Content Syndicated by GuildPortal.com (c)2001-2012 Axiom Shift, LLC

Mizus RaidTracker and More

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:45:27 GMT

GuildPortal now supports the Mizus RaidTracker third party Add-On for WoW guilds when used with the EQdkp Plus XML export option for loot drops. Because of its superior functionality and popularity, it replaces the GPHelper add-on for this functionality. For more information, open an event follow-up and select the Loot Drops option.

Aside from numerous other minor bug fixes, the following also went live:

Event sign-ups are now numbered.
"New Activity" link from forums main view shows you new topics since the last time you logged in.
Tooltips of most recent posts have been improved, especially for quoted items.
"Deleted" shown in sent items next to read status when recipient deleted the item.
Selected mail folder now bold.
Fixed info section editing problem.
Multi-event days now say which event is blocked from sign-ups, or available to be signed up to.
Fix for bug when editing an alliance event.

Raid/Op Groups and More

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:45:16 GMT

Two new widgets go live today! The first, Raid/Op Groups, lets you group individual characters that are associated with your guild into groups for raiding, with the ability to specify role. For example, you could have "Monday Night Group 1" as a raid/op group and it could have five characters, each with their roles ("DPS", "Tank", "Heals", etc) specified.

The second is the EQ2 Server Status widget, which displays the status of the server your EQ2 guild plays on.

Welcome Letters and Idle Monitor

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:26:03 GMT

Welcome Letter goes live with today's update! When you have one set up, it is sent out to people when they have their access level to the site upgraded from public to member (or higher). To start using this, open your Control Panel and click Welcome Letter.
The Idle Monitor will now let Super Admins know who received warnings for inactivity, and who was automatically disbanded.
The Mass Move functionality in the forums editor is now working correctly.
$block[variable] tags now work correctly in mods.

Mass Move and More

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:08:45 GMT

Most of the updates done since the last change log entry have to do with bug fixes and small tweaks in response to support tickets. Aside from those, the following has gone live:

Mass Move is available in the Forum editor. This allows you to move a lot of topics at once from one forum to another.
Many raid progression entries have been added for different games to get them up-to-date with their latest expansions.
The correct amount of available file space is now shown in the file manager.
The login bar border color can now be customized in the control panel.
The WoW GPHelper add-on has been updated to a new version, to make it compatible with WoW's latest update. Those who use it will need to download and install the latest version.
Date/time stamps are now shown on event comments.

Multi-Choice Voting, SWTOR Server Status and More

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:09:24 GMT

Multiple choice voting is now available! When creating a new poll, just click the checkbox at the bottom to indicate that it is multiple choice.
Star Wars: The Old Republic Server Status widget is now available to ST:TOR guilds. It displays your server name, up/down status, and current population.
The most recent posts count to display has been split out from the regular forum and most recent posts stand-alone widgets, so they can each have their own values.
When browsing Site Mods, you now have the option to display only those that are installed on your site.
30 signature backgrounds were added to the signature generator background gallery specifically for Star Wars: The Old Republic.
The crafting marketplace now requires explicit selection of the tradeskill required to make the requested item.
The crafting marketplace now displays orders from all approved alliance guilds!
The needs list widget now has a new field for "days/times available."
The event signup texting reminder is now firing.
Section wrapper opacity now allows for more fine-grained selection.
There is a new "mailbox" in your mail widgets, called "GuildPortal Updates." It displays these entries, and is there in an effort to better communicate changes to the service to our members.
Spaghetti is good with or without meatballs, but better with.

