Website Updates

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,950]

Borx Purple

  - Clicking the logo now redirects to forums instead of home

  - Changed profile photos to round for consistency throughout the theme.

  - Changed the donate message from the default one.

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,950]

- Borx Halloween is the default frontend theme for the month of october (GFL Dark can still be used until atleast November 1, we haven't decided what we will do with it yet but it will likely be retired). Thank you @Ben for the work on the dark and October theme.

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

10-26-19

• Recoded the Discord Widget block so it uses a cached value via the IPS 4 data store instead of grabbing the server count from a separate file on disk. This should increase performance by a lot, especially since you won't run into any sort of delays being caused by rate limiting.

 

Thanks.

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,950]

 - Now using IPS 4.4.9.1

[Ben 2,378 / 31,861]

January 03, 2020

• Added Server Managers List page: https://gflclan.com/managers/

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

2-8-20

• Altered our backup script and made it so it shouldn't use all resources while backing up MySQL databases. Before, when the backup script would run (every hour), it would lock up the disk I/O and cause connections to the website to time out (as of right now, it executes on the 17th minute of each hour).

 

Now hopefully we shouldn't experience long timeouts randomly each hour   I am still seeing what else I can do to optimize the website. Our web server + PHP are pretty much fully optimized. However, the website itself serves a lot of dynamic content. Therefore, it's typically going to load slower, especially since we can't really cache much of the dynamic content.

 

Thanks!

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

2-8-20 #2

• Cached a few IPS 4 blocks that should increase performance.
• Moved the Affiliate Block's images to the website itself (stored locally instead of being hosted on Imgur).
• Removed some useless code from the Discord block since we aren't calculating the exact online server count (this would decrease performance if we did due to the size of our Discord server).

 

Thanks!

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,950]

 - The forums have been updated to the latest IPS

 - The forums are now hosted on the new web machine

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

4-11-20

• Code blocks now have a vertical scroll bar and the maximum height is 800 pixels.

 

Thanks.

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,950]

 - Updated the Developer application form to include the new developer perk. (Developers may request a Linux VPS for their own use)

 - Allowed "post then register" for guests (Guests will be shown the option to make a post, but will be prompted to register once they submit it).

[Liloz01 1,256 / 19,830]

added this: (please use, even if its a tiny thing - will attempt to fix)

 

added this: (at time of posting, TF2/CS:S are not yet finalised)

 

moved "activity" from its own primary category to "community" and added calender. also removed "website bugs" and "website updates" from "community":

 

stuff i didn't really keep track of, just did:

added some font awesome icons, fixed some forms and random bugs e.g. white backgrounds appearing on lower resolution monitors (see below)

 

 

 

 

 

P.S.

The dropdown menus on the navigation bar should be far easier to use on PC now, they won't randomly disapear once you move your cursor.

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,950]

Most images should now be converted to WEBP and served as such. This should reduce image sizes and page load times a little bit.

[Liloz01 1,256 / 19,830]

1. added a cool button that instantly scrolls you back to the top of the website (to use the navbar or whatever is at the top) (does not appear on mobile):

 

 

2. updated favicon (the image in tabs, bookmarks, etc.):

before:

 

after:

 

 

3. various theme bug fixes

3.1 weird white background bug on topic hover

before (scrolled content has white background)

 

after (background is consistent with post)

 

 

3.2 weird select button appearance - this page also had some weird form appearance where descriptions were floating above input fields and misaligning everything, i don't have any pictures onhand but that's also fixed lol

before

 

after

 

3.3 staff page background inconsistencies

before

 

after (they're now all the same size, even if no rank title)

 

3.4 form gaps

before (big gap for no reason, happened on every form field)

 

after (no more weirdly large gap)

 

 

4. forms now tell you why you can't use them

not logged in:

 

not member (when trying to apply for staff):

 

 

there's a few other things i did but didn't write down or document, whoopsie.. probably just random permissions and misc. cleanup/updates of forms/forums

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

• Fixed overflow in latest donations list on "GFLV3" theme.

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,950]

 - Upgraded the site to IPS 4.5

 - Search is now powered by Elasticsearch. Hopefully will see some performance improvements in profiles and searches from that.

 - Most site assets are now hosted on Backblaze B2. 

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

1-6-21

• Possibly resolved an issue regarding new donations not adding any in-game perks.
• Added more debug code in the case the above doesn't work. If it is what I think it is, there's something seriously wrong with IPS 4.

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

1-24-21

After having logging enabled on our GFL Donations application, it turns out an issue we've seen is the application thinking somebody has an existing donation when they do not. This is why a lot of people aren't receiving game server perks after donating and we have to manually insert them into the game server database. What doesn't make sense to me is some of the problematic donations we've investigated hadn't had any entries in the database prior to their donation. Therefore, I'm honestly not sure why this is the case. I've looked at IPS 4's select statement syntax here and it lines up with what we do. This started happening after an IPS 4 update, so I'm wondering if it behaves differently and thinks count($query) returns above 0 at any point when it shouldn't.

 

If this issue was reproducible from my end, I would have setup a test instance along with PayPal's Sandbox so I can easily test with PayPal and debugged the IPS 4 select function itself within the \IPS\Db class. However, I have not found any ways to reproduce this issue. I've tried donating $15 from my PayPal (using the same Steam ID, so it would have multiple transactions) and never ran into this issue.

