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Tera Stuff and Whatnot

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 04 May 2012 21:38:40 GMT

Today's update included mostly bug squishes. Here's some of what went live:

Tera game news is now up and running with a feed.
Tera Server Status, a new widget, is available.
You can now post drafts to your blog, and come back to finish/publish them later.
Welcome letters are now sent out when they should be.
Some didn't like the in-frame windows when editing content, instead preferring actual pop-ups instead. There is now an option in the Control Panel's dashboard, under a new tab called "Preferences," to enable pop-ups.
Blog links under recent entries will now take you where they should.

RSS Feeds and a Boo-Boo

Aaron Lewis — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 19:03:21 GMT

Going out today:

Authenticated RSS feeds (for the guilds that use them) have had their token system changed. You will need to update your links.
Forum read/unread icons sometimes not displaying correctly should be fixed.
The Star Wars: The Old Republic server status widget has been updated to work with the changes they made to their site.
Blog links and posting are now working correctly.

Now, for the boo-boo. Yesterday, I put a trigger on the Shouts table of the database that fired when a new shout was entered. The idea was, it would take the oldest shouts over the count of 50 and delete them. Kind of a self-cleaning thing, for performance. Only, I pulled the ones to be deleted back in the wrong date order. The result was, the trigger ended up wiping the newest 50 shouts.

I'm very, very sorry about that.

Some Enhancements and Fixes

Aaron Lewis — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:32:06 GMT

Today's update includes the following:

A rendering fix for the iPhone (things were getting squished!).
The addition of tagging functionality to the custom status change notifications for calendar events. You can now include [username], [eventname] and [eventdateandtime] in your notifications, and they will be dynamically replaced in the messages that are sent out to the recipient.
A bug that caused the custom emoticons section of the control panel to go all whacky has been fixed.
Forum icons now align more towards the top, by the forum title. This will help with forums that have a lot of sub-forums.
Sub-forum icons will now show up when viewing them alongside the topics listing of their parent forum.
The standard roster will no longer show characters without names.
The control panel has been cleaned up a bit.
Blogs now support custom CSS + HTML.

Better HTML + CSS Support is Here!

Aaron Lewis — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 20:15:26 GMT

GuildPortal has just been dramatically improved when it comes to using custom HTML + CSS. First, we've added a "Navigation" selection in the Control Panel (under Custom HTML). Clicking that takes you to three editors. You can modify the code that is output before navigation items (pages on your site), the code that is output for navigation items, and the code that is output after navigation items.

Once you specify the code, you can then use the Full Page custom HTML editor's new tag, $block[nav=html], and your pages will be rendered as the page loads, using your mark-up.

Also, three more tags have been added to the Full Page HTML: leftwidgets, centerwidgets, and rightwidgets. You no longer have to stick with designs that render the main widget body in a tabular format, and can control exactly where your widgets appear.

A new option has been added that prevents GuildPortal from rendering any style information based on your point-and-click settings in the Style Tools area of the Control Panel. This makes it so the only style info comes from your custom CSS, without any interference from GP, except for a few helper rules for margins and the like. You can enable this option in the Control Panel by expanding Custom HTML, selecting Custom CSS, selecting the Full Custom CSS tab, and checking the box at the bottom that says "Disable all GuildPortal CSS Output".

Finally, editors for all of the custom HTML, custom CSS and custom Javascript selections in the Control Panel have been enhanced with the CodeMirror editor, which provides syntax hilighting and automatic tag completion.

These enhancements, in combination with the already existing Banner, Footer, Widgets, and Full Page custom HTML and Custom CSS, provide complete control over how your site looks. Now you can bring your favorite templates from anywhere -- and there are a lot of free template sites out there. Oh, hey, and if you find any really great ones and port them to your GuildPortal site, share them, it's easy! Just open the Control Panel, expand Style Tools, and then click Share Theme.

