New Site Update 4 April April 4, 2025 9:17 AM   Subscribe

Update on the beta version of the new site. See notes inside.

QUICK UPDATE (April 5, 1:05pm ET): As of right now, the staging site still throws a password error when you try to sign up, so it's not possible to test logged-in behaviors. We're aware, but kirk is out of town and unavailable to fix. Feel free to check other parts of the staging site in the meantime.

The site is not being presented as a complete and finished product, but a work in progress. If you notice a feature from the current site is missing, please assume it's because it hasn't been programmed yet, not that it's being discontinued.

You can report a bug if you notice something that's broken. Check the list of bugs before reporting a new bug. Please don't report missing features as bugs.


A non-update update?
Recent changes are mostly behind-the-scenes. Kybard has volunteered as project manager and will help with communication and task prioritization moving forward (including these regular update posts!). More details about this will come soon: we're meeting today to "kick off" the PM side of things and discuss what's needed and/or will be most helpful.

frimble provided kirkaracha with the users table from the current site. There's a lot of data, some of which might make sense in different tables, so we're reviewing the schema. When we're satisfied with the users table, we'll import the users into the new site and members should be able to log in with their real usernames and passwords. (Which should help us implement voting.)

We're testing CKEditor with integrated Markdown support (product demo) as the WYSIWYG editor for posts and comments. There's a potential open source licensing issue; details on Ask MetaFilter. CKEditor lets people either use the visual editor, type Markdown, or enter HTML.


Little help?
Volunteers are always welcome to help with anything from user interface design to writing code. (Some database design help would be especially helpful at the moment.)


Previously
Resources
posted by Kybard to MetaFilter-Related at 9:17 AM (23 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite

Thank you for your help Kybard.

As reported by Reverend John in the bug tracker, it's currently not possible to sign up for a new account on the staging site. It appears there was a database reset at some point as I can also no longer log in with the account I made a while ago. That makes it impossible to test anything besides reading. I think restoring the ability for members to try the new site should be a high priority.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 9:48 AM on April 4 [3 favorites]


yeah, I have caught and am aware of that too.

I'll talk to kirk about whether we can get that fixed up ASAP (since we're about to talk anyhow) and provide an update here as soon as I can.
posted by Kybard at 9:50 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]


Thanks, Kybard. Will the new website have a MetaTalk queue?
posted by ftrtts at 12:40 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]


as of this moment, I would expect so at launch, unless the policy around the queue changes on the current site before then.

discussion of whether there should be a queue in the first place is ultimately up to the board and/or moderation team and not in the decision-making scope of this project or the people working on it.

speaking of which: I'm going to make a post early next week explaining in more detail how I'm stepping in, the kind of authority and scope I expect to have, and how I'll be transparent about project progress moving forward. kirk was already doing a tremendous solo job on that last point, so I'll mostly just be buffing up what he's already done and is doing, while taking over as "communications lead" to the extent one's needed, so he can just get the work done.
posted by Kybard at 1:04 PM on April 4 [12 favorites]


> frimble provided kirkaracha with the users table from the current site. There's a lot of data

in light of the situation regarding the mismanaged AWS backups, i'm sure many of us are curious for some details about the sizes of MetaFilter's constituent parts. acknowledging that the user table would/should be only a small part of that (the contents of MeFiMusic would be expected to be the largest), can you please share the size of this table?

thanks for taking on this important task. ✌
posted by glonous keming at 1:59 PM on April 4 [2 favorites]


Thank you very much for the update, Kybard, and many huge thanks to kirkaracha and frimble for all the work on the tech stuff!
posted by kristi at 2:18 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]


The users table (and I suspect the rest of the tables) reflects how MetaFilter was built up over decades. There are 345,637 rows, which includes the current and former members plus everyone who has ever started registering, including spammers. There are also lots of fields that either should be in separate tables or are for features that aren't supported anymore. I need to run but I'll update with the file size later.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 2:18 PM on April 4 [3 favorites]


thanks, kirkaracha. i appreciate you!
posted by glonous keming at 2:20 PM on April 4 [2 favorites]


more user stats for anyone interested:
- users who completed the registration process: 76,974 as of February 2025
- users who have ever made a comment or post on any site: 47,888 as of February 2025
source: cumulative users chart at mefist.at, from infodump data
posted by Klipspringer at 2:48 PM on April 4 [7 favorites]


