This site has been running for about eight and a half years tracking the digital television transition. During that time, through two content management systems nearly 3,400 items and more than 15,000 comments have been posted. There have also been more than 900 posts in the forums through two different systems. During that time, 11,300 user accounts have also been added, but as near as I tell, fewer than 1,000 of those are not hackers simply looking for an way in to do whatever.
With the analog cutoff for some stations more than a year out and all stations since last summer, I’ve been rethinking the site and am going to make it more functional and interactive. There are also a few problems that will be fixed by these changes. As some of you know, I make my living doing web development and I’ve often used this site as a way to learn new things and experiment with things before I install them on client sites. This transformation is no different.
The first step in this upgrade process is going to be getting rid of the user accounts that don’t seem to have been created by real humans. The easiest way for me to do this is to delete the user accounts that have never posted an item, a comment or a forum post. While that might delete some actual real people from the system, I can’t think of a better way to identify who is actually participating in the site. And once I do this, I’ll be adding some software to better identify hacker accounts in the future so it should make it easier for me to maintain, which is one of my goals.
So, until someone jumps up and screams “NOOooooo!” I’ll be deleting the accounts later in the week. If your account gets deleted because you’ve never posted an item, comment or forum post, you’ll still be able to recreate it in the normal way. And, this would be a good time to comment if you haven’t done so before.
The rest of the changes will follow shortly after and throughout the process I’ll be posting links on Twitter.
Dennis
11 Comments
wasn’t sure if i ever made a comment… i’m pretty sure i have, but better safe than sorry…. good luck with the upgrades! i can’t wait! i check the site daily
I live in Texas and hold much interest in what goes on in Oklahoma. I hope it’s okay to occassionaly comment.
I get up to Lawton about three times per year. I really like what’s going on with the new Fidelity owners of Lawton Cablevision.
KSWO-DT Lawton is corporate for KXXV Waco. I know some of these guys. Good bunch.
It’s really interesting to learn about small cable systems from ggore.
sorry i haven’t respond lately been busy but i am still here so don’t delete my account
Lol…guess I better leave a comment since I really enjoy this site!
I’m sure I’ve posted a comment before, but it might have been the other site. Really hasn’t been much to talk about in Tulsa. Maybe one of the other networks will get local HD like KJRH.
Still here.
Still here in Yukon, still read the comments
Still here. Still read the web site periodically. Post on occasion.
I’ve often wondered how long it will be before the low power TV (LPTV) stations have to switch to digital broadcasting and give up analog.
I hope you’ll do two things with the upgrade. First, I hope you’ll give us the ability to edit and/or delete posts from the site (I can be a terrible speller at times) and second, I hope you update the over 2 1/2 year old satellite HD channel lists.
By posts, I assume you mean your comments. In theory, you should be able to edit your comments by clicking on the ‘e’ to the right of the date/time of your comment. I can do it because I’m the head honcho, but I haven’t tried it as a normal user.
One purpose of the upgrade is to make the system more interactive with user profiles along the ability to do private messaging and submit news items for putting on the front page.
However, because I got some paying work, the schedule has been pushed back or so…
Dennis
That’s good in theory, but I do not have an “e” anywhere on my post. Perhaps this is an administrator only function? hopefully when you get to the upgrade this will be addressed.
Also, as before, please update the satellite HD listings. They are so out of date as to be laughable. For example, the only Tulsa broadcast station not carried in HD by DirecTV is KYMT-41. (Now I don’t know if KGEB is ion HD but I know that KWHB and KPTX are not.)