Were open, but were in beta -- and that means there are some bugs. This page tells you what we already know about. Find something new? Then add it to this discussion!
89 Comments
89 Comments
89 Comments
Search Engine Land produces SMX, the Search Marketing Expo conference series. SMX events deliver the most comprehensive educational and networking experiences - whether you're just starting in search marketing or you're a seasoned expert.
Join us at an upcoming SMX event:
Learn more about search marketing with our free online webcasts and webinars from our sister site, Search Marketing Now. Upcoming online events include:
Comments
We know about these things: + IE7 Issues: The Inbox pop-up window might not close. This is a known issue with the software were using, and were trying for a fix. [FIXED] + Sphinn Button Doesnt Change: You cast a vote, the number updates, but the button still says Sphinn It until you reload the page. NOTE: The button does not control voting - you must click on the text that says "Sphinn It!" to vote. + Submit Button on Register Page is disabled on error (i.e. Passwords do not Match Clicked Try Again Unable to Submit). + Mistyping profile URL generates errors + Registration errors: *Parse error* might appear. Reload and youll be fine, until we fix it. And if you get sent back by the script to start again, the "Create user" button will go missing. + Cant Stalk Or Friend People With Punctuation In Their Names: No, you cant. Eventually, you will be able to. But for now, at registration users are requested not to use these characters in their usernames Now you know too! Got something different? Post below, and well update the list if we cant kill it immediately.
A couple of things I noticed: [FIXED] -The All Categories > Whats New list claims to have 2 pages, but when I try to go to the second page, it gives me a this is not the page you are looking for error. [FIXED] -If you navigate into a story from All Categories > Whats New, there doesnt seem to be a way to get back to that list except via the Back button, or by clicking on all Categories (which takes you to the Whats Hot page), then on Whats New again. -There arent enough stories that have been submitted about my cats. Can you look into that?
[FIXED] Now that you have enough users to build a page 2 the link is broke http://sphinn.com/network/page/2/
Ah, gray, as you see I mentioned that on the topics list too, but now I see we have both apparently just ignore whatever Danny writes, as he seems to have noted that as a bug. Heh.
[FIXED] Work Blog URL if you use a url like: http://www.seofox.com/blog it shows incorrectly in the profile page its displaying as http://http//www.seofox.com/blog however if you use a domain only it shows properly ie: http://www.semtutor.com/
[FIXED] Having an issue adding for SES San Jose. I think the links wrong on it, it keeps linking back to the sphinn.com homepage. BTW.. Im stalking you now vanessa :P
[FIXED] NEXT buttons not working well throughout the site. Expanded stories per above to 100 to tide us over. Graywolf, kicked network page to show 500 at once which I hope will get us through an hour or two. Actually, Id hope not :) [FIXED] Will see if theres a workaround for categories or better, just fix the broken nexting. [FIXED] Calendar area seems to be having all types of odd things -- not just wrong links but events pages not loading up right. Plus, wrong dates for PubCon. Will check.
[FIXED] Also character escaping on blog names is not being handled properly in profiles. IE: Personal Blog: Caydel\s Blog
Submit Button on Register Page is disabled on error i.e. Passwords do not Match Clicked Try Again Unable to Submit Browser: Firefox
[FIXED] Regarding my profile: On my personal blog, I have an apostrophe as in "Jason Bartholmes SEO Blog and it comes as the following: Jason Bartholme\\\\\\\s SEO Blog
Danny, neat site youve got here. I just need a few more hours in the day now! Anyway, just to add to the list of bugs, I see that some error pages arent being handled very gracefully. For example, I was trying to see if our friend Philipp Lenssen had a profile yet. Since I couldnt find anywhere to quickly search users, I just guessed the URL: http://sphinn.com/user/view/profile/philipplenssen Which returns a load of MySQL / PHP errors... :-S (BTW, I was getting the apostrophe error too. It seems to add another one every time you save the page.)
