Forum Changes

Post by **Altuslumen** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 13:22

There is a new mobile template, I'm currently testing it out but so far I like it better than the old one.

Also, for the full forums I added a portal page. It still needs some work but it is what I have so far.

As always, feedback would be great.

Post by **Stryx** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 14:42

Thumbs up! Much cleaner appearence on my phone.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 20:21

CA Black (desktop version) should have a functioning portal now. I need to do some work on the timeline still, but I got the most crucial part fixed; the images are now loaded to my site before being loaded. Thus, nothing (nearly 100% sure) is being loaded from twitter. Probably not a big deal for most folks, but in case someone hits this site from work they won't also be hitting twitter. This is making the portal a little slow, I need to add some code to only load new images (or after they are 24+ hours old (or something like that). I also want to add some code to save the twitter responses so twitter isn't pinged as often, there is a cap on how often you can call the API. I'll probably make it something like within five minutes, like the server status. I also need to add more categories for sorting the tweets.

The overall goal of the timeline is just to make it easier to find news (server outages, etc) in an easy to find place. Let me know if you have folks that need to be followed.

I've move the server status to the portal page and reduced the height of the header (less dead space).

On the mobile, the portal page should be disable. I'll probably add a timeline link on the mobile version.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 22:10

Okay, the twitter feed is working pretty much how I want it to. It will update a page after it is five minutes old. It will update images after they are 24 hours old, however it won't update more than three images on one page load (unless there are missing images due to new people in the feed). However, if a page is over a minute old at the bottom there will be a Refresh link, that will refresh the page and all the images. This seems to provide decent performance and keeps everything on my server (the Follow @nosaeternus button had twitter content, so I removed it, just a simple link now).

Post by **Altuslumen** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 22:37

The mobile has a link from the index to the timeline, it is a very simple timeline for the mobile. I'll probably work on it some but it works for now.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:37

I really like the "Latest News" section on the portal page. The portal doesn't port to the mobile template well, but I'm still trying to work on it a bit. I may try and create a "mobile portal" that just has the basics; latest news (something Myrsho asked for a long time ago), server status, and maybe the timeline.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 21:00

I updated the mobile template to iphone colors (greys instead of blues). I also added an indicator for new posts (the first line says "NEW" in red text). Tomorrow (or whenever I get back to working on this) I'll work on the mobile portal.

Post by **Stryx** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 22:13

I don't understand all the lingo but I like the changes, especially the new mobile template. Everything is easier to find and aesthetically, the changes are much cleaner compared to the old version.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:12

There is now a very simple portal for the mobile style. I'm sure there will be some stuff I missed with some of the advanced modules. I'm still working on getting the formatting correct for the Who Is Online but the important stuff is working. The portal will list the most recent five topics (it will be red if there is a new post and the link will take you to the unread posts). Server status is now on the portal page and the timeline link is at the bottom. I thought about just adding the timeline in but then images are loaded and on a mobile device there is no guarantee that will be quick, thus it stayed a link on the mobile portal. The current date/time is now at the top of the portal. I need to add a timestamp to the timeline also but I haven't gotten to that.

Please let me know what you think, I'm hoping this provides a quicker way of accessing the forums with a mobile device.

To return to the portal on the mobile use the link in the footer of the page.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 15:11

Removed the Timeline link and moved it to the Gear icon (top right corner) on the mobile style; I also added the Who Is Online and Calendar to the Gear icon. I added a Portal link to the up arrow (top left corner).

On the Timeline I added a timestamp at the top.

The Calendar isn't great (formatting is too wide) but it is there.

Post by **Ashien Velor** » Mon May 14, 2012 20:21

FORUMS
Is the portal page down?

Post by **Altuslumen** » Mon May 14, 2012 20:21

FORUMS
Yes, I'll get it back up and running tomorrow. There was an update today and I'm having issues with it.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Tue May 15, 2012 09:26

I believe the Portal is working as it did before for CA Black. I still need to work on the mobile version though. The mobile side will be trickier, they rewrote all the backend code for the portal so my hacks no longer work, I'll have to recreate them.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Wed May 16, 2012 09:41

I think I have everything back to the way it was. On the mobile version instead of saying "NEW" for new posts they are now outlined in red (you may have to refresh your cache). Please let me know if you have any problems with the site. I know some minor things have changed but the functionality should be back.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Wed May 23, 2012 09:29

Ash and Stryx, did either of you have Portal access this past week? I was doing some testing and it looked like you two (well everyone that isn't an admin or global moderator) didn't have access to the portal. Everyone should have access now. Let me know if you don't have access.

Post by **Stryx** » Wed May 23, 2012 18:10

I am not sure what you mean by Portal but I was able to access the board fine on my phone and via the PC.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Wed May 23, 2012 18:29

http://www.sheffieldfamily.net/forums/portal.php

That is the portal. In either version it should have the Latest News on the top and the server status. When I was testing permissions it was forwarding me to the index.php page when I tried to hit the portal.php.

Post by **Stryx** » Wed May 23, 2012 19:40

Ah, i have the board index bookmarked so i generally go right to the forums and not to the page with the news and server status.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 09:46

I've updated the timeline in the portal for non-mobile browsers.
http://sheffieldfamily.net/forums/portal.php
Instead of loading with the page it loads with an AJAX call. I've noticed if it needs to update there can be a bit of a delay on the page loading. Now, it will say "Loading timeline..." while it gets an updated timeline then add it to the page when ready. The
http://sheffieldfamily.net/forums/timeline.php
page has not changed yet. I will probably replace it with the AJAX version at some point.

So far I've tested with the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, iOS Safari, iOS Chrome, iOS Opera Mini. It seems to work on all of them. Please let me know if you run into any problems. If you test on a mobile browser the standard portal in the mobile style does not load the timeline, you have to use
http://sheffieldfamily.net/forums/portal.php?style=8
or logout so that it will load the CA Black style.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 15:18

The server status now is an AJAX call also. I removed the cron job that used to run to update the server status in the background and it now is just called as needed. If the values in the database are over 100 seconds old it should go out and get updated status. While getting the status it will say "Loading server status..." then that will be replaced once it is ready. I already removed this from the main flow so there should be no performance impact.

Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

I also added a backend cron job to cleanup timeline data, but that really shouldn't matter to anyone but me.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 07:50

The mobile template has been updated a bit. On the portal I added "| Forum Name" to the news section. With the weekly posts one couldn't tell which forum a post was in without clicking on it and checking. Hopefully this makes it a little easier. If anyone has an idea for a better format let me know, the pipe was just something I figure won't be used much so I used it.

Post by **Myrsho** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 09:56

Love the forum header in the links!

Post by **Altuslumen** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 14:36

I've updated the timeline, if you aren't in the "Allowed In" group then you can't page on it. Bots/web crawlers were hitting it like crazy. They should only be able to see the first page now. Humans should still be able to use it just like before. Please let me know if you experience any problems with the timeline.

Post by **Altuslumen** » Fri Aug 17, 2012 12:03

Let me know if you see any problems with the server status. I just changed the SOE feed to use their JSON feed instead of XML. The XML wasn't working today for some reason, the URL worked but my code wasn't getting it. The JSON version should be faster (by a little) than the XML version.

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