[Critical] Unintentional reverting of template code

Galen King's Avatar

Galen King

23 Jun, 2010 02:49 AM via web

On several occasions now we have lost a whole bunch of changes. Not talking a single save but several template pages simply revert to a previous state.

This happened yesterday and we had to manually go through all the pages redoing code changes we'd made over a number of iterations.

  1. 2 Posted by John Nunemaker on 23 Jun, 2010 03:03 AM

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    Can you provide any more details? When it happened were you saving and saving and then had to sign back in? 

  2. 3 Posted by Galen King on 23 Jun, 2010 03:07 AM

    Galen King's Avatar

    Sorry, don't really know what could have caused it. It *is* conceivable we
    had multiple tabs open but I don't think so. We did *not* have to sign-back
    in. We just noticed suddenly that several templates had reverted to a
    previous state.

  3. 4 Posted by John Nunemaker on 23 Jun, 2010 03:19 AM

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    I have noticed there is something with the latest webkit stuff (and safari by proxy) where it logs you out of an app after a short time of inactivity. Not sure what is going on, but it happens even with mobile me. In harmony, you can save and save after this happens, but nothing actually happens as we need to detect it and let you know what went wrong. Sounds like this maybe is not the problem you had, but be on the lookout if you run into the issue again.

    We haven't experienced this issue at all and have had no other reports so I am not sure even where to start. If it happens again, as much detail (step by step even) as you can provide would help diagnose. Make sure that you aren't overriding each other and that you don't have multiple tabs open. Both of those could be the culprit. Maybe we can add some kind of locking/versioning that lets you know if it has been updated since your last save. We'll put this on the list.

  4. 5 Posted by Galen King on 23 Jun, 2010 03:28 AM

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    It's definitely not logging us out.

    I appreciate you can't do much without more info so will be sure to pay more
    attention to what might have caused it next time.

    Locking might be definitely worth considering as it's quite common to have
    multiple people working on a site concurrently.

    Also, I'd quite like to see the theme and content stuff broken into separate
    tabs as I find I'm always click back back back to tweak the template then
    have to drill back down into the content. I'd opt for having the theme stuff
    in a tab at the top. Or something like that. In any case, right-clicking and
    opening theme in a new tab (in browser) does the trick.

    Cheers,

    Galen

  5. 6 Posted by Michael Warkentin on 10 Aug, 2010 04:18 PM

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    I've also had this problem. It just happened to me again (just testing the system, so I haven't lost any production work or anything).

    I'm using the latest Chrome for Mac.

    Here's what happened:

    • I've created header / footer includes
    • In the default "page" template, I included those headers and footers
    • After saving everything looks ok, I can browse to the site and see the header / footer, etc.
    • After closing the tab for page.tpl, and reopening, it was blank
    • I can still browse to the site, and see the header and footer.
    • If I save the now-blank template, the header / footer disappears
  6. 7 Posted by John Nunemaker on 10 Aug, 2010 04:52 PM

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    Thanks for the details. Next time if it comes up blank, don't save and instead just refresh your browser. We'll try to reproduce and fix but haven't been able to yet.

  7. 8 Posted by Marian Yee on 16 Aug, 2010 09:05 PM

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    I am having this same issue in Chrome on Windows 7.

    I wonder if it is pulling the content for the template files from a previous version in the web browser's cache rather than from the server.

    I have found that when i get old code, if i back out, then come back in, I get a more recent version of the code. If I do this 2-3 times I usually make it up to the most recent version. If I fail to notice that this isn't the most recent version and I save, it will save it as whatever version is currently on screen(which is not necessarily the most recent). I lost changes as well this way. It is a huge bug and needs very badly to be fixed.

  8. 9 Posted by Galen King on 16 Aug, 2010 09:14 PM

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    Just to chip in my two cents' worth—not sure if this is related but it could
    be:

    We sometimes notice that a template or include can open multiple times in
    the tabs within Harmony—this could mean you end up making changes later on
    an earlier tab thus overwriting the newer ones.

