Nebraska Libraries on the Web

With over 50 Web sites now live on the system, we’re looking to do a little house cleaning. The major portion of this cleaning will be removing themes and plugins that are not currently being used by any site on the system. We will be doing everything in our power to not delete anything that will negatively affect your site, but we realize that there is a very small chance we might delete something we shouldn’t.

We plan to do this work on Wednesday, January 16^th and Thursday, January 17^th. What we need you to do is to keep a close eye on your site those two days and make sure everything is working as it has been. If something changes, please let me know ASAP and we’ll do what we can to put things back the way they were. As I said, we don’t expect anything to go wrong, but better safe than sorry.

There may be some other items we’ll be dealing with that effect specific sites and I’ll contact those sites individually. If you’re wondering about the status of something I’ve said that I’m working on for you in particular, this is all part of that and you haven’t been forgotten. I’ll also contact those libraries directly as the project progresses.

As always, if you have any questions just let me know and please don’t forget to keep an eye on this blog for news, tips, and updates.

Thanks for your continued participation in this project.

Michael

I’ve been testing the Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin on a few other WordPress sites I run and it seems to just about eliminate comment spam that gets through the other measures we’ve installed. So, if you interested you can check out the details through the previous link and then let me know if you’d like me to turn it on for your library’s site.

This morning I opened my e-mail and found 300+ incoming spam comments for about half-a-dozen of participating libraries. For most of the affected libraries, if you’ve not changed your spam settings the most annoying result of this is copies appearing in your inbox for moderation. This isn’t the biggest problem in the world but it’s is an annoyance we’re trying to minimize.

So, for the sites that I saw were currently at issue I’ve gone into your discussion settings and checked the box labeled “Automatically close comments on articles older than 14 days”. This will prevent ALL comments from being created on posts older than 14 days. It’s not the best solution but it helps with the immediate issues.

At this point I also recommend that anyone else experiencing a significant increase in spam comments to the same.

We’re also working on some additional solutions here at the commission. As these solutions are tested and rolled-out I’ll be sure to post updated here.

We here at the commission have already been in contact with the six libraries that are affected by this problem, but in the interest of full disclosure, and to have a full record of the project I’m also posting this information here.

Google Analytics (GA) is a Google service that will give you statistical reports of visits to your Web site. In order for this service to work with WordPress-based sites, a plugin must be installed to connect the site to a GA account. We’ve been offering this plugin for about a year now without any problems.

Recently we updated our installation of PHP, the programming language that WordPress relies on to run. That upgrade caused the GA plugin we were using to fail, and in at least one case, cause errors to appear on the library’s page. Of course, this happened not just over a weekend, but a weekend between my being out of the state and then being sick for two days.

At this point, the only solution has been to disable the GA plugin that we were using. The next step will be to find a new one and test it before rolling it back out to participating sites. In the mean time, those of you that were using GA will receive reports of zero visits. There is nothing you need to do to your GA account. Just leave it as is.

Please accept my apologies for this and know that I’m working on it and hope to have something tested and ready to use ASAP.

It has come to my attention that part of the Nebraska Library Commissions computer security protocols could have a serious effect on someone’s ability to access sites hosted as part of the Nebraska Libraries on the Web project. Here is the official statement from our computer team who handles security:

The Internet presence of and online services offered by the Nebraska Library Commission continue to expand. In order to safeguard its computer equipment, network, and data from misuse, the agency blocks inbound access from ranges of IP addresses that have been the source of repeated malicious activity. The practical effect of this process over many years is that a large portion of the IP address space outside North America is blocked. Users in those areas are unable to view webpages and sites hosted on Nebraska Library Commission servers. This includes all libraries.ne.gov sites.

So far, this has not been a known problem for any of our participating libraries but in the interest of full disclosure, I wanted to make sure that you were all aware of this issue. I apologize to anyone who wish they’d known this prior to setting up their site with us. If because of this you wish to move your site to another server/service we’ll do what we can to help assist you with that process.

This information has been added to the Want to the Participate page so as to alert any new libraries wishing to join the program.

If you have any questions about this please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to provide what answers I can.

It appears that a server patch done over the weekend caused the required \tmp folder to disappear. Two libraries reported they were unable to upload images to their blog. The folder was manually recreated, and everything works again.

If you do have continued problems with this issue please let me know ASAP.

Over the weekend two libraries reported that they’re receiving an error when they’re trying to upload content to the media library. The error looks something like this:

Warning: touch() [function.touch]: Unable to create file /tmp/dr.tmp because No such file or directory in D:\Inetpub_WPNElibraries\wp-admin\includes\file.php on line 177

Dismiss“dr. seuss.gif” has failed to upload due to an error
The uploaded file could not be moved to D:\Inetpub_WPNElibraries/wp-content/blogs.dir/46/files/2012/02.

At this point I can confirm that you’re not doing anything wrong and that it’s a problem with our servers. We’re looking into it and will report additional information as it becomes available.

We’ve been listening!  A comment we’ve heard pretty often is that so many presentations at conferences seem to be by and for librarians from larger libraries.  Well, Big Talk From Small Libraries will change that.

This free one-day online conference is aimed at librarians from small libraries; the smaller the better.  Each of our speakers is from a small library or directly works with small libraries.

Topics range from technology (new tech and old tech) to programming to partnering with your community.  Speakers will cover eight topics—one each hour.  Come for the programs on what you’re dealing with now or maybe try something new.

Everyone is welcome to register and attend, regardless of how big or small their library is, but if your library serves a few thousand people, or a few hundred, this is the day for you.

More details, including speaker bios, session descriptions, technical information and registration can be found @ http://nlcblogs.nebraska.gov/bigtalk/.

This conference was organized and is hosted by Michael Sauers and Laura Johnson of the Nebraska Library Commission and is co-sponsored by the Association for Small & Rural Libraries and Library Renewal.

Big Talk From Small Libraries
February 28, 2012
8:45 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (CT)

Preliminary Schedule:
8:45am            Log-in, Welcome, Housekeeping – Michael Sauers & Laura Johnson, Nebraska Library Commission
9:00am            Helping Your Patrons E-Read – Karen Mier, Plattsmouth Public Library (NE)
10:00am          Community Partnerships – Karla Bieber, A.H. Brown Library & Diane Althoff, Gregory Public Library (SD)
11:00am          The Fayetteville Free Library Fab Lab – Lauren Smedley, Fayetteville Free Library (NY)
12:00pm          TBA
1:00pm            Training the Public – Jessamyn West, Librarian.net (VT)
2:00pm            Working in the Cloud – Jezymnne Dene, Portneuf District Library (ID)
3:00pm            Gaming and Game Collection Development – Diane Trinkle, Nortonville Public Library (KS)
4:00pm            TBA

Well, it turns out that I spoke too soon with yesterday’s post. Yes, I solved the new user registration problem but I created another problem. With the new plugin turned on, users were unable to post comments to your sites. So, for the time being I’ve turned off the new CAPTCHA plugin and everything “working”. The trouble is, this has the potential to significantly increase the amount of comment spam you may receive. So please keep an regular eye on your incoming comments for the immediate future. I’m actively working on solving all of this ASAP and will report back as information is available.

(If you’re more technically oriented and are interested, I have submitted a help request to the plugin’s community which you can read and follow along with @ http://betterwp.net/community/post/252/.)

I’m cross-posting this from the Commission’s blog as I thought some of you might be interested
(Posted on January 5, 2012 by Laura Johnson)

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