john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 7:27 pm    Post subject: Re: Mystery changes of template Reply with quote

It would probably violate copyright

We can't recommend violating copyright law for any reason.

I finally removed a post that had a URL to a graphic on the NY Times site, a PDF that should pop up. THAT fixed the problem.

I may have made a mistake about which article your bad HTML was on, my apologies for that. But the problem was most definitely with some bad HTML on one of your articles. Looks like you found the right one, my guess as to which one was incorrect.

Whether the problem was with some HTML code you copied and pasted from another source or whether it was a problem with the automatically created code in your excerpt, I can't say now as the article has been removed. Either way, what I said in the email I sent you is still true: if you're using complex HTML (or copying HTML from other sources) in your articles it's almost always going to be better to create your excerpts manually.
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jtjohnson



Joined: 21 Nov 2005
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 2:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

John:

Nope, we haven't solved the problem.

At this moment my site -- 'analyticjournalism.blogharbor.com' -- looks as it should. But note that the last displayed entry was posted the end of December. Tonight I tried to post, but no matter how simple I made the entry, i.e. one simple headline and literally one sentence of text without hyperlinks, fancy typography, etc. Even that resulted in a two-column layout instead of the normal three-column.

Quite odd, but I'm confident I'm not trying anything fancy.

Suggestions?

Tom Johnson
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john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 8:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Then we both got it wrong which article had the bad HTML. Wink I'll try to look at your articles today to see which one has the problem HTML.
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john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 9:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The problem is with the article called Digital serendipity? Perhaps coming to a news source near you.

There is some bad HTML code in your excerpt which is causing the problem, it looks like there was a javascript that got truncated. Again the advice is the same: if you're using complex HTML (or copying HTML from other sources) in your articles it's almost always going to be better to create your excerpts manually. In fact, we would go so far as to say that if you are copying HTML from other sources, you should not use the Automatically generate excerpt feature. That feature works pretty well when you compose the article in our editor, but when you copy HTML from other sources you are usually copying peices of HTML which not only might be poorly coded in the first place, but peices of a larger picture. If you're only getting the opening part or the closing part of an HTML tag, that will cause problems.

To fix your problem in this case, remove the excerpt and your problem will disappear.
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jtjohnson



Joined: 21 Nov 2005
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 12:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK, thanks for for tracking this down. I've removed the entry you suggested.

But recall that the offending entry was posted back in the end of November. There was no problem with postings for the following month, so I don't get why/how there would be the latency in the template problem.

Cheers,
Tom
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john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 1:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It only occurred when it was at the bottom of the list, so it must have been due to its interaction with some other code below it. I can't say exactly why without putting the code back on the page, going over it with an HTML debugger etc. which would not be worth either of our time. Just make sure to avoid pasting in other people's HTML and try to create your own excerpts whenever possible.
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