Posted by Kim on May 31, 2010, 4:29pm
Want to know what the heck is going on around here? Read on!There's been a whole lot of feedback and bug reports over the last few weeks, and it is incredibly appreciated. Although I try to respond quickly to all these communications, it dawns on me that those of you who aren't having problems (or at least aren't reporting any) are being left out of the loop. So, I'm going to respond publicly to some of the most common questions and most important bug reports I've got so far. Rest assured, the lights are on, someone is home, and they're pushing code around for hours a day to try and make the place nicer.
Miscellany
Because of your feedback, we've made it possible to remove the character name, gender and player from the top of vital stats widgets, so it can now be used as a list of absolutely anything. I'm also in the process of retooling them so that the items in that list can be reordered with a simple drag and drop, just like the rest of the widgets. We've discovered that the play-styles widget liked adding backslashes all over your text, and put a stop to those shenanigans. Information on how to use the bbcode formatting tags has been written and posted. Picking a template for your character pages has been made easier and more obvious. And many other little tweaks to make the site work better. Thank you and thank you again for finding the problems and suggesting ways to make things better.
Timeout Issues
A small but disgruntled number of you have run into timeout issues. Both to prevent itself from getting overwhelmed and to prevent certain security issues, our server closes connections that don't appear to be in use. Its definition of 'not in use' is that it hasn't heard from them in the last three hours. This is standard, default server behavior, and for the most part it keeps things running quickly and smoothly, and very few of you ever even know it exists.
However, a few people have spent impressively long times typing directly into the browser, only to discover when they hit update that they aren't logged in anymore. I sincerely apologize to those of you to which this has happened, and I know that it's a sore disappointment to lose your work. I'm currently experimenting with methods to extend the server's grace period out to lengths of time no mere mortal could type for, and hopefully this won't be an issue for much longer. In the meanwhile, one way to prevent timeout is to just hit "update" every once in awhile while you're working on something. Little notes have been placed around the site to remind people to be careful with their work.
I do want to stress, however, that no connection is 100% reliable. I had to learn this lesson the hard way years ago on other sites, where I'd time out, or my modem would drop, or my wireless card would go on the fritz, and hitting 'submit' in my browser would just send all my work off to its death. If you think it sucks when it happens to you while you're writing out a bio on a RP site, imagine how bad it would suck if you were trying to submit an application for a scholarship and the deadline was creeping up on you.
That said, I will do my absolute best to make the RP Repository as reliable as I can, but there are certain things that will always remain out of my control. Please, save your work. If you've worked on something long enough that you wouldn't want to redo it, just be sure to quickly copy and paste it into another window before you hit the submit button. This goes for any website you use, anywhere. It's just a good habit to have and is likely to save you a lot of grief when you least expect it.
Friending Users
Yes, you will be able to friend other users, not just their characters. This is in the ending stages of being built. What's holding it up is that it's being developed in tandem with the ability to block other users, which turns out to be a somewhat less than straight forward proposition when some users have anonymous characters. Of course you need to be able to block anyone from messaging you, but we also don't want it to be possible to simply go around blocking anonymous characters, then taking a glance at your blocked users list to find out who played that character. It's taking some extra work to be able to maintain everyone's privacy without sacrificing security.
Alien Abduction of Apostrophes
Some of you were running into an issue that involved all of your apostrophes being magically transformed into a mishmash of what appeared to be an alien language and, for whatever reason, the trademark symbol. I only give this its own section instead of lumping it into miscellany because of the sheer number of people that were affected. I believe that this issue has been tracked down and resolved now, but we must remain vigilant to prevent the alien scourge from returning. If you run into this issue again, please let me know.
Redundancy in Friend and Enemy Widgets
A lot of you had expressed displeasure at the way Friend and Enemy widgets had a redundant subheading, that would say Friends right underneath the main heading that also said Friends, and wanted to know why you couldn't remove or edit the subheading.
