Mahz's Dev Journal

[Mahz]

Closing the browser still/again logs me out regardless of "remember me" being checked.

@Shienvien

I'm so stumped. :(

As mentioned in my previous few posts, I'm upgrading the Guild's underlying platform and all the various libraries the project depends on, so maybe a relevant bug was fixed somewhere in the graph of dependencies that will solve all of our problems.

[Ellri]

Clearly we'll need to recruit more of those people awake and online at the valley times.

That deepest valley also hits late morning for Europeans, when a lot of those tend to get to work/school. Combine that with american night, and you get a proper valley. But not an uncanny one.

You might've noticed it mentioned a page or three ago, @Mahz... There's something funky about the new post window when used on some tablets. At least on Android, can't remember if the other person mentioning it also had it android-based. The issue is essentially that its really slow to pick up writing, lagging a second or two (ish) behind the onscreen keyboard. Its only the guild that lags that way, so its most likely guild-side.

[LegendBegins]

@Mahz
One issue that I have seen nobody report is that if you receive an error when you try to post (e.g. you lost internet connection in the middle of it) and you go back a page, all of the information will be there, but the post button will be nonfunctional; it forces you to copy the post, refresh the page, and try again. I've only had a lost connection on mobile (my PC uses Ethernet so it does not drop connections), so I do not know if it affects both platforms.

As for building a sense of community, I believe that a feature that distinguishes the Guild from other roleplaying sites would increase the sense of pride that participants have. I believe that an idea you suggested long ago would be a perfect example of a unique feature: the ability to easily switch between characters or accounts without logging out. I have seen no websites deploy this feature at all.

[Mahz]

@Ellri: Thanks. Is this also an issue on Android phones? On every keypress, the char counter below the textarea is updated. Maybe this is the issue, though hard to believe.

@LegendBegins: Interesting. I have a weak double-post prevention system that tries to avoid double-click submissions. Seems that the mechanism needs to reset itself after pressing the back button.

Popping my head in right now to say that I just deployed a platform upgrade. Let me know if yall encounter any breaking changes.

[NuttsnBolts]

As for building a sense of community, I believe that a feature that distinguishes the Guild from other roleplaying sites would increase the sense of pride that participants have. I believe that an idea you suggested long ago would be a perfect example of a unique feature: the ability to easily switch between characters or accounts without logging out. I have seen no websites deploy this feature at all.

@LegendBegins

While I can see this as a unique idea (much like how you can change channels in YouTube) I don't think that it's a first choice for new members as they are probably still rating the site and seeing where they fit in the grand scheme of things, but rather for established members that want to vary their persona's and writing styles. Something I would ask is that would the link between the two accounts be visible for other's to see? eg: if you were to enter the profile, would it possibly have a tab stating "Other/Linked User accounts."

[LegendBegins]

@NuttsnBolts

I would agree to this. Or if it simply adds characters instead of accounts, it could hold a drop down or a new page with each character a player uses. Though, it's intended to build community with those here instead of attracting new visitors, but I can certainly see how that would improve it, especially if characters can be hidden.

@Mahz

Are there any specific features we should keep a close eye on?

[Mahz]

Update: I awarded the trophies for the 4th and 5th Labour contests.

Are there any specific features we should keep a close eye on?

@LegendBegins

Looks like the platform upgrade deployed without a hitch and brought with it some pretty big performance improvements. The Guild is using 60% less memory and response times are 60% faster.

I'm now working on upgrading some of the Guild's library dependencies, though this is much harder and might introduce unexpected breakage.

[LegendBegins]

Update: I awarded the trophies for the 4th and 5th Labour contests.

<Snipped quote by LegendBegins>

Looks like the platform upgrade deployed without a hitch and brought with it some pretty big performance improvements. The Guild is using 60% less memory and response times are 60% faster.

I'm now working on upgrading some of the Guild's library dependencies, though this is much harder and might introduce unexpected breakage.