I'm seeing a trend

MeFites whose usernames start with 'k' are generally decent folks? but kinger.beef is just weird, so I'll leave you to that and maintain my reputation of indecency
posted by ginger.beef at 3:00 PM on April 4 [2 favorites]


There is no kabal.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 3:48 PM on April 4 [12 favorites]


The CSV for the users table is 228.2 MB.

thanks, kirkaracha. i appreciate you!

Aww, thanks!
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 4:21 PM on April 4


I'm using this guide to get the site on my local dev machine and run into issues with databases...any help appreciated.

https://ddev.readthedocs.io/en/stable/users/quickstart/#laravel-git-clone
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:21 PM on April 4


We're testing CKEditor with integrated Markdown support (product demo) as the WYSIWYG editor for posts and comments

This seems like unnecessary scope creep from the remit to recreate the existing site.
posted by jimw at 8:49 PM on April 4 [2 favorites]


I can assure you it's not. CKEditor is a well-established tool -- I was using it as the built-in content editor for the Drupal CMS almost a decade ago at my last job. on the new site, rather than coding from scratch an editor that allows specifically MetaFilter's current formatting options, CKEditor can be dropped in as a pre-existing package. it is possible there's a similar drop-in package that only supports MeFi's options, but there's no reason to go hunting for one when an installation of equal complexity buys us more functionality out of the box.

this'll likely be true of other aspects of the new site! next week I'll talk about that a bit more, and we'll be providinga way for everyone to see clearly how and where the scope of new site launch will deviate from a 1:1 match.
posted by Kybard at 6:11 AM on April 5 [16 favorites]


Also, Metafilter's existing text box is a pretty massive barrier to participation. For a site that is primarily about sharing links, it is surprisingly hard to make text into a link if you aren't familiar with HTML or are on a phone. I am really interested in how changing the text box into one of the industry standard ones will change pattrns of participation on the site.
posted by rockindata at 7:06 AM on April 5 [9 favorites]


Thank you to Kirk, Kybard and any volunteers. It looks like good progress.
posted by NotLost at 8:16 AM on April 5 [3 favorites]


QUICK UPDATE: As of right now, the staging site still throws a password error when you try to sign up, so it's not possible to test logged-in behaviors. We're aware, but kirk is out of town and unavailable to fix. Feel free to check other parts of the staging site in the meantime.

I've asked the mods to put this up in the original post for clearer visibility, but I know their availability is limited this weekend.
posted by Kybard at 9:55 AM on April 5


I'm using this guide to get the site on my local dev machine and run into issues with databases...any help appreciated.

I added setup instructions to the developer documentation. I also fixed an issue that was throwing database errors when I tried to migrate the database tables.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 10:27 AM on April 5 [3 favorites]


Mod note: Kybard: "I've asked the mods to put this up in the original post for clearer visibility, but I know their availability is limited this weekend.
"

This has been done, took all of 10 minutes from original message :)
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 1:35 PM on April 5


kirkaracha: "I'm using this guide to get the site on my local dev machine and run into issues with databases...any help appreciated.

I added setup instructions to the developer documentation. I also fixed an issue that was throwing database errors when I tried to migrate the database tables."

Thanks! I'll try this, later this weekend. It's been awhile since I've done any Laravel, but it's PHP so I should pick it up quickly.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 2:06 PM on April 5


Ok, after I remembered to git pull, your fix was pulled down and I was able to get the rest of the steps completed. Getting a 404 when when i go to the site url, but that's likely a misconfig on my ddev setup, ddev uses urls like so metafilter2024.ddev.site
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:25 PM on April 5 [1 favorite]


Novus situs Latine est! Mirum!
posted by Phanx at 3:33 AM on April 8


« Older An opportunity for healing?   |   Easter Eggs? Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments