___But this did not happen today on Monster. The reason is that their new login widget was so cool and looked so great that it locked me out of my account. Along the same lines of excellent customer service, when I logged a service ticket with Monster, I received simple instructions on how to log in. Hmm. I’ve been with Monster.ca now for more than a couple of years. You started up a new login widget just a short while ago, and now I cannot login. Do you think there is some correlation? I know my login ID and password, so I know I am not the problem.

___Here’s what happens. You bring up the Monster.ca site. There’s a prominent green “Sign in” button on the mid top right. Hit this and the screen greys, a popup window appears with boxes for your ID and password. I put in both and am told my password is incorrect. A couple more attempts and they lock me out of my account. I click the “forgot your password” link, and a temporary password is immediately sent to my mailbox.

___Ok, maybe I wasn’t awake enough this morning. The email arrives promptly with my temporary password. I cut and I go back to the Monster login screen, type my ID in, paste the temporary password in and, the drum roll please…my password was incorrect.

___Life is too short to waste time on apps that don’t work, and I bail. A couple of hours later I return and try again, with the same result. I try my original password. I try the new temporary password, and they both don’t open the castle door.

___Fast forward another 6 hours and tonight I try to login, just for fun. This time after one attempt I quickly get a “Too many attempts” message. A message will be sent to my email. I open my email and I’m asked to click a link to create a new password. This link launches me straight into Monster and I am asked to type in a new password. I type in my original password and hit the tab key to get to the next box to retype and confirm my new password. Something’s tugging my ear telling me the user interface is not right. After I typed in my ID, I hit the tab key and the cursor, which I expected to jump down 1 cm to the confirm password box, within the popup window, has disappeared. Where did it go? I had to use my mouse to reposition the cursor at the second password box and confirm my password. I’m then logged in.

___Or so I thought. I’m unsure if I actually AM logged in. I try to ensure that my stored resume is still intact. I click the profile button, and am prompted for login. This will be the third login I’ve done in under 2 minutes. You would think that if I can change my password successfully that the very act would be enough to grant me access to the site. At least they didn’t let the new widget programmers mess up my stored resume.

___A couple of issues ruined my Monster experience today.

1. The site login did not work: If you’re going to make a change to the production site, please thoroughly test it. Please test it in a development environment with test ID. Do not test your code on me.
2. Unexpected feedback to the user: When you grey my screen and present a popup window with 2 input boxes, once one input box is filled in and the user hits the tab key, the expected outcome is to position the cursor at the beginning of the next input box. Unexpected outcomes such as having the cursor disappear into Never Never Land really throw people off. You also get incorrect input into your second input box.
3. After your user has changed his password and properly confirmed it, do not force him to login again. Why do this? You have already confirmed the user’s identity, and they have already offered sufficient proof. It is 1) pointless and will anger or perplex your user, and 2) You will not obtain any more or better security information about your user. In other words, there is no benefit to this action.

___Throwing users off with an illogical, unexpected or untested user interface puts significant doubt into the user’s mind about the the site’s credibility. Though I’ve been in IT for quite a while, am no different. I wonder if the same widget programmer that did the login code is also responsible for keeping my resume and personal information secure and confidential? Cool widgets can really make a site look nice, but one wardrobe malfunction and your site will look like a boob.

___I think I’ll not visit Monster.ca for a while until they work out the bugs. There’s no point in playing guinea pig two days in a row.

Technorati Profile

Solution: This is not a problem of the theme or the module, but an unfortunate consequence of their interaction.

Here the fix.
Summary: Go into FCK Editor, change the default style sheet, which is “use theme CSS”, to the “FCKeditor default” style sheet, and the background will turn white, allowing you to see what you’re typing.

How to do it: Admin > Modules > Admin by Modules > FCKeditor > global settings > profiles > edit > CSS. You still with me? Change the dropdown from “use theme CSS” to “FCKeditor default”.

What Happened: FCKeditor defaults to the background colour of the theme, which happens to be black. Your font colour is also black. As you’ve found out, it’s not always cool to be in all black. The change of style sheet to the FCKeditor default put the background to white, so much easier to read if you don’t have ninja skills. You could also try adding your own CSS but that’s too much work and too messy for me. If you could change the font colour to white, the editor would work, but I could not see any such option in FCKeditor. Anyway the web usability of black background with white text would be suboptimal, and would hurt your eyes and tire you out. If you’re over 50 you’d really hate it. It sure does look cool though.

Link to the official Drupal 6 AboutPeople Fix log.

Interestingly, using Fantastico it was very easy to create a Drupal web site in my root directory. Fine. Unknown to me is the fact that the Drupal site is configured to http://dontai.com, which still points to my original site on Doteasy. I therefore cannot get to the new Drupal site using my domain name.

text-based Drupal admin logon screen

So what to do? I get on the Site5 forum to find out how I can use my IP address to get to my site. No luck. I talk to Joslyn on LiveHelp at Site5 and she says http://ipaddress/~loginid. Ok, this gets me to a text based Drupal login screen. I try to login with my Drupal admin ID and password and I get a 404 file not found error.

original error 404 file not found screen when I tried to login

That’s not so great. I step through with Jocelyn, who says I should go back to Drupal and ask around on the forums, or put a trouble ticket into Site5 and a senior tech will look at it. So I open a trouble ticket as she suggested, and bid her a “Good Night”.

Hmmm. Today I get an email response from Site5 saying that I need to change my domain registrar first, or Drupal will not work. I get on the forums and search. Of course others have had this same problem.

Graphics based Drupal admin logon screen

A possible solution, they say, is to go into your sites/default/settings.php and change your $base_url to the URL you want. I found mine was set to http://dontai.com. Fine, this makes sense. I copy this code line, comment out the original and change $base_url to http://ipaddress/~myID. Happily, I now get the graphics based Drupal admin screen. Unfortunately when I log on with my admin id and password I still get an error 404 file not found message.

second error 404 file not found message

I think I’ll start the process of moving my domain registrar. While this is happening, kill the Drupal install and FTP my original site to Site5 and get it working. Once I know the DNS is functioning well, then I’ll remove my index.htm file and reinstall Drupal, and hope that this will work.

I’ll still need to keep hunting on the web for answers.

I didn’t expect to get such a nice girl as Summer to visit me during my small financial transaction. It just goes to show you that no matter what you’re doing, a guy can always appreciate a bit of encouragement.