Aaron Lewis

GuildPortal Dev Blog

Updates from Aaron Lewis, GuildPortal Code Monkey

Entries From Aaron Lewis' Blog

7/13 Release

Posted 7/13/2012 4:12 PM by Aaron Lewis. 114662 reads. Share:

Here are the highlights from this week's update:
  • One-on-one chat now works across public-side (meaning just browsing around GuildPortal), blogs, and guild pages. You'll be notified of chat requests no matter where you are.
  • Posts now have a link along the bottom for forum moderators/admins that lets them move the post to another forum/topic of their choosing.
  • Inbox messages now show up on the /m (mobile) versions of your sites.
  • The guild chat link again displays the count of people in chat.
  • A new widget, called "Available Achievements and Medals," has gone live. It lists the achievements from the guild that members may earn, medals they may be awarded, and also GuildPortal achievements that are available.
  • The "Wall" and "About Me" links are now back on the profile page.
  • Some more work has been put into the Dev Status pages. Next week's milestone is empty, but that just because this week's kept me busy up until the very end. I'll be filling it in on Monday.
  • RSS links have been added to the issue comments so you can subscribe and be notified when issues you are interested have updates to their status.
  • The member editor's "Characters" tab for each member now displays a link indicating whether that character is blocked from display on the roster. It also allows you to toggle block status.
  • The member editor grid displays more rows now.
  • Achievements (all three kinds) now display on the "About Me" page of member blog sites.
  • The roster blocks that were mysteriously applying themselves to innocent victims have been slain.
  • A bug causing the forum moderators editor to come up blank has been fixed.
That's all for now!

Full Text Search

Posted 6/27/2012 12:48 PM by Aaron Lewis. 45648 reads. Share:

Forum full-text search goes live! There is a link along the top of your forums that says "Search." It has two available modes, controlled by whether you have the "Exact?" check box checked.

If you do not have the "Exact" check box checked, GuildPortal will find posts that match what you type in, but it will also find posts that match based on the meaning of what you have typed in.

If you do have the "Exact" check box checked, GuildPortal will find posts that match what you type in. In addition, you can use operators in your query. For example:

  • "bad monkeys" (note the use of quotes with phrases) would return posts where "bad" and "monkeys" appeared right next to each other.
  • "bad" AND "monkeys" would return posts where "bad" and "monkeys" appeared, regardless of whether they are next to each other.
  • "war*" OR "ever*" would return posts with "warcraft" or "warhammer" or "everquest" or "everquest2" in them.
  • "warcraft" or "everquest" would return posts with either "warcraft" or "everquest" in them.
  • "war*" OR "ever*" AND NOT "everquest2" would return posts with "warcraft" or "warhammer" or "everquest" in them, but not those with "everquest2" in them.
You can also do searches for a particular author, whether or not you specify anything to search for in the subject/body of the posts.

Big Update

Posted 6/22/2012 1:38 PM by Aaron Lewis. 39174 reads. Share:

Today's update includes stuff and things! Namely:
  • Added the ability for forum moderators to merge topics.
  • A new right that you can grant members, called "Designer." Those granted this access will see a link to "Site Design" on guild pages, and when they click it, they will be taken to the Control Panel, but with only the design-related areas accessible.
  • Added ability to move images between galleries in the editor UI by dragging and dropping them from one gallery to another.
  • Fixed broken one-on-one chat.
  • Fixed icons in the WYSIWYG editor.
  • Fixed the "View" link in the gallery editor.
  • Fixed the Forum Moderator selection UI.
  • Fixed forums mass move functionality.
  • Fixed link to blog when viewing the pop-up profile for a member.
  • Fixed the gradient builder not saving widget header gradients.
  • Made the gradient builder open in a larger window, so IE users could see everything.
  • Updated GuildPortal to the latest non-beta .NET framework, including an update to our tools which should result in improved productivity. :)
  • Removed the forced delay that made you wait 10 seconds before going back to edit a post you just made.
  • Fixed the "No Signature" check box not working when adding a new topic.

GuildPortal goes Mobile!

Posted 5/22/2012 10:56 PM by Aaron Lewis. 164429 reads. Share:

Note: If you do not want to read through this whole post and just want to get to your mobile site, the address is your.guild.domain/m. For example, if your sub-domain is icanhaz and your primary domain is guildportal.com, your mobile site would be at icanhaz.guildportal.com/m
Phone showing GuildPortal Mobile I've been mostly working on support tickets and this nebulous thing I'm calling GP-5 (shhh, Sandy would be furious if she found out). Also, Sandy and I are really going to put our heads together to come up with something for the progression widget. However, with all this stuff going on, we managed to get something pretty neat out the door for those of you who use a phone to check up on your guild forums and web mail...

