Welcome to the new, improved We Hunted the Mammoth!
We’ve moved from WordPress.com and replaced the old WordPress theme with a streamlined custom theme. And we’ve been able to implement a number of long-requested features that will make navigation easier and commenting more pleasant. In related news, the Blockquote Monster has resigned to spend more time with his family.
Moving a blog with 2471 posts and 573,557 comments (yes, really) to a new server is a messy job. We were offline for longer than we expected while we tried to get all the old content up. And we’re still sorting through issues with plugins and widgets and so on. If you notice some weirdness going on please let me know in the comments below. Or send me an email.
And let me know what you think of the new features.
HUGE HUGE HUGE thanks to Tracy Bradley, who handled the redesign and the big messy move and dealt with all the technical glitches that came up. For free. Without her help the new site would look crappy and not work and my head would have exploded from frustration about a dozen times. Hire her for stuff!
Seconded! 😀
…the original Star Wars didn’t. Have. Women?
Thank you for that laugh, I’m on the tail end of over an hour of frustrating I. Hate. Everything. So yeah, Princess Leia not existing is a lovely change!
I think I ay have to be ultra conservative here.
I’m so far not happy about the move from wordpress
I consume most (nearly all) written material on my phone. It’s become a cross between a magazine, newspaper and book for me.
As such the wordpress mobile app fulfilled my personal needs for WHTM, enabling me to read David’s content and then comment and become involved in the WHTM community.
Opening up WHTM in chrome on android now, I’m presented with lots of choss, sidebars and related posts.
I am fully aware that as the producer, David requires a “better” platform then wordpress. As well as many other features to spare his time.
Is there a mobile content app related to the primary web delivery platform that performs “an as” replacement for the wordpress app for this particular platform, if not is their a third party alternative.
It’s a bit of a shock of the new for me. Actually, shock of the old, this looks like a retrograde step to me as the site’s performance and behaviour (Not the look or content) is a bit 2010.
Is anybody else getting what seems like massive text size? Everything just seems overtly large… (insert joke related to penis-size post)
And, it’s late so I didn’t read the comments, but do we reply directly to people or do we just post new comments?
I will also admit I will miss the Blockquote Mammoth (mainly because I never got blockquoted) and all the wonderful responses it spawned. I hope the BQ Mammoth enjoys a wonderful retirement with the grandbaby mammoths.
Likewise.
@PI
Hah, I post around CFH sometimes. Great site, great example of “MRAs will swarm any comment section on any topic no matter how irrelevant.” =P
@otherwise
I keep getting caught in redirection loops – is the new DNS stuff still propagating or is that a bug?
Lots to like about the new design, but like Ace, I’m finding the text really large on my (Nexus) phone. One short comment fits on the screen, whereas in the old design I might see two or three. It’s going to make it really hard to scan through comment threads…
Commenting to 1) escape moderation limbo; 2) ask if the “reply” function actually leads to nested comments or not. I’m not seeing any nesting, so I wanted to ask if it was an “It doesn’t work like that” issue, or an “It just doesn’t work” issue, or an “It works, but we don’t want to use it” issue.
[ed: Also, edits. Whee!]
Last thing before bed — can you put the “top posts” thing back in the sidebar? It was really useful for following semi-popular threads that weren’t still in “recent posts” nor popular enough to reliably stay in “recent comments”.
Also, you lost the “contact the mods” but I think you lost the mods themselves awhile ago? Or did you get new ones while I was away?
Last last thing — it’s not logging me in, but it is auto filling the name and email fields, so this is just an oddity to add to your list (fix 1, find 3 more? That was my first month of running a entire WP site solo)
It works, we just aren’t really using it, seems to be more out of habit than any rule though?
Like the new layout, the possibility to format comments more easily, and an edit/correction time window.
So – for understanding. No posting using twitter/other id’s, so avatars cannot be carried from there?
No local accounts
Avatars can be applied from a wordpress account. I have a wordpress account (dormant). But how do I associate my wordpress account with a comment here – via the email address?
Finally – is there a way to find previous comment I’ve made. (Not specific to the new layout, I couldn’t find how to do that from the old layout either)
Thanks.
EDIT – just read up on Gravitar. Will try that.
The nested replies are noticeable by the smaller font, and if you look carefully, a pixel indentation. Meanwhile, in my text browser (and maybe other things that don’t make much effort with graphical layout), they show up as typical <li> indenting, which is much easier to spot.
Cool – it works.
Ahhhh, I had wondered about the text size difference, and had completely overlooked the pixel. Thanks!
Do images still embed? One of the things I like about the culture here is the use of pictures to communicate in ways that words can’t.
Testing, testing.
http://www.westerngazette.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276414/Article/images/20964846/6018239-large.jpg
EDIT: It seems that images no longer embed. David, is that intentional?
Ooh, I’m looking forward to trying out these new bold, italic and
buttons.
It sure saves time from having to type the html commands manually. 😀
Here, have a kitten:
Can we use embedded links, too? I’m testing to see if that works…
Everything looks kind of… big to me, as well, but that’s hardly here or there. 🙂 Yay, Mammoth 2.0.
Oh, my first link didn’t work, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to fix it using the “edit” view?
I’ll get used to it. The reply function is bound to come in real handy, thanks for adding that feature! 😀
LOOK AT MY NYM IT’S HUGE.
Wait, wait, there are nested comments? 🙁
That’s going to make it hard to keep up with active threads.
Welcome back, David. I really like some of the functionality of the site.
Now, if someone could be ever so kind to instruct me as to how I get my gravatar to work, I would be most grateful.
Alas, I never attempted to blockquote and never got mammothed.
I suddenly regret missing my chance to have this iconic experience before the blockquote mammoth got hunted to extinction.
^.^
That said, exciting! Wooo! A bold new era of internet-awfulness-documentation!
I get seriously grossed out looking at the faces of horrible people (like Matt Forney), so to protect my sanity, I try to use AdBlock to selectively block any images featuring said horrible people. But when I right click most images on this new site, I no longer get an option to add them to my block list. Any chance you could fix that? Especially now that such images are also showing up in the otherwise lovely random post sidebar?
I’m on a desktop and the text font is a bit larger than before but not overly large like some are describing. If those people are all using mobile devices, it must be a CSS thing.
I don’t care for the nesting. Like POM said, it’ll make it hard to keep up with busy threads. That kind of thing also hurts the conversational flow IMO. Instead of it being one conversation that evolves naturally, there’s danger of people feeling like they have to locate a thread that’s on a particular topic and stick to said topic.
If we’re not going to be using/paying attention to the nested replies, then they provide another opportunity for necro trolls: Just like the droppings left at the end of an old post, there could be a comment buried on page 1 where it stays stinking the place up and the active posters will miss it.