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A brief Sunday blog status update

I felt a brief update on the blog status is in order because the National Geographic overlords have actually rolled out some improvements on Friday.

First, the Last 24 Hours feed is reportedly working again, although, quite honestly, when I just checked it it appeared not to be working. The funny thing was, it did appear to be working yesterday. Oh, well.

One good thing that is working is that the tags for the number of comments, Facebook “likes,” Tweets, etc., are showing up on the main page of the blog, as they should. I am much happier about this now.

Unfortunately, still missing in action are variable post preview lengths. I like to be able to control the length of the “above the fold” part of my post, because I use that for dramatic effect. Also missing are direct links to comments, the exception being the links in the side bar to “Recent Comments” (or, as I like to call it, “Recent Insolence Returned”). Also not working yet are some of the system-wide categories. For instance, when I apply the “Medicine” category to my posts, they still don’t show up reliably in the Medicine feed and haven’t since May 28. Meanwhile, the inactive blogs need to be winnowed from the dropdown menu. Hopefully these are among new improvements promised in a week or two.

Finally, yes, I know I still haven’t gotten around to fixing up the look of the new Respectful Insolence as much as is allowed within the confines of the new template, but I plan on it. Really, I do.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

19 replies on “A brief Sunday blog status update”

Content is king, so I think most readers do not mind.

Oh wait, I mean Orac is king. My mistake.

Any word from the overlords on when the old comments, the ones that weren’t supposed to disappear in the switchover, might be restored?

Also missing are direct links to comments, the exception being the links in the side bar to “Recent Comments”

Which has merely been reset to the afternoon of June 7 in its not-updateyness, hence this comment to get it to reset.

Well, check the post on Patricia Finn, the antivaccine lawyer. There are only 6 comments on it now; there were definitely more than that before.

The “last 24 hours” feature only sort-of works. It lists the most recent blog posts on page 1, but there’s no second page. So it only shows a half-dozen recent posts. If I’m off for a couple of days, it won’t help me find new blog posts over that time period, as the old version did.

I wonder if the “most active” tab will ever be restored? I notice the “editors’ picks” is back.

Thanks for the update. It’s clear that you’re making progress, although the most recent ‘insolence returned that I can see is five days old. However, as Emil Karlsson noted, content is king.

Posting from this computer so that the recent comments will update properly. That and to say that I thought that WordPress was supposed to be a mature, stable platform. This one bug shows that to be very wrong.

Had to kill -9 the browser. Post is solely to get the recent comments to functtion.

I wouldn’t blame you if you question my sense of humor but I laughed when I saw the “In partnership with National Geographic” across the top of the page because it was a short article about treating stress in rats with acupuncture in the June issue of National Geographic that started me on the trail that eventually led here.

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