Public Radio Exchange

PRX 3.0 Launch – Here it is! List of known issues and how to give us feedback.

Jake posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 | Blog, Tech | 54 Comments

We cranked out another release of http://www.prx.org called 3.0.2 and here are the highlights. Please use this new post to leave comments.

List of known issues

Welcome to PRX 3.0!

Over a year in the making, we’re thrilled to present the new PRX.

If you want a glimpse of the action-packed moment of actual launch, watch our behind-the-scenes video from the PRX HQ in Cambridge MA:

So this is version 3.0 and will soon be followed by 3.1, 3.2 and so on. One of the big reasons we rebuilt the PRX web application from top to bottom (moving from Java to Ruby on Rails, for the technofriendly you can see more of what’s under the hood on 3.0 here) was so we could more easily expand and improve the site and incorporate ideas and suggestions from stations, producers and listeners.

As with any major construction project there have been some redesigns, some delays, some of the original concrete wasn’t mixed properly, we forgot to put a window or a banister here or there. We know of a few things that are missing or confusing and are on our list to be fixed for 3.1, and we hope and expect you will find some too. Please tell us!

At the bottom of this post we’re keeping a running list of known issues with 3.0, which we will continue to update as we fix or discover things.  If you find something you think is broken or just funky, email feedback<at>prx<dot>org and we’ll be obsessively checking it over the coming days and weeks. If you need help with your account on PRX just email help<at>prx<dot>org, we’re on top of that one too.

However if you just want to say glowing and celebratory things, please comment on this post so the world can see!

For a taste of what our top-notch tech team was doing over the last 12 hours or so, here’s an excerpt from one of Andrew’s 4 a.m. emails:

——– Original Message ——–
Subject:     [Staff] update 2
Date:     Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:08:27 -0500
From:     Andrew Kuklewicz

Ok.

Things are getting there.  The data and files are migrated, and ftp is reconfigured and accepting files, so good stuff.

To give some notion of what I am talking about, there are some 31,241 mp2 files, and of those 22,889 are not orphaned, and are working – for example, pieces which have a single version, and no promos, are fine.

That leaves 8352 files to be resolved. I expect to have a working script within an hour, and then crank up a bunch of amazon ec2 instances to correct this in parallel, so hopefully it can be resolved within a few hours – once I have it running, I’ll have a better notion of how long until it will be fixed.  I am moving a bit slowly due to lack of sleep, but I’m doing what I can to fix this asap.

We have lots of people to thank and credit for getting this baby off the ground. First and foremost the PRX dynamic tech duo Andrew Kuklewicz and Matt MacDonald, with big coding help from Nathan Woodhull and Dan Choi, migration wizardy from Robert DeBenedictis, design deliciousness from Paul Irish and Paul Krasnoo, and an all-out effort by the PRX staff, in particular Genevieve Sponsler who masterfully reworked help documentation, John Barth and Kerri Hoffman who have shaped and supervised critical areas of the new site, Emily Corwin for all kinds of support, and Rekha Murthy who joined PRX just in time to provide essential efforts in the final 3.0 push.

And a big thank you to the funders that supported PRX throughout – the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Major props!

Continuously Updated List of Known Issues

These are issues that we know about and are actively working to fix, if you’ve found one not listed or crossed-out here please email feedback@prx.org. If you need help or have a question about your account(s) on PRX send an email to our Technical questions email address.

• [PRXMJ-650] Searching for multiple keywords does not return results. For example “Quirks” returns results but “Quirks and Quarks” doesn’t. We’re working on this one and it’s the highest priority as search is the way most people find pieces on PRX.
• [PRXMJ-373] Missing RSS feeds for: New Pieces, New Reviews, New
  Producers, New music pieces, New news pieces, New documentaries
• [PRXMJ-620] series with period in the title does not get displayed correctly
• [PRXMJ-322] Various Internet Explorer 6 CSS, image and user
  interface issues, we will fix these but you should really update your
  browser:)
• [PRXMJ-14] Missing CSV/XLS/PDF export for royalty statements
• [PRXMJ-347] Search Results Should Persist When User Clicks “Back” From a Piece
• [PRXMJ-544] Piece Creation UI Minor Defects on IE 7 Windows
• [PRXMJ-457] Series added to Favorites does not appear in Favorites Playlist
• [PRXMJ-550] Advanced search date range not filtering
• [PRXMJ-510, PRXMJ-509, PRXMJ-507] Various People search related bugs
• [PRXMJ-575] Slashes in piece tiles result in 404 errors.
• [PRXMJ-654] the tinymce editor embedded on piece edit basics step is super long, like a foot of screen
• [PRXMJ-660] when a piece is in an account that is deleted, you get errors seeing the piece profile
• [PRXMJ-576] Periods in piece titles cause 404 errors.
• [PRXMJ-619] “People” tab and “Advanced” search links point to wrong page
• [PRXMJ-585] Text fields for piece short_description, credits and broadcast_history are truncated. We’ll fix the data and update the fields to be larger.
• [PRXMJ-625] Outside purchaser opt ins didn’t get migrated from PRX 2.0 to 3.0 for pieces
• [PRXMJ-404] The “why” field of joining a group request says it is optional but if you leave it empty it tells you it can’t be blank
• [PRXMJ-643] choosing incorrect default (station) account in account merge blocks access to MyPRX
  

Tags: 3.0 launch, technology rubyonrails