 

Anyways, while the MySQL query we use to insert users into the game server database uses INSERT INTO, it also checks if the duplicate key already exist (in this case, the Steam ID) and if it does, it'll update the group ID (perk) if the existing group ID is lower than the new group ID (since we go Member => Supporter => VIP).

 

In this case, I made it so it still attempts to insert them into the game server database even if it believes there is already an existing donation. This should work for now and once we build out our new donation system, we won't see this issue again.

[Liloz01 1,256 / 19,830]

Going to make an effort to post all changes in this thread from now on. Apologies for not.

 

Security updates:

• All staff, including teams, are now required to have 2FA enabled.
• The amount of failed login attempts has been lowered from 3 to 2 before locking.
• The account lock period for failed login attempt threshold increased from 15 minutes to 60 minutes or email verification.
• Login authentication type changed from "Display Name or Email Address" to only "Email Address".
• Password strength threshold changed to "very strong" from "fair".
  • "Fair":
    • A simple phrase or mix of letters and numbers. (this is the lowest option possible, lol)
  • "Very Strong":
    • A mixture of upper and lowercase characters, numbers and special characters.
  • The strength of a password is calculated using an algorithm which rewards longer passwords with a mix of letters, numbers and symbols, and subtracts points for using consecutive or sequential characters. Minimum of 8.

[Liloz01 1,256 / 19,830]

Added Profile Songs

Profile songs are available now to anyone supporter+ (including staff) - if you upload anything obnoxious, you'll be punished (duh).

Please refer to this post for more information about it: 

The only thing to note that is not in that thread is that you cannot manage profile songs via mobile as of right now.

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Added Secondary Group Indicator

You can now view (most) of peoples secondary groups via their hovercard.

Example:

Spoiler

Not all groups can be viewed, temporary groups or groups intended for permission management and not public view do not appear. Badges are still far more identifying than Groups, but this feature can help staff figure out why they do not have certain permissions themselves (it's usually because they don't have the correct secondary group(s)).

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Fixed Weird Notification Bug

When clicking a pop-up notification, the notification counter in the top right wouldn't update correctly sometimes. The counter should now update as intended.

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Updated Sign Up Errors

Errors would sometimes tell you that you need to sign up to view content, but have no button on them to actually sign up. They do now.

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Updated Banned Page

The banned page used to be pretty garbage, updated it.

Banned Page before:

Spoiler

Banned Page now (if the user has no warnings):

Spoiler

Banned Page now (if the user has warnings):

Spoiler

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Updated Edit History

Edit history now has "wiki-style" edit highlighting.

Edit history Before:

Spoiler

Edit history now:

Spoiler

Helpful for determining what was edited in large posts.

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Updated Colour Consistency

A lot of the blues on the website that were close to the "GFL Blue" have now been changed to actually be "GFL Blue"... the blue colour of the like button, for example... a few horizontal rules... other colours I didn't note down are now also more consistent.

Find (most) GFL Colours here: https://gflclan.com/style-guide/colour-guides/

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Updated Topic Rating

You can't rate your own topic anymore.

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Updated Messaging

You can't message in a DM that has no one in it anymore.

Messages are no longer affected by merging.

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Updated CKEditor 

Group colour should apply more consistently now. Sometimes the "wrong" colour would be applied. Still not totally fixed unfortunately, doesn't apply to ACP.

Added a preview button, cus why not, also made it so the buttons don't overlap on mobile anymore:

Before on mobile:

Spoiler

Now on mobile:

Spoiler

Before on PC:

Spoiler

Now on PC:

Spoiler

Still quite a bit to be desired on mobile, but for the time being... this is what we're working with.

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Updated Header Logo

Removed a lot of the height from the header logo, the most dramatic effect can be seen on mobile. Frees up a lot of screen real estate.

Before on mobile:

Spoiler

Now on mobile (the yellow line is the same length as the "before" image, jesus!):

Spoiler

Before on PC:

Spoiler

Now on PC (the blue line is the same length as the "before" image, less of a difference):

Spoiler

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That's about it, there's other random little theme things that have been done but I didn't note them down... whoops.

[Liloz01 1,256 / 19,830]

Added Pronoun Indicator

Where they appear:

On posts:

Spoiler

On profile:

Spoiler

How to add them to your profile:

Step 1 (go to your profile):

Spoiler

Step 2 (press edit profile):

Spoiler

Step 3 (edit the information):

Spoiler

Step 4 (hit save, all done!):

Spoiler

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"Fixed" Navigation Bar Items
All but the "Servers" and "Donate" primary navigation buttons do not have href attributes anymore. This basically means that people who click on the buttons, instead of hovering the buttons, will no longer experience a page refresh and be confused.

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Also...
Fixed a few theme issues but didn't note them down again. Oops. I remember changing profile pictures to have them load more consistently/align better and I also changed our table CSS to have shit fit "nicer". I'll just keep changes I do from now on in a shitty little notepad for more specific updates in future.

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Also Again...
Users with the Server Admin group should no longer experience permission issues when they are not supposed to. If you still do, please contact your Server Manager or me directly with the issue. Please include: your Forum name and a link to the page you cannot view.

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That's all this time. Just a small update to let you know what's gone on.