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Sunday, 26 April 2009

Tech Help Needed

We are having two site issues that I cannot fix. I have searched high and low, I have left messages in help forums and I have asked all my tech friends (who admittedly are not au fait with Blogger html). The problem remains. The only suggestion I was offered required me to revert the template back to normal and manually add the widgets back in by hand, one by one. I was hoping for a simpler solution.

Can anyone help with the following problems?

Post Titles
If you load a post into its own page and click on “create a link” at the bottom of the page, the link that comes up in the "BlogThis!" window is now always just “MandM” and not the correct title of the post. However, the url it points to is the correct one for that post. Previously the correct title for that post would show up.

I suspect that this recent phenomena is related to this related problem. Take a look at our Popular Posts widget in our sidebar. This is supposed to display the 10 most clicked pages on MandM. One could be forgiven in thinking that it is malfunctioning and showing the homepage in all 10 slots - run your mouse over each link, it is showing the top 10 most clicked pages but like the BlogThis! program, for some reason it is not extracting the correct post titles, just the url for them. I cannot leave it looking like this, if I can't fix the problem causing it I will have to remove it from the page.

The same problem was evident in our tweetmeme gadget, if you wanted to tweet a post using it it would pull up the correct url but only the title of the blog - I have since gone back to Amanda's tweet this widget because it at least still manages to grab the right title even if it will only display on individual post pages and the text order that appears in Twitter is kind of silly.Can someone tell me what I need to look for in my html to fix this problem?

Missing Spaces from our Post Footer
Take a look at our post footers. The date and the labels are mashed up against the text and the labels no longer have spaces between them.

Posted by Matt atFriday, April 10, 2009 80 comments
Labels:,,

In the first line see how the ‘at’ and the ‘Friday’ have no space between them?

In the second line see how the first label, ‘Aspergers Syndrome’ has no space between the 'A' and the ‘Labels:’; see also that there are no spaces after the comma's separating the labels.

This is happening on every post now. Again, it didn't used to. We are entering spaces between the labels prior to posting but they show up like this.

How can I edit my html to put the spaces back in?

These problems are recent, they arose around the time I put Comment Luv into our site but they may have begun when I did something else too as the point I noticed them may not be the point they began. That said, I am all but certain the second problem arose when I installed Comment Luv as the other day I removed Comment Luv and the problem went, though the post title problem was still there, and then I put Comment Luv back in and the problem came back.

17 comments:

  1. I am a "tech guy" :P - but I most use wordpress. However, the symptoms suggest to me that there is a bug with the code of "comment luv" - you could contact the creator, or just stop using it till a new (and hopefully improved) version comes out.

    I am used to editing and tinkering with this kind of code though, and dont mind having a look.

    Recent blog post: blogroll updates

    ReplyDelete
  2. Contacting the creator is difficult. I managed to create a profile on their help forum, I had to create a hotmail account to do it because the confirmation email would not turn up to my regular email. I posted some questions around customising that weeks later no one had answered. Then I stupidly tried to change the email account my forum account was registered to to my normal email so I could receive notification of replies and it now will lot let me log in.

    I am reluctant to dump Comment Luv as I really like it, I mean have you seen the default blogger comments page? and I spent hours customising it to look seamless. In any regard, I did remove Comment Luv the other day but the only problem it fixed was the spaces issue. The post title issue remained.

    Anyway, if I could email you the html code and you could take a look that would be great.

    Thanks :-)



    Recent blog post: Antony Flew v William Lane Craig debate "Does God Exist?"

    ReplyDelete
  3. Stephanie @ Faithful Follower of ChristSunday, 26 April 2009 at 12:43:00 pm NZST

    Was there anything else that you changed? I am not having the same issues with my JS-Kit comments w/Comment Luv. The post title issues must all be related. It's got to be one thing that is making them all grab the wrong title.

    Recent blog post: Dave Ramsey's Town Hall For Hope Live Event--Fear is The Enemy of Hope

    ReplyDelete
  4. Stephanie @ Faithful Follower of ChristSunday, 26 April 2009 at 1:06:00 pm NZST

    I think I noticed something in your code. On my blog, if there is a post loaded in it's own page, there is only one title tag, and it has the post title in it. On your pages, there is two title tags, and the first one contains only "MandM." The second title tag contains the post title.

