Ch-ch-ch-changes (YC 2.07)
Mornin', everyone. One of the unnerving things about using Typepad always has been the opacity of the company (actually, the parent company is an outfit called SixApart); there's no such thing as a phone-in help desk. If you have a problem, you have to submit a electronic "ticket" via the Typepad software control panel, and keep your fingers crossed. Thankfully, we (and I mean a full cast, including Rosangel and Andrew) were able to work the system, and managed to get some real answers to our questions. We were subsequently able to get our comments-per-page up to 100 today. It's a start.
Here's the big picture: We're looking at a few days (at least) of transition, because Typepad is making some changes, including going to pagination, which makes things easier for them to manage at the server level. By next Thursday, some of the most irritating aspects of the current, primitive pagination structure should be improved via numbered pages and, I hope, a "first" and "last" page link (in addition to the numbered pages). We're also hoping to have a link that will enable you to open all comments at once, as well as create threads for individual comments. Typepad is planning to add some other community-friendly features, but they're a little further down the road and may hinge on the grade of subscription we have, or commit to.
Of course, I wish nothing had changed, and I am still hoping that we'll be able to get even more than 100 comments per page (I think 250 would be a pretty good number). I'm not against pagination per se, I happily read a number of blogs that already use it. I'm just against endless, un-numbered pages of comments, especially if they need to be opened one-by-one (never mind having to scroll down through the entire post to pick up where you left off).
We do have some options that the bare-bones hobby blogger might not enjoy based on the kind of deal we have with SixApart, and/or our own Tennis.com architecture and servers, so our ability to cobble together some custom version of the software is possible (just look at our relatively new and valuable "Search" function). But we don't need to think about that for now. Let's see what Thursday and our ongoing correspondence with SixApart brings. And yes, the changes at TennisWorld will apply to all of our weblogs.
Meanwhile, this is Your Call for today. Feel free to call matches, discuss tennis, or rag on websites and software developers. TW's official lifeguard at the Suicide Pool (Ptenisnet) will soon be making an official announcement on how TW did in TAT's official SP contest for the Australian Open, and Ed McGrogan will be back with a Monday Net Post (new, short version) at the usual time.
Ed's been working hard at the website (I assume that the Tennis.com home page is your primary source of tennis news), so he's had to cut back on some of his MNP features, but I always felt that an overview of the previous weekend and a peek ahead at the schedule is a great way to start Monday. And, under intense pressure from me, I convinced Ed to keep naming his McGrogan's Heroes. I mean, being so honored will look pretty good on, oh, Rafael Nadal's resume, right?
Oh, and this comes to us from one Bouba Slim (I take him or her to be an offspring of the Star Wars bounty hunter Boba Fett and a character from a Louis L'Amour dime-western):
Gotta love those "dynamite forehand(s) down the line" - and the fact that Wozniak is out there under the flying Maple Leaf, making those Puerto Rican girls weep and gnash their teeth.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
-- Pete
(Update by Andrew: use http://tennisworld.typepad.com/tennisworld/2009/02/ch-ch-ch-change/comments/page/100/ to jump to the last page of comments on this thread. As Pete wrote above, still workin' through de gremlins...)