I was doing some cleanup on my feeds, fixing a few URLs, renaming folders, moving sites between folders, deleting now-empty folders. Everything was fine until I moved a nested folder to top level (right-click folder, select “Move to folder”, left the select dropdown at default “Top level”, and clicked “SAVE”) and it just vanished along with all its sites.
I was doing this in the “All” view, and switching between other views and back to “All” doesn’t bring the folder back. I also tried a hard refresh with no change. The folder had a unique name that was not shared by any other folder. The sites from the folder are also not anywhere in the full list. Right-clicking another site and clicking “Change folders” does not show the missing folder in the list of folders. I found one of the affected sites in a “You subscribed to (site name)” item in the Activities list and clicked it there, which then shows the feed - and if I right-click on the site title above the feed and click “Change folders”, nothing happens except a JavaScript error (“Uncaught TypeError: n.get_view(…) is undefined” from “show_confirm_move_menu_item”).
I received an email “Backup OPML file of your NewsBlur sites” from hello@newsblur.com but I think this happened before I moved the vanished folder and I assume was triggered by one of the (empty) folders I actually deleted. (It includes a site that I edited before moving that folder, but with the old URL.)
I tried adding a new folder with the same name as the disappeared one and it has strange behavior. It’s shown in the list as not containing any sites, but when I click on it I am shown items from multiple feeds - it looks to be the same set of items I see when I click “All Site Stories”.
Since I have the backup XML I can presumably recover the missing sites into a new folder but I’m concerned about this ghost folder that might somehow be colliding with the actual top level folder? Not sure how to handle this.
I went ahead and downloaded a new OPML backup from the Account dialog - it contained the new folder with the same name as the old one and showed it as having zero sites.
I pasted the missing sites in from the previous backup, but I can’t figure out how to import it. When I open the “Manage Newsblur” menu and click “Import or upload sites”, all that happens is that the menu closes. I don’t even get a JavaScript error for this one.
I came back to Newsblur after some time with the tab closed and now all the missing sites are present at the top level. Could be the same behavior as Moved a folder to top level and it disappeared though as previously noted in my case (a) there was no folder name collision and (b) I tried a hard refresh with no effect so presumably any caching issue was not in the browser.
I also tried adding a new folder with a totally different name and it also had the behavior of displaying all site stories when clicked on, so I guess that wasn’t unique to the name of the disappeared folder but is just what happens when you click on an empty folder?
I’ve gone ahead and moved all the reappeared sites from “Top Level” to a different new folder and most things seem fine. When I find one of the affected sites in Activities again and right-click on the title as before, Change Folders doesn’t error out anymore. I may not have any lingering issues - it may just be the case that moving a nested folder to the top level instead deletes the nested folder and moves its sites to the top level, but in a way that causes them to vanish for a while first?
Also, I don’t know if this is related, but “Import or upload sites” still doesn’t do anything when I click it.
I’m sorry this happened. I believe there might be some issue deep down in folder management that’s gone haywire due to the backend upgrade that was part of the redesign. You’ve certainly done your homework and seen previous threads about this issue.
Moving folders should be atomic, in that there’s never an in between state. And it’s all heavily tested, but the tests haven’t run on the new upgrade yet (we’re working on that), so part of that work is to fix this from happening. I believe the tests we already have will fail if this is a backend problem. If they don’t, I’ll have to find it on the front-end.
Thanks for the thorough writeup. I’m glad the backup OPML was sent just in case, as that seems to have smoothed things over.
As for the Import Sites menu item not working, you’re right, the menu button for Import Site doesn’t work. I just fixed that and will deploy in 24 hours due to another backend issue I’m working on. You can also use the Import Sites button on the dashboard.
Thanks for the context and info here - with the OPML and the eventual reappearance of the removed sites, I do seem to personally be all set, and it’s good to hear that there’s already work ongoing on the parts of this that tripped me up.
I appreciate the response. Hope you’re having a good day!
