2010/Jul-Dec/Announcements/Staff Updates

26 No title
As an experiment in improving communication with the users, we'll be experimenting with using this thread as an ongoing log of the changes done to the site. We push out many changes throughout the day, and we'll announcing many of them here.

29 Bug Fixes Since 7/26
Bug Fixes Since 7/26
 * - performance improvements that should speed up day-to-day use of the site
 * - cleaned up some JavaScript libraries and fixed a bunch of minor issues resulting (especially with the floating footer and other JavaScript functions)
 * - fixed color picker in Journals
 * - cleanup of Rina's shop
 * - bug fixes for trashing of aquarium items
 * - removed [] from arena ratings
 * - fixes for daily chance (a JS error was causing DC to blow up for some IE users)
 * - fixed achievement modal
 * - fix for game tab displaying too many inventory items
 * - fixed sparkle locations
 * - free gender bender potions in account settings -- you can get up to two free potions, if you haven't used your gender changes

29 JavaScript error in Account Settings Fixed
JavaScript error in Account Settings Fixed

Pushed out a fix today that was breaking account settings for some people.

30 New Marketplace/Stores Widget
New Marketplace/Stores Widget

The new preview widget started during Spring Cleaning is now live!

02 New Forum Feature: Tipping
New Forum Feature: Tipping

Tipping is now live on the site -- please give your thanks to wondersloth for this feature, which he completed on his own time. This feature originally started as one of our one-day-hackathon projects a couple of months ago. It's meant to be a lightweight and easy way to give someone some props for a good response, and will hopefully encourage more variety in the forums.

02 Preview Widget Updated
Preview Widget Updated

Hey! ania1899 has improved the preview widget so that handheld items now preview in shops properly -- which was actually a feature, not a bug, since it never worked properly before. You can now preview in the Buttercup to your heart's content.

(Also, quick tip for those that don't know: did you know you don't need to close the modal when shopping? After previewing an item you can just click on another store item and the preview will be updated).

04 New Guilds Home Page + Exploit Fixed
New Guilds Home Page + Exploit Fixed
 * - new guild homepage is out!
 * - Fixed the exploit whereby people could "trick" people into tipping them

04 Gamestop
Gamestop - Gamestop now in the list of stores that carry Gaia cash cards

05 Forum Tweaks
Forum Tweaks

Shadow_Dragonz has labored over the forum markup code; it is much cleaner now, which means a) that pages should render faster, and b) it will be easier for us to do forum improvements in the future.

Also fixed: the featured avatar on the home page vanishing when you hover over the menus.

05 More Forum Tweaks Today
More Forum Tweaks Today
 * - fixed IE and Chrome issues
 * - fixed problem with the tip jar being obscured
 * - fixed forum previewing
 * - if you run into any problems with the new forum markup, please go to this thread and let us know

06 Site Search for Visitors
Site Search for Visitors

Searching on the site is now (re)enabled for visitors.

10 Bug Fixes
Bug Fixes
 * - Fixed problem with gifting from a stack of items when one was in storage
 * - Stylistic tweaks for MyGaia
 * - new sprite for Ornate post type that works to 3200-wide screens
 * - fixed minimum height of post bubbles
 * - fixed problems with inventory / friends overlapping the bubble
 * - fixed problems with vertical scrollbar appearing

11 Minor Changes
Minor Changes
 * - Yesterday and today: some bug fixes and tweaks for our amazing moderator team
 * - Today: fixed a registration bug

12 Summer Buildup
Summer Buildup
 * - Manga released (and a problem with the sizing of some of the pages fixed)
 * - Mysterious sticker in the header -- collect and keep!
 * - Bunches of preparatory code for the summer event

13 More Summer Buildup
More Summer Buildup
 * - mini-comic
 * - Scott Pilgrim sponsorship
 * - changed behavior of wing icon in the header if you've already redeemed the item
 * - fixed bug with header width
 * - more preparatory pushes for event

16 New Achievements Being Released
New Achievements Being Released

Rolling them out now. Some interesting and incredibly obscure ones!

17 Outage
Outage

We had a ten-minute outage caused by a database server going down, causing some of the user data to be unavailable. The site should be back up and restored to 100% functionality at this point.

17 Pre-event
Pre-event

New mini-comic is up.

19 Event rollout
Event rollout

We'll be pushing out code for the event -- please excuse any minor glitches for the next few hours. We'll announce when the event is ready for you!