I think we've found a compromise that should work, but first allow me to explain why these widgets worked like that in the first place. The fact that the subheading was (and is) uneditable is very much by design. Otherwise, there would be nothing stopping anyone from renaming their friend widget to "slaves," or "conquests" or something else more colorful and inappropriate that probably shouldn't be said in a general news post. I'm sure most of you can think up a not-so-friendly label you wouldn't think you were agreeing to by clicking accept friend request! The redundant subheading is therefore put there to keep the correct label always in proximity, so people know what you meant no matter how ridiculous or inappropriate someone might get with their headings.
But as important as that is, I was also in complete agreement with all of you that it was just ugly to have that redundancy. So, because the subheading is only necessary as a precaution if the original heading has been modified, it will now only display if you change the main titles of your friends and enemies widgets to something other than friends and enemies. For most of you, that means the subheading is now no longer. If you changed your heading to something else just to avoid the redundancy, you can safely change it back.
Advanced Search
One of the most popular requests has had to do with various methods of search. The most requested has been the ability to search by game, which is now possible. Other search requests have had to do with tags, the ability to search by any word inside a character's page, by gender, by race, by sexuality, by interest, by genre.
Many of these things are already planned, but not all. The ability to search the interior of pages is particularly unlikely to happen at any point in the near future, because of the way the data is structured and compressed. The most easily searchable data is data that is standardized. This is one of the reasons why the site asks for the gender of your characters separately, by the way. It will allow me to implement searching by gender much more easily in the future. Otherwise, some people might choose to disclose the character's gender in a vital stats widget, others might write it in a text widget, others might not write it anywhere at all and simply allow pronouns or images to do the job just as effectively, if less directly. And even if everyone chose to put gender in a vital stats widget, would they all choose the same label? We'd all know what was meant, but a computer doing a search isn't so smart.
That's why interior search isn't something planned for right now. It's a good idea, but it would simply take too much time, that I believe is better spent on other features. It's much more likely that some kind of tagging system will make an appearance as the next advance in search, so that you can mark your characters as being part of certain genres or being interested in finding certain types of RP friends, and other people looking for the same will be able to find you.
I also believe that there many other features aside from traditional 'search' that will help you to find new friends, perhaps better than search on its own might. The most obvious of these would be forums, where you can introduce yourselves and ask directly for the sorts of things you're looking for. Another is the ability to form and join groups. On that note...
Forums and Groups
Both these things are on the planned features list, and relatively high priority. They are very complex features, however, so they will be in development for awhile yet. I know, I know, I can't wait either!
Featured Characters
Why aren't there more featured characters? Why aren't your awesome characters featured? The problem at the moment is simply manpower. Every minute I spend reading your great profiles is a minute I'm not able to work on fixing bugs or developing new features, and so I've gotten really behind on adding new featured characters. I too would love to see a wider variety in the rotation!
Because I can't comb through every profile on my own, I need your help. See a great character somewhere? Please let me know.
Here are the guidelines:
- Featured characters need to have icons! We want to put our best foot forward for guests, so I vastly prefer to feature characters that have a pretty graphic to go along with them, to prevent the community page from wearing too many question mark icons.
- The profile is reasonably complete. There's no specific length requirement, but it needs to look like some effort went into the character and the layout of the profile. Good use of a wide range of widgets is encouraged, although a number of the currently featured characters just made really good use of the text widgets
- Original characters are going to get preference over remakes of characters from movies, comics, books or other copyrighted material.
- The character needs to be appropriate for a general audience, teen and up. If you're not sure, try to think about whether it would show up in your average tale of fantasy adventure. It's okay if they're a warrior that gets into fights, or if they happen to be a seductive naga lady. It's just excesses that we want to avoid.
- The better the spelling, grammar, punctuation and clarity of writing, the better!
- Please keep in mind that I'm not going to be able to feature every character that gets suggested.
Game Icons
Every once in awhile I get asked how to add a custom icon to games that have been added to a character. The short answer is that you don't; the custom icons are added by me, to keep them standard across the site. Unfortunately, I don't know every game in the world, and although I try to keep an eye on what games are being added and add icons when I see one that's becoming popular, sometimes I miss things, or sometimes I just don't know enough about the game in question to know what icon to use and what nicknames to associate the icon with (For example, World of Warcraft is also popularly just called WoW). If you know a game that really ought to be added, you can help me out by suggesting it. If you can, linking me to a 32 x 32 icon with proper transparency will get that sucker added much faster, since it won't have to wait for me to find the time between coding new features and fixing bugs to do as much research.
