CataBlog Bug Reports

Zach,
I’m using Catablog to create a site with over 700 Catalog items in about 47 categories. So far it’s working just great. Here’s a link to the site so you can see Catablog in action: https://stevedgo.ipower.com/cat/

I have one small issue with trying to Delete a Category. The entry is “Plaques-Signs-Sayings-Wordart” I believe the problem is with the exact length of this entry.
When I put the cursor over this entry, the DELETE option shows up on the line below the entry. When I move the cursor over the DELETE option, it chooses the line below the one I want to Delete. So I am unable to delete the one that I really want to delete.
I have been able to Delete catalog entries that are Shorter and Longer, but not this one.
I’m using IE 8 but have tried it also in Firefox with the same results.
I have upgraded to 1.1.7 and it’s still the same.

Thanks for looking into this and thanks for such a great product.
Frank

Zach,
A comment on vers 1.1.7. This version must process the images differently because when I click on “Catablog” in Admin, it is very very slow in loading my over 700 pictures. Maybe 30-45 seconds before I can choose an image to process.

This is not workable for me as I have to finish processing my 700+ images for my catalog.

So I have re-installed version 1.1 and it is working fine, just as it used to before. It loads the images really quick and I am able to work as before.

Thanks
Frank

Thank you for your input regarding CataBlog. I appreciate the time and effort everyone takes to help make CataBlog a better plugin. It would seem you had two problems to report.

1. If the category name is just the right length then you can’t delete it.
2. Catalog list in Admin takes too long to render 700 items

Now I haven’t had a chance to fix the category name blocking the delete link issue since I have been concentrating on other features and bugs. A fix most likely will be integrated into the upcoming 1.2 version release, since it should be relatively easy to fix.

As far as the version 1.1.7 being much slower then version 1.1 at displaying 700 catalog items, I am not surprised. 1.1.7 was a beta release and low and behold had some pretty nasty bugs. One such bug was that WordPress was individually fetching each item’s categories, making a list of 700 items require over 700 database queries. Very very bad, got that one fixed in 1.1.8 which was just released.

In an effort to make the Admin catalog list load faster I also incorporated some JavaScript to lazy load the thumbnail images. Instead of loading all images when the page is loaded it only loads the images that are visible. This script was doing a lot of calculation when you scrolled the browser window, I fixed this by caching the list of images to lazy load into one array and manipulating that array directly. This dramatically reduced the amount of memory the page required and made scrolling seem smoother to me.

All in all, if you are adventurous, I would look into possibly installing CataBlog 1.1.8, otherwise wait for the upcoming new stable release.

Zach,

Thanks for fixing the slow image loading problem. I upgraded my test site to 1.1.8 and the image loading is OK with no problems.

I then went ahead and edited some of my entries by adding images to some of my previous entries. All the editing went OK, however when I went to my live test site, no entries showed up for any page that had [catablog category=’??????’]. The only page that showed my entries was the one that had [catablog]. It showed all of my 700+ entries OK.

So I switched back to 1.1 and everything was OK, including my recent image updates. Just to be sure I then reloaded 1.1.8 and the problem is still there. So I went back to 1.1 and everything works fine. I will leave 1.1 installed until you make a change or put out a stable version.

In spite of these few glitches, Catablog is a great product and it is the heart of my application.

Thanks,
Frank

papafrankc,

I’m not sure if you noticed but 1.1.9 is now available. This version should let you filter your original, as in pre CataBlog 1.1.8, categories as well as any new ones you make. I deeply appreciate you taking your time to test CataBlog on your test server, if you have any spare time I would love to hear your feed back about this new version. Cheers,

– Zach

Zach,

I just loaded 1.1.9 and it does the same thing as 1.1.8. The filtering doesn’t work. I reloaded 1.1 and everything works fine.

Question: To upload a new version like 1.1.9, I just copy the 1.1.9 Catablog directory to my test site. This overwrites the older 1.1 files. Is there anything else that I need to do so do an upgrade?

Thanks
Frank

You should probably be disabling the plugin before overwriting it and then re enabling the plugin after you overwrite it. Did you also try the filters in the Admin section, on the main CataBlog list page you may filter your catalog with a drop down menu, I assume that does not work either? Thanks for testing for me.