20 Once more, with feeling
Once more, with feeling

Fixed a bunch of bugs that showed up only on production yesterday. Final version of code is out and everything is looking good for launch really soon. We'll be metering people in, so you may have to be a little patient.

Please understand that per our announcement last week, you'll need to construct your Navigation Rudder before embarking on your journey: this requires 10 wooden surfboards, 5 red and blue (each) tribal surfboard fish, 100 insects, and a "Helmsman's Domain" item.

(Hah! Just kidding about the Navigation Rudder -- event will be open to all as we meter people in).

26 Wednesday
Changes Monday - Wednesday
 * - Fixed bug in Treasure Chest AJAX response handler
 * - Fixed problem with stats display in the event
 * - changes to Coke page
 * - tweaked JS packages for better site performance + other backend improvements
 * - new build of zOMG out
 * - fixed a Daily Chance exploit
 * - added URL for magazine ad that is out soon
 * - Five new jigsaw puzzles released (may need to reset your cache to see them)

31 Rally and Town Changes
Rally and Town Changes

A bunch of scripting exploits have been fixed in Rallies and are currently being fixed in Towns. We're hoping that this stops most of the name forgery / vortexes / statue exploits.

31 New Achievements
New Achievements

New achievements are released. Note that you'll only see two of them unless you've unlocked the higher level achievements.

02 Photobucket fixed
Photobucket fixed

A change on the Photobucket side resulted in people being unable to post in guilds -- we've put a temporary fix in place.

03 Arrows in Towns
Arrows in Towns

The are back in towns / rallies.

To be honest, we were astonished at the outcry that arose from this bug -- apparently, the symbols are critical to discourse in Towns and Rallies.

People are exchanging code snippets? Playing cowboys and indians? Trying to make ASCII Christmas trees? Who knows!

08 Miscellaneous Bug Fixes Past Two Days
Miscellaneous Bug Fixes Past Two Days
 * - tweaked spotlight on main page
 * - achievements UI improvements
 * - added input validation to wishlist
 * - restored post styles and actions to guilds
 * - new animated items released
 * - fixed animated preview in cash shop
 * - fixed glitch that prevented number of announcements from showing (will be live tomorrow)

10 Bug Fixes Thursday
Bug Fixes Thursday
 * - Fixed session error when a user goes to shops without logging into an account.
 * - fixed {quotereport} in moderator autoreplies
 * - fix JS error on Treasure Key use

10 Autocash Live
Autocash Live

Soft launched and available to users on the cash page; we'll announce after we've watched the traffic levels for a bit.

14 Announcements Fixed
Announcements Fixed

We had a bug wherein announcements weren't showing up in the bubble if you didn't have anything else in the bubble. This has been fixed.

14 Wing Store Live
Wing Store Live

It's live! Please go to the Treehouse and redeem your wing stickers. Selection is limited right now, but this is something that we will be adding to on an upgoing basis -- if you don't see anything you like, be sure to hang onto your wing stickers for the future!

15 Cash Shop / Subscriptions
Cash Shop / Subscriptions

Per user feedback, we now show the discount BEFORE you purchase the item, as well as after.

15 Free Keyboard Cat!
Free Keyboard Cat!
 * - Fixed "Account" and "Help" links for Webkit Browsers.
 * - Fixed youtube tag to work with Youtube links with hyphens in them. The primacy of Keyboard Cat is now assured.

User YouTube video. Click to show.

16 New Offer Provider A/B
New Offer Provider A/B

Based on user feedback, we're currently testing a new offer provider (Super Rewards) to some of our users. We're hoping that this offer provider will provide more timely updates of offers and pay out faster. If the test goes well we'll roll this out to everyone.

18 SuperRewards Delay
SuperRewards Delay

From about 1AM PST this morning, a server problem prevents SuperRewards offers from funding, even though the offer was completed. The problem has been cleared up and you should be receiving any delayed payments shortly.

21 Site Outage
Site Outage Site was down for about 5 minutes today due to one of our database servers failing. We hot-swapped to a spare, and everything should be fine -- no data was lost.

22 Forum Tweaks and Menu Changes
Forum Tweaks and Menu Changes
 * - Hotfix for forum posts for FF users where they would have a 1px-3px horizontal scroll bar
 * - Tweaked the menu -- promoted conventions up and, per user suggestion, added a link to our blog.