[Not a bug - see help file] Im adding friends left and right, but only 5 of them are on my FRIENDS list. Everyone is added to my PEOPLE IM STALKING list.
Also, on a users profile, can we get an ADD AS FRIEND link? (Maybe next to the STALK THIS PERSON link?) Or am I missing such a link? Only way I can see to find an ADD FRIEND button is to search by username first.
Matt, I think that they are people you are stalking unless they are also stalking you. If you stalk either other, you become friends. Its like a sweet romantic comedy with John Cusack or possibly Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, you know, now that Cusack is mostly doing horror movies.
Matt - adding friends cannot be done automatically - it has to be a reciprocal relationship. If you see someone is stalking you, from within your profile, select "add" and that person will now show up on your friends list (and vice versa - you stalk someone, they have to add you). I think Danny covered this in his help file but Id have to review it again. The language in the UI is a bit misleading though, so were cleaning that up.
[FIXED] Comment Counts are still off - I commented on your "Common Sense Rules" post (making 3 total comments) and it still reads 2 on the home page. Not a big deal at all really, but worth mentioning. Vanessa - seems I cant get away from Romantic Comedies. My wife loves them (as do most Im sure), but Id rather wait in the car :)
Thanks Vanessa and Michelle. :-) Michelle -- I did read the Help, but missed the detailed explanation of Friends vs Stalkers. What I read made it seem like two unrelated things. My bad.
I added the sphinn button over at the SEOrefugee blog but Id prefer it to open a new window rather than sending the user off (perhaps never to return). Can you make that happen. And, BTW, your own spell check should flag sphinn as a typo!
Great site Danny. Just signed up, and Im not able to edit my profile at present - created fine, but unable to update any of the details... Is it just me? or...
[FIXED] I clicked on the title from your topics list. After clicking "Sphinn it" nothing happened. I clicked on the Title to read the article then back to the story on Sphinn. Still the number of Shpinns was unchanged. Upon refreshing the page the following error... Parse error: parse error, unexpected $, expecting ) in /var/www/html/sp/sphinn.com/templates_c/c_ef20b2b5fff08f636a080a9108ff9329.php on line 136
Updated the list above. Thanks, everyone! Aside from that... "If you navigate into a story from All Categories > Whats New, there doesnt seem to be a way to get back to that list except via the Back button, or by clicking on all Categories (which takes you to the Whats Hot page), then on Whats New again." Yes, this is correct -- but its not a bug. I mean, how else would you get back? Me gets it not! LeighH & WesleyLong, can you both try again and if you still cant, leave another comment.
[FIXED] I was surprised to see that www hasnt been redirected to the non, which is what it appears you are using for canonical. Finally figured out that clicking the Sphinn logo/count next to the article just takes you to the article, put you have to actually click on the "Sphinn It!" text to, um, Sphinn it... but might just be me... its been a long week.
I had to register in IE, as I couldnt get the register and verify buttons to be clickable in Firefox.
Username I tried to enter (with an underscore), got an OK when I used the Verify key, but produced an error message when I registered.
PS... You mean, Im going to see my own name as "you" after I post? ;-)
[FIXED] The title of the Dannys Welcome post is clicking, oddly, to Barrys article on Google Acquires Postini, a Security Company, for $625 Million. Ooops. Strange.
Yep, look up at the list of known bugs. Discussion headline links currently are screwed up that way.
Sorry, Danny, my eye must have gone right over that when I first read the list. Thanks, and good luck with all the Mr. Fixit stuff you must be having to do right now. I am sincerely excited about this new site! Miriam
Related to the weird apostrophe thing, I cant seem to add friends who use a hyphen in their user name, SEO-Honolulu, for example. I like Matt Webb. I want to be friends with Matt Webb. But each time I try and friend him Sphinn yells at me. It hurts my feelings. It probably hurts Matts feelings too.
