Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Progress pages

I was getting impatient with how long some pages were still loading, even after turning cache on. Then I ran across this post on Stack Overflow that got me thinking: I should add a "loading progress" page for long processes.

So I did.

And I stole a lot of their messages.

So sue me.

But not really.

Friday, September 19, 2008

The world runs on Cache

I've been playing around with my framework's caching mechanism lately. Although not perfect, I have implemented a caching scheme for (rol) on the pages that seemed to need it the most. Notably, the overall character page and the "Add New ..." sections for advantages, skills, etc. I took an overly conservative outlook on this, so there may be times when you are expecting the page to load quickly and it doesn't. However, at the very least it should reflect any changes that are made (either by you or someone else in the system, such as someone adding a new spell).

If the site starts getting pounded, I may revisit this and attempt to implement something that is slightly smarter.

For right now, I've only turned this on at the demo site, but it will soon be propagated to the main site if I don't hear any negative feedback in the next few days.

Expect to enjoy some quicker page loads in the near future!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Mobile Safari and demo errors

Just a few quick updates.
  1. I noticed that I wasn't able to access the site from my iPhone, but I could access the site on the old server. I dug around a bit and found out that the underlying framework was now identifying the browser as a "mobile" browser instead of a full featured browser. Having an iPhone version of the site is on my wish list, but at the very least I want to be able to view the full site. This is now fixed
  2. My old server is now back in action, but will no longer be hosting the site. It's now fully on an external, redundant, professional hosting service. However, I am now confident that all files are up-to-date, so I can once again start moving forward with actually developing features into the site instead of getting it back into your hands.
  3. While testing the latest files on the demo site, I found out that there were some errors on the "addNew" advantage and disadvantage pages. After digging around, I found out that I had some additional security timeout settings on the demo site that I neither had on the old server nor do I have on the main site. I had to disable these timeouts for the demo site, so hopefully you won't see any more "Internal Server Error 500" messages on the demo.
  4. I have also had an inquiry about helping development of the site. I welcome any developers to help out. This is pretty much a community project after all. If you are interested, please email me at dev "at" rol-play "dot" com and we will see what we can do to get you developing.
That's about it. With any luck, I'll be able to start working on new features shortly. As usual, if there's anything you are waiting on (or more importantly, something that is just bugging the hell out of you), drop me a line and let me know.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Delete Latest Character Point Entry

By user request, I have modified the Character Point page (where you can enter new character points) to be able to delete an entry, but only the most recent one. If you want the ability to delete ANY entry, let me know, but I thought it would be a safety feature to be only able to delete the most recent one.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Now, New and Improved!

Ok, my old web server still hasn't come back from the dead, but I was able to get into some of the drives and pull the latest database out.  For those wondering, I've spent the last three weeks fighting with a dead motherboard, dealing with a crappy vendor to get me a replacement, dealing with the bad motherboard that they finally did send me, threw up my arms in frustration, and continued to purchase an entirely new server (minus hard drives).  The new server isn't up yet, and probably won't be until next weekend, but I hijacked a friend's machine for a day, dug around, and copied what I desperately needed.  There might be a few outdated files yet, but they will hopefully be corrected once the old/new server is back up and I pull all my CVS files off it.

For now though, all your data should be restored, the domain has been redirected to the new location (http://www.rol-play.com), and I've even taken this time to add a few new features to the general site.

First and foremost, you'll notice on the login screen that you can now log in with OpenID and clickpass (which is basically just OpenID, just simplified).  If you don't know what OpenID is, basically it lets you log into some websites using your username/password from other sites.  For example, you can use your GMail user/password to log into (rol).  No usernames/passwords from those sites are kept in (rol); basically Google just verifies that you are who you say you are.  After you use OpenID for the first time on (rol), you'll still need to log in with your normal (rol) username/password, and we will remember that the OpenID is yours and you won't have to use it again.  To edit your OpenIDs, you can go to the Options->Portal on the left pane after you log in.

Once inside, you'll also notice a few new items in the tree in the side menu.  I went ahead and enabled some of the default Horde apps, such as the calendar, addressbook, comics, wiki, etc.  Still no mail for now though.  Since I had some downtime, I also wrote an import for the addressbook to import your Yahoo! contacts, if you so choose (I'm thinking about giving this to the horde.org project while I'm at it).  

When you try to add friends now within the main GURPS application, I added a nifty ajax lookup from your addressbook as well.  I figured that we have the addressbook, we might as well use it.

Finally, I added links in the side menu to the News Blog (so I'll probably be taking that off the Campaigns page soon), and I added a new forum link.  The forum is phpbb, and I wasn't able to easily figure out a simple way to use your (rol) authentication for the forum, so you'll need to create a new user on the forum page to post anything.  I've opened almost all the restrictions on the forum though, so once you have an account there you should be able to do pretty much anything.

Well, I think this post is long enough (long enough for the DNS redirect to spread?), so I'll let you get at it!  As always, let me know if you find any issues!

Friday, August 8, 2008

New Site Coming Up

Hey everyone. I apologize for the extended downtime. But, due to the generousness of a user (thanks Sean!), I have set up an external hosting account with a new URL. I still need to get the latest copy of the database off my old server, so DO NOT ADD ANY NEW DATA (or at the very least, don't expect that data to be there for long). Also, the database that is there is from a development machine, so I'm not sure how up to date it is, but at least it is there.

If you need to get to your character, you can go to the new site. The new URL is http://www.rol-play.com. Because all changes in user and character data will be replaced with the data from the old server (I should be getting that motherboard any day now. Really.), I have temporarily disabled the creation of new users, so if you don't have an account already, keep an eye on this blog and I'll post an update when the database is restored.

When the time comes, I'll redirect the old URL to the new one, but you might want to update your bookmarks anyway.

Thanks for your patience!

Monday, July 28, 2008

Server Down

Hey everyone. My web server decided to have issues late last week, so the web site has been offline until the new motherboard comes in. Sorry for any problems this creates. I'll post an update once everything is back up.