New Templates
No, I haven't forgotten them. It's again just an issue of manpower. At the moment I'm overwhelmed with bug fixes and trying to juggle new templates with new functionality. Templates will get worked on in the order of popularity as soon as I can find a free moment. The most popular templates being requested at this moment are:
- Nature
- Warrior/Barbarian/Grrrr kind of theme
- Space/Sci-fi
- Some kind of oriental brushwork
If you want to see a certain template, suggest it. Even if you know it's already planned or it's one of the ones already in this top four list, suggest it. Knowing relative numbers of how many people want a certain template helps me to prioritize which ones to work on.
Stuff That's Still Broke (And How You Can Help Fix it)
A bug was reported wherein vital stats widgets wouldn't accept any new data if there was some other widget above them. That bug was found and addressed, or so I thought. Although it seems to be working for most people now, there are still a few reporting problems. I'm still in the process of determining whether this has to do with the fix for the old problem creating a new one, or if this is a resurfacing of the evil caching issue, where some server out there is retaining a cache of our old code for far longer than it should and delivering the outdated files to a few poor souls. If you are experiencing this issue and are willing to lend me a hand to help me track it down, please, please let me know. It will probably involve me giving you certain links to follow, then asking you to save a copy of what you get when you follow them and email it to me. This is really the only way for me to determine whether the problem is caused by the old code or the new.
Internet Explorer displays some things wrong, still. I work on this periodically but it's a constant uphill battle. Sorry! If you're having some display problem you really can't wait for me to get to, you could always switch to a browser that isn't riddled with bugs and loathed by pretty much every web developer in the universe.
You will probably also be surprised to discover how much nicer the site looks in other browsers.Finally, there's something really weird going on with the bbcode parser wherein it struggles so hard to get image tags correct that it just sort of gives up on life after it's handled an image, meaning that any other formatting tags that come after an image has been used inside of a text widget get ignored. This is annoying and ugly and we spent days and days trying to figure out what was going wrong. I think we have a handle on the issue now, though, and a patch to fix it should be forthcoming. You don't need to do anything on this one but sit tight, your formatting should resume working shortly.
Next Steps
Aside from what's already been mentioned above, one of the things closest to the top of the list that's about to start getting working on (again) is a more flexible stat widget, that will accommodate much more than the rigid D&D classic six stats and include a few choices in how the information is displayed. This will be a good choice for those of you that have white wolf style characters.
Another thing that has been very popularly requested is some form of feedback/commenting/rating system on characters. It's unlikely that I'll implement a 'rating' system, as I don't want to turn this into an in-character Hot Or Not, but some form of guest-book widget is definitely a planned item.
Hopefully all that sheds some light on what's going on behind the scenes. Of course if there's something you're wondering about that didn't get discussed, ask away!
Comments
Ah, sorry, confusion between languages... 
I meant, font colors... *checks* Yes, font colors. (Because, yeah, as weird as it might sound it's called "police" in french. oO )
I meant, font colors... *checks* Yes, font colors.
(Because, yeah, as weird as it might sound it's called "police" in french. oO )
@StyxTheMad There's at least one character in circulation tagged as being just "The Elder Scrolls" without a particular affiliation, but my main concern here is that on the search page, http://www.rprepository.com/search.php The Elder Scrolls is now a general search category, but is still represented by the default icon. If it's going to be popular enough to be a main search category, it should probably get some icon lovin'. I've sent a message to you and all the other players who have characters tagged as being part of the TES community to get your thoughts on what that 'general' icon ought to be, as I don't play TES and am probably less qualified than you guys.
Also, what is "police" color? Color that defends the peace? Wha?
@Tasha: *salutes!* I shall count them all as having a vote, in that case. And I'll take Styx's squee as a vote for the parchment idea, too.
Also, what is "police" color? Color that defends the peace? Wha?
@Tasha: *salutes!* I shall count them all as having a vote, in that case. And I'll take Styx's squee as a vote for the parchment idea, too.