There are some odd formatting problems in FF 2.0: [FIXED] http://sphinn.com/live_published - page specific tabs and headings overwrite each other. [FIXED] http://sphinn.com/comments - Long names (like dannysullivan) overwrite the time column. However, I love the new site! Congratulations!!
Just tried replacing my profile picture, however the old image remains stubbornly in-place. Also, I clicked save by mistake instead of upload and got an error message "Only these file types are allowed : jpeg, gif, png" but it was located above your site header. EDIT: It appears that the image was in fact changed, but the new image was not displayed on the page. When I moved away from the page to my Info page the new image was displayed.
Sometimes when I click a headline, I get an error like this: Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in /var/www/html/sp/sphinn.com/templates_c/c_ef20b2b5fff08f636a080a9108ff9329.php on line 392 But then if I click back and on the headline again, its fine. Danny, but, but. See, Im skimming through the new list. I find something I want to read and click on it. But then I want an easy way to get back to the list. And the back button shouldnt really be the only way to easily do that (or you know, maybe it should). I guess Id like either the hot/new tabs not to disappear within a thread or Id like the tab for the one that you are currently in to still be there. Or a "back to x" link with "x" being where you came from. Or maybe having either a breadcrumb (I know you did away with those though) or some visual way in the current tabbing system to see exactly where you are (for instance, other > water cooler > whats new somehow highlighted when youre within a thread).
@0thelisa - thanks for reporting this - this is actually a new bug (wheee) @Red5 - known issue about the header on that one live page, thanks for the image upload error report @vanessa - known error re: the template cache. thats being seen in a variety of odd places; adding breadcrumb back to the story pages seems reasonable. bugs...why does it always have to be bugs....
Related to what Othelisa said about hyphens in usernames, the same seems to be true of periods in usernames.
so that means that I can have some friends now Michelle? ;) LOL if I need to change my name, please go ahead and feel free to drop the hyphen. I will alter my very identity just for some friends!
[FIXED] If you submit a story that has already been submitted, it gives you a warning that the url already exists and link to find the story on sphinn. This searches and for the story I submitted it wasnt listed in the results. It seems like it would be pretty easy to be able to just pull up the story so I can Sphinn It.
Just fyi, Ive been getting this error every so often today when I load the home page: Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in /var/www/html/sp/sphinn.com/templates_c/c_ef20b2b5fff08f636a080a9108ff9329.php on line 392
Yes, this is really starting to bother me too....no need to report any other errors like this one - even if the "on line..." changes - as this specific type is known and Im seeing them too (in a variety of places). Its on the hit list.
[FIXED] Im going to vote for this bug too: + Work Blog URL field on profile page might be adding http:// to URLs entered automatically
Hi Danny, I cant sphinn something no matter how many times I try. I try refreshing ... nothing. Ive even tried logging out, and back on with a different browser ... nothing. I want to spread my Sphinn love but ...
Im either implementing the sphinn button not quite right... or the sphinn button is not quite right. I put it on my post here: http://www.vanessafoxnude.com/2007/07/17/how-offline-businesses-can-improve-their-web-sites-at-least-according-to-me/ The simplier javascript for the button looks like it grabs the current URL, which means that it would grab the right one if the person were on the permalink page, but the wrong one (the domain only) if the person were on the home page). (Which logically is what happened with the first button I tried.) So, I went with this version of the code: submit_url = http://www.vanessafoxnude.com/2007/07/17/how-offline-businesses-can-improve-their-web-sites-at-least-according-to-me/; That works right if I visit the post on my home page after Ive sphunn the post. But if I visit the page and I havent sphunn the post, I still get the url of the current page (the home page, the category page), rather than what Ive specified as the submit url.
Hmm. So actually. If Im on the permalink page the button shows up with the # of spins. But if Im on the post on another page (like the home page), the button shows "sphinn this" instead and still grabs the current page url.
