29
Jan

Update Post – January 29, 2020

Hello Portal Community,

While this post is technically a bit overdue (I had originally intended to post an update in late December), the delay has enabled the list of fixes and updates to grow, and for me to add another couple of items to the list myself. This past month (give or take), I achieved a personal goal and have been granted access (and permission of course) to start doing some dev work in addition to the various community and content tasks I normally do.

In terms of my technical background (so the community has no fear about the qualifications of anyone working on the site), my bachelor’s degree is in computer information technology (CIT), with a focus on web development. So, while I’m still newer at getting into OP’s dev side, I’m not just some random well-intentioned joker that’s going to break anything (don’t forget, my campaigns are on here too!).

All of that said, let’s get into the most recent updates and changes:

Back End and Technical
  • Additional tracking and auditing was added to some database tables concerning subscriptions and users. This is primarily for logging purposes, but also helps with certain kinds of support tickets from users. Generally speaking this helps us to help you.
  • Cookie expiration has been extended from one month to six weeks. This just lets you have to log in less often (unless you are intentionally logging out when leaving the site).
  • Password changing has been updated to now log the user out upon a password change.
  • Added a notification email in the event of an account password change. This mechanism has been applied to all forms of account password alteration (edit profile, forgot password, and administrative password reset).
  • Fixed an issue with the Google login option that was resulting in some users being blocked due to image URL length.
  • Fixed an issue that was resulting in duplicate reminder emails for calendar events.
  • Fixed an issue on the administration dashboard where the linkage between a payment refund and a subscription cancellation was not always correct.
Gifting and Subscriptions
  • Gift Ascendant has been retooled to require the recipient’s username instead of the email address associated with their account. This change was made in order to make gifting easier.
  • Fixed an issue with gifting that would sometimes result in the failure to apply upgraded features if the recipient had a prior subscription.
  • Added a one-week grace period in the event of a failed subscription payment. This gives the user time to get the payment issue sorted out before being downgraded back to the Basic (ie, free) account level.
  • The Adventurer subscription tier has been removed as an option for new subscriptions. Existing Adventurer subscriptions are not affected by this change, but can no longer swap from monthly to annual, or vice versa. This is a result of the tier not living up to its originally intended purpose, and the additional development time required for it.
  • PayPal has been removed as a payment option for new subscriptions. Existing subscriptions using PayPal are not affected by this change. While we liked having additional payment options, PayPal did not contain all of the necessary back end mechanisms to be an equivalent to Stripe in terms of functionality that we needed.
Front End / Functionality
  • Fixed an issue that would sometimes result in 500 server errors when searching in campaigns that contained non-English characters (such as Cyrillic).
  • Fixed an issue on the Campaigns page that was preventing the listing of campaigns from being filtered by both the game system and filter drop-down selection at the same time. The two methods now correctly work in tandem.
  • Added an “All Systems” choice to campaign filtering to act as a ‘reset’ for the game system half of the campaigns list filtering.
  • Updated the “Looking for Players” campaigns list filter to automatically sort by most recently updated.
  • Fixed an issue with the Modern Dystopia name generator that would sometimes result in a “node not found” error.
  • Fixed an issue with the random name generator where 2-part names were not being spaced or capitalized correctly.
  • Fixed an issue with the insertable JavaScript random number generator where the ending number was sometimes being excluded.
  • Fixed an issue that was resulting in an “argument out of range” error for some users when updating calendar events.
  • Fixed an issue where some keyboard characters (such as apostrophes) were not being converted correctly for slug generation when used in character names.
  • Added dynamic messaging for DST notes on the character creation and edit page in instances where no DST exists for the set game system, and for when no game system has been set for the campaign.
  • Fixed an issue preventing the character show page from conforming to the width set for the public layout portion of campaign sites.
  • Fixed an issue where the “getting started” messaging intended for a player viewing their own profile with no campaigns was being shown to all users. New messaging has been added for other viewers.
Visual and Clarification
  • Fixed an issue where the ‘active’ flag wasn’t being set for the Media Library tab. This tab now correctly shows as active when on the Media Library page.
  • Replaced the radio button gender selection mechanism with a drop-down selector on the character creation and edit page. This drop-down has been positioned and labeled to more clearly indicate that it is for use with the random name generator.
  • The ‘missing’ divider line on the top navigation bar has been found and is now correctly displayed between the “Quick Links” and “Campaigns” drop-downs.
  • The icons for the insertable JavaScript element buttons are now correctly center-aligned when viewed in small-screen / mobile – matching the preexisting buttons.
  • Fixed an issue where some keyboard characters (such as apostrophes) in a character name were being incorrectly encoded on some functionality buttons (such as for delete character).

– – –

That’s going to do it for now. Thanks for reading, and for your patience with my delay in getting this update out to you. I’ll have more updates as we continue to go forward. My schedule for posting will likely be closer to monthly as opposed to the previous weekly schedule. This is due to the current uptick in workload, as well as my personal preference for a more meaty update post.

– Kallak (Dan)

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Gold ENnie for Best Website 09'-11'


Silver ENnie for Best Website, Best Podcast 2012-2013
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