Here's a snap of a theme developed using custom HTML and CSS from a freely-available one meant for a completely different system:

Events Enhancements and More

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:43:54 GMT

Big enhancements to the calendar system have been made over the past couple of weeks! Here's what's been done:

Event Submissions : Associate-level and higher members of your site are now able to submit events for approval by events admins. When they view the calendar, they have a new button in the top right-hand corner:

When they submit the event, event admins are notified via web mail. When they go to the calendar, if there are any submissions pending, they see the following:

Clicking the button shows them the details of the event, and gives them the option to Approve, Approve and Edit, or Reject the submission.

Simplified Sign-Up: Signing up to an event no longer requires multiple steps. Members can now sign up directly while viewing the event:

In-Line Sign-Up Admin: Like the sign-ups, administrating status and role of sign-ups by event admins has been simplified to a couple of drop-down boxes that appear in-line while viewing the event:

Enter Loot Drops from the Event: Entering drops for an event used to require several steps. Now, it's right there in the event view and much more efficient:

Enter / select the item that dropped. If you start typing the name of the item, a drop-down appears with matching items that have dropped for your guild previously. You can then use your arrow keys or mouse to select any match, or just type in the name of the item if it's something that hasn't dropped before:

Selection of the person who received the item works in the same way. You begin typing, and a list appears with matches:

Here's a partial list of the rest of what's been done over the past couple weeks:

New topics default to "subscribed."
E-mail notification is sent out when you receive web-based mail.
Users can delete their own posts unless the admin disallows it by clicking Edit under their forums, Options, and then checking "Disallow users from deleting their own posts."
Ventrilo server status was fixed.
The calendar now lets you choose between Monday or Sunday as the first day of the week (click Edit under the calendar, go to Display Options, and select the day from the "First Day of Week").
Fixed duplicate characters appearing on the default roster.
Added two new widgets: Rift Addons: Hottest and Rift Addons: Newest.
Event categories now support a background image, which appears on the large calendar display. To configure event categories, click Edit under your calendar, and then Event Categories.
Multiple events may now be deleted at once from the calendar editor by checking the boxes and clicking "Delete Selected."
The EverQuest 2 auto-roster has been fixed.
The forum icon legend now shows if you have custom forum icons, but can be disabled by clicking Edit under your forums, clicking Options, and checking the "Disable forum/topic icon legends" box.
Selected character fields now show up in event sign-ups.
An asterisk is displayed next to events that you have signed up for in the main calendar view.
If there are applicants awaiting approval, the member admin link flashes.
Many Web Fonts have been added and can be selected for your widget titles and widget body areas by going to the Control Panel > Style Tools > Content Boxes (Widgets). Not all of the fonts work with Internet Explorer.
Other miscellaneous bug fixes. =)

Mizus RaidTracker and More

Aaron Lewis — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:45:27 GMT

GuildPortal now supports the Mizus RaidTracker third party Add-On for WoW guilds when used with the EQdkp Plus XML export option for loot drops. Because of its superior functionality and popularity, it replaces the GPHelper add-on for this functionality. For more information, open an event follow-up and select the Loot Drops option.

Aside from numerous other minor bug fixes, the following also went live:

Event sign-ups are now numbered.
"New Activity" link from forums main view shows you new topics since the last time you logged in.
Tooltips of most recent posts have been improved, especially for quoted items.
"Deleted" shown in sent items next to read status when recipient deleted the item.
Selected mail folder now bold.
Fixed info section editing problem.
Multi-event days now say which event is blocked from sign-ups, or available to be signed up to.
Fix for bug when editing an alliance event.

Raid/Op Groups and More

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:45:16 GMT

Two new widgets go live today! The first, Raid/Op Groups, lets you group individual characters that are associated with your guild into groups for raiding, with the ability to specify role. For example, you could have "Monday Night Group 1" as a raid/op group and it could have five characters, each with their roles ("DPS", "Tank", "Heals", etc) specified.

