Jump to content

New Stuff in the 4/15/17 Update


Chaos

Recommended Posts

Hey everyone!

Yesterday I did some various updates. Let's talk about what happened, what's new, and what's coming up later this year. 

The first thing which I did was update some server architecture, which means things should perform better. Then, I also upped server resources so that our server so that it is now a beast. We had some bizarre crashes the past few months and this should fix it.

In addition to that, I upped our software version for 17S. That update fixed a lot of bugs and should increase performance, too. But it also came out with some features! 

Activity Stream Menu

In the original big update last summer, Activity Streams were a thing, but they didn't perform particularly well. Additionally, since I heavily modded the main navigation bar, I didn't know how to replicate the menu that the default skin used to generate Activity Streams. That meant I essentially gimped some functionality for a while, and made this more like "View Unread Content" on the prior version. In this version, though, Activity Streams perform much better than before, and I got the menu properly replicated, so here they are, at long last. 

So what are Activity Streams? 

It's a way to view activity on the site in a totally customizable way. Maybe you want to view Unread Content, but you only want to view things in the topics you follow. Or, maybe you want to view new content but you just want to see stuff in various Book Discussion boards--perhaps you don't care about the RP content, or, alternatively, maybe you really care about RP content and only want to see that. Activity Streams allow you to make custom feeds of basically whatever you want. You can look at all content of a type (topics or gallery images, etc.), sort by particular forum, sort content by individual member, and you can sort what date range you want for every stream. 

How do you access Streams? On desktop, click the newspaper icon next to the Search bar to see the Streams menu. (On mobile, the stream menu is in the sidebar.) There are a number of default streams:

  • All Unread Content
  • Content I Started
  • Content I Follow
  • Content I Posted In

(I can create more default streams, if you find something useful. For example, I could make a "Members I Follow" stream, but I decided to cut that for now to make the menu smaller. Let me know what you'd like to see. Notably, I cannot create a stream that narrows Topics by a particular forum, but you can create a custom stream for that.)
After the default streams, you will have all of your own streams, and by clicking the Create New Stream you have an abundance of options for things you'd like to do. Most options are self-explanatory. One thing I expect you'd like to do is to sort things by forum, so you only see something from a certain list of forums. To do this, select Content Type, and hit Topics, and you'll see a gear next to it. If you click that gear, you can click which forums you want to see in that stream.

By going into each stream, you can rename it, make it your default stream, or delete it. Setting something as your default stream is primarily useful on mobile, when the newspaper icon takes you automatically to your default stream, rather than opening a menu.

I'm really excited for you to have this customizability at last. Play around with it and let me know if you want any additional default streams.

Leaderboard

In this update, we restore a functionality we had in the old version of the site prior to 2016: a way to see who has the most reputation. But it's actually way more than that. There are now Reputation Leaderboards. (You can access this from the menu to the right of the Search bar, or the usual menu on mobile.)

Every day, if you get top reputation, you'll get a trophy saying you "won" that day. This trophy is present on your profile, too!. On the Leaderboard page, there are three tabs, one for the current Leaderboard (and you can set who "won" in whatever date range you want), one for past daily winners, and one for Top Members. You can sort Top Members by not just Reputation, but by Post Count and more. It's awesome! Unfortunately, on Top Members, I can only display the top 100, but it's certainly much better than not having any way to see this.

Maybe I'll figure out how to put these trophies on posts, but in the meantime, it's not only useful but a fun little game to see who got upvoted the most in a day.

Other minor notable things

There's a lot of minor fixes:

  • Moving multiple PMs to different folders
  • Can clear old data in the text editor
  • Display name history is now on profiles (as it should be)
  • The log out bug from multiple devices is (apparently) fixed
  • Many bug fixes

There were also some other things I did:

I moved the Birthdays sidebar widget to the bottom. There is also now a widget for users online in the past 12 hours. I can set this to be whatever time frame you'd like. I did this because we had this on the old version of the site and thought you'd maybe like it back, but I worry it's too long. What do you guys think? 

Certain abilities that new accounts would need to manually enable are now automatically enabled for brand-new accounts. These include the ability to View Signatures, Enabling Status Updates, and having a Recent Profile Visitors block on your profile. Apparently these weren't enabled by default when you register, which is insane to me. Thankfully, that's resolved.

What's next

I have some other big goals for 17S.

I'll be moving the Coppermind to its own device to further enhance server stability. That way if 17S is acting up, the Coppermind won't go down. This is not a significant extra expenditure, so don't worry.

Though, speaking of expenses: ads are eventually coming, since we've spent a lot on hosting and software with nothing in return. We want to make ads very clean with nothing annoying. The first phase of this will be to include some Amazon affiliate links in natural places. I want to make it obvious when these are implemented, but hopefully you guys won't mind? My goal, always, is to make a clean interface for you all, so I think this will be a reasonable start...

