FIXING SOME ERRORS AND BUGS - TIMEOUT ISSUES
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From: Bruce Schuman
Date: Monday, December 22, 2008, 7:55 AM
Subject: Fixing some errors and bugs - timeout issues
ID: 266294

Dear -- good morning.

Thank you for this clear message.  I appreciate the precision.

Let me just -- go through a few things in response.  It's Monday, a few days have passed.  Let me see if I can get us in a little better focus here...

1. You were quite right, there was a critical flaw in that "post a blog comment" feature.  I tried to re-create that error, and was unable to do so -- until I let the process sit untouched for more than 20 minutes, and then clicked the "post" button.   This flaw did cause an instant timeout of the login security and blew away the message.  That's unfortunate and frustrating, and has to be fixed immediately.
2. These timeout issues were a bit of a bane on the LightPages site.  They were hard to identify, and did occur, as it took us quite a while to discover, when posting a bulletin board message in "reply" mode -- but not when posting a new message.  LightPages login runs on a session variable that will time out in twenty minutes, and must be refreshed automatically if it has timed out.  That refresh process requires that the logic flow be correctly sequenced, or the timeout will occur, the process will be lost, and THEN the user recognition process kicks in.  That is what was happening when you posted that comment.
3. When I discovered that, I did fix it immediately.
4. That timeout problem in the bulletin board reply process was fixed a month or so ago, but I understand if there is some residual mistrust and frustration.  It's hard to know all these things, and when a writer is investing time into an online platform, it has to be stable and trustworthy.  We have built many of these systems, and they work.  There are at least 200,000 email messages in online database systems I have built.
5. After receiving your email, I got up early that morning, and ran detailed tests on these timeout problems.  I carefully tested each of these features -- post new blog message, post blog comment, post new bulletin board message, post bulletin board reply -- they all worked fine after being left alone for long periods of time.  Today, this morning, I am pretty sure they are fixed.  We are doing so much development, I can't absolutely swear that these functions are perfect, and there are some unpredictable elements still in the air, but I am confident enough myself, as a writer making the same kind of investment, to trust these functions.  I have been using LightPages a lot lately, and it is working great for me.
6. The "Rich Text" editor is a high-strung and powerful function -- but as far I can tell, it does not work correctly for any other browser besides Internet Explorer.  There may be a fix or setting for that in the configuration of its set-up.  When I get a chance to look at that, I will see if I can get it to work on multiple browsers.  If that doesn't work, I will put some controls on the post functions that do not display this editor to any browsers besides IE.
7. I have been doing professional-grade programming on systems like this for a long time.  These systems have to be stable -- and they are.  We built a commercial database system for a real-estate company that grew from 4 employees to 25, because they could build their business on the tools and platform we created.  In the 9 years that system has been running, we never had a database crash, and no information was ever lost that we know about.  As far as anybody can tell, it is rock-solid.

Just so you know, the "comments" in the blog system are not saved as drafts.  We might want to talk a little bit more about the blog design, to get the features tuned a little better.  There are a lot of choices and options where somebody simply has to make a decision on what things should do and how they should work.  I did all of that myself, without any creative input from anywhere, so, feel free to make some suggestions.

I have been using the blog system, and so far, like it.  I've added a few simplifications to make it more intuitive, and I do continue to find minor issues in the logic.  But it has been working stable for me, and I am using the "import from the bulletin board" feature regularly.  I like it, it's powerful, fast, and elegant.  It's a writers tool, and for me, it's flexible, graceful, and intuitive.

From some points of view, LightPages is a simple and not highly sophisticated layout.  The programming and graphics are quite basic, and maybe some day, there will be a development team to raise some of these standards.

My objective is to build a fundamental and robust framework, that can support a very fluent and natural approach to this "border-crossing" design that seems to be emerging. 

I hope this is helpful, and again, I do apologize for the lost message.  I do know from experience how painful and annoying that can be.

- Bruce