Housekeeping: It’s (not) In The Mail

No, you weren’t unsubscribed to your daily dose of SJ. The emails aren’t going out. Neither are the automatic twits when posts are published. I’m not often frustrated, but I am now. I apologize.

SJ is published on a platform called WordPress, which is where it ended up after my original platform from GoDaddy was “end of lifed.” For the uninitiated, there’s a dirty little secret about tech that the happy faces don’t talk about. The things upon which you rely, and for which you pay, magically disappear when the tech company that you’ve been paying either goes belly up, decides that they aren’t making enough money off a product to keep it supported or comes up with the next newest, coolest thing ever, so that they trash the old one that people were very happy using and create a new one that nobody wants and sucks.

Anywho, WordPress uses something called “plugins” to allow users to pick what the blog should do. One of the plugins used at SJ was WPTouch, which morphs the blog you see on your computer screen into the blog you see on your smartphone. The two are not the same, and while I don’t care for the smartphone version, some of you insist on reading SJ on your tiny screen, so I added WPTouch because I’m a swell guy.

A few days ago, WPTouch updated the plugin, and everything fell to shit. I let them know, and they then came up with two additional updates to fix their update, and it didn’t work.

Since then, subscriptions haven’t worked. Auto twits haven’t worked. And WPTouch has ignored me on the twitters when I tell them that things aren’t working.  And no, there’s no undoing the updates. It doesn’t work that way.

I’ve deactivated the plugin, in the hope that it would right the ship, but that hasn’t worked either. It could be that there is another problem going on having nothing to do with WPTouch, but if so, I have no clue what it is. Nobody is talking about it and nobody is doing anything about it. I certainly don’t have the mad computer skillz to fix it. Or even diagnose it. I can’t even push it out manually to compensate for it failing automatically.

twits

Nice of them to have a red “fail” next to each attempt. How to fix the fail is nowhere to be found. That, kids, is technology. And that, kids, is why you don’t bet your life on it working, because as great as it may be when it works, it really sucks when it doesn’t. And all tech, at one point or another, fails. And when it fails, that’s that. And when that’s that, and you absolutely need it to work, tough nuggies.

So, it’s not that I did anything to you. It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s not that I’ve gone fishing. It’s just that I can’t figure out how to fix what’s broken, and I’m pretty miffed about it. I don’t want to spend my time with nonsense like this, particularly since it’s accomplished nothing.* I apologize for not being able to remedy the problems, but it’s not for lack of trying.

*And no, this is not an invitation for you to offer your well-intended but clueless, simplistic or utterly idiotic ideas as to what it may be or how it might be fixed. If you don’t actually know anything about WordPress or this specific problem, demonstrate impulse control. I’m not in a good mood about this and am unlikely to respond appreciatively to your good will but mind-numbingly stupid offering.

26 thoughts on “Housekeeping: It’s (not) In The Mail

    1. SHG Post author

      I got some very angry emails about why I was denying people their daily dose. “Why do you hate me? What did I do? You suck!!!”

  1. Paul

    “*And no, this is not an invitation for you to offer your well-intended but clueless, simplistic or utterly idiotic ideas as to what it may be or how it might be fixed. If you don’t actually know anything about WordPress or this specific problem, demonstrate impulse control. I’m not in a good mood about this and am unlikely to respond appreciatively to your good will but mind-numbingly stupid offering.”

    Have we told you recently how much we, each and every one of us, love your comments?

    1. SHG Post author

      I should make everybody who wants to comment sit on my side of the computer for a day and see what I see. And for winning the pie eating contest, I get more pie. And the joy of paying so you have stuff to read and bandwidth to tell me what an asshole I am. Of all the stupidity here, nothing is more flagrant than the fact that I come back for more everyday.

  2. F5

    *And no, this is not an invitation for you to offer your well-intended but clueless, simplistic or utterly idiotic ideas as to what it may be or how it might be fixed.

    Since you didn’t mention which plug-in you use for auto tweeting, any advice given would have to be clueless.

    1. SHG Post author

      What are the chances that non-devs who wouldn’t know a plugin if it bit them in the ass would try to be helpful by telling me what they feel it could be? Shockingly, cluelessness has never stopped anyone from offering their most helpful thoughts.

      The auto twit is WordTwit, same dev as WPTouch. My latest suspicion is that the update created an incompatibility with Jetpack, as there are tons of people at Jetpack with the same issues, and Jetpack handles pieces of this problem. Or maybe not.

      1. dm

        “Non-devs,” “plugin,” “Jetpack.”
        I don’t know what any of these words mean, but have you tried rebooting?

  3. losingtrader

    That, kids, is technology. And that, kids, is why you don’t bet your life on it working,

    Try not to think about that when the plane you are flying in is on “autoland” and is so low to the ground the pilots likely couldn’t stop redundant system failures from killing you.

    1. SHG Post author

      I’m hearing from very helpful young people who are probably very knowledgeable about all this and unhesitatingly accept the concept of complete failure as normal and inevitable. We are doomed.

        1. SHG Post author

          Doomed. Do you think its limited to blogging platforms or smartphones? Back then, there weren’t many hi-tech devices. Now everything is. Doomed.

          1. Adam

            “Internet of Things” security (or lack thereof) is the impending tidal wave of doom all the experts can agree on.

            Failure isn’t normal, inevitable (except in the longest of timescales), etc, it’s merely a product of incomplete testing and verification.

