Re: RingLink Question

[pamster@speakeasy.org]

> > The site order number - how is that determined?
> 
> It is simply the order in which the (active/inactive) sites are listed
> in the sites.db file. That file includes both active and inactive sites,
> and the only difference between them is a "Status" field with the value
> "active" or "inactive".
OK - I think I understand.  What this means in the functionality, is that when 
I inactivate a site, and then reactivate it, it will go back into the same spot 
in the ring.  This is the equivalent, in the WR world, of having the sites in 
site ID order (which in RL is Site Order # order).  The only difference being 
that when a site is removed, the DISPLAYED site order numbers change to fill in 
the gaps. 
> The behaviour you describe seems to be in order. As you understand from
> this, the site order # is not a static thing. Besides the fact that it's
> changed when you activate/deactivate sites, when the tool making it
> possible to reorder the sites completely has been implemented, the site
> order numbers will change accordingly.
Thanks for the explanation - it gives me a better mental model of what's 
happening.
> Consequently, the site order # has no special meaning. In my opinion
> it's simply a help to know what you are doing when you change things in
> ring admin.
And it's also the order in which the sites in the ring should be displayed. And 
I think that is useful - especially when it comes to having folks do site 
checks. I can give them the first site in their group to test, they can "list 
sites" from that page to get the list of sites that they should check.
For example, we played a little while over the weekend with a different script, 
and were having problems with the Next link skipping sites - with that script 
we didn't have a way to get a list of the order in which the sites SHOULD 
display in order to figure out what was wrong.
> > is there a way to get the site ID into the email...  It appears
> > that we have no control over the Subject line of the email that
> > goes out (is it possible that we could?)
> 
> You are right, you have to change the program code to control the
> subject line. (Btw, is the subject line controllable when customizing
> the WebRing emails?)
No, the subject line isn't controllable in WebRing - one of our constant 
complaints, that we couldn't have the site ID in the title of the message.  I 
seldom used the auto-generated WR messages when moving sites from the ring to 
the queue, because I wanted to provide more specific information to the user 
about why they were being moved (404 error, couldn't find code, problem with 
code) rather than a generic message.  However, with this tool, I could see me 
either putting all of the reasons into the message and deleting the ones that 
didn't apply - or having notepad open with paragraphs about the reasons - and 
pasting the correct one into the message before I sent it.  
> > Or, can we use the site ID variable within the inactivate message
> > template, to pull the site ID into the message?
> 
> Same answer - you have to change the program code, since there are no
> customizable templates for the messages that you can change "on the
> fly".
> 
> But I like the idea of letting the program automatically put the site ID
> in the subject line. (That's how I do it myself when managing my own WR
> ring.) If not something that is even better comes up, I'll fix it in the
> next version.
Cool..
Thanks for the information.  
The owners of the ring have decided that they like what they have seen.  We'll 
start moving the ring to RingLink this week - as soon as we get the pages 
customized.  We currently have 195 members in the ring.  
Thanks, again.
Pam