I also want to get HTTPS support on the whole site. There are some specifics on implementation that I need to sort out, though, so this will happen this summer, most likely. 

There will be a big feature update from our software, IPS, in moving from version 4.1 to 4.2. In 4.2, there are some very cool features that are pretty neat, and we'll be opening up some discussion talking about these features and we'd like your input. We might be changing some long time features, like the reputation system, so we'd love to hear your thoughts, when the time gets closer.

Lastly, there are some minor things on my agenda that just haven't been a top priority in my limited time I have to spend this semester. (Being permanently overtime in my teaching assignment this semester is really fun! Not.) But these will happen: forum game subforum, Back to Top button, and more emoticons.

Phew, I think that's it. What do you think of the new stuff?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So far I like it, except for part of the unread feeds update. I'm not sure if the design was intentional or unintentional, but every time I want to look at the unread stream, so whenever I click that button, I have to then select exactly which stream I want to look at. I always use me custom stream that cuts out a lot of stuff, so it's a little annoying to have to click on that one, instead of it just being my default unread stream. Is there anyway to set a default unread stream, or do you have to select a stream every time? 

I'm honestly glad that you're getting some good ads. I've felt bad knowing that the admins pay for the server costs along with everything else ya'll do, and it'll be nice to be able to contribute. 

I'm so hyped that the top member list is back!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 16.04.2017 at 9:14 PM, Chaos said:

Though, speaking of expenses: ads are eventually coming, since we've spent a lot on hosting and software with nothing in return. We want to make ads very clean with nothing annoying. The first phase of this will be to include some Amazon affiliate links in natural places. I want to make it obvious when these are implemented, but hopefully you guys won't mind? My goal, always, is to make a clean interface for you all, so I think this will be a reasonable start...

Have you thought about donations? I think that if you publish your every month expenses, there will be some Sharders willing to donate some cash. As a reward they may get a special badge or status to show that they support the site and that's all. It wouldn't require as much work as adds and can potentially cover all the costs. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Mestiv said:

Have you thought about donations? I think that if you publish your every month expenses, there will be some Sharders willing to donate some cash. As a reward they may get a special badge or status to show that they support the site and that's all. It wouldn't require as much work as adds and can potentially cover all the costs. :)

There is a way to donate. Scroll all the way down:

http://www.17thshard.com/about.php

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed Argent, I'm not really into the RP or social boards (though I'm very glad so many people get so much out of them), just Cosmerology, where reputation is perhaps a bit harder won.

Not of course that I care! I'm too cool for that, waaaaay too cool to care. So cool :(

Gimme the rep gimme the rep

Edited by Extesian
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Argent & @Extesian I can't say I agree. I did enjoy the times when the majority of reputation was hard-won by really well crafted theories but that was over 3 years ago now. The site has grown dramatically over that time and while theory crafting will always be an important part of the site it isn't the predominant feature anymore. I know there is a distinction to be made between theory crafting and Brandon-related content in general but the point stands that the parts of the site that aren't directly Brandon related are now a very significant part of our community. To stop reputation from the social boards from counting would send the message (intentional or otherwise) that their contributions to the community aren't as valuable, and I think that would be quite harmful to the community as a whole.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Claincy said:

@Argent & @Extesian I can't say I agree. I did enjoy the times when the majority of reputation was hard-won by really well crafted theories but that was over 3 years ago now. The site has grown dramatically over that time and while theory crafting will always be an important part of the site it isn't the predominant feature anymore. I know there is a distinction to be made between theory crafting and Brandon-related content in general but the point stands that the parts of the site that aren't directly Brandon related are now a very significant part of our community. To stop reputation from the social boards from counting would send the message (intentional or otherwise) that their contributions to the community aren't as valuable, and I think that would be quite harmful to the community as a whole.

No I agree with this entirely, I was just being flippant :) I'm very glad that so many people have found a true community here and I'd never diminish that, especially when reps are boosted by people giving honest and helpful advice to each other, I think it's a beautiful thing! I'm just making trouble ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

About reputation: It would be nice if we could at first glance tell who has mad rep because of roleplaying a lot and who has mad rep because of pulling obscure, untagged, long-forgotten WoBs out of nowhere.

Edited by Oversleep
Link to comment
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, Extesian said:

No I agree with this entirely, I was just being flippant :) I'm very glad that so many people have found a true community here and I'd never diminish that, especially when reps are boosted by people giving honest and helpful advice to each other, I think it's a beautiful thing! I'm just making trouble ;)

I apologise for misunderstanding :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Claincy said:

@Argent & @Extesian I can't say I agree. I did enjoy the times when the majority of reputation was hard-won by really well crafted theories but that was over 3 years ago now. The site has grown dramatically over that time and while theory crafting will always be an important part of the site it isn't the predominant feature anymore. I know there is a distinction to be made between theory crafting and Brandon-related content in general but the point stands that the parts of the site that aren't directly Brandon related are now a very significant part of our community. To stop reputation from the social boards from counting would send the message (intentional or otherwise) that their contributions to the community aren't as valuable, and I think that would be quite harmful to the community as a whole.

