As you can see CTH 2.0 is launching a new comment platform to improve the features and user engagement we have all come to appreciate. Here is some background information about this comment process that will likely answer questions. Please book-mark this post and share it for those who do not read the site updates and just go into the comments.
Because we are free from the constraints of WP/Automattic we are able to explore features that many Treepers have asked for. We have selected comment software from WPDiscuz (not affiliated with Disqus in any form) specifically because we can control the platforms internal content according to our privacy demands.
No outside system is gathering any user data or content on the commenting platform, everything within CTH 2.0 is being built on a very stable and private proprietary foundation.
The ability to add videos, graphics, pictures, tweets, scribd embeds and other functions is now present in the comment section. This is called “Oembeds”, and it is live right now. However, we will not be activating a feature that allows you to upload images or videos directly from your computer. If the image/video has a url, it should be visible.
There are other features we will likely add to the comments section, but we must go painstakingly slow, and here’s why….
At each step in the process of adding features we have to pause and measure the impact on server capacity to support the addition. Each feature creates a small amount of data that communicates with the servers in real time (ie. the bandwidth). Think of it like a pipe, and each feature adds data into the pipeline… the pipe has a capacity… we add, then evaluate, ensure pipe capability/stability, then move on. The issue is scale.
CTH 2.0 is a massive community of simultaneous users. Each user engagement requires a live-time upload of data from server to you. The page load time is directly related to the bandwidth capacity… if there are a lot of simultaneous users the level of data transfer can overwhelm the pipe…. it can clog and freeze.
Additionally, each new feature creates a draw from the server capacity at the end of the pipeline. For lack of a better explanation this is the CDN rate. CDN = Content Delivery Network. CTH 2.0 is a massive load of data that updates for each user as they land on the homepage and visit the articles. Again, it is a matter of scale. As we said before CTH is a community, essentially a social media platform, working inside a website.
Our community engagement, the size of our commenting community, exceeds almost all other types of websites except for social media sites. Those sites are specifically designed for community engagement… CTH 2.0 is leading the charge back to the era before Big Tech took control of content delivered to you.
The content in the community (the comment section) is derived from your choices, your freedom. It is your discussion and we are stewards protecting your conversation.
With 5,000 simultaneous users on-site at any given moment, the bandwidth demand is large. With 100,000+ unique daily users and 500,000 page views per day, the data load (CDN rate) on the servers is large. We are chewing up about 5 terabytes of server space per day even with two cache services hosting the older content. We always knew our data load was heavy, we just didn’t know how heavy. This is why almost all other suggested solutions for our CTH 2.0 launch would not work. It is a scale issue.
All of these are essentially good problems. The rebel alliance is strong and the assembly is large. We just need to consider that each small 4gb feature addition for a single user has a magnitude of impact based on the scale of our assembly.
Think about walking into a bar with 100,000 friends and everyone orders one drink at the same time. The bartenders (servers) are going to get overwhelmed pretty quick, and the beer kegs will run dry fast. Then think about everyone ordering two drinks. That’s the type of scale issue we are navigating while keeping the bar open.
With all that in mind we initiated the new comment system with Oembed functions activated. Now we watch a little while and make sure the pipes (bandwidth) and servers (CDN rate) can handle the data load.
Then we add the “likes feature”, and we watch again… we keep repeating this process with every feature until we have safely checked-off our priority list. There are a lot of features we want to provide while at the same time the server host is trying to figure out what the level of our site demand actually is. Again, good problems, but this is unknown territory.
So the proprietary comment platform we have selected is stable, private and secure. It also allows us to add features that you have requested. We just need to measure the impact of each addition as we move along.
Also, CTH is modeled on an eleven year-old platform theme. It is reliable, but it is also clunky, heavy and not as streamline as modern tech can provide. As described, CTH is a heavy data-tank on a highway with the ability to collapse the road. We need to modernize and get faster while retaining the depth and purposeful mission priority.
We need to change our theme platform to be responsive to the type of device you are using making it easier to navigate the site from phones and iPad type devices. The engineers are working on a proposal, and a test site is experimenting. The good news is our site content is not complex and the modernization should not be too difficult. In essence, CTH presents itself differently, more user friendly, depending on the type of device you are using.
Additionally, one of our priorities right now is establishing an email notification system where you can subscribe to automatic notifications of new posts etc. As with almost all systems of this type (there are many) it involves the use of a third party email transmission process. Y’all are aware that privacy is a CTH priority, so we are being very careful about vetting the service and setting up this notification system to protect CTH users.
