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Comments
Odd...your smiley showed! :-P
Dana
Number two is why number one is an issue. In order for the download window to show progress and estimated time left, it has to know how big the file is. Not only is the store not telling you how big it is, it's not telling FireFox how big it is. That seems to be a very basic omission. I'd like to say that it is easily fixed, but I have no idea, really.
Dana
It actually does report the file size in the file header. Why FF doesn't pick it up, I don't know. The code I'm using does. See top of the picture I link to.
There are other problems though - the server is commiting protocol errors for about every other file - it's possible to work around it and I suppose that's what the browsers do (they are extremely fault tolerant as they have to deal with a lot of broken servers). But the code I'm using has no workaround yet and therefore fails downloading the files. A funny thing btw: it doesn't corrupt the files (append these error messages) like the browsers do. Why the browsers do that I don't know.
Looks like they've begun to serve zipfiles btw, see bottom of the picture. The zip files actually contain the correct items, but the filenames are just numbers (SKU I suppose). Maybe that's how the new Install Manager wants it, but I imagine it may be confusing in other contexts. Or maybe it's a bug? And the accompanying "UsingZipFiles.pdf" is not accessible.
http://taosoft.dk/temp/dazservererrs01.jpg
What are you using, Taozen? It looks like perhaps some custom application. At any rate, they are certainly not adhering to web standards if such a highly used browser such as FireFox can't decipher the file sizes. This just gets more and more messy. :long:
Dana
I'm using a download manager I've written myself. It worked fine with the old site, currently I'm trying to adapt it to the new site.
It may or may not end up as a commercial program, depends on different other things, so I can't say much about it here in the commons I suppose.
Odd...your smiley showed! :-P
Dana
That's weird, Dana - I still can't see it, only the text equivalent (even though smileys are supposedly enabled)........and a few days ago I didn't have that prob........:down: Also can't see smileys in lots of other posts.
Now that is something new, and also the first time it has been remarked on. It maybe something somewhere in your settings, or browser settings.
I am sure that if otheres were having this probelm we would have had lots of reports, because people do like using smiles, and have been moaning like mad about the ones suppplied with ths forum software beacuse they want different ones, or more, not that they don't display.
:coolsmirk:
...OK having been out of the coding loop for nearly two decades, website design is something foreign to me (when I did most of my programming, the the net as we know it today didn't exist).
As I understand the old site was run under PHPBB which I researched to find that (like Blender) is open source software.
When I looked into Magento, I discovered that it originally was open source as well and in seeing Kendall's response above also is built on PHP, (which I now realise is a scripting language unique to website development and not a branding for a specific software). The last update of the software was issued only a few weeks ago.
Apparently about a year ago, Magento was bought by eBay and now the only free version of the software offered is the Community Edition which is unsupported and thus, in the description is:
From what I've been hearing here on the forums, it sounds as if the Community Edition is what Daz is using. The one thing that bothers me in the description is the "non-mission critical "part. Certainly operating an online store site that involved personal account information of a world wide customer base would seem very "mission critical".
In a statement issued by Magento's CEO Roy Rubin on the Magento Blog after the eBay sale, he mentioned that the company would continue on with himself and [co founder] Yoav Kutner as leaders. Kutner left in April of this year over concerns about eBay's/PayPal's visions for Magento, and whether the software would remain open source as he felt eBay had trouble understanding the concept.
Last fall eBay introduced X-Commerce that basically "stitched" (as the article mentions) eBay, PayPal, GSI Commerce and Magento platforms together with other partners to...
This leaves me just a little concerned about what Daz may be getting themselves into and what this means for us.
On top of this a major update to the entire works is planned for release later this/early next year which could mean we may have to go through this all over again.
As far as I am aware DAZ is using the commercial version of Magento - please be careful about building deductions from heated speculation offered as fact.
I see smileys, no problem there. :coolsmirk:
...Richard, thank you for clarification on which version is being implemented. That leaves me a bit more comfortable in knowing that Daz site development has access to support resources rather than being left to fend for themselves.