Eeehhh... I was only half serious there. On one hand, I wouldn't want to stop people from earning reputation, but on the other, it bothers me a little bit that a lot of people are earning tons of reputation from posts that are very... ephemeral. Forum games, "what are you <verb>ing", and the like. In theory, somebody who has never read Brandon could register an account and climb to the top of the reputation leaderboards - and that doesn't feel right to me. 

But it's not a big deal, it's just internet points. I just happen to like internet points...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Argent said:

Eeehhh... I was only half serious there. On one hand, I wouldn't want to stop people from earning reputation, but on the other, it bothers me a little bit that a lot of people are earning tons of reputation from posts that are very... ephemeral. Forum games, "what are you <verb>ing", and the like. In theory, somebody who has never read Brandon could register an account and climb to the top of the reputation leaderboards - and that doesn't feel right to me. 

But it's not a big deal, it's just internet points. I just happen to like internet points...

I do understand that, and I don't entirely disagree. 3-3.5ish years back I might well have been in favour of such a change. It's not that I don't see benefit to it still, I just think that now it'd do more harm than good on balance :) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/21/2017 at 11:18 AM, Argent said:

On a different note, search seems broken? When I search for multiple words (e.g. Brandon Sanderson) the search query turns into Brandon+Sanderson - which leads to nonsensical results (i.e. results where, for some reason, sometimes neither word appears).

I guess that's the default behavior now but that one in the picture you have does mention Brandon in the text, so it definitely works? 

16 minutes ago, Sart said:

Also, the default colors have changed in the forum. It would be nice to have Red and Green back for SE, as that's what we use to lodge votes with. Not a huge concern, but a minor annoyance.

Are you referring to text colors? They are totally there in the dropdown... I'm not quite sure what you referring to? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Chaos said:

Are you referring to text colors? They are totally there in the dropdown... I'm not quite sure what you referring to?

The normal red and green are no longer there. For example, the options for green are now "Emerald" or "Dark Emerald", and neither is the standard green.

Emerald
Dark Emerald
Green using the code

The other colors have been similarly changed.

Edited by Elenion
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Chaos said:

I guess that's the default behavior now but that one in the picture you have does mention Brandon in the text, so it definitely works? 

Maybe not the best example then. I don't think the images were a good idea when the behavior is easily replicable. 

Here, take a look for the default results when I search for "Brandon Sanderson". You can see that the search query turns into "Brandon+Sanderson", and if you expand the search options you can see that the "Contain all of my search term words" filter is selected; however (as of right now) the top result is this post (screenshot) - which does not appear to contain either word. 

Now, after checking the actual post out, I see that the search is fine - the phrase "Brandon Sanderson" does, in fact, appear in it, but the problem is with the search result preview. Manually correcting the search query to "Brandon Sanderson" (i.e. replacing the plus with a space) seems to fix the preview.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Sart said:

Also, the default colors have changed in the forum. It would be nice to have Red and Green back for SE, as that's what we use to lodge votes with. Not a huge concern, but a minor annoyance.

13 hours ago, Elenion said:

The normal red and green are no longer there. For example, the options for green are now "Emerald" or "Dark Emerald", and neither is the standard green.

Emerald
Dark Emerald
Green using the code

The other colors have been similarly changed.

You can actually get to those standard colors, if you're using the drop down menu and are therefore on a computer. Here's how:

 drop down.PNG

drop down more colors.PNG

And there you have it. A vast array of colors all ready for you to use whenever.

And for the standard red, green (I think; close enough, if not), and blue:

drop down red.PNGdrop down green.PNGdrop down blue.PNG

I happen to like this better. It's not that hard to do the coding on mobile, and the coding gets it right, and on the computer, this is only a couple extra clicks, and there are a ton more color options available.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On April 19, 2017 at 11:01 AM, Argent said:

I wish only Brandon-related topics would count towards the reputation leaderboards :(

Maybe there could also be separate leaderboards for each topic? That way, someone could look at the theory leader boards and see who has the most rep there, or who has the most rep in the Reckoners RP, or SE.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Arraenae said:

Maybe there could also be separate leaderboards for each topic? That way, someone could look at the theory leader boards and see who has the most rep there, or who has the most rep in the Reckoners RP, or SE.

The issue is not "who has the most rep related to this?". It's rather "where is your rep coming from?".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...