CTH does not compile user information, does not engage in the manufacture of processes that assemble lists of users or any user data. We are working to ensure we do not end up creating an external list of subscribers that would be vulnerable to exploitation. Your privacy in all matters related to CTH engagement is my priority. This new commenting platform can also deliver that type of email notification service, we are evaluating.
Thanks again for bearing with us as we work through some technical issues, search for optimal solutions, and fiercely retain the original values and mission priority of the Treehouse. The Truth Has No Agenda
Myself and the incredibly hardworking site admins consider ourselves stewards to this community. YOU are what matters. Your ability to analyze, discuss, crowdsource and provide your comments on the subject matter is what makes CTH home. We will NEVER remove a commenting function from our website.
In fact, it is the crowd-sourcing work we have done as a community that has been the most thrilling and brilliant part of our work together. I will never lose that focus. The key to Treehouse 2.0 is recognizing we have built something within a big tech ecosphere that wants to see us removed. By being proactive we have avoided some serious challenges and that makes us better stewards for our conversation.
Remember, YOU are the important part.
Without you CTH doesn’t really have a purpose. Individually we could stand outside shouting at trees with no impact; but together, sitting on the figurative cyber-porch, the conversation is rich with unique skill-sets, subject matter experts and life-long experiences that make discussion so much more valuable. Myself and the CTH admin team cherish the value you represent.
Please share your feedback and suggestions on the comment platform. Does it work for you? What do you like or not like about it. We will modify, when possible, based on feedback.
Love to all,
~ Sundance
I miss the ability to tap on the header and get today’s lineup.
I have to go over to recent posts(in the sidebar) to view other content.
Ad Rem, welcome back. Keeping us Treepers clean, polite and on point.
I see that thumbs up have returned.
That’s as good as a “Like” button — thanks, SD! <3
Just noticed it. You get my first one. Thanks.
And with the edit button I can now type that it works just fine.
Ohhh this works much better than “no name host.” All that is needed is to add a font drop down list button.
,,, and word wrap. Letters in a word are being split at the end of a line if they don’t fit.
I came to thank Administration for hearing us about the light-colored fonts! The darker color is such an improvement and relief to the eyes.
Your level of caring is beyond any site I’ve ever seen!
A HUGE THANK YOU to Sundance and the AMAZING Administrative Team! ? ⭐️
Better!
Thanks
I’m glad the wrapping isn’t bothering you, Chrystalia99… it’s driving me nuts. I’m sure all will be smoothed out in good time.
DEFINITELY three cheers for the darker fonts.
:-):-):-)
Here is the explanation on how/when the “likes” feature will return:
“Then we add the “likes feature”, and we watch again…
we keep repeating this process with every feature
until we have safely checked-off our priority list.”
Known as a spiral development. Listen to customer and make updates to the product.
Looking much better than version 1.0.
Sundance etal Thanks
I’ve been reading and posting (on and off) for over seven years. The site has never been better as far as usage goes. The heart of the CTH will never change. That’s why I’ve been here and always encourage others to read this site as well. There is no other site like the CTH.
testing
excellent
bravo.
thank you sundance.
thank you adrem and other SUPER fantastic moderator.
thank you to the dozens of professionals who assisted.
God Bless America
A new comment section! Bravo! One reason why I didn’t come here that often
Bigger and darker text lookin’ good! Thanks for all these ongoing tweaks and new features…
Bravo! The new font color is great, likes are back, and I can actually write out my comments with my pen on my TabletPC; not so on Treehouse 1.
Just got to get the words wrapping correctly then you guys can go on a much needed vacation or Christmas break!
P.S. Love the ‘edit’ feature on the posts!
No kidding… I really have no excuse now…
Thank you. I don’t frequently comment but when I do I sign in with WP. So I will find out in a minute if that still works or not.
Test
test
I hope PresTrump is browsing Treehouse on that laptop …
… or maybe he’s got Nancy on the screen and he’s winding up to slam down on the DELETE key … BAM !
Some feedback on the most current iteration of comments:
I actually preferred the green screen names. When they’re black it all just bleeds into the text of the comments. Perhaps the names should be a point or two larger if you’re set on black, or perhaps a different font.
The comment page links are fantastic. So glad to not have to click a link through them all to get to a specific page. I would, however, like to see the links present at the top of the comments on a given page as well as the bottom, like it was previously.
Call me crazy, but I liked the round avatars.
The comment text font just doesn’t really do it for me. Whatever the font is here, that I’m typing in in this comment box, seems far easier to read.
The text features (bold, italics, spoiler, etc) are awesome. So glad to have those for people who don’t want to be bothered to learn the HTML codes for these things. I imagine this will allow users to present their information/opinions in a much better fashion.
