Site Updates

[Nathan Caroland]

I've changed it so now the maximum file size in the gallery is 300k per picture. This allows for a slightly higher resolution for the contest pictures so that it isn't that much trouble with compresion. I still suggest doing 'save for web' when you do these though, you'll find it works a lot better.

Also, Member Galleries and Iron Painter galleries no longer require moderation for either pictures or comments, though the Wyrd Painting Contests still do due to their nature.

-
Nathan

[EricJ]

cool! I'm off to leave unmoderated comments, I hated waiting for those cursed moderators to approve what I had to say! :D

[Duende]

Oh sure NOW you do that, after I had to resize some of my images since some were just slightly too big.

:girlhit:

I'll give you something to moderate!!! :censored:

[Ritual]

I honoured this initiative by uploading a bunch of minis! :)

[Skya]

Also, Member Galleries and Iron Painter galleries no longer require moderation for either pictures or comments, though the Wyrd Painting Contests still do due to their nature.

-
Nathan


Wooohooo!!

:vb_cheers

[Nathan Caroland]

Currently doing updates to the website in order to facilitate some changes and general site upgrades so you may find some portions of this site not working as you are used to them until the upgrades are complete.

[Nathan Caroland]

Was a bit of a glitch in the update meaning that the front page had to be redone (sigh). I'm in the midst of fixing the links but in the mean time, anyone got an old screen shot of the front page of the site? :D

[Nathan Caroland]

Alrighty, new gallery in place, will be a few before everything gets ported over with the previous galleries.

The navigation on the left on the home page is messed up at the moment as well but I'll be taking care of that through the night.

If you encounter any problems, please feel free to let me know.

[Duende]

I know you're still probably working on the galleries, but I notice an old problem cropping up again. Using Firefox, I'm logged in on the Gallery main page but when I go into a category, I get the place to enter my username and password again, and signing in doesn't change it.

I tried again with IE and it's fine. I'm listed as signed in on all Gallery pages.

:irked: Nothing too big, but it would just be annoying to have to open IE if I want to add to the gallery.

[Nathan Caroland]

We figured out a fix for this at one time - I gotta go in and figure out what we came up with. Akenmaat or whomever has the penguin avatar figured it out if I remember correctly.

[Duende]

Found the other thread: HERE (http://wyrd-games.net/showthread.php?t=1253).

I'll have to try Firefox again later at home.

[Nathan Caroland]

Alrighty, gallery is working right now, but everything has to be ported over, which I'm told will work but I haven't managed yet and will be gone for a couple of days so won't get done till I get back. In the end I'll probably hire that out so as to make certain that everything comes over just fine.

Site navigation on the side is a bit glitchy right now, but I have to sit down and put some time into it, but to be honest, you can get around without it for the moment as the top navigation works just fine so there shouldn't be any issues there at all.

Anyhoo - this upgrade basically adds some functions which haven't been seen yet such as myspace information, Ipod casts, rss feeds, better spam protection, ajax, better security and a whole host of other stuff that frankly I haven't figured out yet and bunches of it I likely won't ever get around to using. Still, the option is always nice and hopefully this will be the last update for some long time to come as frankly, bleah, its stressful on me having work done on this and just waiting for everything to go POOF!

:D

Hope your holidays are going well.

-
Nathan

[lauth81]

Spam protection would be nice. There were quite some spambots making entries on the wyrd board over the last few weeks.

[callumrice]

Aye too many cheeky gits sending links to us. Burn the witches.

[wiccanpony]

“Burn the witches” what is with you people and flambéing us poor witches. LOL

I like more spam protection too.....will have to poke around and see what speed I can crank out of this new puppy, thanks Nathan. :)

[Duende]

... better spam protection, ajax, better security....

Ajax??

http://www.reallynatural.com/archives/pictures/CPajax-thumb.jpg

Keep the site clean?

;)

*EDIT*



Quick I need a fireman!!

Here you go, Donna. Will he do?

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/10P/FIREMAN~Fireman-Posters.jpg

:D

[Thryth]

We figured out a fix for this at one time - I gotta go in and figure out what we came up with. Akenmaat or whomever has the penguin avatar figured it out if I remember correctly.

