The TL;DR on this is always, always, always dig deep into any organization offering publishing services and do your due diligence. There are many ways to spend a lot of money and receive little value. Here’s the result of my digging into one of those services.
I’m part of several writers groups on a variety of social media sites. Earlier today, A fellow going by the name of “John Stokes” posted a link on one of these sites to waitlistr.com, saying something along the lines of “Apply to get on the waiting list for high quality Canadian book production services”. The image attached to the post referred to Agora Publishing.
A wait list? No reputable publisher I know of has a “wait list”, especially not one offering self-publishing support. They might have a slush pile, but not a wait list. This aroused my suspicions. It sounds like that well-worn marketing technique “false scarcity”. Better get on that wait list quick, or it will be years before they get to you! Right. Let’s check that out!
I left a comment saying that authors might want to check references before spending any time and/or money on this, and “John” deleted the post. Bad move, “John”. Now I’m curious!
First, as always, I check with Victoria Strauss’ Writer Beware blog at https://writerbeware.blog/ and https://writerbeware.com. There’s nothing there, but there was a Twitter post from her indicating that there have been complaints. You’ll have to find that yourself, since I’m no longer linking to sites that support fascism, and Strauss hasn’t made it to Mastodon yet.
Next, I thought I’d look up Agora myself. What we get is a nice looking home page, but most of the links on that page just replicate the same information. There’s no evident content beyond that. Here’s what the home page looks like:
Looks okay, I guess. Save for the fact that the address is a PO box in a shopping mall and it’s an awfully thin site for 23 years of publishing. I figured I’d see where it’s hosted, so I did a quick IP address lookup and got 165.140.159.91, which appears to be a VPS at Scala Hosting. Noted.
Next, I wondered what all these sites that were “talking about Agora Publishing” actually had to say. None of the images actually link to websites, and I’d never heard of any of these publications, so that requires a little searching.
First up, the Toronto Business Journal found at tobj.ca, which we can find at (drum roll) 165.140.159.91:
There it is, in the footer: developed by agorapublishing.com. Well, that’s an independent, objective source, isn’t it? For an extra bonus check the sidebar which features some COVID-19 conspiracy theory garbage and (surprise, surprise) self-publishing services through Agora. There’s more cross-links there too if you want to really dig into the mind of this person.
On to the “Canadian Business Daily”. That site doesn’t come up, but there’s a YouTube channel of that name that links to agoracosmopolitan.com at, you guessed it, 165.140.159.91! Here we find… well it’s not a business journal, that’s for sure. All I can say is if I were an incel trolling for women to “neg”, I’d build a site that looked a lot like this one.
If you can stand to scroll down, you can find insightful business articles like “Are demonic clones now running the world?” Seriously.
Moving on, we have “Le Canadian” https://www.lecanadian.com/ (yes, also at 165.140.159.91):
This is pretty much the same whacked out content as the other sites, still featuring dating events in the past. There’s no explicit mention of Agora, but the contact page lists “National Co-Managing Editor: John Stokes”. So, another independent journalistic source there. Is this starting to smell the same for you? I bet it is!
Next up we have “The Ottawa Star”, a non-responsive site, if I managed to find the right one. And finally, the glowing, independent review that would be found at “Toronto Capitalistocracy” [wut? LOL], if the site could ever be located. I found nothing referencing this ludicrously named site.
I was going to dig into “John Stokes” a little more, but I got blocked real quick. That’s great defence of my remarks there, bro. Nothing to hide, eh?
But there are ways around being blocked. I’m not planning to dig any deeper, but here’s the source for his profile image:
He’s cropped it, of course, but it’s good to know that “John” makes a good “Man in Blue Longs Sleeves Smiling at the Camera while Sitting on an Office Chair”. (Credit to Yan Krukau, who I imagine has never met the person behind the “John Stokes” name. https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-in-blue-longs-sleeves-smiling-at-the-camera-while-sitting-on-an-office-chair-7792769/). Needless to say, I won’t be convinced that a “John Stokes” exists until I see some official documentation.
Now, should you be masochistic enough to find some of the books available from Agora, be prepared for lots more conspiracy theory and the like. I’ll spare you what else I’ve learned.