[FIXED] Unsphinn doesnt work, the unvote script doesnt change the counter and doesnt trigger an event on the live page. NOTE: this action will not trigger on the live page - not a bug. And by the way ... Im on your "friends" list but you appear on my "folks Im stalking" list. I cant figure out how to move you to my "friends" list :)
Vanessa, probably that`s a problem with your quoting. When you say print $variable; that ends up in print nil, and your browser sees that as a relative link to the current page. When you say echo "$variable"; or print $variable it should output the value of $variable, e.g. print "submit_url=$variable;"; or print "submit_url=" ."" .$variable .";"; should do the trick.
Hmm. Weird. I added you as a friend, which should take me off your stalking list right? And I wanted to mention that Sebastian helped me fix this problem offline. And by offline, I of course mean via IM. The code listed on the tools page that you copy and paste into your site uses single quotes for the URL, but WordPress seems to be mangling that, so when I switched the single quotes to double quotes, it worked fine!
Thanks Vanessa :) The problem with friends/stalkers appears with Danny. I stalked him when I joined, then he added me as friend, but hes still on my stalking list. Danny, the tools page needs an update telling that WordPress escapes the single quotes when one copies+pastes the JS code into a post and replaces the yourdomain.com example with the posts permalink. Or just switch the single quotes in the code provided there to double quotes.
Thanks for helping out Vanessa, Sebastian - I think I just might like user generated support as much as user generated content - or more actually :-) Ill update the tools page for WordPress users. Be sure to keep an eye out though - weve had some great Sphinn tools for WordPress developed by the community already, with more to come. And are updating the Tools page as they come online. Ill add the friends/stalking problem to the list. Is this something you both notice with all your contacts? Or just specific contacts?
Vanessa & Sebastian - Ive added both of you to my stalking list, but to try to recreate the behavior youre seeing, did so via different method for each. Please add me to your lists so that I can see if that kicks either or both of you to my friends list. Thanks!
Michelle, I added you as friend and that works. I dont think Vanessa has that problem, somehow different topics got mixed. 1. http://sphinn.com/story/124#c1123 The problem with friends/stalkers appears with Danny. I stalked him when I joined, then he added me as friend, but hes still on my stalking list and Im on his friends list. That happened a few days ago, perhaps youve fixed this bug already and there are just a few IDs left in the wrong attributes. You can check it with those two profiles and scan the database for other occurences of this pattern. 2. http://sphinn.com/story/124#c1083 Ive unsphunn http://sphinn.com/story/808 but that didnt work.
I never had a problem with that, Sebastian is right. I added you back, Michelle. Seemed to work fine. Tried to send you a message, but wasnt able to from your profile, only my friends list. (Known bug perhaps?) But then when I hit send, I got this: there was an error. error number 1 which was kind of poetic and lyrical, actually.
Thanks Vanessa and Sebastian - Ill get the cross linking sorted out for you, I think it is related to when you added Danny as we pretty much dumped the db, for the most part, after the closed beta. Please confirm your friends/stalkers/stalking is working fine now (with the exception of Danny in the list). V - I do like error no 1 - it is beautiful in its simplicity. but Im thinking perhaps of swapping that for a smileycon with a look of horror instead ;-) though I reckon, we should probably just sort out the errors...
My friend/stalker stuff seems to be working just fine. I can stalk all kinds of people! Speaking of that though, theres no way to tell if someone is stalking you unless you remember to go into your stalkers list and check. It might be nice to have an option to alert you so that you can see if you want to friend them or whatever.
Danny - the move of a post from youmoz to seomoz main blog means that your system hasnt picked up a dup submission - just thought that I would mention it. Cheers
Thanks Vanessa - thats a great suggestion. Well add it to the features wish list. Send an alert to your inbox (or SphInnbox anyone???) when someone stalks you. Oooohhh and perhaps call it an APB! Maybe issue a restraining order if youd like to block someone? Or this a bridge too far??