As to the situation at Magento, when someone who is a co-founder (and the firm's CTO) departs for reasons other than retirement or wanting to expand in a new direction, I see it as no small matter. Again, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been though a somewhat similar situation which didn't end up very pretty and what I read conjured up a few old memories.
I actually like these new smileys. I can understand people bemoaning the lack of some of the extras (which I only discovered a couple of days before the old site went dead :red: ), although I think that the Jason mask one would be used quite a bit in these recent posts. :lol:
Dana
Here's another little "gotcha" the changeover did to us. Previously, Google was the best way to search the old forum. It still is, but there's a catch (or CACHE as the case may be). If you use the search exactly as before, you get the topic, but at the old location, which means the link Google returns will fail unless you change "forum" to "forumarchive" as previously indicated. The Google engine database has not caught up. :down: Using the same search with forumarchive does not return any results. Example:
Enter the following in a Google search box:
site:forum.daz3d.com somebody mentioned eyes
Click on the first link (FAIL!)
The link returned is
http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=23797
which of course has to be changed to:
http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=23797
This public service announcement brought to you by your department of redundancy department
On a sorta-related note is that Google returns archived-forum results scattered between at least 4 domain names;
“forum.daz3d”, “forumarchive.daz3d.com” “http://66.180.192.247” and “http://ca1-webvirt-forumweb.daz3d.com/”
Plus, a lot of times, I'm, personally looking for info about a program/utility/plugin/how-to, and I want to include the new forum.
So I skip site search and I type something like: daz animate2 64 -torrent
(If I don't expect to see legit freebie downloads I might add -download or -free download).
Not as clean as site search, but your relevant hits multiply tremendously. And it's not unmanageably littered.
If there's a bunch of promising links, I just drag them do a doc/rtf and use search & replace (e.g. to add archive to forum).
Watch "Search Fu" weekly on that network your television service provider has vowed never to carry, and you won't find it on the internet either. Check somebody else's local listings.
Well I've been looking into this a bit more, and it appears that these Protocol Violations seem to be caused by the problem with the server appending error messages to the files. Or rather, to about every 2nd file (may vary occasionally), for whatever reason.
Looks like the .NET libraries are better than those used by the browsers, in that they detect the mismatch between file size reported in the file header, and the actual file size, which is different because of the appended error messages. That causes the Protocol Violation exception. How they get the actual file size I don't know - the file is actually never downloaded as the exception causes the program to bypass the download routine and start on the next file immediately.
That also explains why I seemingly never get any corrupted files - only the files where the actual file size matches the size in the header gets downloaded. I'm not 100% sure here though as a few files looks like this at the end:
17849 ÿèthpt/:w/wwd.zad3c.mo
17850 /
17851 .....=ÿÂthpt/:s/oterd.zad3c.moi/dnxep.phS?otereDaptremtns=pdalitun
17852 m6
17853 ......ÿèthpt/:w/wwd.zad3c.mo
17854 /i
17855 .....;ÿÄthpt/:s/oterd.zad3c.moc/talagop/orudtcp.php?ocedp=_spa20
17856 3
17857 ..ESIV....
But since there probably are som references to DAZ inside the installers I can't say for sure.
It seems that this Magento doesn't do a whole hell of a lot of what DAZ3D needs it to do...seems like just a fundamentally bad choice. And now a bunch of custom code is being written, with error all its own as you pointed out, and it seems that this will become as complex and unstable as the site they have moved away from. :blank:
Dana
Dana,
That's quite a jump in speculation there from what I wrote. I'm surprised.
NOTE TO MODS: IF YOU NEED TO DELETE THIS, THERE'S NO NEED TO NOTIFY ME. JUST GO AHEAD AND DO IT.
Now to people in general: I'm summarizing here, using my friend Dana's response, to avoid writing things that might get me banned if I handled them separately. Dana, this isn't aimed at you, my friend.
