Site Update: Thurrott Now, Improved Commenting, More

Site Update: Thurrott Now, Improved Commenting, More

This week, we are proud to finally launch our Thurrott Now micro-blog for Premium members, plus improved commenting and a few other new site features.

Yes, it’s been awhile since our last site update, but we wanted to wait until we got Thurrott Now up and running. And you may know, the origins of Thurrott Now date back to a September 2015 meeting in Fort Collins. At that time, our boss George asked me if there was anything that I felt was missing.

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My answer was that we needed to address those stories that were not big enough to justify an entire blog post. One of my goals for Thurrott.com is that we be useful, and not just noise like so many of our competitors. I’ve never wanted to inundate readers with nonsense. But I did want a way to mention things in passing that I felt people would be interested in.

The answer we came up with was a micro-blog, a way to just link to stories written elsewhere, accompanied by a bit of commentary. The issue was that creating a micro-blog on top of everything else we were doing—and then, later, everything we did for Thurrott Premium in 2016—would be time-consuming and would require a lot of technical work behind the scenes. And I wanted to start doing this immediately.

The result was Thurrott Daily—the posts here on Thurrott.com, not the newsletter; choosing the same name was my mistake—where I collect several such stories throughout a given day, link to the original source, and then comment on them. The Thurrott Daily posts were always meant to be a temporary thing, and would be discontinued when the micro-blog—since named Thurrott Now—was ready.

Well, it’s finally ready. Thurrott Now is designed as an ongoing stream of content, with each linked story being its own post where Brad and/I can add some commentary. We want to be respectful of the sites and people who create this content, so we will always link to the original source, as I’ve done in Thurrott Daily.

But that’s not all that’s new today. We’ve also completely re-written the comments system for the site, and while it looks similar to before, you will notice that it’s faster and has some nice animations.

Premium members should note, too, that Brad and I have now recorded over 90 episodes of the First Ring Daily podcast. I feel like the show is off to a great start, and we do a live show on Friday’s that everyone—yes, even non-Premium members—can watch. You can find all of the episodes here.

Finally, I’d like to note a new Thurrott Premium promotion for those who haven’t signed up yet. Now, when you buy a year’s subscription to Thurrott Premium, you will 1 month free. So the price is effectively $58 for the first year, instead of the normal $64. You can find out more here.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and if you find any bugs with the new features, or anything else on this site, please email [email protected] (and not me). I’m not passing the buck here: A real human being will get back to you and see the issue through to its fix/completion.

Brad asked that I mention that he “is the best person on Earth and I am lucky to know him.” I refuse to do so.

Thanks!

–Paul

 

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Conversation 43 comments

  • burog25c

    16 February, 2017 - 3:21 pm

    <p>Glad to see you&nbsp;didn't mention that Brad is the best person on Earth. ;-)</p>

    • Brad Sams

      Premium Member
      16 February, 2017 - 3:24 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#42807">In reply to burog25c:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Can't deny these facts.</p>

      • actionthomas

        Premium Member
        16 February, 2017 - 3:59 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#42808"><em>In reply to Brad Sams:</em></a></blockquote><p>Is this an alternative fact ?</p>

      • starkover

        16 February, 2017 - 3:59 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#42808">In reply to Brad Sams:</a></em></blockquote><blockquote><em>I fear for earth.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

      • woelfel

        16 February, 2017 - 4:22 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#42808"><em>In reply to Brad Sams:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Denied.</p>

  • ReformedCtrlZ

    Premium Member
    16 February, 2017 - 3:37 pm

    <p>Love the addition! Is there a way to get these as an RSS feed or to include them with the main article RSS feeds?</p>

    • Tim

      Premium Member
      16 February, 2017 - 3:43 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#42811">In reply to ReformedCtrlZ:</a></em></blockquote><p>https://www.thurrott.com/thurrott-now/feed</p><p><br></p><p>You can amend "feed" to just about any URL on the site and you'll find an RSS feed of that content</p><p><br></p>

      • jgraebner

        Premium Member
        16 February, 2017 - 5:06 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#42814">In reply to Tim:</a></em></blockquote><p>That works, but with these really short articles it would be nice to have a full text feed in order to avoid having to click through to the site to see the excerpts and commentary. Maybe an authenticated feed for Premium members could do that?</p><p><br></p><p>(honestly, a full-text RSS feed for the entire site for Premium members would be a really nice feature)</p>

