Bug Report - Sites mod thumbnails

Not such a big deal but site members might not figure it out.

When you enter the URL to add a site, the next page opens before the script has had a chance to finish the thumbnail generation. The result is the created thumbnail does not display.

If you refresh the page, the thumbnail will appear. The page should wait to load until the thumbnail generation process has completed.

An update on this problem. My members are having a lot of trouble. The site never creates the thumbnail on the first try and they don't know to look for it.

When you enter the url and go to the next page, the thumbnail NEVER appears. If you complete the page and click submit without resolving the issue, you cannot fix it afterwards. .

On the other hand, if you enter the URL, then go to the next page, then hit the refresh key before you do anything else, you can force the thumbnail to appear. Finishing the page at this point and clicking submit will successfully mount the thumbnail.

Can we fix please?

It is not bug, it is the way how site's thumbnail provider works.

Many new sites are not in the database if thumbnail provider and they are generated upon the first requests - it is luck if it is generated quickly just after page reload you have ready thumbnail, in most cases thumbnail generation can take some long time - depending on the number of pending thumbnails.

So as the result, if thumbnail is not in the database of sites thumbnail provider - you can upload sites image by yourself.

I don't want to sound like I'm whining but what use is that? There is nothing worse than a feature that has not been properly thought out and only works part of the time. A good share of my members have no idea how to cap a screen and make an image from it so to them, this is useless.

It seems to me a better way would be to force the page to wait until the image is generated. The member is not going to mind if you give him some sort of rotating circle  whizzy that gives the impression the site is working on it? (wait! I've seen that before on my site! A revolving gizmo that makes you think something is actually happening!). In any case, the browse feature does seem to provide another avenue to add an image but it shouldn't be thought of as a backup for a thumbnail creation system that fails on a regular basis.

Thats why i removed that option and skiped the first form and now just load the long form first...

I just added another site. It took 5 attempts to get the thumbnail to load. This is wholly unacceptable. The page needs to wait for the image before it continues to the next step. This is a COMPLETE failure of this mod.

I really want to take the next step with Dolphin and buy the Prime license but then I run into one of these problems and I decide to wait a little longer. At some point, I'm going to get tired of waiting and just move on. I knew someone else building a complicated piece of software. He was doing the same thing, adding features continually and not finishing anything that he started. In the end, the entire project went bust because no one had any faith that the details were ever going to be worked out. This is OBVIOUSLY a failure to complete a task to it's logical solution.

I use ThumbShots.org for a directory I have built with another technology, and it has been really reliable.  Here is an example page:

http://www.caltrade.com/directory/agriculture/wineries/

Maybe Boonex or some mod developer could make it work with them.

Rob

That would be cool if we could talk someone into it. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the one that's being used. I just think a small snippet of code needs to be added to the current site mod that forces the page to wait for and check to see if the thumb has been delivered yet or not. If you keep refreshing the page, you can eventually get the thumb to load.....

I've noticed this problem too.  Making someone wait till the thumb is generated would work, but how long does that take?  Is there a way to do it so the thumb is generated in the background when someone goes to the next page, and then added whenever the process is completed?

i  would like this fived too  ,is this a bug? will boonex fix?

I agree - it's not a very well thought out system - it should at least report to the user that the auto generation has failed, currently there is no way of knowing.

I've just imported my links from my D6 site into D7, and the auto thumb generation would be a useful feature, except that there is no way to use the service.

Maybe an additional 'generate auto thumbnail' button might be a good idea, or maybe add the thumb generation to a cron so that it may be added next cron run.

/DM

Hey skyforum, I just added a hint/tip to my site - thought you might be interested -

in

/modules/sites/classes/BxSitesFormAdd.php

find

            'inputs' => array(
                'url' => array(
                    'type' => 'text',
                    'name' => 'url',
                    'caption' => _t('_bx_sites_form_url'),
                    'required' => true,
                    'checker' => array (
                        'func' => 'length',
                        'params' => array(1,100),
                        'error' => _t('_bx_sites_form_field_err'),
                    ),
                    'db' => array(
                        'pass' => 'Xss'
                    ),
                    'display' => true,
                )

change it to

             'inputs' => array(
                'url' => array(
                    'type' => 'text',
                    'name' => 'url',
                    'caption' => _t('_bx_sites_form_url'),
                    'required' => true,
                    'checker' => array (
                        'func' => 'length',
                        'params' => array(1,100),
                        'error' => _t('_bx_sites_form_field_err'),
                    ),
                    'db' => array(
                        'pass' => 'Xss'
                    ),
                    'display' => true,
                ),                
	            'Tip' => array(
					'type' => 'value',
					'caption' => 'Tip',
					'value' => 'After you hit submit, a thumbnail should automatically be created. <br>If you do not see it - refresh your browser.',
				)

/DM

Wow, just found this old post. I never knew you responded DeeEmm. This still doesn;t work in 7.03 and NEEDS TO BE FIXED!

I'm going to go ahead and try your fix in 7.03 and see what happens.

How long is this apt to take? I've been waiting 10 minutes and there are no thumbs showing up.

Anyone try DeeEmm's code in 7.0.9 yet?

When I was using shrinktheweb, I usually had to refresh the editor page about a half dozen times before the image would show. I have since removed that feature and cancelled shrinktheweb.

Do more searching here.... read all about it

I refreshed and even waited a few hours. It never did work.

It's cool. I just removed the linkup to that site. I will just have to create the thumbs myself I guess.

Thanks SkyForum

I was trying to get the sites mod to work over the weekend and after I logged in my shrinkthaweb account and looked at the log I saw the requests were getting denied because I only had the "free" account at shrinkthaweb. From what I can tell they changed the code at some point so you can only get manual screen shots using the free account. To use an automated script (like Dolphin uses) you have to have one pay memberships. At this point Boonex might as well take the "sites" module out of Dolphin.