Many, Many Updates

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:10:39 GMT

Widgets sometimes only adding to the home page (regardless of what page you select) has been fixed.
Newest Members widget displaying incorrect data has been fixed.
You can now specify a custom favicon (the icon that appears in the browser when people are visiting your site) to be used instead of the default GuildPortal ones. The place to specify the icon to use is in Control Panel > Style Tools > General > Layout.
Story chapters will now display in order of chapter number instead of the order in which they were entered.
New widget: Torhead Search goes live! For those using the Mod, you no longer need to (but you still can).
In the forum display options, you may now specify that the most recent posts to show should be 0. If you do, the most recent posts will not be displayed at all. Some may find this useful, especially if used in combination with the Most Recent Topics widget.
Bank items with "Display to Members" un-checked no longer show in the bank widget.
Guilds with subscriptions expiring soon will now receive a more informative e-mail reminder.
Guild Events/Raids can now be set to "Block Signups" when entering them. Doing so prevents members from signing up to the event.
Application Questions may now be edited, although once the type is saved (multiple choice vs. text entry), that cannot be changed.
The maximum number of Recent Posts to Show in the forums has been raised from 20 to 50.
The signature generator should now always update your profile with the new image.
A new page in the Control Panel, called Raid Points Tools (under Member Management), provides quick and easy ways to mass adjust everyone's raid points/DKP by a set amount (either deducting or adding), reset everyone's DKP to 0, and individually edit member DKP without having to enter an adjustment.
ATT/AP were dropped from the Raid Points Standings widget. The data was essentially meaningless, and became only moreso over time.

Torhead Integration and More Texting

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:43:44 GMT

Today's update includes automatic integration with ZAM's Torhead in the WYSIWYG editor for Star Wars: The Old Republic guilds. To use it, simply click the Jawa icon when editing and follow the instructions.

Also going live are two new text messaging notification options: when a reply is added to a topic you've subscribed to, and also reminders about upcoming events you've signed up for. To receive these notifications, click Profile on any guild page, and then click Text Messaging. There, you'll see these two new options, in addition to all of the other things you may choose to receive text messages on your phone for.

Customizable Recruiting

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:30:36 GMT

A new widget type called "Recruiting (Customizable)" goes live with today's update! It offers a lot of flexibility as far as what you want displayed (and how) to potential recruits. To check it out, add one to a page and click the Edit link to get started. For many games, there are defaults that you can import and then modify as you see fit.

We've received many requests from members who want the ability to remove images they've previously uploaded to sites they've been members of. Sometimes after leaving a guild, they'll want to remove personal real-life pics, for example. Members can now do so by clicking their Profile link on any guild page, or by clicking their name from any GuildPortal public-side page (top right) and then clicking "Uploaded Images."

Also, some further optimization is going live as a result of the database tuning we are performing. This is an ongoing process!

Rally Widget, Image Editor and Upgrades

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:19:23 GMT

A new widget called "Rally the Guild" goes live today! This beta widget operates much like a shout box, except instead of just adding a line of text to your site, it will send the text to members via either their cell phone or e-mail. For cell phone delivery, members will need to configure texting in their Profile (the widget itself provides a direct link to configure it, as well). Only those with officer level or higher access to your site may send out rallies, and only those marked as associate or higher receive them.

Also, images uploaded since the new file storage system was brought online (images that show as being located on a path that begins with /GuildImages) now show an Edit link next to them in the File Manager. Clicking it brings up a new web-based image editor that gives you the ability to crop, add text to, and otherwise manipulate images. The functionality of this editor already has planned enhancements, coming soon. It is also available from the Gallery widgets upon upload of new images, if the uploader has Images Admin rights on the site.

Over the past couple days, we ran across a hardware problem with one of the drives on our database server, causing some downtime. We apologize for this. The good news is, however, that we have replaced the drive with a mirrored array that has twice the space. Also, while they had the system open at the data center, we had them double the RAM as well, which should have a positive impact on performance.

To make things run even better, we have also brought in a company that specializes in the optimization of databases specific to the platform that GuildPortal runs on. They have completed their initial monitoring phase, and we will be working closely with them to implement their recommendations.