It is probably redundant to say this, but if you’re looking for help self-publishing, Agora is not an option I’d recommend.
Update: A friend did a reverse lookup on the phone number and found Xcheaters-Reviews.com Magazine Publishing Montreal, QC. That site is dead now, but a LinkedIn page describes it as “Xcheaters-Reviews.com is an an eclectic lifestyles oriented magazine which includes investigative analysis and sightings reports on UFO and alien sightings.”, which sounds consistent with these other sites. Meanwhile there is an (also defunct) xcheaters-bistro.com, which was located at the same mall, same “BP” (which seems to be an attempt at “box postale”, or “bag postale”, except in French it’s CP “Case Postale”). Here’s a capture from the Facebook page:
Same phone number too! None of this seems to be based on the name xcheaters.com, which looks like a sleazy “casual dating” site based in Cyprus. I can’t see anything to say that they’re related, but opening a bistro based on the name of a sleazy dating site is curious, to say the least. Especially with all the dating-related content on those “business” sites. Possibly it’s just an outdated attempt to get some search traffic and route it through an affiliate link, or maybe it’s just deranged. It’s hard to tell.
Having just gone through some trouble trying to get a decent, fully responsive, non-trivial table working in Laravel Livewire, I figured I’d share. This code is available on GitHub as Laravel Livewire Paginated Table. Feel free to use and adapt.
First set up a project with breeze. I’m assuming you’re familiar with this process. If this is new, there are lots of other resources available to help. Replace “myproject” with your project name:
composer create-project laravel/laravel myproject
cd myproject
composer require laravel/breeze --dev
php artisan breeze:install livewire-functional
npm run dev
Next, we’ll create a table to hold the data and a factory to generate test data.
php artisan make:model -mc Part
php artisan make:factory PartFactory
In practice, the data in our table would probably be the result of a join and some computation but for the purposes of this example, I’m just going to mirror the columns in the table. Our migration for creating the parts table will look like this:
public function up(): void
{
Schema::create('parts', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->id();
$table->string('partNumber');
$table->text('partDescription');
$table->string('vendorNumber');
$table->string('vendorName');
$table->integer('orderQuantity');
$table->integer('receiveQuantity');
$table->decimal('cost');
$table->decimal('extendedCost');
$table->decimal('dutyPct');
$table->decimal('duty');
$table->decimal('freightPct');
$table->decimal('freight');
$table->string('uom');
$table->string('vendorPart');
});
}
While we’re at it, set up the factory to generate sample data.
I tried to embed pagination inside a view-component and got nowhere. What worked for me was creating a component-component. In other words, I separated the component code from the view. While we’re here, I added some methods to populate and clear the table.
<?php
namespace App\Livewire;
use App\Models\Part;
use Livewire\Component;
use Livewire\WithPagination;
class PartList extends Component
{
use WithPagination;
public function populate(int $count)
{
Part::factory($count)->create();
return redirect()->to('/');
}
public function purge()
{
Part::truncate();
return redirect()->to('/');
}
public function render()
{
return view('livewire.parts.list', ['parts' => Part::orderBy('partNumber')->paginate(10)]);
}
}
Making the CSS Mobile First
Nakayama’s CSS has a desktop first orientation. My first step was to reorganize it to be mobile-first, as a precursor to making it actually use Tailwind’s utility classes.