Maybe it was that Thryth guy? ;)

[matty1001]

No Ajaz the Greek Hero, he can just club any little spammers.....to death Gggrrrr

[Duende]

Using Firefox, I'm logged in on the Gallery main page but when I go into a category, I get the place to enter my username and password again, and signing in doesn't change it.


Well, Thryth's old solution works to correct this one as well. Using Firefox, if I'm not signed in on a gallery page, I can remove the www. from the address bar and it's fine. And IE works either way.

Does this help to fix it?

[Xenon_Wulf]

I can't seem to have access to anything but the Wyrd galleries and the contest galleries, not to mention that I can't seem to stay logged in in the galleries, is this normal?

[Ritual]

There was a software update done on the site a couple of days ago and the galleries have not been fully restored yet. The logging problem is due to the "www" part in the URLs, I think.

[Thryth]

There was a software update done on the site a couple of days ago and the galleries have not been fully restored yet. The logging problem is due to the "www" part in the URLs, I think.

Hi,

I would like to interject once again on this issue...

I think that ultimately, the problem is that the cookie is being accessed in some areas as the domain that you are viewing and in others as wyrd-games.net. If it were my site, I would always set/get the cookie as the wyrd-games.net domain since that should always work.

Just a suggestion. :D

(no applause, just free minis, thank you. :D :D :D)

[callumrice]

I can't seem to have access to anything but the Wyrd galleries and the contest galleries, not to mention that I can't seem to stay logged in in the galleries, is this normal?

Im the same I think, what has happened to the users gallery link? I need to go through "my photos" at the left hand side then to "users gallery" which isnt a link, its just a short cut thingy. Apologies for all those who are not on the same absolutely idiotic wavelength I am when it comes to computer terminology (its all witchcraft I tell thee!) it seems a little "sketchy" to view stuff is all.

Is there only 2 users galleries up there at the mo? I have re-added my photos in today and then there are FFs greenies (tee hee) but that appears to be it. Unless I cant view anyone elses......

Whilst we are on the subject, I would be delighted if anyone would comment on my recent photos added today as I need some criticism before my head gets too big for the door. Im amazing! (Go on, someone shoot me down!)

Also a thanks to FF and everyone else for all their hard work put into the site this year. I aint been here for too long but one thing I have learnt already is that there is plenty of work behind the scenes to keep this site going that us peasants dont get to see, it seems only just that FF and his loyal crew of disciples get a big up! so BIG UP!

[Nathan Caroland]

Hi folks,

I just got back into town tonight after being on a mini-vacation-sanity-recoup since Thursday. There are several things that need to be updated/fixed/cleaned up around here after the major software update that we did on Wednesday that didn't go quite as smoothly as I thought it should have and consequently have some work to do on the site and upkeep.

Not going to happen tonight. Likely not tomorrow even, but it is on my 'fix as soon as possible' which means this coming week.

Thanks for the time and understanding folks, sorry for the delay with updates.

[Nathan Caroland]

Alrighty, things are moving along now and we're getting things setup and fixed around here.

The gallery is now once again operational though you'll notice that I've got to do a bit of cleaning and rearranging of things but all of the categories, photos and comments have returned. Whew! Have to admit, I was a bit worried there for a moment but ended up hiring the folks that did the software to take care of it for me.

Now, from an admin point of view, this is going to allow me a whole lot of different options, many that I don't have a clue about yet, but I'm going to figure them out over the next week or so as I'm able as it is rather neat.

Also, this new software has a 'contest' option where voting and commenting can all be done in the same place so I'm going to give that a look to see what sort of options are available with that and see if it is something that might be usable for the next Wyrd Painting Contest which technically was suppose to start today but won't until I get a few more things fixed and figured out on my end.

If you uploaded something in the last day or two (just one of you), sorry, that bugger is gone, but go ahead and upload it again and it should go through without any problems or hitches. Again, my bad, but with the port, had to change some things.