Other stuff addressed in this push:

Aion armory tooltips are fixed.
LoTRO Integration now allows manual entry of your guild name, in case your actual guild name was already taken for your server and you had to use a different one when creating your site.
Approving/denying item requests in the bank now visually updates the visibility of the approve/deny links, giving a better indicator that the command was performed.
A bug causing only one item to show when viewing item requests has been squished.
SuperAdmins can now delete crafting orders from the main display of the Crafting Marketplace.
Spotter's Order was nerfed in Rift. (Okay, so we had nothing to do with that -- we're just very, very angry about it)

Recent Updates

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:45:22 GMT

On Monday, the following updates will be deployed to live:

XML/XSL Transforms where either the XML or XSL files are being loaded from guild storage will work properly.
Text filters will function correctly.
Voice server purchasing will be fixed for a few guilds that were having trouble with it.
The main GP page login control will now correctly say that it's an invalid login if no user name and password are provided, instead of providing no feedback at all (just sitting there, staring back at you).
Announcements will now be shown directly on the calendar widgets, instead of being their own listing before the calendar.

In addition, many updates have been made over the past couple weeks that have already been pushed to live:

Performance enhancements have been made to the forums and news widgets.
Cache duration of guild data has been reduced, causing less of a delay between saving some changes in the control panel and being able to see them appear on your site.
Text Messaging functionality has been made available for open beta. Check your Profile settings to see what it's all about!
Registration and application completion have been merged into a single page, so that people applying to your site won't think they're done after completing the registration part, and exiting prematurely.
New CSS classes have been added to the forums, mostly to facilitate alternating item displays in the post listing.
Maximum individual file upload size has been increased from 5 MB to 7 MB.
The ability to enter a custom color code, instead of being limited to the drop-down choices provided by the picker, has been enabled for section wrappers.
Section wrappers! A new set of options are available in the Control Panel, underneath Style Tools > General Style Settings > Section Wrappers. These enable containers that wrap around elements on your site, such as the navigation bar (if you use it), the content table (where all the widgets are contained), and the footer. While they're attractive in old browsers, they look especially good in CSS3-compliant browsers (most of the latest browsers are CSS3-compliant).
By default, signatures will not show in forum posts when the post is by a guest user (non-associate or higher access level). In order to override this behavior, click Edit under your forums widget, then Options, and then "Show non-associate (guest) signatures and thumbnails."

Mods System Updates

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:00:04 GMT

A few (hah!) updates have been made to the new mods system:

Installed mods that have a newer version will now also allow uninstalling of the mod (previously it would only allow updating to the latest version).
Updating to the latest version now indicates that it has done so (previously, it looked like you were never up-to-date).
Certain widget-type mods were not rendering.
The "Top Mods" widget in the Admin Help Community was sorting by a formula foreign to modern-day mathematics, which we believe was used in earlier centuries to summon demons and sparkling ponies (closely related, by the way). It is now sorting by popularity, using regular numbers.
Media file uploads now work. Authors, pretty please with sugar on top use this for storage of files needed by the add-on, instead of linking to external sources.
The updating of a mod to the latest version now requires confirmation from the admin if the update includes customizable code (since it will wipe out any already-customized code the admin may have in place).
The listing of comments in the mod authors' view now includes which mod the comment is for.
The authors' view now includes the ability to search their own mods.
Upon saving a new mod revision, the author is asked whether they want to publish it. If they do, it will be marked as ready for review by GP staff. If they don't, it will be ready to test by the author but will not be reviewed until they edit it again, save it, and then indicate they want to publish.

Mods System goes Live!

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 18:04:47 GMT

The new Site Mods system goes live with today's update! From the Control Panel, select Site Mods. From there, you can install them on your site, or even author new mods for others to use. A mod is any combination of HTML, Javascript, and CSS code that come together to enhance the functionality of a site it's installed on. They can be full-blown widgets, or code that makes snow fall down the screen during the holidays. They can even have configurable code so that authors can provide variables that an admin installing a mod on their site can change in order to customize how it behaves.

Widget authors can create widgets, and when they make changes, they create new revisions. Each mod (and further revision of the mod) will be reviewed by GuildPortal staff before being made available for installation (although the author of the mod may always install the latest revision, even if it's not approved, in order to test). Mods can also be given star ratings and comments by the community! After many years of awesome admins providing guides and help when it comes to extending the functionality of GuildPortal, we're offering this in hopes of making that development (and deployment) process much easier -- we're looking at you, Mottie!