Magento is a modular system. The emphasis on modular and not system. Out of the box it has a certain functionality. Additions and/or modifications are purchased or custom coded. By default, the base package is set up for a physical product storefront, and the modules for the other modes of operation are purchased. There are hundreds of extensions for this thing.
Regardless, it takes significant coding to make the HTML and PHP sides coalesce, as stated clearly in the support and requirement areas. DAZ has been working to get things going as close to what they had as possible for the switchover. The beta site was working fairly well, as far as it went. However, something on the production server turned out to be different from the setup on the beta server and Murphy took advantage.
I don't doubt that DAZ intends to get the system close to what they want, but there are stages one has to take for this stuff. Both for Legal/Regulatory and for System (macro definition, not micro) stability. There are 4, maybe 5 pieces to this puzzle and none of them are cakewalks:
1) The Storefront (Magento) provides for the user experience
1a) Downloads
2) Product Database
3) Restricted/Secured Transaction Database
4) Forum Software
5) Cache Manager
From what I can glean, DAZ has #3 down solid. They thought that #1, #2, and #5 were going to be minor changes and/or settings migrations from the beta server. And #4 was left for afterward. #5 has been a real PITA for them. Varnish is a freaking $#*^&$!! to work with. Once you get it right it is solid, getting it there will try the patience of a Saint. The majority of the "wrong usernames" and "wacky product info" problems are right here. Before someone says: "Then don't use it" -- without a cache manager the server would be overwhelmed by the same requests over and over and over again. Varnish is considered one of the better Cache Managers.
#2 seems to be almost right, but it does seem that the database migration procedures from the old system weren't quite 100%. It may take a while to wade through the two databases and find all of the differences. That leaves #1 and 1A. #1 is like any other e-commerce system... designed to be obtuse and obfuscated. A guaranteed income generator for consulting income and support billing. DAZ thought they had the setup right from the beta server, but something between the two installs turned out to be different. Tracking down the differences is the task, it doesn't help to have to dodge the rotten eggs and rocks being hurled at them from outside.
That leaves 1A. Downloads. Virtual product vs Physical product. Picky, OCD, intolerant users who hate anything different, and the need to put in your own download module because one that does what you need doesn't exist. Oh, and don't forget the people screaming at them to convert from installers to zips...yesterday. Wait a minute, don't forget about writing a new interface for those users who don't have the skills to work with those zips, or who are on Macs that will trash their runtimes without notice.
Let's add in that the current system takes 100% of your time just to keep up and running. It's dying and you've already pushed it 3 months past its failure point. "Weekend at Bernie's" anyone? Let's make this corpse dance a little bit more! Hey, we lost an arm! Whoops, there goes a leg. Did anyone bring a needle and thread?
Now before I get accused of being a DAZ excuse maker....again. I would not have done the switch-over this way. What method would I have used? That depends on the circumstances, with which I wasn't privy to. The point is that what we have is what we have. I've been through helping a company who made a similar error recover, and I know what's involved (EDIT: This was in a MicroSoft IIS/SQL Server based environment.) I am not envious of the DAZ crew. But I AM NOT going to stand around throwing rocks at the guys and gals trying to get things running. That isn't going to help anything. Even from the outside, I help where I can. I've done so for other entities as well over the years. That's just the way I am.
Kendall
Excellent post Kendall, thank you.
Coldrake
I can only agree - I'm not envious at the DAZ crew either, right now. Give them some time, I'm sure they'll work it out sooner or later. No one's life is at stake here - if you're a DAZoholic you could dive into your file cellar and spend some time finding bottles you've haven't opened yet. I'm sure you'll find enough to quench your thirst for a while (I believe I have a few hundred unopened bottles myself)... ;-)
*applauds Kendall* Mate, that's... everything I didn't say, because I couldn't make it sound as thoroughly non-bitchy as you did. I, like you, have been that misfortunate sod who had to mop up a one of these -- thankfully, on a much smaller scale. Doesn't matter how nailed down you think it is, there is always something that didn't get accounted for, and most of the time, it's not too horrible. And some of the time everything explodes and catches on fire... no, literally. I was standing in a server room for that one. I'm going to call this a 3 on a 1-5 scale of bogged transitions. Yeah, it's not good, but I've seen worse. The server is not on fire, therefore the situation is still salvageable.
