We continue to work on a few buggy issues involved with the new site design and I wanted to give you some tips on how to solve some persistent issues. For subscribers, aka Tammy Army Members (TAMs), we get a lot of emails about what seems to be the inability to be signed in to the TAM system and WordPress at the same time. For some of you, you are signed in as a TAM and can’t Comment, or you can Comment in a post but can’t get premium material.
The WP and TAM elements are two different systems, and we obviously want them to work in harmony but since that doesn’t seem to be happening right now we do have a temporary solution–if you’re a TAM, you’ll need to sign in separately to both. If you are a regular Tammy Blog reader you don’t need to worry about this.
TAM & WP log-in instructions:
First, sign in as a TAM via the blog front page log-in area using your TAM credentials–your email and associated password. Then, go to the WordPress log-in page for the blog at https://tammybruce.com/wp-login.php. Here you will use your blog handle and associated password. With that, you will be simultaneously logged in as a TAM and through your WP account, allowing access to both premium material and Commenting on the site.
UPDATE: I tested something and here’s another option: you can log in first to WP if you want. Then, when you go to the blog you’ll see “You are logged in as [your handle]” but then you’ll see the front page log in field’s empty (that’s because, if you’re a TAM, that is for your TAM log in). You can then log in using your TAM credentials. I mention this because this is a way to determine if you are logged in only on WP.
Also, for newbies, you may have missed the discussion about browsers and which work best with the site. Right now the site isn’t handled well by Google Chrome and Safari, but it works perfectly with Firefox and IE browsers. As you might imagine we are working on this issue as well, but in the meantime if you find menus are buggy and the podcasts won’t play or other buttons won’t respond to your clicks, it’s likely the browser is at issue. Firefox is a great browser and can be downloaded for free here.
Thank you all for your flexibility while we tweak the site and get her perfect in every respect 🙂
Testing. As luck would have it, I can sign in from here to comment. (I probably just jinxed myself.) But I am having trouble with the browser-I think. I’m using IE. The page loads but then it seems to try to keep refreshing. The messages that flash across the bottom bar are “Done” then it switches to “Waiting for http” Tammy’s bog. This makes the screen kind of jumpy and the text in different fonts. Is this a common problem? This started happening recently for me though.
Just as a generally good thing to do, try going into > Tools > Internet Options.
Delete cookies, and delete temporary internet files. These things can build up and cause weird problems.
I find the Google Chrome browser mostly usable with two problems that are nuisance but not showstoppers (major features like login and access to members pages works better in chrome for me than firefox by far):
1. the “Posted In” block immediately below the by line and date on post pages contains two buttons that screw up the menu pull-downs (f-recommend and tweet). This happens in Chrome AND firefox both the same. The menus that only pull down two items won’t be an issue, only the MEMBERS has a long enough menu to get impacted by the FB and Tweet buttons. So, one suggestion is to force those two buttons down to the next line and keep them on the left under Home (which does not pull down and won’t have the issue).
something like this:
| HOME | TAMMY | MEDIA | MEMBERS |
Posted in: Internet/Communication, Tammy Notes
[f-recommend] [tweet] <–buttons on a new line, left margin under HOME
2. Podcast page is impacted by the dynamic twitter display of recent tweets. When I right click save as a podcast link, the browser freezes up. Will stay that way for minutes, sometimes "waiting for twitter.api" (or something like that) appears at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the twitter box (or sometimes other parts of the page) will wake up the page and immediately bring up the file save as dialog and I can download the file. This behavior is consistent in Chrome for downloading podcasts. Can't get to it in firefox to see if it works the same way. Don't know enough to offer a suggestion, but these are the symptoms.
Other than that, I am happy using Chrome on the new site.
Firefox for me is problematic and not usuable.
Seems to be in an endless loop requiring new login. I tried to follow the procedure described in this post with the two separate logins (might have messed it up being I'm a geezer), but it always ends up in endless logins and when I get to the podcast page then I am back to premium content login required. Login again and that sends me to the home page, navigate back to podcast page and I see premium content login required. rinse and repeat. Never have been able to actually download a podcast in firefox on the new site yet.
I haven't tried IE. Firefox is utterly useless. For now I am okay using Chrome, which is my preferred browser anyways.
hope this detail is useful for chasing down the remaining bugs. Liking the new site overall. You guys are mashing up a lot of cool widgety-thingies (sorry for using the tech jargon), some bugs are to be expected. best wishes.
oops, what happened to preview for comments? oh, well here goes :).
Found a simple workaround to the Members menu problem… first pull down Welcome Letter. That page doesn’t have the “Posted In:” box with the FB & Tweet buttons, so you can then easily get to any menu item from the Members list.