@Mahz

I will be sure to inform you of any issues there may be.

[NuttsnBolts]

Do notice that it loads a bit faster and smoother. On my phone it loads the whole page at once, rather than sections in quick succession.

@NuttsnBolts

I would agree to this. Or if it simply adds characters instead of accounts, it could hold a drop down or a new page with each character a player uses. Though, it's intended to build community with those here instead of attracting new visitors, but I can certainly see how that would improve it, especially if characters can be hidden.

@LegendBegins

I do remember that topic where there could be a library of characters in the profile, rather than the forum with threads. That would be a great idea as GMs and other players could look around and see the characters that people made, while looking at profiles and getting to know the community.

[Shienvien]

I personally never experienced any delay in the text entry box on my Android phone - not using any of the regular or Beta Firefoxes during the time, anyway.

Edit test.

[Ellri]

We seem to vaguely recall that the edit post window didn't have the same delay. But we can check later today whether the issue is still present now that the architecture is improved.

[Mahz]

Migrating the templating system right now to a better and faster one.

Really hard to test without real data, so I just pushed my progress live, hence the big blue alert box up top. I'll debug issues on the production server.

For example, the user profile page doesn't work. #fixing #fixed

My process is to keep clicking around to find and fix breakage.

If you find any "INTERNAL ERROR" pages, lemme know.

[NuttsnBolts]

@Mahz I saw for a brief moment that the chat label at the top of the page said that -7 people were in chat. Doesn't seem to say that now though.

[Ellri]

heh. Nice process.

We tested the android thingy. Still slow.

typing one letter at a time on a 62-character line meant that 13 or so of them were left untyped by the time we stopped entering letters.

secondary tests put the rate at about 2/3rds completed after typing end.

[Mahz]

Seems I've fixed all the main code paths and I'll remove the blue alert box when nobody runs into an error page for a while.

Took me half the day to migrate to the new templating system, but I'm glad I did it. Old, rotting code is one of the main reasons why features become harder and harder to implement over time, so by reanimating a few corpses I'll make future work easier.

We tested the android thingy. Still slow.

typing one letter at a time on a 62-character line meant that 13 or so of them were left untyped by the time we stopped entering letters.

secondary tests put the rate at about 2/3rds completed after typing end.

@Ellri

Thanks. Yeah, that's unsettling. Has it always been like this or is this a recent regression?

Looking at it right now. Could use an obvious break for once.

Edit: Every time the textarea changes, it grabs the content, counts it, searches for the counter-box, and updates the count.

It's not efficient, but I'd be surprised if that's causing such immense delay. Playing with a just-in-case fix by running the code as few times as possible.

[Shienvien]

We tested the android thingy. Still slow.

typing one letter at a time on a 62-character line meant that 13 or so of them were left untyped by the time we stopped entering letters.

secondary tests put the rate at about 2/3rds completed after typing end.

@Ellri

What kind of Android device, what Android version, and browser and browser version?

As noted earlier, at least my own Android cell phone doesn't suffer for similar problems at least not with Firefox variants, so it is not all Android devices. Will test Chrone and the native browser later, given that I remember to, but from my unrelated tests a way back not displaying such delays, I'd presume it'd not occur there either, unless it is the result of a relatively recent change.

[Mahz]

@Ellri I just pushed up a random guess of an update. Is it any better when typing?

Gonna take down the blue "you might experience site breakage" alert box since I haven't seen any errors in the logs since my last post.

Update: Mods should now be able to /mute and /unmute users in chat.

[LegendBegins]

The Guild was just down for a short amount of time. If you were pushing another update, this makes sense, but if not, there was an issue.

[Ryuzaki]

I experienced an error when loading a user's Visitor Messages page. I cannot recreate it though.

[Mahz]

Yeah, thanks. Havin some issues.

Edit: Still making a lot of changes, so we'll be experiencing hang-ups from time to time. They're just temporary.