I had problems submitting an apparently fine URL. Sphinn said the URL was either malformed or blocked. Its documented here: http://blog.arhg.net/2007/07/blocked-or-bugs.html
Just confirming what I wrote re the Sphinn buttons not working. It isnt just that the button does not change. As I said the vote was not recorded in the Sphinn Live! when that was available and the votes have not been recorded in the Who Voted section. I tried both three times and have tried others and its not just buggy, it doesnt work.
Following up here as well: Barry and Miriam, The button/text does seem to be confusing for some users, as the two actually do separate things. The button links to the story page, and also displays the current vote count. The link below it is what allows users to Sphinn a story, and increase the vote count. Afer having sphunn a story, the text is grayed out, changes and is no longer actionable. The button shows an increased vote count, and is still clickable, to take users to the story page from one of the archive pages (Hot Topics, Whats New and Greatest Hits). What we are seeing with some users, and is a bug, is that the text below the button does not change unless the page is refreshed. Some users will then try clicking multiple times on the link (though the vote count does update right away) and will get an error warning them that theyve already voted. Its on our list to sort out.
[FIXED] A Sphinn submission link that has previously been submitted results in a page telling you that the story has been submitted, and a way to search. Unfortunately the way to search doesnt bring up the existing story. This is unnatural behaviour which makes most of the submission buttons or even a text link effectively useless unless they are using the official javascript code. It also breaks the bookmarklet option
Sphinn staff, Im with jeffquipp, Im unable to Sphinn any stories either in FF or in IE. Tried refershing, logging out, etc... and no dice. I had been using this as a way to track stories I wanted to read again, but now I cant. Any clues?
@Natasha - are you clicking on the text that says "Sphinn it!"? If you are clicking on the gear itself, it will not increase the vote. This issue does seem to be one that confuses some users, so its on my list to change sooner rather than later. Going forward, from the Sphinn site pages, clicking will be disabled on the button itself and the only clickable item will be the text. Hopefully, that will lessen the confusion for people. But to vote on a story - clicking on "Sphinn It!" should be working.
[FIXED] Had some general calendar bugs that I mentioned here: http://sphinn.com/story/1270 BUT then I found this article and it looks like youre on top of those, please disregard my comments. Thanks
Michelle, THANKS!!! I was clicking on the Gear itself... Ive been spoiled by Digg I guess into thinking that the gear is the click point... especially since the page reloads when you do. Thanks... Im now happily Sphinning away... and stalking you ;)
Hi, Ive no idea if this is a bug or not (it could be a feature). I had a story pulled for being too old just now, and the comments for it are still shown in http://sphinn.com/comments
Yeah, eventually you wont see comments like that. Right now, were leaving them visible as a way to kind of educate everyone.
[FIXED] Ive turned off comment voting because at least one person has down voted many comments, which by default makes them not visible. I think this was an accident, as covered here: http://sphinn.com/story/1558#c2463 I think well look to set the default for showing comments to be -1 or -2 votes, so that more accidents like this dont cause comments to go unseen. But I cant fix that tonight, so I just disabled voting as a stopgap.
Copied over from http://sphinn.com/story/1558 to keep comments in right thread... . A URL with a space in it... not sure you wanted to do that... http://sphinn.com/category/AllCategories/parent_name/All%20Categories . Another "bug" for you. Profiles and some other pages can be accessed both with or without a trailing "/" on the URL. I am guessing youll want to supress that source of potential Duplicate Content soon. Also, http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site:sphinn.com is interesting to watch from day to day, to see what gets picked up next. I guess youll be more interested in looking for inconsistencies as to which URLs are presented to search engines. :-)
[FIXED] All of my profile info has disappeared (the links to forums, social networking sites, etc.). Is this a known issue already?
@Vanessa - No, not a known issue at all. Has not been previously reported either. I took a look at a number of other user profiles, and everything is intact. Were you updating your info? Or did you just view your profile and see everything gone?