Of course, for the scripters out there, the jQuery library is already available, and you can easily use it from your javascript code in your mod! Also, we look forward to providing service end-points that return JSON or XML guild data that can be easily consumed by a mod using simple jQuery get requests, and sample code to go along with it. Think of it as a light-weight API for writing your own widgets or extending GuildPortal to your specific needs, and then getting massive kudos for doing so.

Now, aside from that excitement (can you tell we're excited? huh??), we also pushed the following changes with the update:

Sign-ups may now be deleted by event admins directly from the sign-ups listing when viewing an event's details.
Aion integrated rosters are now working again.
Buncha other stuff for support tickets.

Support Updates

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:20:22 GMT

* Updating attendance/awarding DKP will now immediately update the totals on the Raid Point Standings widget, instead of showing cached data.
* The Silverlight gallery has been replaced with an entirely javascript gallery that has similar functionality, but does not require a plug-in.
* Animated GIF thumbnail images uploaded in your Profile settings will no longer be converted to PNGs (ripping out the animation in the process).
* Files with multiple periods in the name will now upload without error.
* Setting the URL for your banner in the General Style Settings will now save correctly.
* Saving your profile settings after canceling out of uploading a new thumbnail will no longer error out.
* The "Select from guild files" globe icon on image selectors in the control panel now works correctly with Firefox 5.

New File Storage, CDNs, and More

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:12:36 GMT

We've begun using new file storage with this update. All of your existing files are still available at their old location, but newly uploaded files will have URLs that look like /GuildFiles/[your guild ID]/[file name] instead of http://www.axiomfiles.com/[your guild id]/filename. This removes the need for your browser to determine a different host's IP (axiomfiles.com) when loading each image. While you can leave your old files where they are, you could benefit more from this change by copying them back down to your hard drive and re-uploading them. Once you have all references pointing to the old image updated, delete it to free up more of your available file space (also keeps things tidy). To help differentiate between which files you have on the old system and which you have on the new one, I've added a URL column to the Control Panel > File Manager file listing.

For yet more performance gains, we are now using CDNs (content delivery networks) from both Google and Yahoo to serve up the more common Javascript libraries we use. What makes this so great is that those services will automatically route your request for the file(s) to your nearest data center, making it very, very fast. It also takes the burden off GuildPortal, no longer needing to serve up these very common Javascript libraries, instead giving it more resources to dedicate to just your content.

Many support tickets were addressed (and small features tweaked) in this update, as well:

The signature generator now saves your preferences. You will no longer need to start from the beginning when using the tool.
The signature generator now provides links that you can use in your signatures on other forums/web sites!
Associates and higher are now able to upload images directly when using the WYSIWYG editor to post, and then insert that image into the post immediately after.
Event/Raid templates now correctly import any custom category they were saved with.
Clicking on an entry in the "Recent Blogs" widget will now only open the blog in a new window, instead of opening it in both your current window and a new window.
When editing your profile, you will no longer default to the "Casablanca" time zone. Unless that's your time zone, of course.
The World of Warcraft server status widget is now back and functioning correctly, now calling an API provided by Blizzard instead of parsing the old server status page.
In the Funds widget, guild transactions may now be entered using more than one type of currency at a time.
A guild in an alliance that has had a forum shared with them by another guild is now able to set one of their forums as the parent forum of the shared forum.

Many Updates

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:54:07 GMT

New: "Newest Members" widget now available. By default this is included below the forums on new guild sites.
New: "LOTRO Server Status" widget now available for Lord of the Rings Online guilds.
New: Fade animation for background color of grids with alternating colors for odd and even rows. Can be disabled in Control Panel > Style Tools > Content Boxes > Grids.
New: It is now possible to add a comment when adding a transaction using the guild funds widget (previously, you had to edit the transaction after creating it).
New: Setting the margins at the top and bottom of your banner image is now possible in Control Panel > Style Tools > General > Banner.
Updated: "Latest addition" column in the guild bank widget made wider.
Updated: Signups table in event view of the calendar now shown with slightly smaller text.
Updated: "Edit/Delete" link added to the beginning of each transaction in the guild funds widget.
Fixed: When importing drop from a list of previous drops for an event, the description was not being brought over.
Fixed: WoW Integrated Rosters were unable to parse Battle.net for EU guilds.
Fixed: Add New Forum window in the forum editor was appearing above the top of the editor in FireFox.
Fixed: When posting, the option to subscribe to replies was being ignored.

