Dreadknux Posted September 14, 2022 Share Posted September 14, 2022 (edited) Hello! Found something weird, not sure if anyone else is getting it or if I'm doing something wrong. But I have a Pages database with the Publish Date field activated. I'm trying to populate this database with backdated historical articles. The IPB system is letting me do this... eventually. But for the entire system to accept it I have to publish and edit the record several times. Here are the replicable steps: Step 1: Create new story as normal via Pages interface. Step 2: Set Publish Date field to a past date, instead of 'immediately'. Step 3: Publish. The system for some reason does not accept the past date, and instead acts as if we published this entry just now. Step 4: Click the Prefix Tag ('Dreamcast', above the headline in the above image), which will take you to the Search section of the site listing entries matching the same tag. The newly-published article will be present, but its publish date will also be 'Just now' instead of in the past. Step 5: Go back to the article, click 'Story actions > Edit'. Go to 'Publish Date' and re-enter the past date. Save. The article's date will be corrected. Step 6: Again, click the prefix tag ('Dreamcast') and check once more the Search results for the tag. Even though the Pages entry's date has been fixed after the edit, the date listed on the search meta still acts as if it was recently posted. Step 7: Go back one more time to the article, click 'Story actions > Edit', change nothing and just hit 'Save'. Go to the article in question, click the prefix tag one final time. Check the Search page results. The date has been fixed. For some reason, going through the edit process a second time will correct the date on Search. I imagine this isn't expected behaviour, but wanted to know if there was anything I could do about this or if it is simply a bug that needs fixing? Authors should only need to input the publish date of an entry once, but in order for it to work properly here the entry needs to be published, edited and then edited again. It's a bit much. 😅 Any ideas? Edited September 14, 2022 by Dreadknux My Sharona 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Matt Posted September 14, 2022 Management Share Posted September 14, 2022 I've opened a bug report for you on this. I agree that this isn't what you'd expect to happen. Dreadknux and eugene228322 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dreadknux Posted September 14, 2022 Author Share Posted September 14, 2022 (edited) Thanks Matt. A lot of what I'm doing at the moment is still WIP/behind the scenes so it's not critical, just a minor annoyance. 🙂 If it means anything, I should mention as well that I have this database set up to post topics when an entry is created, and similarly when the associated topic is created the date on that is also not adjusted to suit the intended past date (this is true on the forum its supposed to be created in, and the Search results page in which the topic pops up). I mention that in case fixing the issue with the Pages date setting also doesn't happen to fix the same for the associated topic posting. Usually I think you cannot edit a topic created from a Pages record, but I am at least able to work around this issue by using a third party plugin that allows me to edit the post date of topics... Appreciate you guys looking into this! Edited September 14, 2022 by Dreadknux Matt 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dreadknux Posted December 1, 2022 Author Share Posted December 1, 2022 Hello - sorry for the bump, just checking to see if this is an issue that will be resolved in a patch or maybe next month's update? I just upgraded to the December update and latest patch and this issue is still rearing its ugly head. 🙂 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 Hi @Dreadknux, One of my colleagues is checking up on this for you. We hope to get back to you shortly. Thank you for your patience though! Dreadknux 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Silvester Posted December 22, 2022 Share Posted December 22, 2022 HI @Dreadknux This bug report was investigated recently and some fixes have been implemented for a future release. Since we're in a bug fix only cycle over the holidays. With this fix being a little more involved, it will be included when we restart feature releases around February at the earliest. Dreadknux 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dreadknux Posted February 9, 2023 Author Share Posted February 9, 2023 (edited) Just to update you guys, I upgraded my IPS install to the latest version (February update) and this issue is still apparent. It would be great to get an idea of whether this might be fixed in the March update or sooner @Stuart Silvester @Matt @Gary ? 🙂 EDIT: Actually I just tried to edit a post and change a publish date to the past and it seems that I can no longer do that after this latest update, which is now a big problem. Is there a way of escalating this? Edited February 9, 2023 by Dreadknux Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Matt Posted February 9, 2023 Management Share Posted February 9, 2023 I've taken a look and it's complicated. The publish date field was designed and coded to allow content to be published in the future. This would effectively be hidden content until the publish_date was less than the current time. It kind of allows previous dates but it may actually un-publish them now. It's not an easy fix to allow past dates without changing the publish state as all that code is very central. The tag bug we can fix, and that seems specific to Pages. I need to think a bit about this as we risk destablishing the entire future publishing code by allowing past dates and need to decide when and how to un-publish a topic/article. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dreadknux Posted February 10, 2023 Author Share Posted February 10, 2023 (edited) Thanks for the additional context @Matt. I think the ability to backdate content would be integral to any content manager working with content, so even though it's a complex issue I appreciate that it's being looked into. I don't mind waiting for a fix in that case. Would it be possible to fix the new issue that I found, that I posted in my last reply here? I actually have more information after some additional troubleshooting, if it helps. It seems that the Page Record publish date can not be edited in any way, even post-publish (which was the workaround I was successfully using before). However, the publish date DOES appear with the backdated publish information when looking for the record in Search. Steps to Reproduce: Have a database with settings to publish topic to forum Create new record, enter content, set prefix tag, set publish date to a past date (in this case, 1 June 2001 at 13:36) Publish, check record. Record displays current date ("Just Now") [see image 1] Click prefix to check record in Search results. Record displays past date ("1 June 2001") [see image 2] In Search results, associated topic will also be visible. This will display the current date ("Just Now") [see image 3] Revisit Page Record, edit record, attempt publish date change to past date again. Click save. Usually, this would successfully change the publish date to the past date as desired, but now it does not alter the publish date at all. Image 1: Image 2: Image 3: ----- So I figure some bug fixing attempt was made to resolve the issue I was having, with the last IPS update... but it strangely seems to have worked in one way and not in others. Any ideas? As I say, I'm happy to just have the situation reverted so I can use my workaround as before (multiple edits post-publish) in the meantime while you guys look further into reworking the CMS for future versions? Edited February 10, 2023 by Dreadknux Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Matt Posted February 10, 2023 Management Share Posted February 10, 2023 Yes, absolutely. I'll see what I can do. I do want to fix this properly, but I went down into a bit of a rabbit hole with it yesterday. 🐇 Dreadknux and SeNioR- 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LastPlay Posted February 10, 2023 Share Posted February 10, 2023 I have already addressed this "problem". After registering the application and examining the "problem" - it was concluded that this field is ONLY for publishing a date in the future... After that - my "problem" application was closed. I communicated by email and the email was not saved... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasDiy Posted February 10, 2023 Share Posted February 10, 2023 I'm having the same issues with the date. I only have two Plugins installed one is Google Docs Embed 1.0.3 and the other is FX News Lite 1.0.12 At first I thought it was a bad plugin. But this post confirms that I'm dealing with the same bug. I'm trying to set up a new section and I need to back date some articles from past events. Extremely frustrating. But I had several articles already back dated without issue. But I made a post on the front end and then it set the article to hide and then change the date on all of my other articles. I thought it was the server doing something funky at first. But I'm wondering if this is a front end bug. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LastPlay Posted February 10, 2023 Share Posted February 10, 2023 (edited) 5 hours ago, ThomasDiy said: But I'm wondering if this is a front end bug. As I wrote - it's not a bug! The programmer told me that this date field is ONLY for future dates (so that the article is published at a certain time/date). To specify a date in the past: 1 - create the article and save 2 - edit and specify the desired date *I do exactly that ))) (I think it's not critical to save 1 more time. +/- 5 or 10 seconds of time). Very strange that you have all the articles changed the date... We should call Sherlock 🤪 Edited February 10, 2023 by LastPlay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dreadknux Posted February 11, 2023 Author Share Posted February 11, 2023 16 hours ago, LastPlay said: As I wrote - it's not a bug! The programmer told me that this date field is ONLY for future dates (so that the article is published at a certain time/date). To specify a date in the past: 1 - create the article and save 2 - edit and specify the desired date *I do exactly that ))) (I think it's not critical to save 1 more time. +/- 5 or 10 seconds of time). Very strange that you have all the articles changed the date... We should call Sherlock 🤪 Please don’t derail this thread, it’s only confusing and complicating my original post and issues. The objective here is to fix the inconsistencies in the publish date code (which Matt and the IPS team have recognised as a bug) and to track the progress of this. Whatever you were told is related to your own individual issue, so please leave it there. Thanks. Matt 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Stridgen Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 On 2/10/2023 at 10:54 PM, LastPlay said: As I wrote - it's not a bug! The programmer told me that this date field is ONLY for future dates (so that the article is published at a certain time/date). To specify a date in the past: 1 - create the article and save 2 - edit and specify the desired date *I do exactly that ))) (I think it's not critical to save 1 more time. +/- 5 or 10 seconds of time). Very strange that you have all the articles changed the date... We should call Sherlock 🤪 While I understand you got this from your ticket, we have decided to look into this further and decided it does indeed need to be addressed as its inconsistent with other areas. Note, you are telling our management team and head of our development department that they are incorrect here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LastPlay Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 5 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said: Note, you are telling our management team and head of our development department that they are incorrect here. What do you mean? (I don't understand.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Stridgen Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 4 minutes ago, LastPlay said: What do you mean? (I don't understand.) You are stating this is not an issue, however Matt has confirmed we now believe this is. Matt head up our development Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LastPlay Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 (edited) 31 minutes ago, Marc Stridgen said: You are stating this is not an issue I wrote back, which I got officially from my ticket... That Matt is the head of development - I didn't know... I said I had already received an answer that it was not a bug... And as you can see - I wrote this for ThomasDiy, not told any of the developers... If Matt decided it was a bug and fixed it, that's super! 