Uh Oh...Something's Changed...

SamirD

I woke up this morning after a late night shooting to check on my uploads and prepare for a very busy weekend of shooting to find some new SM features and that my customization for my homepage when not logged in has changed. :cry

It took me forever to get it to work the way I wanted before, so if I could get some direction as to what has changed on the SM side, I might be able to get it back to the way it was in the next few hours. If not, I won't be able to mess with it for the next 2 weeks. :cry

Any assistance appreciated.

SamirD

Oh, I forgot to give my homepage: http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com.

It used to look similar to this: http://www.huntsvillecarscene.com/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=1858

ellepixels

SamirD wrote:

Oh, I forgot to give my homepage: http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com.

It used to look similar to this: http://www.huntsvillecarscene.com/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=1858

Samir, I think I saw something about changes on wesbites....
check out this link,
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=34318

hope this is what you were looking for....

SamirD

Thank you. : That thread had some good information in it.

Now I know why it changed. All I need to know is what exactly changed and I'll have enough information to try to do a quick fix. I've got events to cover starting in 4 hours. :uhoh And they won't stop until Sunday evening...

ivar

SamirD wrote:

Thank you. : That thread had some good information in it.

Now I know why it changed. All I need to know is what exactly changed and I'll have enough information to try to do a quick fix. I've got events to cover starting in 4 hours. :uhoh And they won't stop until Sunday evening...

I'm not sure i understand what's going on, but i get linked to a calendar if i click on the links you provided in your first post.

the second link takes me to a page that says "Invalid Event specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the webmaster"

So, i am not really sure what i am looking at, nor what it is supposed to be?

SamirD

ivar wrote:

I'm not sure i understand what's going on, but i get linked to a calendar if i click on the links you provided in your first post.

the second link takes me to a page that says "Invalid Event specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the webmaster"

So, i am not really sure what i am looking at, nor what it is supposed to be?

I guess I should've explained a bit more. :uhoh

The "invalid" box in the second link used to be in between the header and footer of the first link. It's disappeared because something changed, but I don't know exactly what. :cry

3.5 hours left for me to fix it. :cry

ivar

SamirD wrote:

I guess I should've explained a bit more. :uhoh

The "invalid" box in the second link used to be in between the header and footer of the first link. It's disappeared because something changed, but I don't know exactly what. :cry

3.5 hours left for me to fix it. :cry

Okay, starting to understand more....


where are your smugmug photos supposed to be? in which of the pages? between where and where?

ivar

ivar wrote:

Okay, starting to understand more....


where are your smugmug photos supposed to be? in which of the pages? between where and where?

The first page i am guessing. The page is a nophotos page, it is linked to a gallery/category that has no photos.
Did you make all the galleries private?

what's your smugmug address?

SamirD

ivar wrote:

Okay, starting to understand more....


where are your smugmug photos supposed to be? in which of the pages? between where and where?

I really need to explain myself more. I bet you're like .

All of my galleries are private. All pictures are for Huntsville Car Scene.com, but I don't want them accessing them without going to HCS.com. The link to the gallery can be found on HCS, but I don't want visitors to know they are leaving HCS, so I customized SM to look like HCS. It was really hard too!

So when someone tries to go directly to my SM page, I want the same error msg that you'll get on HCS for an invalid event. So I hard coded it.

And that's the way everything was working until the most recent SM change. I really wish I had at least a 12 hour warning. :cry I could've prepared better.

3 hrs to fix this before a weekend of event coverage...:cry

ivar

SamirD wrote:

I really need to explain myself more. I bet you're like .

All of my galleries are private. All pictures are for Huntsville Car Scene.com, but I don't want them accessing them without going to HCS.com. The link to the gallery can be found on HCS, but I don't want visitors to know they are leaving HCS, so I customized SM to look like HCS. It was really hard too!

So when someone tries to go directly to my SM page, I want the same error msg that you'll get on HCS for an invalid event. So I hard coded it.

And that's the way everything was working until the most recent SM change. I really wish I had at least a 12 hour warning. :cry I could've prepared better.

3 hrs to fix this before a weekend of event coverage...:cry

well, if they are private, they will never show up on the homepage (nickname.smugmug.com) whether they get there direct, or get linked through from another website. You could link them to a category (ie nickname.smugmug.com/cars ) and they will show up. Of course, you would have to have all the appropriate galleries in that category

Right now, as far as i can tell, you are linkng directly to your smugmug homepage, correct?

ivar

Allright, i just don't get it i think. I just went to the huntsvillecarscene.com page, looked for a link to your smugmug page, clicked on it, and it worked fine.... Got into your smugmug page, into the appropriate gallery.


I'm still Maybe i'm just a dumb foreigner, but can you please, one more time tell me exactly what it is not doing, or what it should be doing?

SamirD

ivar wrote:

Allright, i just don't get it i think. I just went to the huntsvillecarscene.com page, looked for a link to your smugmug page, clicked on it, and it worked fine.... Got into your smugmug page, into the appropriate gallery.


I'm still <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/headscratch.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" > Maybe i'm just a dumb foreigner, but can you please, one more time tell me exactly what it is not doing, or what it should be doing?

