Vanishing content on site and admin/pages screen

[HMTKSteve]

I'm using CMS 0.13 and Cataloger 0.4.2 and I have encountered a very serious problem. I have "Catalog Catagory" items vanishing from both the website and the admin->pages.

http://www.thedicetower.com/thedicetower

On my "Game Reviews" page (top level catalog category page) I had setup the template to show all other category pages below it (#, A, B, C.... X, Y, Z) and it started working fine. Then it dropped the "D" category.

I thought I might have just mis-typed so I created a new "D" category, but that caused problems because two pages had the same page alias. I was able to "find" the missing page by going to the page I entered before it and adding one to the page number ("C" -> http://www.thedicetower.com/thedicetowe ... 349&page=1 so "D" must be 350). When I looked at the "missing" page everything looked fine. I changed it's alias and then made it a top-level item (so I could see it) and then deleted it as I now had a working "D" page.

Then it cascaded...

After "Fixing" "D" page "E" page vanished in the same way. I did the same thing (finding it by number, making it a top lelvel page and then putting it back where it belongs in the menu hierachy.)

When I closed up for the night yesterday everything worked fine. When I got up this morning I was missing 5 pages!

Now I'm down to missing only the "I" page, but when I first checked I was missing several "F", "I", "K", and "M" !

I'm worried that since the next page (aftr the one I fix) keeps on vanishing that I will never get rid of this bug unless I go through all 1000+ pages!!!

Help!

PS: I changed the template for my review page to show all subcategories (even if they have vanished) but if you click on some you will get nothing but an empty item template page

http://www.thedicetower.com/thedicetowe ... php?page=i <-empty
http://www.thedicetower.com/thedicetowe ... php?page=h <- good, but off main menu for now.

[HMTKSteve]

One more thing...

When a catalog category goes missing in the admin section is still shows up in the dropdown to pick a parent when adding new content.

Example:

When picking a parent for content:

5.1 #
5.2 A
5.3 B
5.4 C
5.5 D
5.5 E
5.6 F etc...

In the above example "D" is missing from the admin->pages page but still shows up in the dropdown for picking a parent for the new content. I can make the new item a child of "D" even though it will not be available (to see) in the admin->pages page.

I then have to go in and do as above (guessing the page number) and make "D" a top-level item and then move it back to it's proper place (below 5. Game Reviews) and then "E" will vanish but appear in the parent selection drop-down as "5.6" which is the same as "F"...

[Dr.CSS]

is this an upgrade?

[HMTKSteve]

Not an upgrade, fresh install of everything.

I installed it about two weeks ago and we have been adding content ever since (trying to go live by June 16th.)

[HMTKSteve]

This is looking to be worse then I first thought.

I'm even losing Catalog Items...

These items vanish from the admin->pages screen but when you go to give an item a parent they show up there.

Items that vanish are somehow tied together, there apear o be a few "waves" involved. i.e. I fix item#379 and then items 380-384 vanish. Everytime I fix one, another one vanishes...

I used page aliases that are very close ot the name of the item so I can find the pages (directly calling the page still brings it up) and then look at the code for the comment tag to find the items' number.

Irregardless, the items ALWAYS show up in the drop-down to pick a parent. They also always share the hierachy code as above (i.e. 4 items are all 5.34 but only the last item with that number appears...

[HMTKSteve]

Here are some cropped screan caps to show what is happening:

On the pages screen I see 5.17 is the first thing in section 5. ... Where are 5.1 -> 5.16?



So then I pick an item and check the drop down for giving it a parent



Look at all the 5.17 entries!!!

Scrolling down a ways...



Why do L and O have the same ID number? Why do the items inside have the same ID numbers?

Anything that gets "doubled up" becomes invisible except fo the last item in the list. i.e. category "O" will show up in the Pages but category "L" will not.

[HMTKSteve]

I fixed all of the data and I have an idea on where the problem started.

I use Firefox and always keep several tabs open.

When moving items around I often open up 10 tabs, each with an item that needs moving, and then move them. I think becuase each tab's information (parent dropdown)  is based on the state of the db when the tab is created a problem occurs if the db has changed between opening the tab and submiting the changes.

[tsw]

Sounds reasonable, if something has changed in the db after the dropdown was created it gets out of sync. same problem would occur if you edit one page from two places simultaneously (other edits would be lost)

this can be solved by using locks and transaction management on the db, but I think it would be quite heavy...

Your best bet is to use only one window for one stuff

[HMTKSteve]

I have to tell you, this was driving me nuts! One minute a page is there, the next it is gone!

This will probably not happen again once we go live but, in the process of having multiple people putting content into the system at once, this is certainly a problem.

[tsw]

I agree there should at least be a warning when content has been changed while editing. Well have to think about this...