Canadian Mysteries

Got a request saying that a list of files had been modified.
35/4978 Under: Artists' World > "Importance of Thomson's art"
35/5160 Under: Artists' World > "Importance of Thomson's art"
35/5331 Under: Artists' World > "Importance of Thomson's art"
35/5293 Under: Investigations > "1918-1932"
35/5426 Under: Investigations > "1966-1978"
35/5427 Under: Artists' World > "Artists at Work"
35/5428 Under: Artists' World > "What was Popular"
35/5429 Under: Artists' World > "What was Popular"
35/5498 Under: Landscapes > "Logging"

Those files did not appear in the dev or production site, but their id numbers in the db indicate that the records had been around a while. So after figuring out that files were absent and not merely out of date, I then regenerated the site and manually copied and pasted the relevant files (e.g. 4978en.html and 4978fr.html and the indexen.html and indexfr.html in that folder) from the dev site to the production site.

Discovered that the record 5427 was wrongly associated with the section "What was Popular" and with the document type "Chapter In Book", so I changed those to "Artists at Work" and "Letter" respectively and then regenerated the site again.

MF forwarded a report that the links on the multimedia page in the archives section of the Donnelly site were all broken. Turned out to be a bunch of problems.

Remaining issues (I've asked MF for help on these):
I couldn't find the appropriate image file for these pages, so have not edited them:
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/donnellys/archives/multimedia/2992en.html
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/donnellys/archives/multimedia/2992fr.html
point to image of Canada Company chart
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/donnellys/archives/multimedia/3013en.html
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/donnellys/archives/multimedia/3013fr.html
point to image of Gaol summary 1879-1880

Issues I resolved:

1)
There were no french language versions of any of the multimedia files in the development site, but they are there in the production site. I've copied those missing files from the production site to the development site.

2)
On
http://www.canadianmysteries.org/development/sites/donnellys/archives/multimedia/3195en.html
http://www.canadianmysteries.org/development/sites/donnellys/archives/multimedia/3195fr.html
the link to the interactive map has the wrong URL (missing "donnellys"
in the pathname). The link to the image also has the wrong URL (one too many "../". I've corrected those on the production site, the development site and the content management system.

3)
On
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/donnellys/archives/multimedia/2985en.html
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/donnellys/archives/multimedia/2985fr.html
the link to the image file was:
src="../images/site/52565_2.jpg"
but that should be:
src="../../images/site/52565_2.jpg"
when you click on the image, you're directed to
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/donnellys/scripts/photo.php?fileName=../../images/site/52565_3.jpg
but that should be
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/donnellys/scripts/photo.php?fileName=../images/site/52565_3.jpg
I corrected those problems

4)
On all the rest of the pages listed at
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/donnellys/archives/multimedia/indexen.html,
the html needed to link to the image that appears on the page and to link to the larger version of the image is entirely missing in the files in the content management system and on the pages on the sites. I've edited the following pages in the CMS, the development site and the production site:
2979en.html points to image 52549
2979fr.html points to image 52549
2980en.html points to image 52553
2980fr.html points to image 52553
2981en.html points to image 52554
2981fr.html points to image 52554
2982en.html points to image 52555
2982fr.html points to image 52555
2983en.html points to image 52556
2983fr.html points to image 52556
2984en.html points to image 52564
2984fr.html points to image 52564
2986en.html points to image 52565
2986fr.html points to image 52565
2987en.html points to image 52566
2987fr.html points to image 52566
2988en.html points to image 52569
2988fr.html points to image 52569
2989en.html points to image 52570
2989fr.html points to image 52570
2990en.html points to image 52571
2990fr.html points to image 52571
2991en.html points to image 52572
2991fr.html points to image 52572
3000en.html points to image 52561
3000fr.html points to image 52561
3001en.html points to image 52550
3001fr.html points to image 52550
3002en.html points to image 52551
3002fr.html points to image 52551
3003en.html points to image 52552
3003fr.html points to image 52552
3004en.html points to image 52557
3004fr.html points to image 52557
3005en.html points to image 52558
3005fr.html points to image 52558
3006en.html points to image 52559
3006fr.html points to image 52559
3007en.html points to image 52560
3007fr.html points to image 52560
3008en.html points to image 52563
3008fr.html points to image 52563
3009en.html points to image 52573
3009fr.html points to image 52573
3010en.html points to image 52574
3010fr.html points to image 52574
3011en.html points to image 52575
3011fr.html points to image 52575
3012en.html points to image 52576
3012fr.html points to image 52576

In each, I found something like this (the title text varies):

<h1>Chart Showing Place of Birth, Selected Counties</h1>
<p></p>
<p id="clearFloat"/>

And replaced that empty middle paragraph with something like this:

<p><a href="#" onclick="openWindow('../images/site/52565_3.jpg',
'../../'); return false;" ><img src="../../images/site/52565_2.jpg"
id="docImageCentre" alt="[ Chart ]" alt="[ Chart ]"
oncontextmenu="return false" /></a></p>

Where the two instances of "52565" have to be replaced with whatever is the correct file name for the graphic image.

There's an ongoing problem with sites where the authors want to add or modify multimedia abilities. A number of existing examples appear to all have had the media data files uploaded manually and then suitably elaborate html tags included in the files that point to those manually uploaded data files. The specific code varies with each example - some are using small libraries of code, others more straightforward tags. So, maintaining the existing multimedia abilities is fragile, and there's no obvious way of implementing new ones. The CMS is clearly not designed to handle large media files, and I can find no documentation on a consistent practice outside the CMS.