@Vanessa - Im going to assume you went to modify your profile and this happened, as it happened to me right now when I just went to modify mine to replicate what youre seeing. Thanks for reporting - this is new and possilby related to some upgrades done at the ISP this weekend. Looking into it getting it resolved.
[FIXED] The :: spinn live :: link in the green navbar is spelled spinn , not sphinn. Is this intentional or a typo?
@MattC - Nice catch. Just a typo. Fixed now!
[FIXED] "chrisbartow 24 days ago said: If you submit a story that has already been submitted, it gives you a warning that the url already exists and link to find the story on sphinn. This searches and for the story I submitted it wasnt listed in the results. Thats what I came here to say, but Chris already said it. It is a bummer when you want to vote on some story you found but you cant because it has already been submitted. But then the system wont tell you where to go to vote on it so...
Were working on improving the duplicate detection to help with this.
On my personal comments page, the page that lists all the threads that I have commented on, they show only in "reverse order of thread start date". I would like to also be able to sort that page by "reverse order of last comment date". Currently there is no easy way to see if an old topic has had more recent comments added to it. If that is too difficult, how about just changing the "20 days ago" tag (which is a note about how old the first post in the thread is) to show two things: the date of the first post and the date of the most recent comment. I can then at least scan the page and look at those dates. I was initially going to suggest that you highlight the thread in some way (some sort of "new post" marker) if there are extra comments since I last read that thread - but I realise that would involve a whole new database to record every post that every user reads and that it would probably NOT be feasible to do this.
Voted on a comment, got this: Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in /var/www/html/sp/sphinn.com/templates_c/c_ef20b2b5fff08f636a080a9108ff9329.php on line 138
Michelle, This morning I logged in and saw that I had Spunn a story I never Spunn... even odder is the message that I got: ********This is your first time viewing this topic.******** which would not have occured if I had Spunn the story. It doesnt even list me as a Sphinner for that topic... yet it is listed on my "Sphinns" page... any clues?
@Natasha - yes - check your inbox, Ill PM you.
Michelle, when I try to send a message I get the following error: "there was an error. Error number 1" Ill send you an email to webmaster @ this domain
All of a sudden I cant Sphinn a story! I click the button and it reloads as if Ive spunn it but the # never goes up. Plus, if I click "Who Spunn This" Im not listed. Happens in both IE and Firefox. I changed my ISP yesterday - is the new IP Im on blacklisted, or is it a Sphinn prob?
Dont click the button. Click the text. Fooled me for a while too.
[FIXED] Picasa Profile Name and URL in Sphinn Profile is saved, but not shown in profile page. The view profile page does not seem to check or read properly the Picasa information. Flickr works of course, the place where I dont have a pro account ... Its because it is Google, isnt it? :) ... just kidding.
@g1smd - No, thats not it. Cant Sphinn. Could before. :-(
Intermittent error when trying to submit new News articles: Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in /var/www/html/sp/sphinn.com/templates_c/c_ef20b2b5fff08f636a080a9108ff9329.php on line 392 Click back and retry and it works.
When ever I try to submit anything I get this message: "Fatal error: Call to undefined function: logspam() in /var/www/html/sp/sphinn.com/libs/link.php on line 875" Could you please fix it! It says "logspam" but I am not spammng! thanks
Can my username be reset w/o the punctuation in it? I have registered as "gallucci.net". Can it be reset to "galluccinet" w/o losing my history? -giovanni TheAgencyBlog.com
When I was signing up, I had though that I was doing something wrong since the sign up button wasnt becoming active. However, when I clicked verify next to the username field, it worked. How about putting something there to say that you have to click on Verify to sign up? thanks ;)
Since a few days ago, comments have started losing formating when I hit submit (e.g. multiple paragraphs would merge into one big paragraph), I suppose due to comments being HTML-enabled. Is there a help file I can read to help me clean up my comments?
Some comments about HTML formatting and the associated bugs and issues is over there: http://sphinn.com/story/6529
Thread now closed as fresh thread here replaces it:http://sphinn.com/story/6814