Yup. Servers on fire. I got to watch a VAX 8650 go up in flames (at least until the Halon system kicked in and us out.) An Alpha Processor server (from Microway I believe, anyone remember those -- expensive and fast) caught fire. Started in the power supply. Then there's the fireworks caused from Sun Blades popping Caps and causing the blade in the next slot to pop a Cap causing the blade in the next slot to ....
Anyone remember the error message from LPD: Printer on fire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire) DEC ln01 laser printers liked to do that a lot.
Queue the Archie Bunker song: Those weeerrrree the daaaaaayyyyyyssssss!
Kendall
Dana,
That's quite a jump in speculation there from what I wrote. I'm surprised.
Kendall
Speculation?
That Magento doesn't do a whole hell of a lot of what DAZ3D needs (or wants) it to do is an observation, not speculation.
That it sees like a fundamentally bad choice is also an observation.
That a bunch of custom code is being written is not speculation, it's quite obvious.
That they were trying to get away from a system with a lot of custom code is also not speculation, it is what they themselves have stated.
That it will eventually become complex and unstable is some speculation, but not a huge jump, and actually more an educated guess than pure speculation.
However, maybe I should just unwatch this thread and keep my opinions, educated or not, to myself. It seems they're seldom wanted anyway, and certainly nobody here will give any heed to them. That, too, is observation (based on present and past experience here)...maybe a little bit of speculation.
Dana
I wish you hadn't got offended, but I understand it.
He didn't use the word speculation as an insult, but in a stricter sense than the casual usage.
And no one likes to be disagreed with. (Even scientists, and that involves the most important part of their profession).
VAX boxen were downright flammable, weren't they? *laughs* And, yeah, I've seen smaller, more modern things go out from power shorts. One thing in the case made of the wrong kind of plastic (or nobody's pulled the fan-knit dust sweaters from the exhaust grates), something sparks, everything's toast. And not the happy, user-friendly M4 sort of toast.
Ah, printer on fire... That one's up on my list next to 'Guru Meditation Error'.
Hmm, I looked at the screenshot and it reminded me how during download previously, there were two files with the same name, one as a placeholder/null that gets deleted after the download is finished. Maybe that's the one that is corrupted and doesn't contain the necessary information for FF to use to show the size of the file and how much is left to download.
Not so much offended as wary. I can see where this is going. And in these forums speculation is a bad word, trust me.
And disagreement is fine...but I don't care to be disregarded.
Dana
VAX boxen were downright flammable, weren't they? *laughs* And, yeah, I've seen smaller, more modern things go out from power shorts. One thing in the case made of the wrong kind of plastic (or nobody's pulled the fan-knit dust sweaters from the exhaust grates), something sparks, everything's toast. And not the happy, user-friendly M4 sort of toast.
Ah, printer on fire... That one's up on my list next to 'Guru Meditation Error'.
Yup. The VAXorcist (http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/vaxorcist.html). Funny, but true.
Kendall
...this is precisely one of my concerns over the eBay/PayPal buyout.
With PHPBB there was no profit margin involved. With the eBay, taking control of Magento, that has changed and we the community are paying for it. with a flaky system that is taking way to long to implement and, as mentioned, has still seems to require a lot of coding on the part of Daz's web development team to get working right. So where is all that support Magenta/eBay says that buyers of the Enterprise Edition are supposed to have? If Daz has already paid for it, then they shouldn't be in this predicament.
Yes, I'm a bit hot about this but I don't want to see this sink Daz. This company and community has become my family, If it fails it would be a big loss to me.
