TidBITS Accounts Migrated to New Server
After some unavoidable delays and days of testing and tweaking, Glenn and I have now migrated all TidBITS accounts and subscriptions on our old Xserve to our new virtual private server (see “Major TidBITS Mailing List Change Coming,” 2 January 2011). The big reason for the move is that it enables us to integrate TidBITS and Take Control accounts in a single system that we’ve built to work exactly the way we want, which turns out to be nearly impossible to find in any off-the-shelf mailing list software.
Everyone who subscribes to TidBITS via email had an account on the old system, and should have received email about the migration, with a new password. If you didn’t receive that message, you can find the necessary account management controls under My Account in the left-hand navigation bar or go to the Sign Up or Sign In page. Click My Account, then Log In, and then the Need a New Password link, after which you can request a new password for the email address under which you’re subscribed. Once you’re logged in with that password, you can change your password and email address on the Account Info page.
If you have trouble logging in or changing your email address or password, as a handful of people have, try the following:
- Try again, making sure to copy and paste your email address and password rather than typing them manually.
- Try again, using a different browser, and make sure that JavaScript is turned on (as it will be by default in all modern Web browsers).
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Request a new password and try using it instead of the current one.
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Contact me via email and let me know what you’re trying to do and what error messages you’re seeing. Be sure to include your email address and current password so I can test here.
One request: If you have an account in the system, please use it, and don’t just create new accounts willy-nilly. Extra accounts will just add confusion down the road. Thanks!
We certainly hope the account management interface is self-explanatory, since we put a lot of effort into wording and behavior. But if you’re confused about how to accomplish some task, please check our new Get Satisfaction site, where you can ask questions and see our answers to other people. (Note that Get Satisfaction, as a completely independent site, does not use your TidBITS credentials, but you can sign in there using your Google, Twitter, or Facebook credentials, if you don’t want to create a new account at Get Satisfaction.) Or, feel free to leave a comment here, though Get Satisfaction is pretty neat for maintaining support discussions over time.
If all goes well, our next email issue of TidBITS will be delivered by our new system. You shouldn’t notice anything different, except perhaps some slightly different email headers given the different machine. Fingers crossed!
Somehow I can't find a "logout" after I have logged in. Is there one?
It's in the Account Info page. Unless you're using a public computer, there's not much reason to log out, since the only information here is your TidBITS subscriptions.
One note. We're currently trying to track down a bug that's preventing Log Out from working for some people in Firefox. If you really need to log out and can't right now, you could delete all cookies associated with tidbits.com. Obviously, not recommended in general.
In Firefox, look in Preferences > Privacy > Remove Individual Cookies and search for tidbits.com. I think that should do it.
I found Log Out only after reading your post here. Personally, I don't like remaining logged in anywhere - Amazon, Google, etc - and I really don't like it when logging out uses a different route to logging in - they should basically be a toggle, in my opinion.
Can you tell us why you don't like remaining logged in? I can understand it with a site where there's some personal information involved, or where true damage could be done, but at the moment, the only information associated with your account is name, email address, and four checkboxes.
We've moved Log Out from the Account Info page to a button on the sidebar under My Account. And, I think we've fixed the problem with people not being able to log out.
Oui! Ça fonctionne SUPER bien. Bravo et merci
Bertrand
You can add the "can't log out" for me with the Safari browser Version 5.0.3 (6533.19.4).
Do you block JavaScript? We primarily rely on JavaScript for the Logout, but that may be the problem. We could add separate non-JavaScript method that would work, too.
The emperor is dead' Long live TidBITS!
Not quite! It's just resting.
It's looking forward to a new career after a few last internal things are migrated.
I've now updated the article with some troubleshooting tips and information that answers questions we've received via email.
After a decade or more as a subscriber and supporter of Tidbits, I'm dropping my subscriptions, both here and the tidbits forum or whatever that thing is.
It's become too hard to maintain. bye
You don't have to maintain anything unless you want to change something!
We migrated everything for you, with both TidBITS and TidBITS Talk, and if you never logged in, you'd just keep getting TidBITS and TidBITS Talk like you did on our previous server (which was in place for 7 years).
I'm assuming that the 7 Feb 11 TidBITS was the first issue sent out under the new system? If so, the only thing that "broke" for me was my filter in Thunderbird. I've created another one and will see what happens next week.
Oops! I forgot where in the process the List headers were applied previously, so we'll have to add them back in the next issue.