Apparently, there is no clean path to get from the old version to the new version with the comments template intact. The new version of MT doesn’t allow pop-up comments–you have to go to the individual entry page. So I decided that I’d just start with a fresh set of templates that work in the new software, and gradually restore the look of the page. At least we’ll be functional. Now that I have a clean setup, the first thing I’ll do is get comments working properly again, then I’ll start reprettifying the site.

This is a test post…

[Update an hour or so later]

OK, I’m in MT 4.0, but having problems. Still no comments showing up, and I can see that they’ve changed their template comment tags again (no mention about this in the upgrade instructions), so I’m glad that I didn’t waste my time trying to fix it in 3.35. More seriously, the script is crashing when I publish with no helpful messages, though it does seem to publish, so I’m going to have to dig through the server logs. I’m not very comfortable moving forward until I understand/fix that problem. If there are any MT gurus out there, I’d appreciate an email.

[Late morning update]

OK, I’ve got a semi-serious problem. When it updated my data bases, it made me an administrator for the blog, for not for the MT installation itself (even though I was previously). Comments are disabled at the system level, and I don’t have permission to go in and change this. Does anyone know how to hack the installation on the server to change my MT permissions? I’m thinking that maybe if I go in and modify the database directly, but I’ll probably have to delve pretty deeply into the MT docs (or even look at the code) to figure out how to do this.

[Update early afternoon]

Well, I made myself a superuser again by poking around in the data base, and I updated the global permissions. Supposedly now, comments are allowed. But the template continues to refuse to display them. The MT documentation is decidedly unhelpful. I’ll have to try to find some working examples and see what I’m doing wrong. So comments will still be unavailable, for now. But I’m going to resume blogging, because there’s lots of news out there.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Well, at least I found a relevant manual page, with an example. Hopefully this will get comments on the way to wellville.

I’ve done an upgrade, but there are some issues, as you can see. There are no comments.

I don’t think that the comments have been lost, and my data bases are backed up, but I may have to tinker with templates to get things working again.

[Update a while later]

OK, I’ve got the templates to display the comment field, but it’s still not showing the comments. As I said, I’m sure I haven’t lost them, and I can reupload them if necessary, but I may not get them viewable until tomorrow. And I’m only halfway through the upgrade (it’s a two-step process to get from MT 2.66 to MT 4.0). You can comment if you want, but it won’t show up until I fix this problem, whatever it is.

[Update a minute later]

OK, I know the comments exist, because I can see them from my control panel for each post. I just have to figure out what type of incantations I have to perform to make them actually display on the blog.

[Morning update]

I’ve decided that, if I have to rework templates and debug anyway, I might as well go all the way to the 4.0 upgrade first, to spare myself potentially having to do it twice. Hopefully I’ll be through this fresh hell sometime today.

You probably figured this out from my last couple postings, but we’re safely back home. We overslept this morning, and almost missed our flight, but made it in the end. And TSA isn’t any better. But at least they have a sense of humor about it: “This week, lipstick is classified as a solid. We don’t know what it will be next week, but this week, it doesn’t have to go in the plastic bag.”

Busy packing, and heading off to St. Louis tonight, to visit a few more people, then an 8:15 AM flight from there in the morning. Probably no more posting until tomorrow afternoon, if then.

Just in case anyone wondered, I was traveling yesterday. We’re in Columbia Missouri, the Ann Arbor of…errrrr…Missouri, visiting Patricia’s relatives. Posting will not be non-existent, but perhaps light, due to ongoing work load and celebratory Christm…holiday activities. Hope you’re having a good one as well, so far.

OK, is it just me? Even after fixing my Amazon search problem by moving it to the center column, it is still not showing up in Firefox in Fedora. Can anyone else running that browser/OS confirm the same problem? If my computer is the only one in the world that doesn’t see it, I can deal with it, but I’d hate to think that a lot of my readers aren’t.

I just accidentally munged my archive pages. I’ll try to figure it out, but I may have to await my webmaster.

Anyway, I’ve given up on putting the search tool in the sidebar, since it insists on being 180p wide, and I don’t want to do a site redesign for it right now, so it’s going in the top.

For those planning to shop at Amazon, if you use the search bar, I’ll get a cut. It’s a way of supporting the site by doing something you were going to do anyway. And tomorrow’s the last day for Super Saver shipping before Christmas. And thanks in advance for anyone who does!

I want to add an Amazon search button to my template, and I have (right below the Amazon Honor System box to the left). But it doesn’t show up, as it does in this post. Can anyone take a look at the source and tell me why?

[Update]

Oh, this is weird. Not only does it not show up in the sidebar, but when it shows up in this post, it doesn’t show as a searchbox–it comes in as Jonah’s new book. When I did “Post Preview” it was fine, but something strange is going on here when it actually posts to the page.

We’re still tweaking permissions and cgi access on the new server, so you may occasionally get errors when attempting to comment. I hope we’ve got it straightened out now, but if not, that’s the problem.