Time for another update on the update that's in the works!
Anyone who's been on the site for a while knows I'm loathe to give time estimates -- because I'm almost always wrong, even shockingly so. (FWIW, in my professiona life [I do software for a living], I'm pretty good at time estimates, because I know how much time I have to work with. But with Pocket-Monkey, since it's a "spare time" activity, I've found that I'm wildly optimistic with my time frames; I don't have as much spare time as I think I do.) Maybe later this year Pocket-Monkey will be able to fund some of my time and things will be a bit more regular -- that'd be nice.
So those -- again -- who've been here a while will be shocked to hear me say: The update will go live here on the main site by the end of May at the latest. I'm taking this opportunity to do some hardware upgrades as well, and I've just placed the order for one of the new servers. (I wouldn't do that if I weren't pretty sure; it's expensive to have them sitting around.)
I feel I can say this because earlier this week we got to the point where all of the "absolutely must fix before going live" bugs on the list were fixed. (Sadly, since then, we may have added one; I'm still figuring that out.) That left a lot of Help pages to write, a couple of bugs that I'd really rather fix before taking this live if I can, new servers to configure, and testing the database upgrade process to be absolutely sure everything gets updated correctly. Even though I won't be able to work on it every weekend, I figure I can safely predict we'll have a "go" by the end of May.
Folks are also asking what's in the update. Here's a partial list:
Tournaments
Completely updated web pages and improved site navigation
Color themes for the web pages: If you don't like the brown/orange default theme, just choose one of the others. We have about 25 color themes so far thanks to my lovely and talented wife Wendy, and we'll keep adding new ones over time.
Official player pictures
A proper way to cancel games; no more resigning early and hoping you're in time. Resigning will now always be a real resignation (a loss), but in the first few moves there's a "cancel" link under the game which does what resigning early used to do (cancels the game without counting it).
MonkeyTags for putting text effects in your player profile, and even images (so you can also have other pictures than just your player picture). You may be familiar with MonkeyTags from this forum (see this thread for details on them).
MonkeyTags in private messages
MonkeyTags in open invitations in the waiting room notes too!
Enhanced open invitations: Now you can specify what the time limit on the games from the open invite will be, and you can say how many games total you want that invitation to give you before it goes away.
A way to turn off player pictures and other player-supplied images if you don't want to see them. When you have them turned off, a link is provided so you can check out specific ones if you like.
Much more online help
Rated and Unrated games -- so you can play unrated games with someone when you're teaching them, and the initial inevitable losses don't show up on their stats
Better game layout for WebTV users (less scrolling, more convenience)
Editable buddy lists
A browser setting in your profile to tell us what kind of web browser you use: Java-enabled web browser, WebTV, non-Java web browser, etc. Non-java users don't have to use a special link anymore!
Improved session handling (this is largely invisible to players, but it means -- for instance -- that you can bookmark parts of the site other than the main page, and hopefully it will fix some of the WebTV issues).
Searchable player directory (currently only searching by name, but we'll be adding other things as well once the update goes live).
Various bugfixes
Various things behind the scenes to help us run the site better, and to make it faster
...and probably some things I forgot. ;-)
The other thing the update does is make it a lot easier for us to add new features than it is right now (for reasons I won't go into, but let's just say there was a failed hard drive, a dodgy backup, and a miscommunication involved), which means we can add and update things more frequently. We're hoping to avoid any "big" updates like this one for at least another year; instead, we want to do mini-updates every couple of weeks. (For example, a couple of weeks after taking this update live, I expect we'll be able to offer people different choices for the game graphics colors [sort of carrying on from the color themes for the web pages]. That'll just slip in, it won't be a bit song-and-dance. And there will be new games a'coming as well...)
Woo hoo! It sounds like this new site is going to be great! And the end of May isn't that long to wait, considering that the web site isn't that bad as it is anyway.
I am sure i speak for alot of us when i say we apreciate the time and work you and your put into this site, so all of us can have so much enjoyment and fun sharing our common hobby,.. thank you so much
Hey TJ I think you're doin an awesome job with the site and I really enjoy playing here. I'm sure it's not an easy task doin all the upgrades but us faithful players will patiently wait for you to get the site up live. :-)
Re: Coming Soon: The Update
Message #2067 Replies: 0
posted by Lindap957 (Linda G. Parker) on 05/01 at 05:34
Wooo Hooo way to go. Good luck with it all and thanks for the updates that you provide. Looking forward to seeing all the changes and all.
posted by getarget (Alan M Lukee) on 05/03 at 00:56
Great game site. Like the people and your doing a great job on both sites. Alan
Re: Coming Soon: The Update
Message #2070 Replies: 1
posted by gardenbarbie (Barbie Garden) on 05/03 at 04:46
Thanks for all the information.. You do such a fantastic job (even tho you have a permanent job of your own)Good Luck with the upgrades. I know you will do wonders with this site (not that it really needs it.) It's the best site as it is.. :)
Wow! Sounds great! Your game site is already great and now it'll be even better :) Thanks also for being a nice management team! I appreciate that more than you know :)
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