Reviewed all this with JL and suggested that if he is willing to accept the risk of having the media data files uploaded manually and then pointed to from pages created through the CMS, we can continue to do that. His authors will create the web pages as usual and then email me with instructions on what media files are linked to from where in those pages.

This is a kludgy workaround and I'm concerned about it's long term viability. If any new sites are to be created, I think the CMS will have to be modified to formalize the process of linking to large media files (as it will presumably continue to be the case that putting huge media files into the db is not a good idea).

Another request to include an mp3 file on the thomson site. Author provided the URL on another site which included a link to an mp3 file. Again, it looks like each site has a "media" or "multimedia" folder which contains the data files and then the links on the page are hardcoded to the URL of those data files.

As long as I'm careful when regenerating sites and then moving from development to production server to ensure that nothing destroys those manually created and populated folders, everything should work (though I'm not sure if it's possible to write consistently and succesfully relative URLS to the data files).

Also made a couple of minor text edits to the Angelique site.

After some time poking around in the CMS, the development site and the production site, and some testing of adding media files and links to them on pages on the site, and regenerating sites, it still appears to me that existing multimedia content on the CanMys site was put there manually, and not through the CMS (as all other pages are). A related issue is how to generate a site from the CMS and then migrate it from the development site to the production site without overwriting (and destroying) any files that were uploaded manually to either the development or production sites. Will try to get hold of AM.

MF reports a large number of unwanted submissions to the survey form on the home page of the CanMys site. I looked in the db and discovered a large number of records which had obviously been submitted automatically. I did a number of queries which isolated various categories of those unwanted records and deleted them.

To minimize future similar spam, I added some pretty conventional lines to the form and to the code processing the form which should catch the majority of that junk and prevent it from being sent. Nothing elaborate.

One word on one page in the English version of the Angelique site was incorrect. The researcher changed the character in the DB and wanted the entire site regenerated and ported. After confirming the scale of the modification, I decided to manually edit the html file in the dev site and the html file in the production site manually instead.

The reported problem was that the URL cybermysteres.ca pointed to the English language file mysteryquests.ca/indexen.html rather than cybermysteres.ca/indexfr.html. The two domains were supposedly pointing to the same folder (public in the mysteryquests.ca account), but my testing showed that was not the case. After a couple of hours on the phone with their tech support I arrived at the following: Previously, the cybermysteres.ca domain had a "hosted" package, which meant an account on the server was set up to host web pages and email for that domain. That account was set up so that when the user went to cybermysteres.ca in their browser, the server forwarded the browser to mysteryquests.ca, so when the actual site got that request it saw the mysteryquests.ca and displayed the English language page. The first thing I did was to get them to change that forwarding to mysteryquests.ca/indexfr.html, so at least the French language page would appear. The problem remained that the domain name "mysteryquests.ca" rather than "cybermysteres.ca" appeared. To solve that problem, I had to change the type of hosting package for the cybermysteres.ca account from a "hosted" type to a "domain pointing" type. That means that the cybermysteres.ca domain no longer has disk space assigned to it, and that all it does is point somewhere else. I got them to point the domain cybermysteres.ca to the public folder in the cybermysteries.ca account, which is exactly what we wanted. The change in the type of hosting package means we can't have email addresses which end in "@cybermysteres.ca". I was willing to pay that price to get the domain name to work in the browser. The contact page on the site provides admin@canadianmysteries.ca as the contact email, so that will continue to work just fine. There is still some slightly odd behaviour with the cybmermysteres.ca domain: for example, when you go to cybermysteres.ca and start clicking around, the URL box in the browser never changes even though you are moving from page to page. Compare that with what happens when you go to mysteryquests.ca/indexfr.html (where the URL box does change as you move from page to page - which is the correct behaviour). For now, I'm willing to leave that be. That's likely because they're using a mod_rewrite instead of a mod_proxy, but I don't know.

MF inquired about including a set of video files on the Thomson site. Turns out that Greg had prepared these videos last spring. I have been unable to figure out how to include media files in the development CMS, and emailed MF about it. She sent me back documentation, which I haven't had a chance to read yet. She also reported that similar work done in the past required a lot of manual intervention by the sys-admin

Based on reports from MF, I checked various domain names:

1) I went to these two URLS:
http://mysterescanadiens.ca
http://www.mysterescanadiens.ca
If I do nothing on that page for a little while, it automatically loads the page:
http://www.mysterescanadiens.ca/mysteries/indexfr.html
which is the same page as
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/mysteries/indexfr.html
So, those domain names appear to be working properly.

2) The URL www.cybermysteres.ca automatically redirects to the page http://www.mysteryquests.ca/indexen.html but the URL box does not change. This is weird and must be something that the ISP is doing.

First, the URL www.cybermysteres.ca should point to http://www.cybermysteres.ca/indexfr.html. Second, if you type in the URL http://www.cybermysteres.ca/indexfr.html, you get a "page not found" error. What you should see is the page you see if you use the URL http://www.mysteryquests.ca/indexfr.html

The URL http://www.mysteryquests.ca/ automatically redirects to the page http://www.mysteryquests.ca/indexen.html, which is sensible behaviour. On that page, the link on Français links to http://www.mysteryquests.ca/indexfr.html and that works. I created a link on FR, which links to http://www.cybermysteres.ca/indexfr.html and that link fails.

Got contact info for hosting company from MF, and notice that actually getting tech support is not easy. Will give it a shot next week.