      • ReformedCtrlZ

        Premium Member
        16 February, 2017 - 7:37 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#42814">In reply to Tim:</a></em></blockquote><p>Thank you sir!</p>

    • unfalln

      16 February, 2017 - 7:45 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#42811"><em>In reply to ReformedCtrlZ:</em></a></blockquote><p>I was actually thinking a service like Thurrott Now could use browser-based push notifications. If this is possible it'd be awesome!</p>

  • Wizzwith

    16 February, 2017 - 3:57 pm

    <p>Did the update include deleting and rearranging comments? </p>

    • Brad Sams

      Premium Member
      16 February, 2017 - 4:05 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#42816">In reply to Wizzwith:</a></em></blockquote><p>Not sure what you mean, you can still vote content up and down and delete?</p>

      • Wizzwith

        16 February, 2017 - 4:44 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#42822">In reply to Brad Sams:</a></em></blockquote><p>A couple comments I posted earlier today are gone, others have incorrect time stamps ( Outlook premium article). Some counts are off (this page shows 10 total, but then only 4+4 on the tabs). Some replies are not tied to the original post (see standard comment tab under PS Now article). </p>

        • Tim

          Premium Member
          16 February, 2017 - 5:22 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#42841">In reply to Wizzwith:</a></em></blockquote><p>Comments continue to be stored in the same fashion and same place (in the database) as before so this update should not have impacted any comments.</p><p><br></p><p>Votes are stored in a new table and stored in a new way. There is a migration script we ran after uploading the new code base so it's possible that there is a discrepancy there but it should be minimal. </p>

          • Wizzwith

            16 February, 2017 - 7:45 pm

            <blockquote><a href="#42856"><em>In reply to Tim:</em></a></blockquote><p>You've got something going wrong.&nbsp; Look at the timestamps, they are set ~5 hours ahead.&nbsp; I posted 3 more time under this thread and now those posts are all missing.&nbsp; </p>

      • Wizzwith

        16 February, 2017 - 4:45 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#42822">In reply to Brad Sams:</a></em></blockquote><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Looks like there was a temporal shift, these comments won't be posted till the future, but we can see them now!! Time stamp says "in X hours [from now]" AWESOME!!</span></p>

        • Wizzwith

          16 February, 2017 - 4:49 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#42842">In reply to Wizzwith:</a></em></blockquote><p>The time shift does seem to be consistent. Comments posted now say "in 5 hours", some I know I posted this morning are now showing as being posted ~30 minutes ago. </p>

      • Wizzwith

        16 February, 2017 - 5:15 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#42822">In reply to Brad Sams:</a></em></blockquote><p>Just posted 2 more comments under this, and now they are gone. So, reposting…</p><p><br></p><p>Looks like there was a temporal shift; these comments were posted in the future, but we can see them now!!&nbsp;AWESOME!!&nbsp;Timestamp says "in X hours [from now]"</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The time shift does seem consistent, comments posted now show "in 5 hours"&nbsp;while comments I happen to know I made this morning show as "1 hour ago".&nbsp;You may have a server time mismatch.</p>

  • RossNWirth

    Premium Member
    16 February, 2017 - 4:02 pm

    <p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">choosing the same name was my mistake" Clearly inspired my Microsoft (Outlook) (Windows)</span></p>

  • lordbaal1

    16 February, 2017 - 6:22 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Brad asked that I mention that he “is the best person on Earth and I am lucky to know him.” I refuse to do so.</span></p><p>But he is still not the most interesting man in the world.</p>

  • brettscoast

    Premium Member
    16 February, 2017 - 6:22 pm

    <p>Good stuff looking forward to thurrott now. Didn't you say meeting Brad was the best thing that ever happened to you.</p>

    • Brad Sams

      Premium Member
      16 February, 2017 - 9:35 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#42868">In reply to brettscoast:</a></em></blockquote><p>If he hasnt said it yet, he should say it.</p>

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    16 February, 2017 - 6:52 pm