24 Homepage, tabula rasa
Homepage, tabula rasa

We have a brief problem with the home page today, which is why it is white paging. Is fixed now.

24 This Notice is Meta
This Notice is Meta

We have swapped in "Dev Notices" to the main home page to replace "Popular items" -- both of you who look below the fold will be sure to notice.

Also, there is now a new accompanying lab feature that will automatically notify you in your bubble if there's a new dev notice for you to read.

24 Yahoo deliverability problems
Yahoo deliverability problems

We are still working with Yahoo to resolve their e-mail deliverability problems. We hope to get this resolved shortly.(*)

(*) This is made amazingly difficult by the fact that it is impossible to talk to a single person at Yahoo that has responsibility for this -- at this point we are trying direct contact, using our third party vendors, and searching for the name of the girl who dated someone who knew someone in Yahoo Mail Operations.(**)

(**) It's horrible to use Dev Notices for editorial digressions such as the previous footnote. We will now return you to our usual fact-dense terse one-liners.

24 Whoops
Whoops

Please ignore this notice -- we're still ironing this feature out.

24 Yahoo deliverability should be fixed
Yahoo deliverability should be fixed

Yahoo is saying that they've fixed the problem and you should start receiving e-mail in the next hour or so. Please let us know in Site Feedback if it's still a problem after an hour. Thanks for your patience!

27 Meta is Meta Redux
Meta is Meta Redux

Two fixes to dev notices:
 * - should have fixed the spurious "dev alerts" coming up. You'll need to clear the current one (if any) but hopefully it should not be popping up too frequently.
 * - fixed ordering of messages in dev alerts

27 Mechanical Turk
Mechanical Turk

We've enabled the Amazon's Mechanical Turk for Super Rewards. Basically, you can do simple tasks that humans are good at (but computers aren't) and get paid for it.

Also: dev notice fixes tomorrow morning, hopefully fixing the bubble situation. I'm sure you will appreciate this message the 18 times that you read it.

28 Frontier Skies
Frontier Skies

Frontier Skies leaderboard is out!

28 Dev Notices Fixed (Honestly!)
Dev Notices Fixed (Honestly!)

Pushed out a fix this morning, and haven't seen the bubble spontaneously pop up, so we think it's really fixed this time.

29 Miniwing Counts
Miniwing Counts

The Miniwing Counts aren't being displayed correctly; we'll have that fixed by the end of today. Rest assured that when we do the drawing at the end of the month, we'll have the correct counts for everyone.

29 Miniwing Count Update
Miniwing Count Update

Okay, at this point it looks like the counts will be updated in our nightly cron -- so please check back tomorrow for the real counts.

Whether or not you check it, we will definitely triple check and make sure we have the correct counts before doing the drawing.

30 Like/Dislike Going Live Soon
Like/Dislike Going Live Soon

The new Like/Dislike system that has been discussed previously is going live in the next hour or two.

We're hoping to make this feature visible enough so that people use it, and then we can use like/dislike and tipping to show users content that is highly relevant to them.

Some notes:
 * - there may be some minor glitches in forums as we push out, but it shouldn't be for more than 5 or 10 minutes.
 * - the formulas for highlighting hot / controversial topics will need to be tweaked as we go
 * - there will be a new ad placement, and being an ad placement, will be universally hated, but hey, we have to pay the electrical bills somehow. Go ahead and complain in SF, but please try to keep it reasonably civil.

30 Bay Area Testers Wanted
Bay Area Testers Wanted

Hey, guys, Naxash here. Do you live in California? Can you come to Gaia HQ in San Jose? Are you interested in being one of the first people to see an exciting new flash game? If so, please send me a PM! We are looking for beta testers to come onsite so that they can play our new game and give our developers feedback about it.

30 Like / Share Update
Like / Share Update

Placed a sticky with a long description of the current status of the new Like / Share feature, including a poll. Quite a bit of feedback in SF today, and I tried to cover some of the main points in that sticky. As always, SF had some really reasoned and informative responses, and we appreciate the feedback.

01 Need Some Auto Glitch Test Cases
Need Some Auto Glitch Test Cases

We'd like to test a potential temporary fix for auto glitches; please post in this thread if you're interested in being a test sample.

01 Forum UI Tweaks
Forum UI Tweaks

Ongoing UI tweaks throughout the day.
 * - Forums are moving back to variable width for existing users
 * - Changing topic title to a link
 * - Other miscellaneous changes

As always, we appreciate any feedback or complaints in the Site Feedback forum.