The second is the EQ2 Server Status widget, which displays the status of the server your EQ2 guild plays on.

Welcome Letters and Idle Monitor

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:26:03 GMT

Welcome Letter goes live with today's update! When you have one set up, it is sent out to people when they have their access level to the site upgraded from public to member (or higher). To start using this, open your Control Panel and click Welcome Letter.
The Idle Monitor will now let Super Admins know who received warnings for inactivity, and who was automatically disbanded.
The Mass Move functionality in the forums editor is now working correctly.
$block[variable] tags now work correctly in mods.

Mass Move and More

Aaron Lewis — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:08:45 GMT

Most of the updates done since the last change log entry have to do with bug fixes and small tweaks in response to support tickets. Aside from those, the following has gone live:

Mass Move is available in the Forum editor. This allows you to move a lot of topics at once from one forum to another.
Many raid progression entries have been added for different games to get them up-to-date with their latest expansions.
The correct amount of available file space is now shown in the file manager.
The login bar border color can now be customized in the control panel.
The WoW GPHelper add-on has been updated to a new version, to make it compatible with WoW's latest update. Those who use it will need to download and install the latest version.
Date/time stamps are now shown on event comments.

Multi-Choice Voting, SWTOR Server Status and More

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:09:24 GMT

Multiple choice voting is now available! When creating a new poll, just click the checkbox at the bottom to indicate that it is multiple choice.
Star Wars: The Old Republic Server Status widget is now available to ST:TOR guilds. It displays your server name, up/down status, and current population.
The most recent posts count to display has been split out from the regular forum and most recent posts stand-alone widgets, so they can each have their own values.
When browsing Site Mods, you now have the option to display only those that are installed on your site.
30 signature backgrounds were added to the signature generator background gallery specifically for Star Wars: The Old Republic.
The crafting marketplace now requires explicit selection of the tradeskill required to make the requested item.
The crafting marketplace now displays orders from all approved alliance guilds!
The needs list widget now has a new field for "days/times available."
The event signup texting reminder is now firing.
Section wrapper opacity now allows for more fine-grained selection.
There is a new "mailbox" in your mail widgets, called "GuildPortal Updates." It displays these entries, and is there in an effort to better communicate changes to the service to our members.
Spaghetti is good with or without meatballs, but better with.

Many, Many Updates

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:10:39 GMT

Widgets sometimes only adding to the home page (regardless of what page you select) has been fixed.
Newest Members widget displaying incorrect data has been fixed.
You can now specify a custom favicon (the icon that appears in the browser when people are visiting your site) to be used instead of the default GuildPortal ones. The place to specify the icon to use is in Control Panel > Style Tools > General > Layout.
Story chapters will now display in order of chapter number instead of the order in which they were entered.
New widget: Torhead Search goes live! For those using the Mod, you no longer need to (but you still can).
In the forum display options, you may now specify that the most recent posts to show should be 0. If you do, the most recent posts will not be displayed at all. Some may find this useful, especially if used in combination with the Most Recent Topics widget.
Bank items with "Display to Members" un-checked no longer show in the bank widget.
Guilds with subscriptions expiring soon will now receive a more informative e-mail reminder.
Guild Events/Raids can now be set to "Block Signups" when entering them. Doing so prevents members from signing up to the event.
Application Questions may now be edited, although once the type is saved (multiple choice vs. text entry), that cannot be changed.
The maximum number of Recent Posts to Show in the forums has been raised from 20 to 50.
The signature generator should now always update your profile with the new image.
A new page in the Control Panel, called Raid Points Tools (under Member Management), provides quick and easy ways to mass adjust everyone's raid points/DKP by a set amount (either deducting or adding), reset everyone's DKP to 0, and individually edit member DKP without having to enter an adjustment.
ATT/AP were dropped from the Raid Points Standings widget. The data was essentially meaningless, and became only moreso over time.

