Posts by Dani

Oooooooooohh!! I didn't realize that was the behavior everyone was experiencing! I think I know what's wrong.

Unfortunately I tried to reproduce what I thought the problem was, and it turned out not to be what I thought. The only thing I can think of is clearing cookies? :-/ Obviously this is a huge issue, so I'll keep working at it. :(

Oh ... also, have you tried clearing cookies?

It asked me to approve using dazah, which I did, but then it bounced me back to dw not logged in.

Oooooooooohh!! I didn't realize that was the behavior everyone was experiencing! I think I know what's wrong.

Have you tried requesting a lost password?

Is this a Menza test, or a not so subtle push to use a social media login?

It is. ;)

That being said ... for those who wish to use traditional email/password login ... Sorry, I imported emails into Dazah but I didn't import passwords. You will need to do a lost password recovery as of right now.

We rolled out a brand new code base just a couple of days ago and, due to many unforeseen challenges, it's going to remain rather buggy through the weekend. I really apologize, but I'm literally working on fumes right now.

We did have a bug earlier that was fixed yesterday afternoon regarding the Are you human error message. I noticed that you posted before the bug was fixed.

P.S. I'm human too :)

The problem is that you are getting "email address already exists" errors when attempting to create a Dazah account because I have already created Dazah accounts based on your preexisting DaniWeb emails on your behalf. Unfortunately, I did not migrate your passwords from legacy DaniWeb into Dazah. (Not yet, anyways). Therefore, currently the only way to log in (without using Google/LinkedIn) is to request a password reset. To compound matters, the password reset link was broken for the first half-day after launch.

Hey everyone,

Sorry that private messaging is still down. It's one of the main features that is being implemented through Dazah. Unfortunately, it wasn't until sticking it into a production environment when I realized that its performance is subpar and the algorithms need a major overhaul. That's what I've been spending most of today on, and hopefully I should be done by the end of tomorrow or Saturday.

Just to clarify, DaniWeb accounts were migrated into Dazah. However, only emails were migrated, not passwords, because legacy DaniWeb was still using vBulletin's old method of storing passwords as MD5 hashes in the database. I want to make things a lot more secure moving forward.

and then consider a phased rollout of the new code when it has been tested properly?

Every. single. line. of. DaniWeb. was. rewritten. from. nothing.

Just by me. Phased rollout is simply not feasable when we're working with just one developer who also has to run the business day-to-day.

Sorry if I'm coming across as a bit upset but I'm just working off of fumes at the moment, with very little sleep.

I know this isn't the ideal roll-out situation ... believe me, I know it. But I'm working with what I have, at the moment, which is a whole bunch of deadlines imposed by a whole lot of people for a whole lot of business reasons

Thanks for clearing that up Dani - I was on the verge of saying f*** it. I imagine many people seeing that screen would be thinking, what the hell is all that about and deciding, no way.

I think things will become much clearer in the near future once there are other apps out there. In that respect, you can think of this DaniWeb web app as one way of interacting with your Dazah account. There might be someone else making a mobile app that would be a different way of interacting with your Dazah account. Yet a third app might interact in a different way altogether. Each app does something completely different, and some might be "nicer" than others, so we require your permission to give the apps the ability to do what they ask for.

In terms of advertising ... It's the exact same advertising as always, but I removed the off switch for two reasons:

1.) Most people just use their own browser-based ad blocker and aren't inclined to go into the settings for a specific website.
2.) We got accepted into the beta program of this new Google functionality that, instead of using a browser-based ad blocker, you configure it in your Google profile and it lets you see whatever image you choose in the ad space regardless of where on the web you are. Google then pays the publisher the equivalent of if they had shown ads. I don't remember the name …

I promise I will explain everything shortly!! Just squashing some immediate bugs right now!!

So, basically the short of it is that Dazah is a new community platform that manages messaging among members of a community, among other things.

DaniWeb is one such app that is on the Dazah platform. You are granting this DaniWeb app permission to access your Dazah account. It doesn't make much sense right now because this is the only app that exists. But in the near future there will be mobile apps and all sorts of things that you can use to find and chat with other DaniWeb members.

Basically the super short answer is yes, you're the only one writing and making changes to your own Dazah account, through the DaniWeb app.

The permissions screen is really just setting things up that are soon to come.

Hi,

Your email address was imported into Dazah but not your password. You should be able to do a lost password recovery in order to log back into that account.

And as far as who Dazah is ... well, it's me ;)

Dazah is entirely my creation, owned and operated by DaniWeb LLC. Things are off to a rather buggy start right now but once everything settles down, I'll explain myself in full. In the meantime, I'd love to see you be able to log into your account and stay! :)

In the meantime, check this out: https://www.daniweb.com/community-center/daniweb-community-feedback/area-51/threads/502148/future-direction-of-daniweb

> Why the move away from ID/PW

You can still log in with a username + password through Dazah.