@Kim All of the ideas for themes stem from characters I either are currently playing or have played in the past, so I'd pretty much all but the cityscape one. Unless you made some sort of medieval cityscape! O: But I know a bajillion people who would use a cityscape theme.
Actually, there's at least two characters related to Daggerfall, as I have two Daggerfall related characters... (Great game even despite the graphics *nod nod nodding* )
A general "Elder Scrolls" icon could come in handy for those who don't want to be related to a specific game, even though I don't think that's the most important thing to do.
Annnyway, it's great to see so many updates and, most of all, to see so much attention paid to the users! I know many sites which wouldn't be half as attentionned.
I feel a bit like being part of the story of a future great site. I could get used to that...
I see Tasha suggested some interesting template themes (Aaaaaah, a parchment one!), and I agree that adding some options for the colors could be interesting... Like, the Arcana one could get some green, purple, yellow, or anything... Or, simply, the police color. That would be a rather (RATHER ) simple way to custom one's page.
What more can I say, if not:
Keep Up The Good Work!
(Great game even despite the graphics *nod nod nodding* )A general "Elder Scrolls" icon could come in handy for those who don't want to be related to a specific game, even though I don't think that's the most important thing to do.
Annnyway, it's great to see so many updates and, most of all, to see so much attention paid to the users! I know many sites which wouldn't be half as attentionned.
I feel a bit like being part of the story of a future great site. I could get used to that...
I see Tasha suggested some interesting template themes (Aaaaaah, a parchment one!), and I agree that adding some options for the colors could be interesting... Like, the Arcana one could get some green, purple, yellow, or anything... Or, simply, the police color. That would be a rather (RATHER
) simple way to custom one's page.What more can I say, if not:
Keep Up The Good Work!
I never played Daggerfall and only saw one person with that on their thing so I didnt make an icon for that, though I was thinking about a general TES icon. Has someone already made those or do you need them still?
I just finished both those things in the last five minutes, actually! GMTA, and all that. The TES Oblivion icon seems to be working now with many variations of the spelling. Starting in on Morrowind and Daggerfall and just plain Elder Scrolls now.
Elder Scrolls was added as a general search, done based on the game's url rather than its name, given the many variations and titles in the series. It seems to return a greater spread of characters. Of course if you want a certain title you can still type it in more specifically.
Elder Scrolls was added as a general search, done based on the game's url rather than its name, given the many variations and titles in the series. It seems to return a greater spread of characters. Of course if you want a certain title you can still type it in more specifically.
Oooh, also I've noticed that the TES characters seem to be MUCH MUCH More popular on here than WoW but you have that under 'browse by popular games', maybe put the TES ones up there too?
@Kim Can you have multiple spellings/usages have the same icon, because I've noticed some people using TES Oblivion or TES IV Oblivion, and the same with Morrowind, TES III or just TES before it. Or with :, but they're the same whether they put the III or not. I dont know how that kind of thing works :c
Idk, some franchises have multiple games set in the same world with the same races/rules/history...
Idk, some franchises have multiple games set in the same world with the same races/rules/history...
Also @Helix I got your message about the icons. Thank you!! I'm looking them over now.
@Ethelle In this case, our database was storing text as unicode, but browsers were being left to guess what encoding to use. A lot of them settled on Western (ISO-8859), which caused apostrophes to explode like peeps in a microwave. Changing our page headers to correctly identify themselves as unicode stopped browsers from needing to guess. I'm not sure if this would also address the Microsoft paste issue... It would be GREAT if it did, but I don't know what kind of encoding MS word uses. From my past experience with Microsoft products, I wouldn't be shocked if it was something totally non-standard and possibly even proprietary. I'm already up to my eyeballs in IE problems to solve, I would hesitate to touch problems generated by MS word with a 20 foot pole. If you find that it did fix your issue with MS word, tell me so I can put on a party hat and stuff some cake into my face. Unexpected windfall bug fixes call for celebration!