Torhead Integration and More Texting

Aaron Lewis — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:43:44 GMT

Today's update includes automatic integration with ZAM's Torhead in the WYSIWYG editor for Star Wars: The Old Republic guilds. To use it, simply click the Jawa icon when editing and follow the instructions.

Also going live are two new text messaging notification options: when a reply is added to a topic you've subscribed to, and also reminders about upcoming events you've signed up for. To receive these notifications, click Profile on any guild page, and then click Text Messaging. There, you'll see these two new options, in addition to all of the other things you may choose to receive text messages on your phone for.

Customizable Recruiting

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:30:36 GMT

A new widget type called "Recruiting (Customizable)" goes live with today's update! It offers a lot of flexibility as far as what you want displayed (and how) to potential recruits. To check it out, add one to a page and click the Edit link to get started. For many games, there are defaults that you can import and then modify as you see fit.

We've received many requests from members who want the ability to remove images they've previously uploaded to sites they've been members of. Sometimes after leaving a guild, they'll want to remove personal real-life pics, for example. Members can now do so by clicking their Profile link on any guild page, or by clicking their name from any GuildPortal public-side page (top right) and then clicking "Uploaded Images."

Also, some further optimization is going live as a result of the database tuning we are performing. This is an ongoing process!

Rally Widget, Image Editor and Upgrades

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:19:23 GMT

A new widget called "Rally the Guild" goes live today! This beta widget operates much like a shout box, except instead of just adding a line of text to your site, it will send the text to members via either their cell phone or e-mail. For cell phone delivery, members will need to configure texting in their Profile (the widget itself provides a direct link to configure it, as well). Only those with officer level or higher access to your site may send out rallies, and only those marked as associate or higher receive them.

Also, images uploaded since the new file storage system was brought online (images that show as being located on a path that begins with /GuildImages) now show an Edit link next to them in the File Manager. Clicking it brings up a new web-based image editor that gives you the ability to crop, add text to, and otherwise manipulate images. The functionality of this editor already has planned enhancements, coming soon. It is also available from the Gallery widgets upon upload of new images, if the uploader has Images Admin rights on the site.

Over the past couple days, we ran across a hardware problem with one of the drives on our database server, causing some downtime. We apologize for this. The good news is, however, that we have replaced the drive with a mirrored array that has twice the space. Also, while they had the system open at the data center, we had them double the RAM as well, which should have a positive impact on performance.

To make things run even better, we have also brought in a company that specializes in the optimization of databases specific to the platform that GuildPortal runs on. They have completed their initial monitoring phase, and we will be working closely with them to implement their recommendations.

Other stuff addressed in this push:

Aion armory tooltips are fixed.
LoTRO Integration now allows manual entry of your guild name, in case your actual guild name was already taken for your server and you had to use a different one when creating your site.
Approving/denying item requests in the bank now visually updates the visibility of the approve/deny links, giving a better indicator that the command was performed.
A bug causing only one item to show when viewing item requests has been squished.
SuperAdmins can now delete crafting orders from the main display of the Crafting Marketplace.
Spotter's Order was nerfed in Rift. (Okay, so we had nothing to do with that -- we're just very, very angry about it)

Recent Updates

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:45:22 GMT

On Monday, the following updates will be deployed to live:

XML/XSL Transforms where either the XML or XSL files are being loaded from guild storage will work properly.
Text filters will function correctly.
Voice server purchasing will be fixed for a few guilds that were having trouble with it.
The main GP page login control will now correctly say that it's an invalid login if no user name and password are provided, instead of providing no feedback at all (just sitting there, staring back at you).
Announcements will now be shown directly on the calendar widgets, instead of being their own listing before the calendar.