Testing reply limit #1
Testing reply limit #2
Testing reply limit #3
Testing reply limit #4
Testing reply limit #5
Testing reply limit #6
Testing reply limit #7
Testing reply limit #8
Cool, so after 7 nested replies they all stay on the same tier.
Also, when we were on WP, once the reply limit was reached you couldn’t reply to comments in that tier anymore. You would have to go up one tier and then manually call out who you were replying to in your comment.
Edit: With this platform we can continue replying to individual comments, they just don’t get offset anymore.
I do not like the text changes, very disorienting, small type style is hard to read. Also different fonts hard to adjust to. And the page numbers at the bottom does not make sense to me. If I am on the first page, do I click 1 to go to the second page of older messages or ??
Past those issues I like the edit feature, but I do not think you have to document author changes, just too much info.
The page # you’re on is not a link. You can’t click the 1 if you’re on page 1, you can’t click the 12 if you’re on page 12. This is a pretty standard way of linking between many sequential pages.
I don’t see this in sundance’s post.
I often copy the URL of an individual comment in the thread to paste into an e-mail or text message.
I cannot do that, currently on Android phone – Brave & Firefox browsers.
That is a big deal for me.
Edit function is AWESOME!
if you tap the comment, do the little chain links appear in the upper right of it?
On PC if i mouse over a comment, there is a “link to comment” button in the upper right. The button is invisible until you mouse over a comment.
yes, I just hovered over Zachary’s comment and the little chain link symbol appeared at upper right
I clicked on it and a pop-up box appeared with the URL in the box and a “copied to clipboard” message
It’s important to me too, Infidel, I was just coming hear to post a notice I couldn’t find a way to ‘copy link’ and then Zachary’s comment pointed me to the hover step
Thx, Zachary!
oops, and now I see I may have to hit 2 returns after every paragraph
looked ok as I was commenting …
Yep – we are “in business”.
I was playing around with that little clock, etc.
Expanding the screen, this is actually an easier system than before. For me, anyway.
I went to my desktop, yes – with the mouse cursor moved to the right of the date/time a paper clip appears with a “Comment Link” popup.
Clicking that with a computer mouse copies the URL
Now I have to try on the mobile platform….
YES!!! A little tap makes what described appear and I can get the URL copied to the clipboard.
All set 🙂
Nice!
Sundance and site team: Thanks so much for all the hard work you have done/are doing to help us. I love 2.0 and the comments features implemented today! It is soooo much easier than WP. AWESOME!
test on macbook
sundance:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/12/cloudflare-apple-and-others-back-a-new-way-to-make-the-internet-more-private/
not a panacea, but….it’s a very good concept.
“For more than three decades, the Internet’s most key underpinning has posed privacy and security threats to the billion-plus people who use it every day. Now, Cloudflare, Apple, and content-delivery network Fastly have introduced a novel way to fix that using a technique that prevents service providers and network snoops from seeing the addresses end users visit or send email to.
Engineers from all three companies have devised Oblivious DNS, a major change to the current domain name system that translates human-friendly domain names into the IP addresses computers need to find other computers over the Internet. The companies are working with the Internet Engineering Task Force in hopes it will become an industry-wide standard. Abbreviated as ODoH, Oblivious DNS builds off a separate DNS improvement called DNS over HTTPS, which remains in the very early stages of adoption.”
So to summarize, the proxy knows who asked, but not the question. The DNS server knows the question, but not who asked. As long as the two don’t cooperate, you have privacy.
Edit: A DNS server operator with full network overview, like an ISP, might also be able to unmask the requester via traffic correlation.
traffic correlation explained in 2 seconds: the ability for a ISP to deduce computer IP and traffic in the raw through a variety of fundamental techniques. (time bias, unique WebRTC and CSP reports, as well as unique “leaky” programs that “call home” in the background). Actually ciphering encrypted traffic isn’t really necessary, as the metadata is sufficient for tracking and modeling user habits. Which is far more valuable and efficient to for ad marketing and other nefarious privacy threats.
It is still a very good idea, as it tightens up a fundamental archaic method for resolving DNS.
I will be tracking this new technology.
Some have described this as “quasi” TOR for DNS. That’s not really what it is. It IS NOT true encrypted tunneling. So please don’t assume this technology is going to solve privacy in a TOR like way. It will improve privacy, but there are still some obstacles to cross before this launches into widespread production.
I plan to beta it, as soon as it becomes available.
Upvotes are enabled!