WoW Perks, Poll Charts, and More

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 06 May 2011 14:32:26 GMT

A lot is included in this week's update!

New: Guilds with WoW Battle.net integration enabled are now able to see their guild perks from the roster. For those WoW guilds out there who do not yet have integration enabled, just click Control Panel and then WoW Integration.
New: Blog entries now have a FaceBook "Like" icon.
New: Voting polls now display charts.
Fixed: Event templates will now save more information and import it correctly.
Fixed: WoW Roster integration and WoW server status were temporarily broken due to some changes to the Battle.net site.

Updated WoW Add-On

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:30:13 GMT

Version 2.01 of the WoW GPHelper add-on is now available for download at http://www.guildportal.com/GPHelper. Aside from bringing up the UI version info up to date with the newest release of WoW, some bugs causing problems with bank item imports and raid resetting upon zone-in of a raid instance (say, after death), have also been addressed in this release.

We recommend you go with a clean set of data going in, so you will want to delete the [wow install folder]\WTF\Account\[account name]\SavedVariables\GPHelper.lua file (there might be two listed if WoW saved a backup copy).

Additional changes this week were made in response to support tickets.

Rift Updates!

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:42:21 GMT

New: GuildPortal is now able to import roster data for Rift using the in-game /dumpguild command. Further intructions are in the Control Panel, under Rift Integration.
New: Attendance for raids in Rift may now be easily updated using the in-game /dumpraid command. Click Event Follow-up while viewing an event on your calendar for more details.
New: A new widget, called "Rift Guild Perks" has been added. Track and display the perks your guild has earned!

Calendar and Chat Updates

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 11:17:15 GMT

Hello all! It's update time again, and this week we've got some fixes and an enhancement or two:

Fixed: In event follow-up > attendance, updating was only happening if you filled out the form in a specific order (ie, checking the box indicating the member attended before entering the amount of DKP awarded for attending).
New: Event admins may now update attendance directly from events. As was the case when setting attendance in follow-up, allied events put the responsibility for tracking attendance and awarding DKP on each guild the event is shared out, allowing for each guild in the alliance to have their own DKP point structure.
New: The process that checks for new one-on-one chat requests now updates more frequently.
Fixed: Clicking Return to Preview while in drag-and-drop page edit mode wasn't always clearing out the cache, and refreshing the page right away would not always reflect the changes made.

Achievements, Rift and More

aaronlewis@guildportal.com (Aaron Lewis) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:52:09 GMT

Many changes this week!

New: Rift tooltips for items, abilities, and just about everything are now live and fully integrated into the WYSIWYG editor! Many thanks to ZAM for providing this functionality!
New: A new widget called Rift Search has gone live, and integrates directly with ZAM for all your Rift searching needs. There are three display modes for it, and you can choose the one you prefer by clicking Edit under the widget. By default, this will appear on all new Rift sites.
New: System-wide achievements are now live. These are apart from the custom guild achievement system, and can be viewed by clicking any site member's link.
Fixed: Preference/setting changes were not always appearing to update immediately.
New: The bank admin UI (specifically in the areas of managing items and item requests) has been cleaned up.
Fixed: When an item request was approved for an item with a quantity greater than one, the system was not multiplying the number of DKP to deduct by the number of items in the stack.
New: The Rift Server Status widget now has a background image, which can be set to the Guardian or Defiant logo by clicking Edit under the widget.
Fixed: The image selector used throughout the Control Panel was not opening the window to select images that were available in guild storage.