            The good news is that, mostly, things like Autopilots, Self-Driving cars, etc, have enough regulatory burden and financial risk that they are audited for correctness and security pretty thoroughly. WordTwit (and all their other products) is the product of 2.5 dudes working out of an open plan loft office in Ontario. They’ll look for bugs, but they’re not doing the kind of testing JPL does. Nor should they; if they did, they’d probably be out of business. That kind of testing is expensive and time-consuming and only worth it when the potential lawsuit costs more than the testing.

            This lackadaisical approach to testing and correctness is why iPhones cost $600 and not $2000.

            1. SHG Post author

              Failure isn’t normal, inevitable (except in the longest of timescales), etc, it’s merely a product of incomplete testing and verification.

              Merely.

          2. Derek Ramsey

            Nobody, not least the manufacturers and developers, just don’t care much if it breaks. Except for the Therac, when the software breaks you don’t usually get life plus cancer.

            At least there are other industries, like the one I am in, that care a bit more about software quality. We have robust testing, redundancy, backups, and redundancy. But nothing is perfect.

            One way or the other we are doomed to the zombie apocalypse or the AI apocalypse. So get a tinfoil hat and a shelter full of guns and food.

  4. Adam

    For what it’s worth, RSS is still chugging away just fine, and I never noticed an interruption.

    Web 2.0 was a mistake.

  5. Ted Kelly

    Glad to know I wasn’t tossed from the peanut gallery. I tried to subscribe again but a page opens informing me that “the email address has opted out of subscription emails.”
    Have you tried reversing the polarity of the plugin when you plug it in?

  6. Jake DiMare

    “And no, there’s no undoing the updates. It doesn’t work that way.”

    Yes, it does work that way, it takes 10 minutes to roll back a plugin update that doesn’t work. You’re mewling in public about one of the most pedestrian web admin problems imaginable.

    You’ve got my email.

    1. SHG Post author

      Sit down. I have something to tell you and it’s going to make you sad. We’re not all web admins. We don’t even give a shit about being web admins. We don’t even give a shit about not being web admins. Some of us are lawyers. We don’t tell you to write your own motions. Don’t tell us to play web admins whenever you guys screw up.

      I’ve already been give instructions about deleting plugins, uploading old versions and reinstalling. But I need a button to push, not a day of playing babycoder to learn how to do it, do it, and find out later whether the incompatibility problems, etc., will be fixed. It’s too bad briliant coders don’t figure out what sort of havoc they’re going to wreak before they put out an update, but they have all the answers after they’ve screwed things up.

      1. Jake DiMare

        “But I need a button to push, not a day of playing babycoder to learn how to do it, do it, and find out later whether the incompatibility problems, etc., will be fixed. ”

        This button exists. It’s the submit button on a form. On the other end of the form there are these magical wizards who know incantations and spells and can make all these headaches disappear. You’ll get it, it’s kind of like the legal industry.

        Your problem isn’t the whosie whatsie inside the plugin, your problem is either you didn’t know such wizards exist or you don’t want to pay for one. Now you know they exist. I know lots of wizards. Inbox me if you’d like to go back to thinking about the law full time.

        1. SHG Post author

          You assume too much. In fact, I know of the magic button. I hit the magic button. I got an answer. An update. A fix. It didn’t work. Now the magicians are working on it some more, or so they tell me. I’m waiting for them to inbox me again when they figure out why their better whosie whatsie inside the plugin didn’t do it’s magic.

          They apologize for the inconvenience.

          1. Jake DiMare

            Yeah, I read the post. You’re referring to the creators of the plugin. Perhaps you have a legal problem then…Forgot to put a service level agreement in the contract? Don’t worry…It’s a common mistake among laypeople.

            What’s that? You have no contract with the creators of WPTouch because you didn’t pay for it?? Oh well, maybe you selected an organization that has a stellar reputation for championing everything that goes wrong with their free software. Here, let me see…Oops…Darn it. Nevermind. 12 of 33 support threads on their support forum closed in the last 2 months. Not looking good Scott. An experienced, paid, web admin who has your best interests in mind would have checked that right after checking on version compatibility, before installing their plugin.

            1. SHG Post author

              Nope. You assumed again. I also asked the nice Jetpack folks. Still waiting for their response, though apparently they have an awful lot of people like me. Maybe they don’t know either. Maybe they don’t care. Beats me, but whatever it is, it’s not making even the paying users of their product any happier.

              But you missed another point (this is becoming a habit, Jake). It’s not that I’m too cheap to get an “experience, paid, web admin who has [my] best interests in mind.” It’s that I freely give you this blawg. How much I’m willing to go out of pocket so guys (like you) can come here and tell me what I should know and do is another matter. The content isn’t good enough? That’s as far as I’m willing to go (plus the hosting, of course).

              Newsflash: rumors of the vast wealth and prestige I gain from doing SJ are greatly exaggerated.

              Oh, and I have a dev who helps me, because he’s a nice guy who likes SJ. He tried to fix it. He couldn’t. He says you’re funny.

  7. Dragoness Eclectic

    I feel your pain. About the day this post went up, my e-mail finally worked again after being completely killed by an unwanted update by my ISP to change their webmail client from the one I liked to one I now cordially hate. Somehow they managed to screw up internal mail routing–and no one else really wants to read about this.

    I really hate it when something that has been working just fine for years gets changed to something broken that does less.

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