Found a consistent behavior in podcasts page for Chrome. Click save as on a .mp3 link and the file save dialog will not come up until I click on the HOME button at top, then immediately get a save as dialog. It will wait minutes or hours until I click the HOME button. One case went out came back hours later, clicked HOME button to see what’s new, and the save as dialog immediately came up.
better solution for Chrome users… (see reply to Rob_W comment below)
Podcast downloads from the web site using Chrome are now smokin’!
props and thanks to Tammy’s web team. gz
TAM Web Team.. if you guys are still tracking this stuff, the Chrome browser behavior has reverted to its old ways on the downloads page, which means: when I do a rt-click save-as on the podcast, then in order to get the file save dialog box I need to click on one of the masthead menu buttons. Once I click on any of the menu buttons, then file save as dialog box will immediately come up and I can save the file. Until I click on the menu button, I can wait any amount of time and the file save as dialog will not come up… until I click on a menu button.
Something you guys did last week made that behavior go away. Over the weekend (I think) it reverted back.
not a big deal to workaround now that I know how it works. Just letting you know in case it’s something you thought was fixed. It’s baaaaaack :).
gz
Oh, THAT login ID! (email address, not blog handle). That was my firefox problem. Now my firefox works like everyone else’s.
I post this just in case it helps the Safari user who seems to be having a similar problem logging in as I was having on firefox. I tried safari a moment ago and got logged in okay using my email address (vs blog handle).
Shucks guys, you really ought to bold that sort of thing… um, never mind :). gz
Tammy, I have a suggestion for the main page. There is a gray search bar on the top of the page, with our blog handle and avatar on the left side. Can we add gravatar.com to the pull down menu that comes when you hover the mouse over our nicknames? In that way, it would make it easier to switch our avatars and explain new TAMS how to do it.
Hi
For the past 2.5 weeks, downloading the MP3 file into my BlackBerry on the Verizon network has proved fraught with repeated failure. Typically, I would get anywhere between 10% to 50% of the file downloaded before it stopped with “failed”. And typically it takes 2 to 5 attempts of redownloading from the beginning to get the entire file in. (Fractional files are still playable).
If you have a BlackBerry like me, you may want to do what I did today.
In addition to managing all these automatically, PodTrapper fixes the one crucial thing for me, which is to manage the downloading of the MP3 and to retry in case of bad transmission..
N.A.
1) Install PodTrapper (a 30-day free trial is available, $9.99 to purchase)
2) Add the Podcast RSS feed to PodTrapper, as follows
+ In the PodTrapper, Do “Add Podcasts”
+ “Enter feed URLs manually” then type in (or cut and paste) this URL:
+ https://tammybruce.com/feed/podcasts/?dapkey=xxxxxxxxxx
where the x’s the 10-digit code assigned to you which can be found in the member-area, here https://tammybruce.com/members-area at the top.
3) In the PodTrapper, issue “Update Podcasts” to tell the software to go to that URL and index all of the podcasts listed. I saw 8 media files in there.
4) Mark the media files you want to download. Delete the media files listed that you don’t want. PodTrapper to download the rest.
Thank you Doctor 🙂 I’m making sure all your comments here get to Kenton and Sean. Thanks for working with me during this time.
I can’t get in to Chat no way no how. I’ve logged out and back in to Tammy’s website, out and in of WordPress, disabled Flashblock, Adblock, and NoScript, and still accessing the Chat page brings up a blank frame where the chat widget should be. I’m using Firefox 4. I need some help.
We’re on it Larry, hang on…team will email you.
It’s super easy to subscribe to Tammy’s podcasts on Blackberry’s new free podcast app:
Go to the app then click on the phone’s menu button. Select “Add podcast channel”. Paste or enter your subscription link. That’s it!
Works great and no more transferring files. Only one problem – there’s no picture of Tammy on the avatar.
Rob_W.. thanks for the tip!
Although my BB is a little long in the tooth (BB podcast app not supported), your suggestion led me to try similar with Google Reader using my podcast subscription link, and it works great!
So now I can use that in my desktop browser to download podcasts to my BB for offline listening as I have always done before by simply saving from the podcast page (which is a little quirky in Chrome as noted above).
This does not work for me using GG reader on the BB itself, but saving files to my BB using GG reader on the desktop machine is better for the time being than using the podcast page and muy good enough for this geezer.
Blackberry Update (5/23/2011) – The BB podcast app no longer works with the new security protocol. PodTrapper by Versatile Monkey works well, and their player is much better than the standard BB media player. Download from Blackberry App World. It’s $10, but Tammy is worth it.
One thing I learned recently, I don’t know if I’m affected by it yet but, people can have a problem if they have more than one WordPress account based on the same email address. If you do, it can mess you up for logging in. Evidently it’s possible to log in to a WordPress account and change the email address there to something else, to make that email address available, at another WordPress account you want to use it in.