PasteSite

[AElliott]

Pastesite is a personal project of mine, with the intention of providing a few more of the features I see as important in a pastebin/nopaste even to users who haven't registered. For example, it includes an alternate highlighting schema for those who prefer to view light text on a dark background (the theme change is only really noticeable when viewing a paste, I'm considering changing the header logo to have the word "dark" in it to make the change apparent when there is no highlighting visible) and allows users to password protect any pastes they do not want to be completely public so that only users given a valid link will be able to view them.The backend and markup are pretty much all written by me but there are a few credits: - The layout is designed by a friend of mine, his portfolio is linked in the footer - The user control panel makes use of a few icons from Sweetie - The highlight functionality makes use of PEAR's Text_Highlight packageThe main things I'm hoping to get back are bug reports (if there are any - even minor browser inconsistencies count in my book), this is a new site, and not as widely tested as I would like, so anything preventing the use of some or all of the functionality would be something I want to fix very quickly. And also, any suggestions for things about pastebins/nopastes which may have annoyed you (through ommision of a feature or otherwise). On the list of things I hope to add to the site in the future already is support for members to be able to configure their own custom highlighting schema to match that of their favourite editor, or just to make it easier for them to read.

[Synook]

Nice design perhaps a change of tab colour to reflect the current page? An about page would be nice as well as I don't quite get what a "pastebin" is.Also, your ToS needs to be more rigourous. What about offensive material, links to illegal / offensive content e.g. warez sites, etc?Change the "Not Registered" link on the login page to "Register". Less ambiguous. When you register, a sucess notice would be reassuring.Visual Basic seems to be missing from the highlight options. Over 50% of programmers (or so my teacher says) use VB, so it would be a good option to have.No bugs that I could find, and very good form validation.Great job!

[AElliott]

Nice design perhaps a change of tab colour to reflect the current page? An about page would be nice as well as I don't quite get what a "pastebin" is.

Yeah, you're probably right - it does merit some explanation. Need to think where I'll put the link though, too many tabs and it won't fit in 800x600. Though, 1024 is more usual these days. In essence, it's a place to dump code, most useful when looking for help in say an IRC channel, where posting a 100 line program would be considered a little rude.

Also, your ToS needs to be more rigourous. What about offensive material, links to illegal / offensive content e.g. warez sites, etc?

Yeah, again, I agree - will redraft something later on today, legalese is not my forte though.

Change the "Not Registered" link on the login page to "Register". Less ambiguous. When you register, a sucess notice would be reassuring.

Done, thanks.

Visual Basic seems to be missing from the highlight options. Over 50% of programmers (or so my teacher says) use VB, so it would be a good option to have.

I've updated to a more recent version of Text_Highligher, and we now have Shell Scripting and VBScript support. :wub:I'm somewhat doubtful of 50% of the entire population of programmers using VB, for one thing it's platform limited, I would have hoped C++ or more likely now Java would take a top spot. I can hope anyway, since I really do not want to touch VB unless absolutely necessary, I'm an OSS evangelist in some ways.

Great job!

Thanks

[Norman]

Nice idea! I think you could improve it by adding more features and a service's description in your homepage.

[boen_robot]

Sounds cute as an idea, though I don't really see much usefullness in this.Anyhow, I have lots of things to say in terms of bug reports, and "JS off" issues you have.

1. "View in plain text" should view HTML pages as plain text, not as true HTML pages. Paste 113 is a good example of what I mean.
2. That's just a personal preference, but shouldn't the URL of plain text pastes go like "/113/plain" rather than "/plain/113"? If not, then at least show something more then a 404 page when "/plain/" is used.
3. How exactly do I view a paste that has been marked as "Private" if I'm not logged in before making the paste? If that's impossible, then remove the "Private" checkbox (and the password field) in the publically available advanced options. If it's possible after a log in, explain this somewhere around the "Private" checkbox, or better yet, on another page describing the whole procedure, a link to which could be placed next to the checkbox.
4. They say "If a link does not make sence with JavaScript off, generate it with JavaScript". While I agree with this, I could also suggest that you try to create meaningful URLs for those links that perform the same actions on the server side. With JavaScript off, the same action will be done by the server, which while slower would still make things up nicely. The links which need this are "Add/Remove Line Numbers", "Increase/Decrease Font Size" and "Print Code". In the case of "Print Code", there could be a link that tells users that they can easily print only the paste by selecting "File > Print" in their browsers, ideally with screenshots of this in all browsers (for idiots' sake).
5. If you generate your line numbers as list items in an ordered list ("ol"), you might save yourself from having to use a table in the paste viewer. You'll then just have a left float for the menu, and a right float for the code.
6. The "Dark theme" link doesn't do anything right now. I suppose you'll add it later, right? Well, the thing about JS off applies here too.
7. You've done a good thing in showing the advanced options by default with JS off. However, generating the "Toggle Advanced Options" link in this case is pointless. You should generate this link with JavaScript, or make it switch to "Simple mode" on the server.
8. On the bottom right corner, I think it's spelled "ToS" (note the capitalization), not just "tos".
9. You should use a different title on your pages, and I don't mean just appending the paste name when viewing pastes. I mean also administrative pages like "Forgotten password", "Login", "Register". On second thought, those are the only ones I see sharing the same title.

