Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Your Nightly 2.0 Update — At Week’s End
If there were ever any doubts that Ricochet is a two-way conversation, this week put them to rest. We rolled out Ricochet 2.0. You told us what you thought. We listened. We’re making upgrades.
We’re proud of our new house. But it’s also just that — a new house. When you first move in, there are a lot of little things that didn’t dawn on you before you actually had to live there. Will the sofa fit in that corner? Does that window catch the morning sun? Which way do you turn the knob in the shower for hot water? Sometimes you get scalded. Yeah, we can relate.
After a while though, you make the changes you need to, you oil that door knob, and the place goes from being your house to being your home. We’re not there just yet, but we’re getting there — quickly.
We won’t ever be able to express to you how much we appreciate the support, patience, and, yes, feedback you’ve given us this week. This thing doesn’t work unless we’re all in it together and you’ve shown us — not for the first time — that you’re in it for the long haul. This site aims to be worthy of that devotion.
Here’s a quick round-up of the latest developments:
- Nested comments are gone. We told you we’d try them and ditch them if they didn’t work. They didn’t and we did.
- All of your old settings for people and conversations you’re following have now been restored.
- Your alert systems should now be functional. We’re still tinkering with them to make improvements, but they should be carrying out their core functions.
- We’re going to change the “more” button at the bottom of posts so that the whole thing is a link through to the full post, instead of just the part that reads “more.” This is a temporary fix. Eventually (and we’re not talking long-term … we know you got used to long waits on 1.0), we’ll go back to the old system, where you can expand posts directly from the Main Feed or Member Feed without having to click through.
- We’ll have the Main Feed’s RSS feed restored shortly.
- We’re planning on restoring the old 20-comments-per-page standard for comments.
- All of the iTunes feeds and information for podcasts should now be correct.
- We’re still at work on the archives, the images in the slider at the top of the Main Feed, and imported media content. These are getting fixed soon.
- We’re also working on the join/update membership forms.
- By popular demand (and managerial consensus) we’re working on a simpler layout for the Main Feed and Member Feed, which will restore the kind of readability we had on 1.0. It’ll be a little while yet before we unveil it, but rest assured that we’ve heard your voices on this.
There will, of course, be some hiccups as we make these adjustments, but we’re confident that we’re on the right trajectory. And we’re making improvements fast.
2.0 gets a lot of things right. It’s beautiful, it’s going to be very fast (don’t forget that our old site was powered by a single, very sickly hamster), and — this is important — it’s adaptable. We can make changes in a fraction of the time that we did on the old site.
In the coming weeks, Ricochet 2.0 is going to become the best of both worlds — melding the best aspects of this new design with the simple functionality of the old one.
This work will continue around the clock (that’s not a figure of speech), but we won’t post another update until Monday. We’re hoping that will give the Blue Yeti the chance to catch a nap. Troy might get himself a drink — if his post yesterday didn’t get him on some sort of liquor store blacklist.
Has this week been challenging? Of course. But when we step back and take stock of it all, we feel pretty lucky. When we started this project years ago, we never imagined we’d be presiding over the construction of a brand new site with thousands of passionate and engaged members so adamant — and rightly so — that we get it right. So that’s our final note to you as we head into the weekend: thanks for joining the conversation.
Published in General
Thanks again for the update. While the initial delivery was, frankly, substandard, R2.0 is reaping the benefit of a wise platform choice. Scalability and extensibility aren’t just buzz words.
I love this place.
I checked “The Founders” profile page and found I’ve been ’round Here longer than The Founders. Go figure.
It’s an immense project and I know we need to be patient, but I have one suggestion for the eventual migration to Ricochet 3.0. When you start copying over the existing posts, maybe start with the recent posts that people are still commenting on and copy over the old ones later. All or most of my old posts are live, but the one announcing a meetup that was posted a couple days before the conversion has still not shown up.
Ricochet is too valuable a community and enterprise for me not to want to give 2.0 a chance. Thanks for listening to us and for your efforts. Heh, we complain because we care.
You guys are fantastic, and what you’ve created has been an immeasurable blessing in the lives of its users, as well as a wonderful contribution to conservatism in general. We could hardly ask for more benevolent overlords.
of course, every time I hit “like,” I’m bumped to the top of the page… sorry Snirtler, et. al. Just consider this a general “Felicia-B-style” like.
I still turn the new shower handle the wrong way, so you guys have me beat by about 6 months. Terrific job!
