Buondì.
Just a quickie today, as it’s the end of the month (lots of bills to pay!)
Club member Felice has been helping me out trying to fix the ‘leave a review’ function in our ebooks store.
Those of you paying attention will recall me moaning about this problem, which I assumed to be a technical glitch.
Until about this time last year, we used to get a steady trickle of reviews, several a week at least, and when we published something new, people would review it. It might have taken a week or two for them to get around to reading what they’d bought, and it was only ever going to be a fraction of buyers who bothered, but it happened.
Then, suddenly, the stream dried up. Nothing whatsoever, for months, though because that happened over the long, hot summer, it took me a while to notice – perhaps due to my own torpor, maybe because I was busy wrangling Rommie, or due to low expectations that anything would be happening at that time of year.
But it became obvious, eventually, that something was wrong, so I checked the system, which worked for me, at least. That was bad, because if I couldn’t replicate the problem, well where to start with fixing it?
I probably appealed to ebook buyers to leave reviews in one of my usual articles, and as I recall some did, but some had issues which I could not understand or resolve. The temptation was to assume it was ‘pilot error’, because it often is. But I had a nagging feeling that there really was a glitch blocking people from leaving reviews, somewhere.
Enter Felice, who wanted to say his piece on something he’d bought, and wrote to tell me he’d done so. But of course his review was nowhere to be found…
I tested again, and it was still working for me. On my usual browser, on another browser, on my phone. I could not replicate the issue, so started tearing my hair out instead.
Felice tried from his office, his phone, his ipad, and so on, also using a variety of browsers. Sometimes a series of identical reviews would arrive, sometimes nothing.
You’ve heard of Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire founder of Facebook, boss of the mega-corp now called Meta? Well he’s a club member, so I called him up and asked him.
No, just kidding.
Zuckerberg’s famous for, amongst other things, having adopted a business approach which is summarised in what was once Facebook’s motto – ‘move fast and break things’ – the idea being that shipping products that aren’t perfect yet is faster, and so more productive over time.
Compared to, say, testing everything rigorously before releasing it on an unsuspecting public.
Tech bros’ justification for churning out wave upon wave of buggy updates onto a public that’s already drowning in change is that we’ll all benefit from the innovation.
Perhaps to an extent, for a while, that was true. But while users might benefit in part, a cynic would suggest that the bosses are going to be doing much better from the slapdash approach.
Which brings me back to websites and our online stores (we have three). Website owners are told, repeatedly, that slow-loading pages are a huge risk. Readers/customers won’t hang around waiting for a page to load.
Even milliseconds of delay in visualising a webpage or product means that a proportion of people will get distracted or grow bored, so click away to another site, or pick up their smartphone to see what teenage influencers with extreme finger nails have to say on the topic of learning Italian.
Clicking a link to load a webpage used to mean that your browser (the piece of software on your phone, tablet or computer that you use to visualise webpages) asks a server (a computer) at a particular IP address (like a telephone number for websites, basically) to send over the images, texts, and scripts that go together to construct the webpage.
Your browser then puts it all together, there and then, for you. And hey presto, you’re looking at a webpage on your screen.
I think of websites as ‘places’, and they sort-of are, in the sense that phoning someone up is like reaching them in a different ‘place’ (their phone number) from where they can chat to you.
But actually a webpage, and the website on which is lives, is created for you on your device, by your browser, which downloads data in the form of packets of 0s and 1s from your WiFi or mobile connection. From the computer at the IP address you selected, remember?
You didn’t type in an IP address (sixteen numbers, four groups of four) you protest. Nope, you sure didn’t. You typed, or clicked a link, a URL, such as the one for our ebook catalog, which looks like this – https://easyreaders.org/catalogue/ – and saves you a lot of bother.
Then what happens is that your browser (the thing you navigate the Internet with) calls up a different computer, called a ‘nameserver’, with the ‘name’ you type in or clicked on ( easyreaders.org/catalogue/ ) and is provided with the numerical IP address to match. Just like with names and numbers in telephone books, back in the day.
Your browser then calls up the IP address, and starts downloading the images, texts, and scripts. Try it and see what happens: https://easyreaders.org/catalogue/
You should be looking at a page which shows the layout of our store, including logo, menus, header, footer and sidebar (on the right), plus the content of the page – in this case a typical catalog, with lots of details and a few token images. On a mobile device it’ll display differently, but the content will still be there, perhaps in a different order.