Test
Edit: joy
On my MacBook/safari I see the options for bold, underline etc. Don’t see that line on my android phone. I thought it might be Swiftkey on phone so I turned it off and tried the regular LG keyboard but it didn’t make a difference.
bold italics underline
that was fun!!!!
I sometimes look up older articles on this site and just noticed that the community comments aren’t showing up on these older articles. Example: This article (https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/08/01/perspective-you-are-in-fort-mchenry/) says there’s 834 comments but when you scroll down, it’s just blank.
Has anyone else experienced this? Is it perhaps due to the new comment system launching and archived comments are making their transition to the new system?
Love the darker font, and the thumbs up button — that works as well as a “like”! Thanks!
Two questions:
1) Can we increase the leading between lines — like instead of single space, maybe 1.5? I think part of what makes it harder to read is that the lines of type are spaced much closer together than they were on our old format.
2) Is there something in the new format that gives us the same general function as the notification bell — where you could pull down a history of who either liked your comment (thumbs upped it, now) or who commented on it — and it would link you right to it? I have a hard time a day or two later remembering where exactly I commented — and the only way I can check on any communication is to manually scroll through pages of comments, looking for my comment to see if someone responded. Is there a more direct way that I haven’t yet discovered? The Bell made it nice to click and see at a glace if I had “mail,” even a day or two later, and go directly to that spot and reply back… Thanks in advance!
Test
woops, didn’t see that stupid text under the meme. Oh well!
It’s like the 12 Days of Christmas with all the new whirly gigs
❤
I was/am not a WordPress member, so I have not been able to “like” a comment until tonight. Excited to have that feature!!
Getting the mobile version will be the BEST!
Testing video embeds
Testing Subscribe. Looking to see if anyone replies to this comment.
Not sure what the difference is between new follow up comments or new replies to my comment and
You get your notification? 😉
no
Hello!
Testing PDF embed:
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/guides/M-654.pdf
Hrmmm, can’t embed PDF documents at the moment.
Intentional?
I see Sundance has been put in Twitter prison!
Badge of honor imo
Why?
If I had to guess… they asked him what 2+2 was and he said 4.
So there is the orginal commnet in one font and then all the replys are smaller and more difficlut to read. I am glad you went back to black for the color of the comments.
Agree — the replies in the smaller type are harder to read. Can we make them bigger, like the original comment, instead of mouse-sized type? Thanks in advance! 🙂
https://twitter.com/CatNamus/status/1336451504631406592
Testing link function.
Never ben able to post before, been around here for many years. Now I can. Very happy!
Welcome to the discussion!
Seems to work, however it doesn’t word wrap correctly. Small problem I suppose.
Testing a comment on the new site.
You are doing an awesome job! I am thrilled to be getting your site each day, again!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9018575/Jupiter-Saturn-appear-brightly-shining-double-planet-Christmas-week.html
Star of Bethlehem will appear Christmas week. Ivanka tweeted about this also
Testing
Testing
Was one of those on mobile, and the other on a PC?
When I post on PC my avatar displays, but when I post on mobile it does not for some reason.
What’s an avatar?
The picture next to the author.
The unique image you can post to the left of your screen name. Under the former WordPress/a, a unique silly little thing was randomly assigned to you. If you opened an account, you had the opportunity to upload something more personal.
Now, please explain how this system knew my avi when I haven’t posted a comment here in years and my avi back then on WP/Automattic was something different. the Goldenman avi is what I’ve been using on other platforms, i.e. Disqus and Twitter.
If the avatar is associated with the same email address you used here then it shows up here.
Passed. Test Test Test.
Awesome job SD! I didn’t have to update anything!
Testing a video link.
Didn’t work.
Sundance, Ad Rem or whoever’s listening…
For people with aging eyes like mine, I recommend 3 things be identical to how your articles are laid out.
Otherwise, I love the Reply and the Like, and your layout in your articles is very easy on my eyes to read.
Thank you for all your hard work and tremendous patience through this entire ordeal.
You never cease to amaze me/us! Happy to be part of the family!
They know about all three of your comments….and they are trying to address them.
Scratch #1 & #2, Ad Rem. I discovered the simple method of hitting the return key 2 times to get the proper spacing one desires between sentences and/or paragraphs.
Very simple. I’m just a little slow on the uptake.
However, #3, the “word wrap” forcing partial words onto the next line really should be fixed. As I mentioned earlier, it’s funkifying my brain, which is already too full of funk.
But I want you to know that I’m following Sundance’s advice, and even with all the craziness going on in the world, I’m living the best funked up life that I can!
YOURS w/ no apostrophe