@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;
@layer components {
/* Mobile first styles, extra small display, single column originally up to 580px */
/* Now small display: up to 639px */
ol.collection {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
li {
list-style: none;
}
ol.collection * {
box-sizing: border-box;
}
.item {
border: 1px solid gray;
border-radius: 2px;
padding: 10px;
}
/* Don't display the first item, since it is used to display the header for tabular layouts*/
.collection-container > li:first-child {
display: none;
}
.attribute::before {
content: attr(data-name);
}
/* Attribute name for first column, and attribute value for second column. */
.attribute {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: minmax(9em, 30%) 1fr;
}
.collection-container {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: 1fr;
grid-gap: 20px;
}
@media (min-width: 640px) {
/* Mobile first styles, small display, dual column originally 581px to 736px */
/* Now medium 640px up to 767px */
.collection-container {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr;
grid-gap: 20px;
}
}
@media (min-width: 768px) {
/* Mobile first styles, medium display, table originally 737px and up */
/* Now 768 and up */
.attribute::before {
content: none;
}
/* Show the first item, since it is used to display the header for tabular layouts*/
.collection-container > li:first-child {
display: grid;
}
.item {
border: none;
padding: 0;
}
/* The maximum column width, that can wrap */
.item-container {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: 2em 2em 10fr 2fr 2fr 2fr 2fr 4em 6em;
}
.attribute-container {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(var(--column-width-min), 1fr));
}
/* Definition of wrapping column width for attribute groups. */
.part-information {
--column-width-min: 10em;
}
.part-id {
--column-width-min: 10em;
}
.vendor-information {
--column-width-min: 8em;
}
.quantity {
--column-width-min: 5em;
}
.cost {
--column-width-min: 5em;
}
.duty {
--column-width-min: 5em;
}
.freight {
--column-width-min: 5em;
}
.collection {
border-top: 1px solid gray;
border-left: 1px solid gray;
}
/* In order to maximize row lines, only display one line for a cell */
.attribute {
border-right: 1px solid gray;
border-bottom: 1px solid gray;
display: block;
grid-template-columns: none;
padding: 2px;
overflow: hidden;
white-space: nowrap;
text-overflow: ellipsis;
}
.collection-container > .item-container:first-child {
background-color: blanchedalmond;
}
.item-container:hover {
background-color: rgb(200, 227, 252);
}
.collection-container {
grid-template-columns: none;
grid-gap: 0;
}
/* Center header labels */
.collection-container > .item-container:first-child .attribute {
display: flex;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
text-overflow: initial;
overflow: auto;
white-space: normal;
}
}
}
To test this, I copied the <section> from Nakayama’s HTML and dropped it into the view.
<section>
<ol class="collection collection-container">
<!-- Copied sample table data here -->
</ol>
</section>
Time to add a couple of buttons to manage the table, loop through the data and add pagination.
<section>
<x-secondary-button wire:click="populate(10)">Add records</x-secondary-button>
<x-secondary-button wire:click="purge">Purge All Records</x-secondary-button>
@if(count($parts))
<ol class="collection collection-container">
<!-- The first list item is the header of the table -->
<li class="item item-container">
<div class="attribute"></div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="#">#</div>
<!-- Enclose semantically similar attributes as a div hierarchy -->
<div class="attribute-container part-information">
<div class="attribute-container part-id">
<div class="attribute" data-name="Part Number">Part Number</div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="Part Description">Part Description</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute-container vendor-information">
<div class="attribute">Vendor Number</div>
<div class="attribute">Vendor Name</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute-container quantity">
<div class="attribute">Order Qty.</div>
<div class="attribute">Receive Qty.</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute-container cost">
<div class="attribute">Cost</div>
<div class="attribute">Extended Cost</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute-container duty">
<div class="attribute">Duty %</div>
<div class="attribute">Duty</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute-container freight">
<div class="attribute">Freight %</div>
<div class="attribute">Freight</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute">UOM</div>
<div class="attribute">Vendor Part Number</div>
</li>
<!-- The rest of the items in the list are the actual data -->
@foreach ($parts as $part)
<li class="item item-container" wire:key="{{ $part->id }}">
<div class="attribute" data-name="Select"><input type="checkbox" name="" id="{{ $part->id }}"></div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="#">{{ $loop->index + 1 }}</div>
<div class="attribute-container part-information">
<div class="attribute-container part-id">
<div class="attribute" data-name="Part Number">{{ $part->partNumber }}</div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="Part Description">{{ $part->partDescription }}</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute-container vendor-information">
<div class="attribute" data-name="Vendor Number">{{ $part->vendorNumber }}</div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="Vendor Name">{{ $part->vendorName }}</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute-container quantity">
<div class="attribute" data-name="Order Qty">{{ $part->orderQuantity }}</div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="Receive Qty">{{ $part->receiveQuantity }}</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute-container cost">
<div class="attribute" data-name="Cost">${{ number_format($part->cost, 2) }}</div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="Extended Cost">
${{ number_format($part->extendedCost, 2) }}</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute-container duty">
<div class="attribute" data-name="Duty %">{{ number_format($part->dutyPct, 1) }}%</div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="Duty">${{ number_format($part->duty, 2) }}</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute-container freight">
<div class="attribute" data-name="Freight %">{{ number_format($part->freightPct, 1) }}%</div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="Freight">${{ number_format($part->freight, 2) }}</div>
</div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="UOM">{{ $part->uom }}</div>
<div class="attribute" data-name="Vendor Part Number">{{ $part->vendorPart }}</div>
</li>
@endforeach
</ol>
@else
<p>There are no parts in the table.</p>
@endif
{{ $parts->links() }}
</section>
“Tailwindifying” the CSS
Right now we have a working solution, and we could call it done. But merely dumping our custom CSS into utilities isn’t exactly Tailwind native, and these styles also belong in the components layer, so let’s fix all that. Note that some of the colours changed slightly so we can use those provided by Tailwind. There are also a few tweaks for alignment, which will show up soon.