Now, a lot of people already know that GuildPortal can notify you of things such as when new web mail arrives, an event/raid is starting soon, whether someone replied to a topic that you are subscribed to, when your (or others, if you're an events admin) event/raid status changes are sent to your SMS-capable phone. Also, admins can be notified the instant a new applicant signs up to the site.

For those who didn't know about this feature, open Profile from any guild page, then click Text Messaging to set up your cell phone provider, number, whether notifications are enabled, and which types of notifications you want to receive.

Okay, this next part is a relatively big deal for us. If you go to your site's domain (like http://admins.guildportal.com) and add /m after it, you will be on a site that has some functionality of your full site, but has the added benefit of being much faster to load. So, if you're a member of the Admin Help Community, head on over to http://admins.guildportal.com/m right now on your phone and check it out. If not, try your own guild's domain.

The mobile site was written on jQuery Mobile, and so it should support the following devices with no problems (although not all the bells and whistles may be there on older devices -- like mine. Iphone 1. I swear it's gas-powered.):

The so-called "A-grade" browsers. Full enhanced experience with Ajax-based animated page transitions.
  • Apple iOS 3.2-5.0 - Tested on the original iPad (4.3 / 5.0), iPad 2 (4.3), original iPhone (3.1), iPhone 3 (3.2), 3GS (4.3), 4 (4.3 / 5.0), and 4S (5.0)
  • Android 2.1-2.3 – Tested on the HTC Incredible (2.2), original Droid (2.2), HTC Aria (2.1), Google Nexus S (2.3). Functional on 1.5 & 1.6 but performance may be sluggish, tested on Google G1 (1.5)
  • Android 3.1 (Honeycomb)  – Tested on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Motorola XOOM
  • Android 4.0 (ICS)  – Tested on a Galaxy Nexus S. Note: transition performance can be poor on upgradeddevices
  • Windows Phone 7-7.5 – Tested on the HTC Surround (7.0) HTC Trophy (7.5), LG-E900 (7.5), Nokia Lumia 800
  • Blackberry 6.0 – Tested on the Torch 9800 and Style 9670
  • Blackberry 7 – Tested on BlackBerry® Torch 9810
  • Blackberry Playbook (1.0-2.0) – Tested on PlayBook
  • Palm WebOS (1.4-2.0) – Tested on the Palm Pixi (1.4), Pre (1.4), Pre 2 (2.0)
  • Palm WebOS 3.0 – Tested on HP TouchPad
  • Firebox Mobile (10 Beta) – Tested on Android 2.3 device
  • Chrome for Android (Beta) – Tested on Android 4.0 device
  • Skyfire 4.1 - Tested on Android 2.3 device
  • Opera Mobile 11.5: Tested on Android 2.3
  • Meego 1.2 – Tested on Nokia 950 and N9
  • Samsung bada 2.0 – Tested on a Samsung Wave 3, Dolphin browser
  • UC Browser – Tested on Android 2.3 device
  • Kindle 3 and Fire - Tested on the built-in WebKit browser for each
  • Nook Color 1.4.1 – Tested on original Nook Color, not Nook Tablet
  • Chrome Desktop 11-17 - Tested on OS X 10.7 and Windows 7
  • Safari Desktop 4-5 - Tested on OS X 10.7 and Windows 7
  • Firefox Desktop 4-9 – Tested on OS X 10.7 and Windows 7
  • Internet Explorer 7-9 – Tested on Windows XP, Vista and 7
  • Opera Desktop 10-11 - Tested on OS X 10.7 and Windows 7
"B-grade" browsers  Ehanced experience except without Ajax navigation features.
  • Blackberry 5.0: Tested on the Storm 2 9550, Bold 9770
  • Opera Mini (5.0-6.5) - Tested on iOS 3.2/4.3 and Android 2.3
  • Nokia Symbian^3 - Tested on Nokia N8 (Symbian^3), C7 (Symbian^3), also works on N97 (Symbian^1)
C-Grade Basic non-enhanced HTML experience that is still functional
  • Blackberry 4.x - Tested on the Curve 8330
  • Windows Mobile - Tested on the HTC Leo (WinMo 5.2)
  • All older smartphone platforms and featurephones – Any device that doesn’t support media queries will receive the basic, C grade experience
There is a feedback button there in your member screen. Please feel free to use it. We would love to hear back from you on this. We will no doubt be adding more features (right now, only mail and forums really work completely, oh and the welcome message, underneath the user's start page for the guild).

For more information on graded mobile browser support based upon JQuery Mobile (which we are using for the /m functionality of your sites) library, click here.

This is not the regular update. There's just been enough testing that I'm comfy letting you all know about it. :)

Tera Stuff and Whatnot

Posted 5/4/2012 5:38 PM by Aaron Lewis. 61484 reads. Share:

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.