A file upload bug

Just to give a quick notice to everyone, there's a bug on the server where a lot of file uploads aren't working. I've seen it happen with files as small as 10 megabytes, but it might affect files smaller than that as well. If you try to upload them, you just get an error message back that says "No content."

I've been doing a lot of upgrades on the server end recently and unfortunately it seems to have caused this bug as well as some other issues here and there. I'll try and get to the source of this one as soon as I can find it. Please let me know if you find anything else that's not working as well as it should be.

For anyone who's curious or interested in the technical side of things, I changed the JavaScript bundling method from Webpacker (which involved bundling a ton of completely unrelated JavaScript on every page load, and meant that I had to manage Node.js versions) to a newer solution called Import Maps, which are much lighter. I try and keep ALTopedia as close to Ruby on Rails conventions as possible. My experience is that when you code to a big framework like this, it's best to keep to its idioms as much as possible or else future updates become quite an ordeal. Keeping up-to-date can lead to unpleasant bug surprises like this, but it's better to spread those out over smaller updates than do to a huge jump and have all of those bugs pop up in one big cluster.

The site has crested 4000 activities and the sixth anniversary is coming soon, so I'll make another post about that in a week or two. Good luck with the new school year!