You'll find that you have a separate profile and options available for those of you that want to use it, as well as a way of tracking comments, new uploads, etc, etc. Basically, for those of you that were having at me about not being able to know about new uploads and comments, this is your solution. Also can just hit a button to see all the new uploads and comments since your last visit too.

Anyhoo, have at it, tear it up, make suggestions (keep in mind I'm still working on it) and we'll see if we can make this as usable as possible.

[Nathan Caroland]

Oh, and if you've got pop up blocker, allow it for the site, this allows for larger pictures, ease of viewing the gallery, etc. Haven't figured out what I'm going to do exactly with sizes and all but we're getting there.

[Nathan Caroland]

And for those of you that have noticed a decrease in membership here, its because I've gone through and culled a bunch of accounts that were being watched for possible spam, etc. I've gotten aggressive with the accounts and have thus banned a little over 500 @location email accounts in order to try to combat the spammers coming in.

Not going to be a 100% successful I imagine, but it has already cut down on the number of spam accounts rather nicely and I expect it will do so even more here soon as I continue to implement spam protection.

[Nathan Caroland]

And resounding applause can be given for those that had the WWW issue in the galleries. Got that fixed up as well.

[Ritual]

:cheer2:

[cdukino]

whoohoo Nathan is on a role :)

[Hinton]

If you uploaded something in the last day or two (just one of you), sorry, that bugger is gone, but go ahead and upload it again and it should go through without any problems or hitches. Again, my bad, but with the port, had to change some things.


Yeah, that was me. Tried adding my contest Sophie to my gallery. So, is Duende paying you off to keep my pictures out of the gallery, hmmmm?? Maybe a little bribe so I won't catch up to her?? I am so on to you, evil woman! :laugh:

Seriously, it's looking really great. You sound like you have your hands more than full, all so that us Wyrd-o's have a place to hang out, look at each other's work and chat.

Many, many thanks, Nathan!

[Duende]

So, is Duende paying you off to keep my pictures out of the gallery, hmmmm?? Maybe a little bribe so I won't catch up to her?? I am so on to you, evil woman! :laugh:


Oh damn, I've been found out! :ahhhhh:

Bah, who needs bribes when you have so much catching up to do anyway? And watch those power tools, I see they're kinda tricky for you! ;)

Anyway, I do have a gripe about the gallery. I'm supposed to have 18 images in there but I can only see a few. The categories that come up in the gallery are "Recent", "Most Popular" and "Random", all of which only show 5 images, and some are duplicates, but I don't see a way to show ALL images in my gallery. I tried clicking the "more" button, but it just brings up 5 different random images from all galleries. Am I missing the way to see all my thumbnails at once?

:irked:

[Nathan Caroland]

Probably something I've got to mess with. Give me a bit to figure though this as frankly this software is MUCH more erm ... well ... robust would be a good way to put it, but also a severe pain in the arse.

I'll get it figured. In the mean time feel free to let me know what is wrong so I can get it figured and fixed.

[Duende]

Well, I found the indirect way to get to it was after going into my gallery, go to my Statistics and click in the underlined number in the "Number of photos" box which takes me to a page with everything. Kind of a roundabout, pain in the a$$ way to get there though.

Ahh, fun with new programs. Always such a joy! *heavy on the sarcarm here* ;)

[Nathan Caroland]

Alrighty, went in and did some heavy clean up on the galleries today, reorganized everything, and generally just made it look cleaner. Iron Painter galleries have been moved together and season two has now been moved to the archives in full. Wyrd Painting Contests have been cleaned up and organized as well and Rotten Harvest II has been moved to the archives.

I'll be adding an additional WPC and IP categories when the contests come up again, otherwise, no need to confuse everyone looking around.

Also added the ability for you to delete photos in your own gallery for those of you that want to fiddle with that.

Now, I'm going to be doing some testing at the end of this weekend/early next week on a 'contest' option that this new software has that allows you to rate an entry 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 and at the end of the contest it tallies up the numbers and and makes them public. Not 100% how this is going to work or if we are even going to use it for the next contest, but I do know that many of you would prefer to do your voting and critiquing all in one place instead of popping back and forth from the galleries to the forums. I'll be doing a cute animal contest or something stupid for three or four days in order to give it a try.