I was just able to reset my password successfully. What reset link are you referring to?

Still getting lots of bugs sorted. My apologies in the meantime.

And as far as why Dazah is required for login, it's because huge parts of DaniWeb functionality now sit on top of Dazah's API. I have tons of reasons for this, and I can go into a lot of detail once I get these urgent bugs squashed right now. However, the short version of it all is that Dazah is my own creation and owned and operated by DaniWeb LLC.

https://www.daniweb.com/community-center/daniweb-community-feedback/area-51/threads/502148/future-direction-of-daniweb

Sorry, you're going to have to be a little bit more specific with your question.

You can open Windows Notepad. Type out some HTML. Upload it to a web server via FTP. And there you go.

Well ...

We've launched. All new code. From the ground up. Every line rewritten by yours truly. It's a bit buggy here right now, but please just give me a day or so to clear everything up.

This is an important notification that DaniWeb is in the process of being upgraded, and will most likely be down and/or in read-only mode for the remainder of th is evening. When it comes back up, it may be buggy ... we'll see. I've rewritten every single line of code from the ground up over the past 4 months.

Soooo, as many of you know, I've been MIA these past few months recoding all of DaniWeb from the ground up!! We're finally just about ready to launch, so expect all new code soon ...

Nope, I'm not. DaniWeb purchased ProgrammingForums awhile back because it was growing competition at the time.

I'm thinking of taking ProgrammingForums and taking it down and archiving all of its data. The original owner is planning on starting up a new forum, however, and attracting its core users.

The link must have been temporarily down at the time that it was crawled. It will be recrawled regularly. In the meantime, DaniWeb is unfortunately on a code freeze because I am recoding the entire thing on a new platform, due to launch late this month.

Is the mouse cursor within the editor?

We have a couple of hotkeys (such as bold, italic, etc. when typing in the editor). Alt+S also is used to submit your post. But, aside from that, we are not overriding what the backspace key, etc. do. Perhaps you have a browser toolbar or plugin that is conflicting with something on DaniWeb?

The last item in the list is posts you've written.

I don't know anything about Android development, but hi!!

Hi Mike,

Firstly, the link to your blog is broken because you forgot to put the http:// part at the beginning of the link.

Aside from that, signatures only show up when you start a discussion topic, and not with replies. When we switched to this layout, it was decided that it was taking up just too much room, especially in long discussions.

Are you receiving private messages saying, 'We tried to email you but your email address previously bounced?'

Make sure the option is enabled here (https://www.daniweb.com/members/edit_membership) to automatically watch articles you post in.

Happy New Year!!!!! :)

Ah, if only it were that simple! The system is not designed to allow me to cancel cashouts.

Twitter has never been a big traffic generator for me. Google+ even less so, however. I can't imagine that more traffic is coming from Google+??

Cloud hosting cheaper than diy?

Have tried pricing out cloud hosting multiple times over the years. It's always come out way more expensive, because you pay for what you use, and we use a lot, apparently.

We did successfully renegotiate our contract a couple months back and were successfully able to shave off a couple grand by switching to cheaper hardware and migrating from a private load balancer onto a shared load balancer with our hosting company, among other things.

As sos said in a recent thread the landscape has changed.

It's allllll due to me no longer investing advertising dollars in bringing in new community members.

Over the past 15 years, everyone who has posted was always due to paid advertising. All the traffic as a result of free Google searches just adds to our advertising revenue, but these people don't stick around in the community.

Cutting off spending ad dollars has directly influenced post quantity and quality.

Our traffic has declined over the past couple of years, but it's still way up there. At one point we were one of the top 1,000 most heavily trafficked sites on the entire web, ranking just above ToysRUs.com. It takes a lot of server power. Plus, our database only grows in size. 15 years worth of data accumulated!

Allllll due to declining advertising costs :(

I didn't see this thread until now. PayPal keeps skipping sending out payments to anyone because there isn't enough in my PayPal account to cover everyone. Plus, I believe there was a bug in the system. Working on resolving it.

And that is a direct result of us not spending money on advertising anymore.

https://www.daniweb.com/community-center/daniweb-community-feedback/threads/501570/my-apologies#post2193778

Huh?

Currently, we receive a couple hundred bucks a month, on average, in donations. To put that into perspective, web hosting costs are over $5000/mo.

My thoughts are effectively putting a big banner at the top of every page of the site for, say, a month, and running a donation drive Wikipedia style.