I deactivated Catablog 1.1
I uploaded 1.1.9
I activated 1.1.9

The filtering on my test site does NOT work.
The filtering on the Admin Catablog page DOES work.

I have a feeling I’m doing something wrong or missing a step but I can’t think of what it is?

Can you verify for me that the category in your ShortCode is exactly the same (case sensitive) as the CataBlog category name you want. Spaces, hyphens, underscores and any numbers along with upper and lower case letter much match the category name exactly. Thanks.

I have 41 categories such as this one: [catablog category=’Candle Holders’]
I have 41 pages that contain 1 each different shortcode. The formatting is the same for all of them.

I have not changed any of the categories or shortcodes since I first created them. They work as is in version 1.1 and do not work in 1.1.8 or 1.1.9

If you would like access to my test site for troubleshooting just send me an email at: [email protected]

Hi papafrankc

So I tried to reproduce the error you are getting and could not, these are the steps that I tried.

00. Fresh WordPress Install with the standard theme unit test data loaded.
01. Create new category in the standard post categories named 'Candle Holders'.
02. Install CataBlog 1.1
03. Import a test CSV file for items and add matching images to catablog uploads folder
04. Regenerate all images
05. Create new CataBlog category named 'Candle Holders' and add an item to it, this category is corrupt.
06. Check that the admin list filter works for new 'Candle Holders' category.
07. Check that the filter works with the CataBlog ShortCode.
08. Deactivate CataBlog plugin
09. Replace catablog in plugins folder with version 1.1.9
10. Activate CataBlog
11. Check that the admin list filter works for 'Candle Holders' category.
12. Check that the filter works with the CataBlog ShortCode.

When I do these steps everything works as expected. Even though CataBlog 1.1 created a corrupted category, 1.1.9 is able to use it. I consider the category corrupted because one term has been placed into two taxonomies. This is bad. I am unsure if you have categories with matching names in both your standard post taxonomy and your CataBlog taxonomy. If you do then most likely these categories are corrupted and you should do an export of your catalog and then reimport your catalog. This action should not replace or touch any of your image files and will only replace the CataBlog rows in your database. This action will also clear all corrupted categories and recreate new categories with proper unique slugs. If you could try this on your test server that would be really really awesome. Thanks again

I found the problem and am now running on 1.1.9 just fine.

You actually gave me the answer in the previous reply and I didn’t check it out thoroughly enough:
“Can you verify for me that the category in your ShortCode is exactly the same (case sensitive) as the CataBlog category name you want.” When I had looked at one of my shortcodes, it happened to match correctly. However I didn’t check them all. And also everytime I went back to 1.1 everything worked OK. So I assumed that case sensitivity was not a problem. Appanently it is not case-sensitive in 1.1 but it is case-sensitive in 1.1.9.

I just finished updating my 40 shortcodes to match the category names EXACTLY. I had previously used capital letters at the beginning of each Category name. Now that the shortcodes match the category names…..I’m good to go.

Thanks for your time in helping me to figure out what I did wrong. Hopefully this will help others to avoid this mistake.

Frank

I’m very glad to hear we found the solution to the bug. I decided to make the category value in the ShortCode case sensitive incase someone wanted a Dog and a dog category. Why someone would want that I am unsure. Any thoughts on my decission? The case sensitivity will obviously be documented when I do the real release. Thanks for your help and time in this matter.

My first thought is that case sensitivity should not be needed. I would think that using 26 letters plus numbers should be enough for anyones database.
e.g. dog, dog2, dog3, dog4……..dog9999 I think 10,000 dog categories would probably be enough.

Not having to worry about case sensitivity when creating category names and shortcodes would eliminate possible errors.

I can’t think of any reason why someone would need Dog and dog. I think it would add a layer of complexity for no obvious benefit. But this is just my opinion. Maybe some of your other users will have a different view on the matter?

I totally agree. My main concern is for the people out there who have already created those dubious category names that only have capitalization differences.

I think I will remove the case sensitivity for the new releases coming out very soon. I will be encouraging people to export and import their databases to recreate all the catalog categories. Once people follow this step I think everything should be good for the future.

Thanks for the input and take care.