In addition, many updates have been made over the past couple weeks that have already been pushed to live:

Performance enhancements have been made to the forums and news widgets.
Cache duration of guild data has been reduced, causing less of a delay between saving some changes in the control panel and being able to see them appear on your site.
Text Messaging functionality has been made available for open beta. Check your Profile settings to see what it's all about!
Registration and application completion have been merged into a single page, so that people applying to your site won't think they're done after completing the registration part, and exiting prematurely.
New CSS classes have been added to the forums, mostly to facilitate alternating item displays in the post listing.
Maximum individual file upload size has been increased from 5 MB to 7 MB.
The ability to enter a custom color code, instead of being limited to the drop-down choices provided by the picker, has been enabled for section wrappers.
Section wrappers! A new set of options are available in the Control Panel, underneath Style Tools > General Style Settings > Section Wrappers. These enable containers that wrap around elements on your site, such as the navigation bar (if you use it), the content table (where all the widgets are contained), and the footer. While they're attractive in old browsers, they look especially good in CSS3-compliant browsers (most of the latest browsers are CSS3-compliant).
By default, signatures will not show in forum posts when the post is by a guest user (non-associate or higher access level). In order to override this behavior, click Edit under your forums widget, then Options, and then "Show non-associate (guest) signatures and thumbnails."

Mods System Updates

Aaron Lewis — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:00:04 GMT

A few (hah!) updates have been made to the new mods system:

Installed mods that have a newer version will now also allow uninstalling of the mod (previously it would only allow updating to the latest version).
Updating to the latest version now indicates that it has done so (previously, it looked like you were never up-to-date).
Certain widget-type mods were not rendering.
The "Top Mods" widget in the Admin Help Community was sorting by a formula foreign to modern-day mathematics, which we believe was used in earlier centuries to summon demons and sparkling ponies (closely related, by the way). It is now sorting by popularity, using regular numbers.
Media file uploads now work. Authors, pretty please with sugar on top use this for storage of files needed by the add-on, instead of linking to external sources.
The updating of a mod to the latest version now requires confirmation from the admin if the update includes customizable code (since it will wipe out any already-customized code the admin may have in place).
The listing of comments in the mod authors' view now includes which mod the comment is for.
The authors' view now includes the ability to search their own mods.
Upon saving a new mod revision, the author is asked whether they want to publish it. If they do, it will be marked as ready for review by GP staff. If they don't, it will be ready to test by the author but will not be reviewed until they edit it again, save it, and then indicate they want to publish.

Mods System goes Live!

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 18:04:47 GMT

The new Site Mods system goes live with today's update! From the Control Panel, select Site Mods. From there, you can install them on your site, or even author new mods for others to use. A mod is any combination of HTML, Javascript, and CSS code that come together to enhance the functionality of a site it's installed on. They can be full-blown widgets, or code that makes snow fall down the screen during the holidays. They can even have configurable code so that authors can provide variables that an admin installing a mod on their site can change in order to customize how it behaves.

Widget authors can create widgets, and when they make changes, they create new revisions. Each mod (and further revision of the mod) will be reviewed by GuildPortal staff before being made available for installation (although the author of the mod may always install the latest revision, even if it's not approved, in order to test). Mods can also be given star ratings and comments by the community! After many years of awesome admins providing guides and help when it comes to extending the functionality of GuildPortal, we're offering this in hopes of making that development (and deployment) process much easier -- we're looking at you, Mottie!

Of course, for the scripters out there, the jQuery library is already available, and you can easily use it from your javascript code in your mod! Also, we look forward to providing service end-points that return JSON or XML guild data that can be easily consumed by a mod using simple jQuery get requests, and sample code to go along with it. Think of it as a light-weight API for writing your own widgets or extending GuildPortal to your specific needs, and then getting massive kudos for doing so.

Now, aside from that excitement (can you tell we're excited? huh??), we also pushed the following changes with the update:

Sign-ups may now be deleted by event admins directly from the sign-ups listing when viewing an event's details.
Aion integrated rosters are now working again.
Buncha other stuff for support tickets.

