News from the Top

HG launches Supreme Commander Heaven. Creezy a.k.a. Hairy Scary Man is the seraph for the site – drop by and say hi :) Thanks to Pecunia, Oliver, and Purple for working so hard on the launch, and also special thanks to FD2 and King_Jared for getting the project rolling during its initial phase.

The site uses a new feature in the forums which replaces the old News posting system we’ve been using at HG for at least the past decade. Staff can post news in the news forum using the forum’s own text-formatting facilities (HTML and BBCode for now), and users can comment on the news by posting them as replies in the thread. The site also features a RSS news feed through support of the forums. Upcoming HG sites will be using that to power their news, while older sites will be retrofitted once a conversion script is written to map NewsPro accounts to forum accounts and import old news into the forums.

Along the way we hit a few bumps, namely the ‘whispter’ fiasco. Sorry about that … the module required a few changes behind the scenes to make it all work :)

-Zen

The Forums has been updated to 2.11. It fixes some minor bugs with the administration panels, and adds a new feature to the forums that will be unveiled along with the launch of SupCom Heaven in the upcoming days.

A quick update on where we are with Hotmail:

• They are still discarding emails sent from HG
• We are waiting for Microsoft to process our application into their Junk-Mail reporting program which should assist us in figuring out what their problem with our mail is
• The Hotmail.* restriction on new user registrations have been extended indefinitely until the problem is fixed.

Unfortunately there is no ETA on the resolution of the problem. In the meantime, please check out alternate email providers such as Google Mail and Yahoo Mail.

Microsoft have been discarding emails from HeavenGames for the past week or so, and we have been talking with their technical (non)support for the past few days now. In our most recent conversation they suggested that we apply for their Junk Mail Reporting Program as the latest step to troubleshoot the problem. Unfortunately, we got a reply from our application and this is what they say:

Thank you for your interest in the JMR program. We are currently experiencing an unusually large volume of requests. Your request will be processed in the order received. We don’t normally provide status updates in these circumstances as it takes time away from reducing the backlog. However, since it may take up to two weeks to get to your request we are sending you this notice. We will notify you if we need information or when we reach the next phase in your enrollment. Thank you for your patience.

The other alternative is to buy into their blackmail scheme and pony up $1,400 to apply for a certification with Sender Score Certified™.

So, regretfully, for up to two weeks forum account registrations with hotmail.com and hotmail.co.uk email addresses will not be accepted. However, we do accept account registrations from other free email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, so check them out.

We’ve added support for XBox Live Gamertags in our forum’s user profiles.

The forums were recently updated:

New Features

Goodbye, MSN Zone

We removed MSN Zone from the user profile, and have added three new fields: XFire, Skype, and Google Talk. We’ve changed a few related things as well:

• The ICQ Status icon is now replaced by the Skype status icon in the thread display
• All profile fields are linked to their respective services if they are available (e.g. your ESO2 name will link to your profile on agecommunity.com, your Yahoo name will link to your profile on yahoo, etc.)
• If you have entered a Xfire username in your profile, it’ll appear as a miniprofile. For example:
  <img src=http://miniprofile.xfire.com/bg/os/type/3/inzenity.png width=149 height=29>
• We’ve added a link that’ll allow you to link to your own profile. That link can be found in the “My Account” area.

Go to My Account to edit those fields.

Thanks to HairyScaryMan for the suggestion.

Open Proxy Check

We’ve expanded the open proxy check to run when users post a new reply or new topic. Previously the check was limited to user registrations, but with the recent issue of members from another forum posting spam on HG we’ve decided to temporarily expand the check. This check will run once per IP, afterwards the result is cached so the check isn’t running every time you post a subsequent reply/topic.

Other Changes

Registration Sentinels updated

The registration sentinels have been updated to cover the users that were involved in the latest spam incidents. The sentinel reports have been updated so they’re more informative allowing the FMT to see at a glance which reports need to be acted on.

Password Recovery System Changes

We have changed the way the password recovery system works, so that if the user’s email program bungles the link, the user will be able to enter the request code manually in a form. We’ve also shortened the request code to a manageable size so it’s easier to type.

The Edit Message/View Source button

One of the things we learned from the forum survey was that a lot of people thought any one could edit any one else’s message no the forums. That isn’t the case – if you tried to do that and you’re not a moderator, the forums will prevent you from making edits. We had left that “feature” along for a while because it’s a nice way for people to learn how to use some advanced BBCodes

Because it’s a source of major confusion, we’ve made a change to the way the form is displayed so it’s clear you can’t edit someone else’s message, but can still examine the source.

“Delete Message Content” feature in admin mode

We’ve added a “Delete Message Content” checkbox in the edit message screen for administrators. That’ll allow a moderator to quickly erase a post’s content (including the author’s signature). This feature is temporary, and will be removed when the “Message Delete” function is made available to all moderators (See “Things we are working on” below)

Bug Fixes

• The “Do not convert new lines to <br>” option doesn’t “stick” when previewing (reported by Pecunia)
• The navigation breadcrumb in the edit message screen was missing a link to the thread the message belongs to
• MIME-type headers were missing from emails generated by the forums
• Local forum moderators do not have access to the user profile’s admin view (reported by Qazitory)
• Login form dialog title displayed using the wrong color
• Forward messages are missing the content wrapper
• Deleted messages show a greyed out checkbox instead of the post icon outside admin mode
• Edits and deletes are not being reflected in RSS Feeds

Things are working on

Full text searches on the forums

The #1 request in our recent forum survey was full text searches. You asked, so we’re working on delivering it: We have implemented a full text search engine on the forums, and it is currently being beta tested by HG Staff. It is quite speedy and we’re quite happy with the results so far. We’ll make an announcement here when it’ll be available for public testing.

Message deletes are no longer destructive

We are changing the behavior of the “Delete Message” feature so it’s no longer destructive, that is – the content of the message will not be lost. Previously we’ve had to limit this feature to Senior Forum Administrators because there was no way we could see why a message was deleted, but with this change we’ll be able to allow our moderators to delete messages in the near future (there are still some changes that needs to be made).

Moderators will be able to see the original message by clicking the edit message/view source button. Deleted Messages will be displayed in a compact manner. You can see this in action on reply #4 in this thread.

Email changes

We’ve identified email changes as a source of support emails in the forums – users enter the wrong email when they update their profiles, and loses access to their account as a result. We are working on a new system that will lessen the chances of that happening.

Forum update includes minor update to the built-in anti-spam routines; a handful of users with less than 500 post counts in their accounts may notice a delay up to 40 seconds when they make their first new topic or reply after this update – this delay is normal.

A small update on the admin side – forum administrators can now mark categories as “Always Show”, which is basically “stickied” categories. When you view another category in a forum, forums that are part of a stickied category will also be viewable. New sites that support sequels will benefit most from this feature (for example, Medieval 2: Total War and Caesar IV)

We’ve updated account management and login routines in the forums, which requires everyone to re-log into their accounts.

Sorry for the total pain in the back end.

Update: The problem with users not being able to login has been resolved.

We’ve installed a Trac for the current version of our forums. If you come across a bug in the forums, please report it here so we can track it down and fix problems. The current system is in maintenance mode as we work on migrating the forums to use a database backend. Also a word of caution about that previous sentence: Don’t get too hyped up about the new version, or expect too much from it – there’s a lot of things we want to do but we need to do it in measured steps.

A Trac for the downloads is being setup and will be announced soon.