Major Update Completed
Posted on: Sun, 2006-08-06 08:58
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Major Update Completed
Tonight I have completed the first major update of the codebase of opentravelinfo.com.
Most of the changes are under the hood and will not affect the user. There are however a few minor changes.
Most noticably the look and feel has changed. This was mainly necessary due to some previous problems with Internet Explorer Browsers. Since this website is still fully CSS driven, and IE has never been fully CSS compliant, the website will still look better with Firefox and Co. Nevertheless our goal is to have IE fully supported.
The Forum has also seen some major changes. Now your signature will not show while you are editing. It will be attached automatically as with most other forum scripts. The look and feel of the Forum has also been changed to something a little more classy (or so I think) and functional.
You may be wondering, why you don't see the WYSIWYG editor per default (What you see is what you get, looks like word). In order to enable the editor per default, you should go to "my account" in the left sidebar. Click on Edit and on "TinyMCE rich text settings". There you can set your default state to true. This will basically give you the editor on all text fields (very useful for formatting). I took the liberty to enable it for some users, however not all.
What else?
The new codebase enables us to bring you some exciting new features in the near future. Depending on how much time I will have for implementation (yes I am still the sole programmer / designer) these new features will begin to appear in the next weeks and months.
During the update there were some short glitches that could not be avoided, since the database had to be updated for the new code. However it was always only a matter of less than a minute until the site became usable again. Most people may not have noticed much after hitting a refresh on their browsers.
In the meantime we wish you all the fun.
TTFN
P.S.: I am going to leave this topic open for reply in case you have some feedback or found something that is broken.
Thanks
wohoo i love the new look and feel its looks a lot more modern(no offence) i have no problems with overlapping text. good job on the update.
After all there were some glitches. I aplogize to everyone who experienced a brief downtime today.
I have updated the database on my local computer first and then uploaded it to the server. Unfortunately this resulted in some paths being broken (mainly links to images). In an attempt to fix it, my quick perl hack damaged the database. It took me a few minutes to repair it and upload it again.
Now everything should be fully functional.
As for the display problems you expierenced: I have never been able to reproduce them myself. I believe they were related to running IE with a low resolution monitor.
EDIT: I can still see some ill guided requests in the logfile. I believe this is due to users who have accessed the website during the last 12 hours and have major portions of the site in their browser cache. All links appear to be working. If you have problems, please refresh your browser. If the problem persists, please reply to this thread or send a feedback through the feedback form.
but the thing is i was using firefox not ie, and i was experiencing the same thing until you change the design. i guess it was because of my small monitor though.
Ah yes. I remember now.
Do you still see any problems? Anything sticking out or overlapping?
Are the buttons (e.g. search button, post comment button) grey or stylish 3-D blue?
Everything is perfect now and the buttons are the stylish 3-D blue
, nice selection good upgrade overall i havent had any problems so far. ok i ahve never notic ethis before but what are the points things for, do i get a free pic if i get lots of points
Pretty much yes. There are points given for all actions from Forum postings, to voting on a node or picture to posting a travel article.
Obviously there are more points given for posting an article than there are for voting. Before the update, the points were also given but it didn't show.
You can see how many you accumulated by looking at the my account (left sidebar) link.
The update somehow messed up my points, but all others were o.k.
The idea is to reward the most active users. If I can find some sponsors (e.g. a company can display their banner in exchange for something non monetary) I will have more prizes in the future.
Also the number of posts shown includes travel guide articles and images posted. This is why I do have much more, even though I am not posting much in the forums, but I upload travel articles that I get emailed.