Support Updates

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:20:22 GMT

* Updating attendance/awarding DKP will now immediately update the totals on the Raid Point Standings widget, instead of showing cached data.
* The Silverlight gallery has been replaced with an entirely javascript gallery that has similar functionality, but does not require a plug-in.
* Animated GIF thumbnail images uploaded in your Profile settings will no longer be converted to PNGs (ripping out the animation in the process).
* Files with multiple periods in the name will now upload without error.
* Setting the URL for your banner in the General Style Settings will now save correctly.
* Saving your profile settings after canceling out of uploading a new thumbnail will no longer error out.
* The "Select from guild files" globe icon on image selectors in the control panel now works correctly with Firefox 5.

New File Storage, CDNs, and More

Aaron Lewis — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:12:36 GMT

We've begun using new file storage with this update. All of your existing files are still available at their old location, but newly uploaded files will have URLs that look like /GuildFiles/[your guild ID]/[file name] instead of http://www.axiomfiles.com/[your guild id]/filename. This removes the need for your browser to determine a different host's IP (axiomfiles.com) when loading each image. While you can leave your old files where they are, you could benefit more from this change by copying them back down to your hard drive and re-uploading them. Once you have all references pointing to the old image updated, delete it to free up more of your available file space (also keeps things tidy). To help differentiate between which files you have on the old system and which you have on the new one, I've added a URL column to the Control Panel > File Manager file listing.

For yet more performance gains, we are now using CDNs (content delivery networks) from both Google and Yahoo to serve up the more common Javascript libraries we use. What makes this so great is that those services will automatically route your request for the file(s) to your nearest data center, making it very, very fast. It also takes the burden off GuildPortal, no longer needing to serve up these very common Javascript libraries, instead giving it more resources to dedicate to just your content.

Many support tickets were addressed (and small features tweaked) in this update, as well:

The signature generator now saves your preferences. You will no longer need to start from the beginning when using the tool.
The signature generator now provides links that you can use in your signatures on other forums/web sites!
Associates and higher are now able to upload images directly when using the WYSIWYG editor to post, and then insert that image into the post immediately after.
Event/Raid templates now correctly import any custom category they were saved with.
Clicking on an entry in the "Recent Blogs" widget will now only open the blog in a new window, instead of opening it in both your current window and a new window.
When editing your profile, you will no longer default to the "Casablanca" time zone. Unless that's your time zone, of course.
The World of Warcraft server status widget is now back and functioning correctly, now calling an API provided by Blizzard instead of parsing the old server status page.
In the Funds widget, guild transactions may now be entered using more than one type of currency at a time.
A guild in an alliance that has had a forum shared with them by another guild is now able to set one of their forums as the parent forum of the shared forum.

Many Updates

Aaron Lewis — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:54:07 GMT

New: "Newest Members" widget now available. By default this is included below the forums on new guild sites.
New: "LOTRO Server Status" widget now available for Lord of the Rings Online guilds.
New: Fade animation for background color of grids with alternating colors for odd and even rows. Can be disabled in Control Panel > Style Tools > Content Boxes > Grids.
New: It is now possible to add a comment when adding a transaction using the guild funds widget (previously, you had to edit the transaction after creating it).
New: Setting the margins at the top and bottom of your banner image is now possible in Control Panel > Style Tools > General > Banner.
Updated: "Latest addition" column in the guild bank widget made wider.
Updated: Signups table in event view of the calendar now shown with slightly smaller text.
Updated: "Edit/Delete" link added to the beginning of each transaction in the guild funds widget.
Fixed: When importing drop from a list of previous drops for an event, the description was not being brought over.
Fixed: WoW Integrated Rosters were unable to parse Battle.net for EU guilds.
Fixed: Add New Forum window in the forum editor was appearing above the top of the editor in FireFox.
Fixed: When posting, the option to subscribe to replies was being ignored.