👍 * I'm a person who speaks directly about my doubts! 👌 ** This case doesn't apply to my doubts! (it's a mirage) 😄 🥂 *** Even Sherlock said it was a mirage... 🤪 Edited February 13, 2023 by LastPlay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Stridgen Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 1 hour ago, LastPlay said: That Matt is the head of development - I didn't know... Yeah, thats why I was letting you know 🙂 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CheersnGears Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 Interesting. I've encountered this as well, but the need to be able to do this isn't a common enough occurrence that I felt the need to raise a bug report. It was reproducible the last time it happened. I don't think I've had a need to do this since Oct/Nov time frame, but if you need additional testing, I'll assist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dreadknux Posted February 16, 2023 Author Share Posted February 16, 2023 I've just applied the latest optional patch for my community, and it says it addresses this Publish Date issue in some way. What it seems to do is limit the Publish Date field to only be visible when creating a record, and an error appears when an editor attempts to set it to a past date. The field no longer appears when editing an already-published record. I'm guessing this is the first step to a more complete solution to my issue. Will there be a new field created specifically to allow editors to backdate news records? Or will the existing Publish Date field be modified further in some way? If a new default/standard date field is being made to account for past-date records, it would be great if this field could be visible and allow input at the record creation level as well as record edit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Stridgen Posted February 16, 2023 Share Posted February 16, 2023 24 minutes ago, Dreadknux said: What it seems to do is limit the Publish Date field to only be visible when creating a record, and an error appears when an editor attempts to set it to a past date. The field no longer appears when editing an already-published record. This is correct 25 minutes ago, Dreadknux said: I'm guessing this is the first step to a more complete solution to my issue. Will there be a new field created specifically to allow editors to backdate news records? Or will the existing Publish Date field be modified further in some way? There is no way in which to do this. The function you are looking at is simply not built for what you are trying to use it for there unfortunately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dreadknux Posted February 16, 2023 Author Share Posted February 16, 2023 (edited) Okay... then these changes have done exactly the opposite of what I was reporting! It's not a fix in any way, and not what I was led to be the case when Matt was suggesting he'd fix the issue in the way I outlined. This is super frustrating as I had been waiting for months for something to be done only to be taken by surprise with a random update like this. If I knew the plan was to completely remove the ability to backdate articles in the way I had been doing in the first post, I'd have been happy to just ask you to ignore this whole bug and just let me use the workarounds I had been using. I'd rather you just revert everything back to the way it was please. If not, I suppose I will either have to try digging into the database directly to edit post publish dates or get a plugin created to fix this issue for me. Edited February 16, 2023 by Dreadknux Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Stridgen Posted February 16, 2023 Share Posted February 16, 2023 46 minutes ago, Dreadknux said: Okay... then these changes have done exactly the opposite of what I was reporting! It's not a fix in any way, and not what I was led to be the case when Matt was suggesting he'd fix the issue in the way I outlined. This is super frustrating as I had been waiting for months for something to be done only to be taken by surprise with a random update like this. If I knew the plan was to completely remove the ability to backdate articles in the way I had been doing in the first post, I'd have been happy to just ask you to ignore this whole bug and just let me use the workarounds I had been using. I'd rather you just revert everything back to the way it was please. If not, I suppose I will either have to try digging into the database directly to edit post publish dates or get a plugin created to fix this issue for me. Unfortunately, until we look into these things fully, its not always certain how they will turn out. In the case here the correct fix was to make it work as intended, which was indeed what Matt had originally pointed out above. It simply wasn't feesable to do in another way, as it wasn't intended to work that way in the first place unfortunately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dreadknux Posted February 16, 2023 Author Share Posted February 16, 2023 Appreciate the patient reply Marc. I'm actually quite confused as to how the CMS has been coded in such a way as to make such past-date publish settings unfeasible - it's something that Wordpress can do very easily. Kind of makes me wonder what the CMS app was originally coded for... I hope if there is a refresh/backend rewrite coming as mentioned elsewhere, that the team takes into consideration how editors/content creators use these systems and accounts for this. And while I can't say I'm thankful that my migration from Wordpress to IPB has been significantly delayed as a result of this (that's what I get for bug reporting I guess, lesson learned!), at least I happened to give Matt an interesting problem to work on 😛 Off to make a plugin to fix this myself I suppose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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