Minor Missives

Some of our eagle-eyed members noticed a slight discrepancy in the top ranked spots over the weekend. I've asked Jon if I can hire you as beta-testers!

Sadly, this was no nefarious plot to allow me to takeover Lawrence with my pittance of points, nor was it a virulent worm or virus attacking the site. The real story begins many moons ago… (get in the mood; imagine gathering round a campfire with bated breath!)

After we launched re-blogging, we noticed that points were being improperly awarded. We took down re-blogging to fix points. Case closed, or so we thought. But like the best laid plans of mice and men, our fix went slightly awry. Points were being awarded for re-blogging, but point totals weren't being updated. (ed: do you ever suspect all computers are secretly run by gremlins trying to make your life difficult?) Last night, we took the site down briefly to clean house and fix scoring for all users. During that process, the top ranked spots were regenerated with zero-point users at the top. Oops! Everything should be running normally now, but if you notice any more point-related weirdness, let me know in the comments.

ActiveRain takes security very seriously. Should the site ever be compromised by an outside entity (heaven forbid!), we have procedures in place for analyzing threats, notifying members, and restoring content. We want you to have a good time in the rain, not the hail.

Does anyone ever click on that tiny About link at the bottom of every page? I don't, and I almost missed my own promotion!

On August 8th, I threw aside my umbrella to completely immerse myself in the rain as the new VP of Product Development. It "only" took 15 days for me to blog about it – as you might've noticed, we've been in torrential-downpour-mode for the last few weeks!

I was an independent contractor for several years. The hours were great, the pay was fantastic, and I got to take epic 2 hours lunches. But nothing in life is more consistent than change, and that's what happened when I met the ActiveRain team and the incredibly supportive community. I knew that I couldn't be the "hired gun" anymore — I wanted to make a real difference, and now I've been afforded that opportunity.

I'm done patting myself on the back. After finishing dinner at a Chinese restaurant, my fortune cookie read "Exciting times ahead for ActiveRain". Fake story, but an honest sentiment. The next few months are going to be fun, and there's nowhere I'd rather be!

Late last night, the new [new] design for Localism went live. This is like the new Coke, only delicious, and with less rioting (we hope!)

The display of your ActiveRain posts in this new design has been an issue of contention for some. I'm here to explain the rules:

• The left column is 493 pixels wide. This is where your blog posts are displayed.
• The right column is 379 pixels wide. This is where your profile is displayed.
• Believe it (or not) — we employ some pretty fancy algorithms in an attempt to make everything fit and look "nice":
  • Images and embedded videos wider than 493 or 379 pixels (as the case may be) are automatically resized to fit
  • All images are displayed on their own "line" and left-aligned. We tried to allow for inline and floating images, but the resulting mess was too much to bear!
  • Tables are shrunk to fit in the columns, but this doesn't always work :)
  • Text size and font selection is regulated
  • JavaScript and excessive embedded CSS is verboten

Although we do our best to ensure your content looks great on Localism, we walk a very fine line. If your (admittedly lovely) custom HTML blog post is spilling outside the confines of its column, it'll be truncated. We apologize in advance!

What can I do? I'm scared/angry/depressed and I just want my content on Localism to look good! If you stick with the WYSIWYG editor, you'll be fine. If you decide to create a custom HTML post, avoid large tables with fixed widths.

I hope this brief explanation helps. If you spot a post on Localism that's been mangled, let me know in the comments.