Now, there are some things that I need to fix in the galleries, learn the new options, rearrange, throw a switch I didn't know about, etc so this is where you folks come in. If you see something just a bit off, let me know. Have a request - make it. I'm not sure how much I can do or what I have missed (for instance, callumrice pointed out he couldn't delete a double photo today - whoops - two seconds later everyone could after I found the proper command) but let me know and I'll see if I can get everything worked out in advance before the next contests, etc.

Anything you like or hate about the gallery? Pop ups (anyone having problem with them being blocked?), upload, profile ability, linking, comment ability, ratings (that one people bitched about early on for with the old gallery).

Also, the software updates for the site and forum in general, anything there that is missing or needed other than the nav site on the left which I'll get figured out in the next week or so? Basically, trying to make the site more usable. Ya'll need more PM ability? Chat room (never got used but still ...)? Shout box?

Oh, and as a side note, I haven't had one spam account created in almost a week which is a HUGE load off my back as I was deleting 5-20 a day and it was only then the odd and occasional one that actually managed to make it past myself and the moderators to getting a spam post onto the site. Got pretty good at spotting them from e-mail addresses, birthdates, etc. Still - loving the fact that its practically down to nill for the moment.

[lauth81]

I would like a chat room in here. I´m not the most talkative person around, but I would like to virtually hang out here at wyrd and give my 2 cents woth now and then.

[lauth81]

Did you just throw the site into high gear, FF? First it was slow and now it´s very fast loading. Well done, anyway! Big thanks

[Duende]

The gallery is now once again operational though you'll notice that I've got to do a bit of cleaning and rearranging of things but all of the categories, photos and comments have returned. Whew! Have to admit, I was a bit worried there for a moment but ended up hiring the folks that did the software to take care of it for me.


My gallery is gone! I happened to notice the Wereshark gallery only had 7 entries and I knew there was supposed to be more there and my entry wasn't there, so I went to the Member's Galleries to see if my entry was in there... but my name wasn't listed as having a gallery! It got swept out with the other rubbish! Waaa!

:bawling:

[Nathan Caroland]

Isn't this yours?

http://wyrd-games.net/photopost/showgallery.php?ppuser=21&cat=500

As for the Wereshark gallery, yeah, noticed that last week and am working on it, its the only gallery that didn't come over in full for some reason.

[Duende]

Yes, but my name isn't in the listings with everyone else's. Go to the main gallery page and go under Member's galleries, mine's not there. Desertdragon1964 and DrEvilmonki are the only "D" names.

:sad2:

*EDIT* Oh sure, Hinton's is still there! I see who you're helping out. So what did he bribe you with? ;)

[Nathan Caroland]

Upload something, lets see if that takes care of it.

[Nathan Caroland]

While I managed to snag some free time at work here at the end of the night, I went ahead and recoded the postbit legacy for the information shown in your avatar box so that there is now a direct link to your personal gallery.

Let me know if stuff like this is usefull or a waste of time.

[Hinton]

Yes, but my name isn't in the listings with everyone else's. Go to the main gallery page and go under Member's galleries, mine's not there. Desertdragon1964 and DrEvilmonki are the only "D" names.

:sad2:

*EDIT* Oh sure, Hinton's is still there! I see who you're helping out. So what did he bribe you with? ;)

What? Me bribe someone? I have no idea what you're talking about. :rolleyes:

[Duende]

While I managed to snag some free time at work here at the end of the night, I went ahead and recoded the postbit legacy for the information shown in your avatar box so that there is now a direct link to your personal gallery.

Let me know if stuff like this is usefull or a waste of time.

Well, it's nice having a direct gallery link right there, but here are some problems I noticed just taking a quick look around:

FF - you have only 10 images in your gallery (through the avatar link) and I see your name also isn't in the general Member's Galleries listing. The only "F" name is Flit's.

Mine - The gallery link in my avatar box works well enough BUT I did just upload a pic (I'm at work so it wasn't a mini pic, but a .jpg nonetheless) and it's not showing up, nor did it make my name appear in the general list. Where did it go? Is it in moderation somewhere?