Thank you for your persistance! I'm sure this is very confusing to anyone other than myself. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/rolleyes1.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

Any of the links directly to galleries work the way they used to--that part is fine, so the SM didn't break anything critical. But if someone decided to change the url to go directly to newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com, then they will not see the "invalid" message you get in the second link above. It used to be customized to do that so that people cannot directly go to SM and bypass HCS.

But now, the "invalid" message doesn't come up anymore due to a change at SM. But without knowing what changed recently at SM, I'd have to completely redo the customization for the message again.

I'm hoping to find what the exact change was at SM, so I can just do a quick fix without having to completely redo the customization to get the message. And I have <2hrs to try to do it...:uhoh

ivar

SamirD wrote:

Thank you for your persistance! I'm sure this is very confusing to anyone other than myself. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/rolleyes1.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

Any of the links directly to galleries work the way they used to--that part is fine, so the SM didn't break anything critical. But if someone decided to change the url to go directly to newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com, then they will not see the "invalid" message you get in the second link above. It used to be customized to do that so that people cannot directly go to SM and bypass HCS.

But now, the "invalid" message doesn't come up anymore due to a change at SM. But without knowing what changed recently at SM, I'd have to completely redo the customization for the message again.

I'm hoping to find what the exact change was at SM, so I can just do a quick fix without having to completely redo the customization to get the message. And I have <2hrs to try to do it...:uhoh

Okay, well, first of all, I'm glad i can say i understand your problem now

don't worry too much about the <2hrs, people can still see the photos, and that is by far the most important part <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

Secondly, the coded message. I don't know what happened. I looked at your code, and the message simply isn't there. I don't really know what happened, whether it was smugmug, or you or someone else accidentaly took out that part of your code, but the end result is the same, it is not there.

From where i am sitting, i can only see one option, and that is to rewrite the code, if you haven't saved it somewhere else.

Sorry i can't be of more assistance.

SamirD

ivar wrote:

Okay, well, first of all, I'm glad i can say i understand your problem now

don't worry too much about the <2hrs, people can still see the photos, and that is by far the most important part <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

Secondly, the coded message. I don't know what happened. I looked at your code, and the message simply isn't there. I don't really know what happened, whether it was smugmug, or you or someone else accidentaly took out that part of your code, but the end result is the same, it is not there.

From where i am sitting, i can only see one option, and that is to rewrite the code, if you haven't saved it somewhere else.

Sorry i can't be of more assistance.

You know, you're right. I thought it was a coding change, but it looks like my bio got erased (which is where the code was). And the worst part is I don't think I have a easy to cut and paste copy lying around. :cry

This really sucks. It's one thing to have a change affect your customization. It's another thing to have something erase it completely. Makes me wonder about my pictures too.

Hopefully someone from SM will chime in here and be able to retrieve the customization from a backup somewhere.

Otherwise, I'm going to have to reinvent the wheel and spend another week redoing this customization...grrr...<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/umph.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" > And a week I don't have. Dammit, this is the last thing I needed right now. :cry

Thank you VERY much for your help. I would've never thought the customization got erased.

ivar

SamirD wrote:

You know, you're right. I thought it was a coding change, but it looks like my bio got erased (which is where the code was). And the worst part is I don't think I have a easy to cut and paste copy lying around. :cry

This really sucks. It's one thing to have a change affect your customization. It's another thing to have something erase it completely. Makes me wonder about my pictures too.

Hopefully someone from SM will chime in here and be able to retrieve the customization from a backup somewhere.

Otherwise, I'm going to have to reinvent the wheel and spend another week redoing this customization...grrr...<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/umph.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" > And a week I don't have. Dammit, this is the last thing I needed right now. :cry

Thank you VERY much for your help. I would've never thought the customization got erased.

Well, it's a lesson learned for the next time, ALWAYS back up everything you have, i don't even want to think about the amount of stuff i lost over the years, and had to do again because i didn't back it up :cry Hence now, i back up everything in a manner that would make national security agencies proud

One reason why it could have dissapeared from your bioBox, is when you forget to start it all with < html> and end it with < /html> don't forget to put those in <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

SamirD

Well, I quickly looked at my bio and found all the code there safe and sound. So for whatever reason it isn't appearing on the home, it is related to the SM change and not because it's not there. :

I'll probably just move that bit of code into the header or footer later. I don't think I have much of choice but to play around with the customization again and figure out what changed. :cry

They say the only thing that is constant is change--and nothing could be more true about SM. I've never seen so much evolution on a service, but it's a double-edged sword since many of those changes can also break existing things.

SamirD

ivar wrote:

Well, it's a lesson learned for the next time, ALWAYS back up everything you have, i don't even want to think about the amount of stuff i lost over the years, and had to do again because i didn't back it up :cry

One reason why it could have dissapeared from your bioBox, is when you forget to start it all with < html> and end it with < /html> don't forget to put those in <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

I'm pretty particular on backups and more backups, especially when I've spent any amount of time on something. I actually have my pictures mirrored on 4 different sets of external hard drives. I even have a SCSI RAID 5 storage sub-system in one of my desktops. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/eek7.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

But even so, we're all human. I recently discovered I erased a bunch of 1997 originals without backing them up. :cry I guess the customization is another time I slipped up.

But the good thing is that it's not gone. I'll have to go over it later and see what happenned. 1:20 to events, and I still have to run an errand on the other side of town.