    <p>Notifications?</p>

    • Brad Sams

      Premium Member
      18 February, 2017 - 10:05 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#42875">In reply to Chris_Kez:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Now that the new comment system is done, notifications are now very high on the priority list. </p>

  • mike moller

    16 February, 2017 - 6:56 pm

    <p>Hi – the link in this article for Thurrott Now seems to suggest that Now is going to be a Premium only feature. Is this correct?</p>

  • colmob

    Premium Member
    16 February, 2017 - 9:36 pm

    <p>I'll miss twitter notifications of new content; I suppose a private/authenticated Thurott Now feed with links to new content would be asking too much?</p><p>Apart from that, I like the new format.</p>

  • colmob

    Premium Member
    16 February, 2017 - 9:38 pm

    <p> Second the comment about times of comments being off; I'm posting in PST and as soon as I posted my comment the time said "in 8 hours"; which I suppose it is, if the commenting system is using UTC.</p>

  • robincapper

    16 February, 2017 - 11:01 pm

    <p>Go to Thurrott Now button works for me but the destination will always be blank. </p><p>Why? </p><p>Because 'Now' here in NZ is always your (US) tomorrow. It goes to the correct day (ie now here is the 17th) but Paul is still writing, adding content to the 16th in his 'Now'. </p><p><br></p><p>(Have sent this to the help email too)</p>

    • Brad Sams

      Premium Member
      17 February, 2017 - 8:13 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#42916">In reply to robincapper:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Ah interesting bug, we are working on a small update to this that I think (hope) will resolve this issue.</p>

      • robincapper

        19 February, 2017 - 6:37 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#42963">In reply to Brad Sams:</a></em></blockquote><p>It's a common problem living (a little bit) in the future. I got a ticket response and it appears to be fixed. The button works now, shows a page with content ('yesterday') when I click it.</p>

  • Angela_WWW

    17 February, 2017 - 1:20 am

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I like the Thorrott Now but I need a way to navigate to it from the home page. I am using an iPhone but it is not in the menu.</span></p>

    • Narg

      17 February, 2017 - 3:57 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#42926"><em>In reply to Angela_WWW:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><em>I don't understand why this is a separate section of thurrot.com and not the main section.&nbsp; Thurrott Now should be front an center, IMHO.</em></blockquote>

  • TomKer

    Premium Member
    17 February, 2017 - 9:11 am

    <p>And I'm back to the situation where my company's overtly aggressive firewall rules block the comments. Oh well, at least I can still see the content. I'll just have to go to my phone to participate in the comments while at work. </p>

  • Johannes

    17 February, 2017 - 9:33 am

    <p>Nice work! Keep it up guys!</p>

  • Jhovesen

    Premium Member
    17 February, 2017 - 10:46 am

    <p>So how does one get from the home page to Thurrott Now?</p>

  • Jeff Jones

    17 February, 2017 - 12:25 pm

    <p>Were do we go to watch the live episodes of First Ring Daily? All I see are previous episodes on the blog page. https://www.thurrott.com/podcasts/first-ring-daily</p><p>No live stream, no link to today's episode if it already occurred, and no clock telling me when a new live stream will occur.</p><p><br></p>

    • Brad Sams

      Premium Member
      18 February, 2017 - 10:07 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#43082">In reply to Jeff Jones:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>We record it live every Friday at 1pm ET and you can watch it at thurrott.com/live</p>

  • ryanvalentin

    17 February, 2017 - 1:17 pm

    <h1>Is Paul's picture also a Premium-only feature now?</h1><p> </p><p><br></p><p><img src=" https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0566529900ee49bdd22ff1c013416d06569d9b670ccf4887281da1c7a663a3c5.png"></p&gt;

    • ryanvalentin

      17 February, 2017 - 1:19 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#43125">In reply to ryanvalentin:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>I suppose I just figured out how to make my text larger, lol.</p>

  • StephenCWLL

    18 February, 2017 - 5:38 am

    <p>Anyone else been blocked by Paul on twitter???? I only said I'd brought a Windows phone and he told me to "unsubscribe" and blocked me. Is he having a mid-life crisis?</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

  • marcosanchez

    08 October, 2018 - 10:28 pm

    <p>you can do it better. I know it but just need some <a href="https://lennyfacecopy.com&quot; target="_blank">lenny face</a> to improve it, I think.</p>

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