Hinton - His Member's Gallery listing says 8 images, but the link in his avatar box only shows one. Hmmm, who's bribing who now? ;)

Normally, I wouldn't think of this as that big of a deal but a functioning gallery is sort of crucial to the contests. And that if there was somebody just browsing over the site and went into the Member's Galleries, my name wouldn't be seen there.

:imsorry: As if computers weren't giving you enough headaches, I have to get all nit-picky.

[Ritual]

Clicking on "Member Gallery" for a certain user seems to show the pictures in the section "Home » Member Galleries » user name" and in Hinton's case this is one.

If you click on the link "Click here to see all of Hinton's photos" below the gallery you'll see eight photos. These are all photos posted by Hinton in all sections of the entire gallery (competition galleries etc.). The other seven of these seem to be located in a section described as "Home » » Hinton", which seem to be some kind of limbo as there's an untitled sub-gallery in which Hinton has a sub-gallery of his own... :hmmmm:

But I don't see how this has anything to do with why some member galleries don't show up if you list all member galleries. Inspecting your gallery, Michelle, shows that your photos (except for two Iron Painter related ones) indeed are located in the "Home » Member Galleries » Duende" section.

The plot thickens...

[EricJ]

*gets out the tar and feathers just in case they're needed*

[Duende]

Clicking on "Member Gallery" for a certain user seems to show the pictures in the section "Home » Member Galleries » user name" and in Hinton's case this is one.

If you click on the link "Click here to see all of Hinton's photos" below the gallery you'll see eight photos.


And when you do that, the section name also changes to "Home » Custom View" no username mentioned.

Actually this address http://wyrd-games.net/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=all&page=1&ppuser=X <-- change X to any member's number (like mine is 21, Ritual's is 51, Hinton's is 563, FF's is 1) shows anybody's entire gallery, it even has all 156 images under FF's name.

The link in the avartar box takes me here, http://www.wyrd-games.net/photopost/showgallery.php?ppuser=563&cat=500, in Hinton's case and here, http://www.wyrd-games.net/photopost/showgallery.php?ppuser=1&cat=500 in FF's which only has the 10 images. maybe something to do with the "cat=500" part?

@ Eric - Tar and feathers?? You always seem ready to roast Nathan at a moment's notice.. makes me wonder what REEAALY happened at GenCon? ;) :p:

[Ritual]

When you list all photos posted by a certain user (that's probably what "cat=all" in your first link means) you list all photos posted in ANY gallery by that user, i.e. competition entries etc., except for the Wyrd competitions as they are posted by Contest or in some cases Nathan. I guess that's why Nathan has 156 photos all in all, but only 10 in his gallery.

What bugs me is this untitled section where a lot of photos seem to end up in. Could it be a glitch in the submit function of the Member Galleries?

[Nathan Caroland]

I'll look into all of this over the next few days as I'm able with time being limited due to using a work computer.

I've got a bunch of pictures due to me messing up and uploading them under my account instead of the contest account last time, but I've got it setup so that only stuff that you upload in your member gallery shows up under your name, though I could flip a switch and make it so that it doubles it, showing it in your members gallery and a contest gallery, but that would create a bit of a problem for me when it comes to anonymity for the contest which I haven't figured out quite yet. Working on it for a future project.

In the mean time, gallery is set on moderation so that uploads for the contest remain hidden. In the mean time, if a few of you folks would upload some pictures to your gallery that would be helpful as I know they accept uploads, but being moderated I just want to make certain that is working as well as Duende said she uploaded one but I don't have anything on my end to moderate, other than a comment which I shot through earlier.

-
Nathan

[Duende]

Duende said she uploaded one but I don't have anything on my end to moderate, other than a comment which I shot through earlier.


It seems I might have missed the "Process" page which follows the "Submit" page. My bad! That's what I get for having several windows and applications open at once when I'm at work. I uploaded another one so that should be waiting for approval (my wereshark entry since it seems to have gone AWOL).

Hopefully you get this all sorted once you get your new computer up and running. :)

[Nathan Caroland]

Uploads and moderation work.