[AElliott]

Sounds cute as an idea, though I don't really see much usefullness in this.

Spend much time in IRC channels? These things are Godsends, especially in high-volume channels like those on Freenode.

"View in plain text" should view HTML pages as plain text, not as true HTML pages. Paste 113 is a good example of what I mean.

Hmm? It does, it serves the page as text/plain and only the paste contents are sent.

That's just a personal preference, but shouldn't the URL of plain text pastes go like "/113/plain" rather than "/plain/113"? If not, then at least show something more then a 404 page when "/plain/" is used.

Hmmm, will have to consider that, would mean I would have to restrict "plain" as a possible password though since ([0-9]+)/(.+) is taken for /ID/password at the moment.

How exactly do I view a paste that has been marked as "Private" if I'm not logged in before making the paste? If that's impossible, then remove the "Private" checkbox (and the password field) in the publically available advanced options. If it's possible after a log in, explain this somewhere around the "Private" checkbox, or better yet, on another page describing the whole procedure, a link to which could be placed next to the checkbox.

You enter the correct URL with the password you set in it. For example: http://pastesite.com/119/swordfish viewing it without the correct password will result in being given a form in which to enter the correct password, for example: http://pastesite.com/119/sword

They say "If a link does not make sence with JavaScript off, generate it with JavaScript". While I agree with this, I could also suggest that you try to create meaningful URLs for those links that perform the same actions on the server side. With JavaScript off, the same action will be done by the server, which while slower would still make things up nicely. The links which need this are "Add/Remove Line Numbers", "Increase/Decrease Font Size" and "Print Code". In the case of "Print Code", there could be a link that tells users that they can easily print only the paste by selecting "File > Print" in their browsers, ideally with screenshots of this in all browsers (for idiots' sake).

I'll address all the JS bits here, yes, I think you're right. I'll see what I can do with those today.

If you generate your line numbers as list items in an ordered list ("ol"), you might save yourself from having to use a table in the paste viewer. You'll then just have a left float for the menu, and a right float for the code.

Not doing this with an <ol> is VERY intentional, a large proportion of browsers will not allow you to directly copy and paste the contents of an ordered list without inserting "#"s and new lines for every new item in the list. For this reason it would make copying the highlighted code directly into an editor, or compiler impossible because you have to edit it every time. So, as a compromise I generate line numbers and use a <pre>. It would be nice to avoid the table, but as yet it is the only way I've found which allows the page to expand horizontally outwards without a peculiar overlap issue which drops the code down below the line numbers in IE.However, on things like the "Recent Pastes" page, you'll notice I am willing to use an <ol>, because there the copy/paste-ability of the code is not a great concern.

The "Dark theme" link doesn't do anything right now. I suppose you'll add it later, right? Well, the thing about JS off applies here too.

It does do something, and I mentioned the fact that it wasn't very visible in the OP. So, it's a known issue.Thanks for the useful advice.

[boen_robot]

I think you should leave passwords out of URLs. Send them as POST data instead. A password is supposed to protect a paste, and having the right URL is not much of a protection. Speaking of good levels of protection, what happens if I forget my paste ID or its password? If I'm logged in, I'm probably never going to forget my paste IDs (you do track them, righ?), but passwords? If one is logged in, are all private pastes guarded by the account password, or by their own password, as with guests? And if as with guests, how to change/recover the password(s) then? The whole policy seems unclear. In combination with the "permanent" storage, who knows how much full your server is going to get one day.For the MIME type issue... I suppose it could be just an IE problem.For the line numbers... only Firefox does what you describe. Every other browser I have tried (Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9, Safari 3) doesn't do this. And for Firefox - that's exactly why you have the nice feature known as the "Remove Line Numbers" link.

[AElliott]

If you forget it as a guest, that's an issue - just like if you forget most passwords it's an issue. It isn't retrievable, since there is no good way of verifying that you are the actual owner. As a user, they are retrievable (unlike the account password which must be reset). The choice I've made is to balance security with ease of distributing it to those who need to see it. This way, only a link needs to be sent, and I would not recommend the security it provides for very sensitive data, but for a sample of source that you simply don't want to be viewable by everyone (but still want to get help on) it is perfectly adequate and that's how I see the majority of people using it.My conclusion is that for this type of password the URL is adequate protection, as it's mainly a simple deterrent - since you either need the URL or would have to bruteforce each paste to get in. And I'm fairly sure this server is running mod_dosevasive, so that would help.Hmmm, yes, IE does seem to ignore the specified MIME, that's annoying. I'll need to have a search for workarounds.If Firefox does it, that's way too many people who it would affect. And well, you can also say there's a text box below the paste which you can copy directly from - but the highlighted code not being directly copy/paste-able was one of the biggest complaints I've had with previous versions. So the slightly messy code more than makes up for it.EDIT: Did the maths for a quick estimate of how full things will get (sample of ~1150 pastes from an old still accessible version [but which doesn't accept new pastes]). 100MB will take approximately 15,000 pastes - and that ~1150 took a year before, and if it comes to it I can easily get several GB of space. I don't intend to market it to much, to try to rival say pastebin.com, it's more a personal site I just want to make a good site. So low traffic figures are fine.