Captain Jordan

Mahz's Dev Journal

One thing I want to do is increase the guild's social features. Make it easier and easier to keep up with people and increase the ways you can interact. For example, a friends list. Maybe any friends you add to your list will be highlighted wherever you see their username (like in the list of users viewing the current topic). Also, perhaps you get a personal tab that shows the latest activity of your friends so that you can keep up with their going-ons. That all is just an example.

@Mahz

There's a mod for another forum software that will highlight posts of your buddies. So if you're scrolling by in a forum, the post is colored differently. I'm not sure that's so useful for RPs (especially now that colors are back, think of the eyestrain!) but it might be worth adding an eye-catching symbol or color to the username or post-header of a buddy/friend so you can easily pick them out (but not obscure the post content itself). Perhaps it's a good idea if friends/buddies ever takes off. Maybe not something to start out with (which could be overbearing and turn people off of the feature).

Mahz's Dev Journal

So, this isn't relevant quite to continued forum software development, but how do we intend to make the forum grow more? We've been hemorrhaging users for a while now, is it just intended for us to gain new users over time? Does RPGuild show up high on google results for play by post roleplaying? should we advertise in certain other roleplaying communities? (Not other forums of course, but perhaps things like reddit or more general roleplaying forums?)

@Draconilian

I just did a google search, and the guild is the fourth result.

@TheMaster99

That's not necessarily indicative of where we fall though. Google results are tailored to the individual, for example, this is my search <img snip>

@Draconilian

I opened an incognito browser, searched the phrase in both Google and Bing. 5th result. Asked a friend to do the same on his machine, also 5th result. The difference between 4th and 5th is probably marginal, so I'd say the basic conclusion is confirmed. The Guild is in the first page of search results for this particular search request, most notably above the fold on most screen resolutions.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Hey Mahz, just a quick comment/question! When I go to the PMs page, there's no option to PM someone, instead I have to go a post or their "page" in order to do so. Is it possible for you to make an option for "PM Someone" on the PM page? And maybe a reminder that you can PM multiple people? I was sending one off just now but I wasn't sure with the updates recently, if we still could. (which we can)

@Genkai

Oh yeah, good catch on the missing button! I'll do that now. I thought the text-field placeholder was good enough to indicate that you can PM multiple people: But I realize that you never see it because, when you click "Start Convo with _____", it populates that field and hides the hint. I'll add the hint above the field so you can always see it. Genkai always catching my oversights.

@Mahz

It's probably on your list to do, but have you considered grabbing the real usernames as people type out their PM recipients and displaying them in a dropdown? Some modern sites have started to do this, probably prompted by Facebook and the like, and it's nice when you don't quite remember if you've got the spelling right.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Sweet. Awesome work, @Mahz. EDIT: So I screwed it up and didn't bracket the mention. Does it still notify when I edit and fix the mention code?

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Celaira: For security and performance reasons, I'd advise against it...

@Shienvien

Could someone break something fundemental with what I was thinking, Shien?

@Celaira

Yes. Allowing HTML/CSS also allows for Javascript, Flash and Java to be embedded. These three are common attack vectors for malware/spyware/etc. That's not to say that all Javascript, Flash or Java is evil, but you're basically allowing anyone who can make an account (and if you recall, we got a fair few number of spammers last year on the Guild 2.0, so the machines can easily adapt) to inject these technologies into a post. That's a huge security hole, and as much as I'm sure Mahz would like to trust the Guild not to do that, all it takes is one person doing so intentionally or by accident to do a lot of damage.

Mahz's Dev Journal

I tried to think of ways to show rolls nicely inline with IC posts, but didn't come up with much.

@Mahz

The only way I can think of, besides an obtrusive block code, is to use the acronym/abbr html tag to display the dice roll on hover. So you could make a custom BBCode that takes the roll ID, displays the roll results in the hover, and then let someone write their action (as a result of the roll) inside the tag. Similar to the implementation of URL=, but hover instead of link.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Also, I may postpone the visitor messages system to implement the idea that @Captain Jordan had about notifying everyone involved in a visitor message "thread" + the option to mute notifications for a thread.

@Mahz

My plan to delay the Guild's development inevitably by dumping irresistible ideas on @Mahz is working. *temples fingers* Excellent!

Mahz's Dev Journal

Would a back button be more difficult than telling the server to go to page - 1?

@LegendBegins

The hack is that, unlike for posts and PMs, there are no pages for recent-posts and convos. I go through great length to get fast pagination for posts and PMs by monotonically increasing a number that starts at 0 for each post/PM in that topic/convo (I call it the post.idx and pm.idx). That way it's easy to calculate which range of idx to query from the database given a page number and the amount of posts/PMs to display per page. The database is fast at "WHERE idx > X AND idx < Y" queries. That system doesn't work as well for things with high churn like convos, so I'll see if I can get a previous-button working with the current hack.

@Mahz

I really hope that's not going to bite you in the ass once the database has accumulated a high amount of posts/convos. Deletes are going to be a bitch if that happens.

Indeed, a simple javascript back would be an easy hack for the meantime.

@Captain Jordan

Oh man. Didn't think of that nasty hack which actually isn't that bad since a user is never deep-linking to a page of recent-posts or convos. It'll be my quick plan B if plan A sucks.

@Mahz

:D

Mahz's Dev Journal

No fun at all @Mahz. Hopefully it passes quickly! I was wondering if you could implement two things in the PM list. I've noticed there is a page forward button and one that takes you back to the first page. Do you think you could add another button so that we can go to the previous page (Now I think about it, it also applies to the recent posts on the userpage). Also, do you think you can bring back the PM count for each convo on the PM list? It was a helpful way for me to distinguish between convos with similar names and people involved.

@Kirra

1. I'll see about adding a "Previous" button for recent-posts and convos. That there's only a "Next" button is a bit of a performance hack since it's easy for the server to calculate. I didn't try to add a "Previous" button yet since I figured it wasn't so common for people to be iterating through history. But yeah, bit of a usability annoyance. 2. Haha, I didn't realize the convo message count wasn't displaying. Must've typo'd something. I will fix.

@Mahz

Would a back button be more difficult than telling the server to go to page - 1?

@LegendBegins

Indeed, a simple javascript back would be an easy hack for the meantime.

Mahz's Dev Journal

We know the number might be depressing, but we found ourselves wondering how many users there are that haven't logged in since the relaunch... Its listed on individual user pages, but as userlist hasn't been implemented yet, it can't be checked easily.

@Ellri

I made a user search page for the next update, but it currently has no filter options. Now that you mentioned it, I'll amend that whenever I have time, hopefully before it is launched on the guild. Sort by newest or oldest are obvious, and based on who has an old guild name. Are there any other filter options people would like?

@TheMaster99

Search by post quantity (asc & desc)? I'm kind of assuming this is the default, but if not, by alphabetical (asc & desc)?