    Recent blog post: Dave Ramsey's Town Hall For Hope Live Event--Fear is The Enemy of Hope

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've just been looking, and while I can see the problem with the popular posts part, and with the spaces, I cant really see where title issue appears anywhere else.


    The rendered source code for this site is very confusing though. Each widget or plugin adds its own piece of code to the page... its no wonder things are not displaying correctly :P

    Lets see what we can do.

    Recent blog post: blogroll updates

    ReplyDelete
  6. I added some Mister Linky code... I can't really remember.

    It could be the template itself - it was a custom template that I then modified.

    Recent blog post: Antony Flew v William Lane Craig debate "Does God Exist?"

    ReplyDelete
  7. Well spotted! How do I find that and sort it in the template code?

    Recent blog post: Antony Flew v William Lane Craig debate "Does God Exist?"

    ReplyDelete
  8. You can see the problem in the BlogThis! window - you need a google account to see it.

    It also arose with the tweetmeme gadget but not the tweet this - different scripts though.


    Recent blog post: Antony Flew v William Lane Craig debate "Does God Exist?"

    ReplyDelete
  9. Stephanie @ Faithful Follower of ChristSunday, 26 April 2009 at 1:45:00 pm NZST

    Here is what my title tag looks like: <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>. I am thinking that you have one in addition to that, and that it is placed higher up in the code. If you can distinguish two separate ones, then delete the one that only says 'MandM'. Viewing the source code online is more difficult than viewing what shows up in the "Edit HTML" part in blogger. If you want, you could send me the text file of your template by email at savedbygraceeph289@gmail.com. It might be easier to see problems that way.

    Recent blog post: Dave Ramsey's Town Hall For Hope Live Event--Fear is The Enemy of Hope

    ReplyDelete
  10. Using control f and expanding the widgets, tt appears to only be in the code once but very high up, in the head section - is that where it should be?

    Recent blog post: Go on and Rubberneck

    ReplyDelete
  11. hehe, I do have a google account but I cant see "blogthis!". It could be because its sunday and I'm tired :P

    I would probably need to be able to see all the code, as the bit you sent wasnt entirely helpful. See my email though, I might be able to help is a better, albeit slower manner :)


    Recent blog post: blogroll updates

    ReplyDelete
  12. it should only appear in between the <title> </title> tags, and/or in any place that the title appears (sometimes in the header section). In your case just once in the title section appears to be it.

    Recent blog post: blogroll updates

    ReplyDelete
  13. Sign into blogger, then click on one of our blog titles so that it loads in its own page then scroll to the bottom on the comments and look for a heading that says "Links to this post" click on "create a link" and the BlogThis! window will pop up.

    Recent blog post: Go on and Rubberneck

    ReplyDelete
  14. ahh got it.. yep, its not reading the title right, its getting the blog title rather than the post title. Which means that something is either replacing the blog title with the blog name, or removing/truncating it so that there is only the blog name left.

    As I say, I probably need to be able to see all the code to find out where the problem is, to see whats calling where and so forth.

    Recent blog post: blogroll updates

    ReplyDelete
  15. Stephanie @ Faithful Follower of ChristSunday, 26 April 2009 at 2:45:00 pm NZST

    There are actually two separate <title> tags...I just sent you an email to show you where they are. The problem is that the widgets are all reading the first <title> tag which only says 'MandM'.

    Recent blog post: Dave Ramsey's Town Hall For Hope Live Event--Fear is The Enemy of Hope

    ReplyDelete
  16. So others with the same problem or who are curious as to what the solution to problem one was, it was my addition of meta tage to the header. I had added a title tag, on removing that, problem solved! BlogThis! now displays correctly.

    However the popular pages widget is still showing nothing but MandM however since we fixed the problem about 10 minutes ago note that the live feed widget, powered by the same thing as the popular posts has suddenly started showing page titles correctly as people arrive and depart. This gives me some confidence that going forward, as different pages rise in popularity, that the titles will display in the popular pages widget.

    Recent blog post: Go on and Rubberneck

    ReplyDelete
  17. Oh and big thanks to Stephanie - go and visit her blog!

    Recent blog post: Go on and Rubberneck

    ReplyDelete

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