@Tasha Those are all really excellent theme suggestions. For whatever reason cityscape hadn't even occured to me, and I'll add it to my list of wanted templates. However, I am curious, is this just a list of ideas, or is every one of those something you would personally use for your characters? It helps to have a relative idea of what's wanted now as opposed to what just sounds like a good idea but isn't needed yet, so I can prioritize the order they get made in. Thanks again for your input!
If you find that it did fix your issue with MS word, tell me so I can put on a party hat and stuff some cake into my face. Unexpected windfall bug fixes call for celebration!@Tasha Those are all really excellent theme suggestions. For whatever reason cityscape hadn't even occured to me, and I'll add it to my list of wanted templates. However, I am curious, is this just a list of ideas, or is every one of those something you would personally use for your characters? It helps to have a relative idea of what's wanted now as opposed to what just sounds like a good idea but isn't needed yet, so I can prioritize the order they get made in. Thanks again for your input!
Here's some template theme suggests for ya:
Cityscape
Bamboo
Stone - like a stone wall
Water/seascape
Something flowery
Parchment and/or book
Animal-based templates for feral RPers - such as wolf, horse, dragon, cat, etc.
It would be neat to have more color options for templates too.
Cityscape
Bamboo
Stone - like a stone wall
Water/seascape
Something flowery
Parchment and/or book
Animal-based templates for feral RPers - such as wolf, horse, dragon, cat, etc.
It would be neat to have more color options for templates too.
@Kim: So far you're more than on top of everything
Aaah, the Alien Abduction of Apostrophes. I have (or had, haven't checked yet) that too, but I didn't know it was an actual site problem. For me, it only happens when I've typed my text in Word and copy/paste it to here. Word changes the apostrophes depending on what context they're used in, whereas this site only uses and recognizes the 'normal' ones. It can be fixed by finding the option in Word that does this automatic context-dependent process to apostrophes. Err... not that I know where I can find that. Last time I saw that option was when I still used Windows 95. I can never find options in Word 2007 and onwards. XDD But anyway, I rather thought it was Word's fault, instead of the site's fault.
I have (or had, haven't checked yet) that too, but I didn't know it was an actual site problem. For me, it only happens when I've typed my text in Word and copy/paste it to here. Word changes the apostrophes depending on what context they're used in, whereas this site only uses and recognizes the 'normal' ones. It can be fixed by finding the option in Word that does this automatic context-dependent process to apostrophes. Err... not that I know where I can find that. Last time I saw that option was when I still used Windows 95. I can never find options in Word 2007 and onwards. XDD But anyway, I rather thought it was Word's fault, instead of the site's fault.
I think everything in your "Stuff That's Still Broke (And How You Can Help Fix it)" paragraph has been completely fixed for me, thankyou!!
Also a number of people from the Yorugatana group on Deviantart have showed up here with their characters, its not 'technically' a game, but we've been linking it with that chess-piece. If I gave you a little 32x32 would you add it? I think there are at least about 10 characters with it now.
Also a number of people from the Yorugatana group on Deviantart have showed up here with their characters, its not 'technically' a game, but we've been linking it with that chess-piece. If I gave you a little 32x32 would you add it? I think there are at least about 10 characters with it now.
If only I could claim to be on top of everything!
I hope I'm at least doing okay, though. As for variations, I love hearing that those are wanted! It lets me make people happy but are easier than developing things entirely from scratch. I've also heard from someone who actually wanted the default style in more colors. I'd really like to start sneaking some templates in in between new features.
I hope I'm at least doing okay, though. As for variations, I love hearing that those are wanted! It lets me make people happy but are easier than developing things entirely from scratch. I've also heard from someone who actually wanted the default style in more colors. I'd really like to start sneaking some templates in in between new features.
Ooo. Here it is. I was looking everywhere, I cant believe I missed 1 out of 3 links wtf xD
Good to know you're already on top of everything. Loving the site. Totally would love to see more variations of the Arabesque type one 
Maybe pinks or blues. Pastel colors, but keeping with the banner style. 
Good to know you're already on top of everything.
Loving the site. Totally would love to see more variations of the Arabesque type one Maybe pinks or blues. Pastel colors, but keeping with the banner style.
I so should.
you should add a cyberpunk theme just for me.
Kim
June 3, 2010
8:10pm