Posted by Kim on January 28, 2012, 5:03pm
January has been AMAZING! Here's what's been going on:- The new page management interface was released today!
- 'bots that have been causing us downtime were identified, and steps can now be taken to prevent their mischief.
- Your character could be a star
- Some pretty fabulous updates
- As ever, bugs were hunted and squashed
New Page Management Interface for Profiles RELEASED TODAY!
This new interface will allow for more complex navigation layouts on character profiles. Drop down menus for all! Groups will soon get this same capability. If you want to get in on the more-than-five-pages-goodness, check out the new account Power Ups.
Everyone who helped in the user testing of this interface will be receiving an accolade. Your contributions to the site are invaluable, and the system is much more polished thanks to all of you.
Also, thanks to darth_angelus for stepping forward to do the video capture for this into vid when my computer flipped out.
Another chapter in the robot wars
For quite some time now we've been experiencing occasional downtime, caused by someone or something hammering the site with many connections at once, far surpassing the normal usage a real member generates. The strain often brings the server to its knees.
Above is a graph showing normal usage, and then two spikes where the server was brought to a grinding halt.
As irritating as the downtime is, these two incidents allowed us to capture the IPs of the suspected culprits, and implement new systems to prevent them from doing this to us again.
Though there may be other attackbots lurking in the mists, we stand ready to combat them, and this was a major step toward preventing future issues.
All Epic Memberships were extended by 24 hours today to make up for downtime while I was doing bloody battle with the bots.
Want your character in the next RPR movie?
An extremely special movie is being produced to celebrate the RPR's second anniversary this April, and we really want you guys to be a part of it. The Hero and the Princess are going on their greatest adventure ever, but the challenges before them are so big, they will need the help of your characters to defend the RPR.
There are only two days left to enter your character to be in the next RPR animated short!
Visit the thread now to enter.
Updates updates updates
Many updates this month were focused on convenience. Because you shouldn't be wasting time fussing with systems when that's all time you could be RPing!
Here's a sample of some of the most important changes:
- The character page creation wizard now has better safeguards against losing your work if you somehow log out in another window while you're still working.
- When replying to a topic or opening a chat, the character to post as now defaults to the last character you used in that thread rather than to whatever character is alphabetically first in your roster.
- Notifications check for new activity every 3 minutes, if you just leave the home page sitting open. No more need to refresh constantly to see what's up! Getting activity from the last 3 minutes isn't just convenient, it's also muuuch gentler on the server than getting all activity for the last month, so making constant reloading with that amount of activity unnecessary is a big step toward keeping up healthy response times.
- I wrote a script that makes an attempt at figuring out which of your characters is your favorite. Then me and your favorite characters had a baking party and made cupcakes for a special event. Cryptic? No, not me. Never.
- Kudos now politely request you not leave f-bombs on people's profiles.
- Added a filter to prevent signing up with a username that contains profanity. We have members of all ages, and it's very important to me that everyone feels safe.
Bug fixes
And of course, as always, there were many bugs that needed to be shown what for. Here's just a few that got squashed:
- Updated image upload script, removing three very different kinds of errors that all resulted in the same symptom. The "loading forever" error shouldn't occur anymore.
- Fixed pagination on "Kudos you've given" page
- Made notifications about deleted kudos go away.
- Fixed the "overflow" effect that occured on the forums when someone posted a single word without breaks that was massive, such as a giant long link or a squeal of joy that stretched for the length of most sentences.
- Many more!
Comments
Quote:
I wrote a script that makes an attempt at figuring out which of your characters is your favorite. Then me and your favorite characters had a baking party and made cupcakes for a special event. Cryptic? No, not me. Never.
... So THAT'S why Wilhelm came home today with two chocolate cupcakes and proceeded to smash one into my face in a fit of writer's revenge! Thank you, Kim, another mystery in my life has been solved.
But seriously, this is all fantastic stuff that's been going on this month!
Great work as usual, and a greater way to kick-start 2012!
You rock my socks. Everything is brilliant and I cant wait to see the changes for the chat
Wow! Thank you so much for every Kim.
And Cuppycakes?
Whatever could it be?
And Cuppycakes?
Whatever could it be?
Sweet! As soon as this post went up I started playing with Draeval's profile. LOVE the new layout navigation you did. Brilliant!
Jetticus
January 28, 2012
6:24pm
I'm new here, but even my account, in its inafancy, can feel the relief knowing you are on top of the bugs. I have some minor know-how in web development and I wouldn't even know where to start with the bots.. now that I am rambling...sorry. I am just glad to see that this site is well cared for, thanks again for being so welcoming.
I'm having them send in a bug report as they are still seeing the four pages.
Ah! Let me ask. I have 7 as I'm a epic member, but I was speaking to someone who didn't have an epic membership and it capped out on them at four. Originally it was only showing two, but after a refresh it only showed four. They thought it may have been changed.
They were using Chrome.
They were using Chrome.
@Dylan: I am confused! Base accounts have always been had five pages, and that wasn't changed in this update. I just went and tested on several accounts and it let me have five no problem. What browser are you using that is capping you at 4?
I am very happy to see new things brought to RPR!
Curious question though, what if you don't have an epic membership and already have five pages? As it is currently, when you make a character you're only allowed four pages. Will it change for those without epic memberships?
Also, yesssss I've been waiting for those extra pages.
Curious question though, what if you don't have an epic membership and already have five pages? As it is currently, when you make a character you're only allowed four pages. Will it change for those without epic memberships?
Also, yesssss I've been waiting for those extra pages.
Fantastic.
January has been a great month! What a way to start off the year
CelestinaGrey
January 29, 2012
6:53pm