@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;
@layer components {
/* Mobile first styles, extra small display, single column originally up to 580px */
/* Now small display: up to 639px */
ol.collection {
@apply m-0 p-0;
}
li {
@apply list-none;
}
ol.collection * {
@apply box-border;
}
.item {
@apply border border-gray-500 p-3 rounded-sm;
}
/* Don't display the first item, since it is used to display the header for tabular layouts*/
.collection-container > li:first-child {
@apply hidden;
}
.attribute::before {
@apply content-[attr(data-name)] text-end pr-3;
}
/* Attribute name for first column, and attribute value for second column. */
.attribute {
@apply grid grid-cols-[minmax(9em,30%)_1fr];
}
.collection-container {
@apply grid gap-5 grid-cols-1;
}
@media (min-width: 640px) {
/* Mobile first styles, small display, dual column originally 581px to 736px */
/* Now medium 640px up to 767px */
.collection-container {
@apply grid gap-5 grid-cols-2;
}
}
@media (min-width: 768px) {
/* Mobile first styles, medium display, table originally 737px and up */
/* Now 768 and up */
.attribute::before {
@apply content-none;
}
/* Show the first item, since it is used to display the header for tabular layouts*/
.collection-container > li:first-child {
@apply grid;
}
.item {
@apply border-0 p-0;
}
/* The maximum column width, that can wrap */
.item-container {
@apply grid grid-cols-[2em_2em_10fr_2fr_2fr_2fr_2fr_4em_6em];
}
.attribute-container {
@apply grid grid-cols-[repeat(auto-fit,minmax(var(--column-width-min),1fr))];
}
/* Definition of wrapping column width for attribute groups. */
.part-information {
--column-width-min: 10em;
}
.part-id {
--column-width-min: 10em;
}
.vendor-information {
--column-width-min: 8em;
}
.quantity {
--column-width-min: 5em;
}
.cost {
--column-width-min: 5em;
}
.duty {
--column-width-min: 5em;
}
.freight {
--column-width-min: 5em;
}
.collection {
@apply border-t border-l border-gray-500;
}
/* In order to maximize row lines, only display one line for a cell */
.attribute {
@apply block border-r border-b border-gray-500 grid-cols-none overflow-hidden p-0.5 text-ellipsis whitespace-nowrap;
}
.collection-container > .item-container:first-child {
@apply bg-orange-200;
}
.item-container:hover {
@apply bg-blue-100;
}
.collection-container {
@apply grid-cols-none gap-0;
}
/* Center header labels */
.collection-container > .item-container:first-child .attribute {
@apply flex items-center justify-center overflow-auto whitespace-normal;
text-overflow: initial;
}
}
}
While we’re at it, let’s make the card view a little nicer and align the columns in the table view:
There’s more that could be done here. For example, some of these constructs could be generalized to make it easier to support multiple tables. If your application has a lot of different tables, that would be the best approach.
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