Works for me and I like that–benevolent overlords.
Been in the software biz for a while. Its all good. the focus is on the customer which is where it should be. We will get there.
Cheers!!
Thanks for all your hard work. You have my gratitude.
There is zero to complain about. Thanks for all the hard work done by the powers that be to transition to the new site. It looks and feels fantastic. Slick. Adult. Looking forward to typing into these little boxes for the next decade or so.
At least.
Audeamus!
Chris
Well, this gives me something to look forward to after work on my home computer. When 2.0 is more stable, I plan to do a new post on my own blog (also WordPress), and send a PM to the powers that be at WP suggesting they promote Ricochet to the whole WordPress community, which is huge. “Look Who’s On WordPress!!!”
It’s actually pretty fun reading all the comments on Yeti’s posts. We are, truly, all in this together. Thank you all for your hard work-it’s all worth it.
hmm… maybe it’s just me. I’m on a slightly older mac that doesn’t have the new OS. Can’t get google crome, and it appears that I can’t upgrade firefox any further. 16.0.2
I’m only showing one column of the 2 column format, and every time I hit “like,” I’m just jumped to the top of the page and my like doesn’t register.
Thanks, since I found this site almost 2 years ago, my web profile has altered substantially where now I spend more time here gaining valuable knowledge on the thoughts and wishes of like minded adults than all my other web surfing combined. This site really provides a lot of value for the small investment. While I comment on what is not working, that is not a criticism, rather it is an attempt to provide feedback that can help make the site better for all of us who depend upon it to maintain and grow our commitment to a better America through conservative ideas. Thanks again. Now back to my complaint soapbox :)
I need to know what happened to the hamster powering 1.0.
Cashed out his stock options and moved to Belize?
I’ve been saddened by the posts from people who have apparently decided to bail out on Ricochet because 2.0 had some problems during its first 48 hours. I’m more reassured every day that, if we all work together, this new site is going to become truly outstanding.
He’s enjoying his first week off in 4 years.
BTW I love the new Add Media button, especially the ability to upload files via drag-and-drop!
Sorry, but I still can’t get the “Ricochet Member Super Feed” to work. When I try to resubscribe as I did before to
http://ricochet.com/podcast/allfeeds
the error message “Connection Closed Gracefully” pops up. Fortunately, the “flagship” ricochet podcast feed does work again. Today I heard James Lileks’ “Hey-oh!” and Rob Long’s exasperated response – my earholes were delighted!
(I sent a couple of e-mails to support@ricochet, but the hamsters that answer the support e-mails seem to be way overworked this week. I hope they enjoy the weekend!) <grin!>
Is it possible to bump the comment count per page up? I’d like to get at least a hundred. It’s so much easier to page through if you don’t have to constantly load pages.
I’m seeing steady progress. As soon as I’m sure the billing issues are cleared up, I’m upgrading to the “Thatcher” level. But right now I’m afraid the site will somehow melt my credit card in my hand if I try it.
The work y’all put in during a stressful situation while keeping a sense of humor is greatly appreciated.
Nice stuff, looks like it will be real interaction and discussion and not just reading comments and posting, and hoping someone saw a reply, or answered a question. There is FIRE in the belly on the right, and you can fan those flames in unimaginable ways. We can all learn, and have real conversations in the process…and look forward to that next response in our nested thread.
Now these are the most encouraging words I’ve read all week.
I”m not sure if the founders realize how strong the impression is that you most certainly are not listening, bit of a credibility deficit here. This post gives me some hope.
Sorry, this isn’t quite correct:
My feeds are working, but the links on the page to subscribe to the podcasts are quite sickly.
From the top, click on ‘Subscribe’ under ‘Need to Know’ and you get error messages and a reference to ‘Money & Politics’.
For Milt Rosenberg, you get a ‘Page Not Found’.
For the Ricochet Super Member Feed you get a very nasty looking SSL error.
For ‘Money & Politics’ you get the same message as for ‘Need to Know’, as again you do for the next ‘Need to Know’.
For ‘Launch It’ get get pages of code, headed by ‘This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.’
Thanks to all. One quick FYI that should go pretty low on the triage list: new podcasts don’t seem to be making it to Stitcher.
That happens on my iPhone. (Bumped to top of page). “Like” works as it should on my PC.
Yes.
I’m just waiting for my old posts to show up. When that happens, I’ll give a final rousing cheer.
Yes, Alerts seem to be working now.