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OrnLARP.com Has Gained a Level

Thad's picture
Thad
On Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 12:21am, Thad said:

Well, version number, at any rate. That counts as a level for software, right?

Here's the short and sweet version (the long version is below for those of you who want to hear the technical details). Since I launched the site, we've been running on Drupal version 5. Now, we're on version 6. This may cause some glitches around the site as I update things to accommodate the change. Please be on the look out for anything that seems off and let me know as soon as you notice a problem.

Okay, now for the long version. I originally made the call to launch OrnLARP.com on Drupal 5 because there were some modules I wanted to use that weren't supported in Drupal 6. Some of these have fallen by the wayside as less important than I originally anticipated, while others have been replaced by custom modules (the event module, for example).

More importantly, though, Drupal 5 was an older version of the CMS. It didn't use some more modern features that can make the site function better, and it would probably no longer be supported in the next year or two. That made it a growing security concern. It also meant that I was building a body of custom modules that would all need to be updated when the upgrade could no longer be avoided.

So I decided to suffer through the pain of the upgrade process sooner rather than later. It's taken me several weeks to reprogram the 13 modules that constitute the online game system, but the task would have been much worse if I had waited another year. The good news is that now I can get back to work on important new functionality, like the revamped item system and the referral module, without worrying that I'm needlessly making more work for myself later.

We did lose a few things in the upgrade, unfortunately. For example, the advanced polling module that I was using isn't supported in version 6. There's a less robust polling module built into the core that I'll be trying out, but that won't restore old poll data. I also can't seem to get the five star picture rating system to function. I'm hoping the original developer will eventually patch it, but only time will tell.

At any rate, if you notice anything that isn't working as it should, please leave a comment or send me a private message. I went to great pains to make sure that everything seemed right on the development site before the upgrade, but the modifications were extensive, so I'm sure I missed something.

Note: I just noticed that the site-wide chat is down and the user profile pages are throwing a white screen of death. Feel free to add to the list.

‹ Cron Maintenance Referral Codes are Live ›
Thad | Tue, 02/09/2010 - 12:21am
Thad's picture
Thad
On Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 1:21pm, Thad said:

To keep everyone apprised of the status of the update, here is a list of recent changes I've made. As above, please let me know if you notice anything amiss and I'll add it to the list.

New Features

  • All game-related notices (e.g., boon awards, skill point awards, RSVP requests, etc.) now route through the internal messaging system. This way, messages don't get lost in email, and you can deactivate the message notification emails if you get annoyed by them.
  • Some of the forms on the site now use reCAPTCHA to prevent automated spamming. So far, this is working much better than the old CAPTCHA system; I used to have to delete spam accounts almost daily, but I haven't seen a single one get through since the change.

Bug Fixes

  • There were some templating issues preventing the user accounts pages from displaying, but they're fixed now.
  • The video module we were using previously was no longer supported, so I installed a different one and ported over all the old videos. Actually, I think it's much nicer than it was before.
  • The chat module was not functional on launch. I've updated it and everything appears to be working fine again.

Pending Issues

  • There was some funkiness with the front page yesterday due to a problem with the new referral module. I've fixed it so it doesn't interfere with normal navigation, but the module still needs work.
  • The action and skill previews that normally appear when you walk through the action and skill forms for a character were erroring out. I've deactivated them for the time being so you guys can add actions and skills normally.
  • The user and character tags on photo galleries was creating clutter. More importantly, individually tagging each and every photo was a huge task that we'd fallen behind on. Thus, I decided to do away with the existing tags. I'm considering a community tagging system that would allow everyone to tag photos and videos freely (gotta love crowdsourcing). I figure time will tell if there's enough demand for this feature to return.

"Everyone's a critic!" - Dying words of Rizzik the Corpsecrafter