Wholeheartedly agree here. I don't have your web experience - but I've sys-admined at one company on hardware from 4 vendors comprising seven different mainframe/mini systems and ten (eleven?) operating systems. Never had a server catch fire, but I have had deep-discharge high amperage batteries explode in the UPS when we lost building power.
The rank & file are frazzled at this point - and I think their management are letting them down. We're sitting out here, seeing one strange issue after another, with no way of knowing what has been looked at or fixed. Someone in the upper echelon should be making a daily post to cover what the team priorities are for that day and what (if anything) has been fixed. There may be a day or two where nothing changes; there should be a status update that nothing has been changed. (Digging through code trying to find a cross-platform issue is non-trivial and can be quite time consuming).
What we need. out here, is some communication.
...this is precisely one of my concerns over the eBay/PayPal buyout.
With PHPBB there was no profit margin involved. With the eBay, taking control of Magento, that has changed and we the community are paying for it. with a flaky system that is taking way to long to implement and, as mentioned, has still seems to require a lot of coding on the part of Daz's web development team to get working right. So where is all that support Magenta/eBay says that buyers of the Enterprise Edition are supposed to have? If Daz has already paid for it, then they shouldn't be in this predicament.
Yes, I'm a bit hot about this but I don't want to see this sink Daz. This company and community has become my family, If it fails it would be a big loss to me.
I personally don't think that Magento was either a good or bad choice. It isn't my place to second guess the decisions...I wasn't party to the deliberations when the decision was made. No matter what we, as individuals, may think, the people running DAZ are not idiots. Just as the people on my board are not idiots. DAZ chose what they chose for specific reasons, I don't think it was an overnight, spur-of-the-moment decision by a single person.
Those of us here in the forums can only speculate on what was decided and why. We can also only speculate on what is actually happening. Those of us who have been through similar situations may be able to get closer to the mark; but until/unless we're actually told what is happening we're all speculating.
Also, keep in mind that Magento is only ONE piece of this puzzle. And if they did, indeed, go with the commercial version and the new owners are uncooperative, there is always the drop-back to the OSS version.
Kendall
Not so much offended as wary. I can see where this is going. And in these forums speculation is a bad word, trust me.
And disagreement is fine...but I don't care to be disregarded.
Dana
Disregarded? Never. Even when I vehemently disagree with someone, I never disregard them or their opinions.
Since I consider you a friend, I simply used your post so that I could keep my language more toward the direction I intended. For me, it is easier to work from a "positive" to keep positive, than to work from a "negative" and try to go positive. I needed to lay out a lot of information that may not be well known, and needed to do so in a manner that was as neutral as I could manage.
There is a lot of information that is available that lends itself to a more clear picture of what is happening, and to a degree, why. Many of the hard decisions that DAZ has made that have upset people here in the forums have perfectly acceptable business reasons for being made. But those reasons do not affect the fact that there are problems with the current implementation and that those problems are affecting the customers. I, personally, have many questions that I would "like" to have answered. However, I will not subject the forums, or the good folks at DAZ, to questions that really cannot/should not be answered in a public forum.
Kendall
...the thing with any product, be it software, a car or whatever you can be promised it is the best for your needs by the company's marketing department. That's how they stay in business. eBay is a business which needs to turn a profit. Magento used to be totally open source until eBay bought them. I've read Mr Kutner's comments and tend to agree with him that the vision is muddled by the need to make a profit. Again having someone as important as he was to to the company leave because he felt the focus was moving in the wrong direction causes me some concern.
Blender is Open Source. The Blender community offers an incredible amount of support for its users. On the other hand, users of the Magento Community Edition are left out in the cold. This says to me that eBay only cares about making money from the deal and doesn't give a rodent's posterior about those who don't pony up. To me it sounds like what could have been a promising web development tool has been hamstrung by a company that only cares about their bottom line. I've seen this happen before.
As I already alluded to, if the Enterprise Edition is supposed to be so "robust" and have the "stellar" support as hyped then this update should have occurred on without a hitch.
...sometimes all the positive thinking in the world cannot change the fact that just maybe a bad decision was made.