As far as "what's in it for me" ... Well, I'm betting on at least a handful of DaniWeb lurkers finding enough value in what they read to donate even a dollar.

And by "significant" I mean enough to fuel starting up a new ad campaign to kickstart the community growth back into gear. Effectively, it would rejuvinate new blood into the community and give me the motivation I need to invest a significant portion of a couple of months into the backend.

Alternative suggestions?

I've decided that in order to effectively continue DaniWeb, it's imperitive that I get it on the same modern framework that I have Dazah on. This will allow me, as a single person, to effectively maintain both systems.

From a business standpoint, both businesses benefit by having the ability to integrate, as well, because they can both leverage each other, which helps me not have to shift focus on one over the other.

However, DaniWeb isn't generating enough revenue right now in order for me to spend such a significant amount of my time on its backend, working on something that isn't going to directly affect revenue.

I'm thinking of running a donation drive in order to help fund the massive infrastructure upgrade.

DaniWeb has always received so much "free" traffic from Google of people that come in, read an individual forum thread as a result of their Google search, and then bounce back to whatever they are working on. In other words, they aren't in the mindset to start signing up and joining the community.

We have always relied on paying for Google AdWords advertising to bring in all of our new blood into the community. We advertise to people who are in a different mindset and not when they're in the middle of trying to solve their frustrating problem.

All of the free traffic brings all the advertising revenue from people reading all the content. All the traffic we pay for keeps the community growing and constantly brings …

I'm not a fan of Goto because that would be representative of every single link and navigation menu item on any website ... "Going to" another page.

Diafol, I'll investigate your mobile concerns tomorrow.

Sorry, I'm not able to reproduce your problem. :(

I'm sorry, I cannot reproduce this. Next time, please let me know when the problem still exists, before making another post.

If I change Finder to Me, then won't that be confusing that there is a Dani dropdown and then a Me dropdown right next to it? :-P

In fact, everything in the top navigation menu is about me. My profile. My finder. My inbox. My shoutbox.

Maybe I don't have that luxury yet

You can only edit posts for a couple of minutes after initially posted. The reason why the Edit button would be broken is because you loaded the page when you still had access, but actually clicked the Edit Post button after the cutoff time.

While I'm on a rant, would be nice if the my 'contributions' link was in the hamburger for easy access

The Finder menu does't work for you?

After serious thought, I've decided to take the time to completely refactor DaniWeb's code to operate off of the same codebase as Dazah. This process will take about 2 months and there won't be any noticeable changes (aside from some speed improvements), but I think it will be worth it in the end.

This will allow me to quickly and efficiently flow between developing for both sites. Additionally, I won't have to maintain two codebases. This is significant as I'm already having a hard time keeping up with upgrading the third-party libraries we are using X 2. Keeping everything with the same version of the Markdown parser, GeoIP database, etc. will be a huge step towards maintainability.

Something else that it will allow is the ability to seamlessly integrate DaniWeb and Dazah functionality. With DaniWeb's declining revenue and Dazah's quick growth, I can leverage each off of the other. This will allow me to ensure that DaniWeb not only doesn't suffer, but rather benefits, as I focus all my time growing Dazah, which I think has more future revenue potential.

We shall see! :)

Too many similarities often makes things confusing, as you've discovered.

Both sites are using the CodeIgniter PHP framework, similar database structures, and the same custom-written ORM. The biggest difference is that I have grouped things together differently in Dazah (a bit more organized). Therefore, I keep forgetting where things are in DaniWeb. Ugh! What a pain. I'll figure this one out :)

Sounds like he did a name change.

I probably don't have to tell you that your code needs a lot of comments to document it.

I would say that my code is well-commented, and if I reread it, I can pretty much follow it. The problem is that I used to eat, live, and breathe DaniWeb code and only DaniWeb code. If I needed to do or change something, I knew every line of code like the back of my hand, knew instantly what needed to happen, and got it done super quick.

For the past 3 months or so, I started coding Dazah from scratch. I've learned a lot since creating DaniWeb's platform, and I've structured things a bit differently from the ground up. For the last month and a half or so, I've pretty much been eating and sleeping Dazah.

Now, each time I want to make a quick change to DaniWeb, it takes me a long time to get my bearings. Just the simplest things, that for 14.8 years of the past 15 years would have taken me no longer than 5 minutes to do, are suddenly taking me 20 minutes because I find myself checking three files before I remember where a particular method lives. Or, I need to make a quick HTML change and I accidentally catch myself using Dazah's CSS classes instead of DaniWeb's, and it takes twice as long because I need to rewrite it. I get so frustrated with myself that I've "lost my touch" so quickly …