With me so far? Bene.
So the tech kids are telling me that loading this page for y’all is going to be a lot slower done the traditional way – each of the thousands of club members reading this who clicked that link will individually need to be ‘served’ all the images, texts, and scripts so that their browers show them our catalog page. Right?
Meaning that their server (which I PAY for, remember) has to do loads of work, and may, at times, be slow. So I’ll lose customers, and I don’t want that, do I, they insist.
The solution, apparently, is to create a ‘copy’ of our catalog page (presumably they only bother with the most popular pages) and have them stored on another server, some place near to where you are, so that instead of you dialing up the server I pay for, you’re redirected to a version of the finished page which has been pre-created for anyone who might want it and stored some place convenient.
Sounds cool when put like that, don’t you think?
Except, while this is all supposed to help me/you, the actual benefit is accruing to the tech bros, in the form of reduced costs to run the servers they charge me for. So they can sell space on the same machines to more customers, or perhaps use cheaper machines, who knows?
But no worries, as long as it works. Whether you view a ‘live’ catalog page, or a ‘cached’ catalog page (pre-created and stored ready for you) should make no difference, right?
Except of course that it does. The cached page might not show the updated version, for instance. Or some page functions might not work as they should. The less common ones, like, erm, the ‘leave a review’ box…
Caching software is complicated, I’d say deliberately, the idea being that owners of small websites, like me, will take one look at it and decide not to play with it, for fear of breaking something.
So leaving undisturbed the ‘default settings’, the ones the tech bros selected to ‘help’ me, while in fact helping themselves.
Anyway, thanks to Felice I eventually ran out of ideas, so bit the bullet and called Support. Of course, Support knows and understands nothing of my website problems, but is willing to try the same tests I already did, which worked fine.
Both the website owner (me) and Support are using ‘live’ not ‘cached’ versions of the web pages, so it’s unsurprising, in retrospect, that neither I nor he were able to replicate the issue.
But one thing Support did know how to do was to stop the caching software from ‘creating convenient copies’ of the product pages in the ebooks store, where the review box lives. Maybe that’ll help, he told me, innocently.
Next day, a review arrived, from the valiant Felice, and an hour or two later another, from Gill (you can see them on the Catalog page, in the ‘widget’, in the ‘sidebar’, on the right-hand side on my computer – where it says ‘Recent Reviews’).
‘Move fast and break things’ indeed! The tech bros saved some cash, thanks to some complicated innovation, and the result was that I (and by extension, you) lost a whole year’s worth of reviews! Bastards.
OK, hope you found that interesting!
Besides being ‘educational’ (we’re teachers around here), it was also a long way of begging people who’ve bought ebooks any time in the last twelve months or so, left a review, but not seen it come live, to please, please have another try!
And to be on the safe side, email to say you’ve done it, why don’t you?
Then, if the number of reviews match or exceed the number of emails, I’ll know that Felice, ‘Support’ and I have found the cause of the problem and put it right.
At least until the next time they change stuff and break it.
A venerdì.
P.S. Don’t miss the half-price ‘Ebook of the Week’ offer!
Don’t miss this week’s half-price ‘Ebook of the Week’ offer, which is 2 giugno 1946 (level A2/B1), an ebook named after this Friday’s date, except that it’s about something that happened seventy-seven years ago…
Bologna, 2nd of June 1946. Italy is slowly recovering from the devastating effects of World War II. A referendum has been organised to decide whether the reborn state will be a republic or continue as a monarchy. And for the first time in history, Italian women can go to the polls! Newly-wed Marcella is so excited at the prospect she barely slept last night. But her husband, Antonio, is unconvinced…
- .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
- .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
- 8 chapters to read and listen to
- Comprehension questions to check your understanding
- Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
- Suitable for students at any level
- Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)
Do check out the Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) before you buy a copy. That way, you’ll know whether the level is suitable for you, and that the format works on the device you intend to use it on.
Until Sunday 4 giugno, 2 giugno 1946 is 50% discounted, so just £5.99 rather than the usual ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £7.99.
Buy 2 giugno 1946, just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | History/historical ‘easy readers’ | Catalog
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When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?
P.P.S.
Don’t forget, either, to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news.
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