    Also, we notice erratic behaviour with keyboard commands for undo and redo
    (in Firefox on Mac mainly). Redo (shift-command-Z) scrolls to the top of the
    page.

    And, lastly, I often use the Mac command-tab function to flick back and
    forth between applications—I wonder if this has something to do with it
    since perhaps Harmony is registering the tab key press.

    Hope this helps.

    Cheers,

    Galen

    On 17 August 2010 09:07, Marian Yee <
    ***@tenderapp.com<tender%***@tenderapp.com>
    > wrote:

  9. 10 Posted by John Nunemaker on 17 Aug, 2010 03:27 AM

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    Marian,
    Sorry for the trouble. Chrome is a beta browser and we have come across
    several oddities with it. Usually new releases of Chrome fix the issues. I
    will take a look and see if I can reproduce the issue you are having.

    If you notice that it happens after doing certain things on a consistent
    basis, please let us know the steps, as that would definitely help us debug.

    On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Marian Yee <
    ***@tenderapp.com<tender%***@tenderapp.com>
    > wrote:

  10. 11 Posted by John Nunemaker on 17 Aug, 2010 03:30 AM

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    Galen,
    I have on occasion noticed a tab open twice. I have not been able to figure
    out the steps yet, but I will keep trying to figure that one out.

    command-tab should not be an issue. I also use that combo quite often.

    On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 5:16 PM, Galen King <
    ***@tenderapp.com<tender%***@tenderapp.com>
    > wrote:

  11. 12 Posted by Galen King on 17 Aug, 2010 03:34 AM

    Galen King's Avatar

    John,

    What about command-Z and shift-command-Z?

    Cheers,

    Galen

    On 17 August 2010 15:32, John Nunemaker <
    ***@tenderapp.com<tender%***@tenderapp.com>
    > wrote:

  12. 13 Posted by Marian Yee on 17 Aug, 2010 09:21 PM

    Marian Yee's Avatar

    I had the issue happen once today when I accidentally closed the Harmony tab in Chrome. I reopened it from the list of recently closed tabs and when I open a template to edit it or click on pages in the "manage content" section, I get older versions of the code. Reopening the page or the template makes it reload as a slightly newer version. After about 5-6 reopens I get the most recent version. I have had this happen in Chrome and Firefox on the PC. I have also had it happen under other conditions, and not just when I have accidentally closed and reopened the Harmony tab.

    What browser would you recommend using on the PC? Safari 5 crashes after a couple minutes and Chrome and Firefox have the aforementioned issue.

    Thanks.

  13. Support Staff 14 Posted by Steve Smith on 18 Aug, 2010 02:47 PM

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    I made an update this morning that should more forcibly request new information instead of reading from cache for AJAX requests. Not sure if this will fix the issue 100%, but it sounds like a cache issue to me. Please do a full refresh and let me know if the issue still happens. This is a pretty slippery bug, so we appreciate your patience and help.

  14. 15 Posted by Marian Yee on 18 Aug, 2010 08:25 PM

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    Excellent! I have not encountered the error today. Thanks!

  15. Support Staff 16 Posted by Steve Smith on 21 Aug, 2010 06:31 PM

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    Anyone seen this since I posted the update? I'm hoping the caching issue resolved it. Thanks for helping us fix this!

  16. 17 Posted by Brendan Falkowski on 29 Aug, 2010 05:35 AM

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    Possibly related to session timeout in the backend, which gets me a lot.

    If I haven't touched the backend for a while and then do an AJAXed command, it will appear to be saved (ex: republishing blog post or resaving templates). However when refreshing the frontend it clearly was not saved.

    The backend will still work and display my expected data which is confusing. After CMD+R the backend will revert to the last server version (same as frontend is showing).

    Before doing a hard refresh, clicking on Profile and Accounts will trigger an expired session popup, and re-authentication form. AJAX actions like navigating theme files or content won't though.

    It would be nice if a JS timer automatically logged me out when the session expires. Forcing another login is semi-hassling, but much less than the confusing half-auth state.

  17. Steve Smith closed this discussion on 16 Nov, 2010 03:25 PM.

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