01 Miniwing Count Update
Miniwing Count Update

Everyone's counts reset to 0, since it's a new month. We'll be pushing out a change to the page that allows you to see the counts for the previous month, so you can be comfortable that they are correct.

We will verify that counts are correct before we do the drawing.

If, after the change goes out, the count for the previous month looks incorrect, please let us know in the Bug Reports and Technical Support forum.

01 AtD Thread + Like / Share Update
AtD Thread + Like / Share Update

- As we mentioned earlier, one of our designers has posted her explanation of some of the design choices in the recent forum layout changes in a Site Feedback AtD. That would be a great place to ask questions or bring up concerns.

Please be nice; this is her first time doing this and she's a little nervous.

- An update on the status of Like / Share is in this thread.

01 Miniwing Counts
Miniwing Counts

We've noticed a small number of users (< 20) that are not properly counted for their logins in the previous month. We'll be tracking down the problem so we can fix it before doing the drawing.

04 Miniwing Drawing
Miniwing Drawing

The first Miniwing drawing was just done, for the month of September. We'll be contacting users by PM in the next few hours, and then doing a full announcement tomorrow.

Details: we had two pools of participants; one pool contained everyone that had logged in (one ticket per day), and the other pool contained everyone that purchased something (one ticket for every 99 cents spent). From each pool we drew one miniwing winner and five consolation prize winners.

More details in the announcement.

04 Garage Glitch Update
Garage Glitch Update

Good news -- we have fixes for two garage glitches! Please go to this thread in BR&TS for more details.

05 Minwing Counts and Update
Minwing Counts and Update

We're in the process of doing maintenance on one of our secondary database servers; as a result, there may be some glitches in the counts for October until we get it squared away. Nonetheless, all the data is secure, and you will get credit for any logins / GC purchases for the month of October.

The announcement looks like it'll go out tomorrow, instead -- we're still contacting some of the winners.

05 Bug Fixes
Bug Fixes


 * - Fixed glitch in inventory encountered by some users
 * - Autos auto-cleanup improved; see the working thread in BR&TS for details.

07 Secret Yearbook
Secret Yearbook

Sorry guys looks like the granting for the item when you send a pm in the Secret Yearbook is broken. I'm pushing a fix now.

This has now been fixed, for those of you who sent a pm when it was broken, you'll have to do so again to get the item.

07 Special Miniwing Drawing
Special Miniwing Drawing

There will be an announcement later today, but both of you that are subscribed to the dev notices will get special advance notice:

Based on user suggestion, we're doing a special third Miniwing drawing this month. We'll be putting 1000 tickets on the marketplace in the next couple weeks at random times. Each one gives you an equal chance in the third drawing.

(We thought this would be a fun event to try for October; as always, we appreciate your feedback, questions, and complaints in Site Feedback.)

09 Miniwing Counts Still Glitched
Miniwing Counts Still Glitched

We're still (re)building the backup server that we'll need to bring the counts back online. The counts should be up-to-date and correct by Tuesday if all goes well knock on wood.

10 Slow Page Loads
Slow Page Loads

We are tracking down a problem with the CDN that is causing pages to load extremely slowly.

UPDATE: Looked like a problem with a new firewall -- Ops has turned it off and site traffic looks to be returning to normal.

11 Code Live
Code Live
 * - CarbonPhyber has done a wide variety of HTML cleanup; it shouldn't have caused any problems, but if you notice something acting differently today please let us know in BR&TS, and be sure to mention the browser you're using.
 * - Cleaning and tweaking some notifications in MyGaia

11 Advertising Changes
Advertising Changes

You'll notice the black bar that says "Advertisement" above all the ads is going to change in the next few hours.

We'll explain it in detail in the announcement, but the TL;DR:

Buying an MC has historically turned off ads. We've expanded this to AutoCash subscribers and anyone that purchases anything for 249 GC or above, and you'll have control over whether your advertisements are turned off or not.

If, after we roll out the changes, you run into any problems with ads showing when you think they shouldn't be, please let us know in BR&TS. If you have comments or feedback about the idea of extending ad-free browsing to more users, please let us know in Site Feedback.

12 Bug Fixes
Bug Fixes
 * - Ad opt out not working for some people should be fixed -- log out and log back in and it should work correctly. Sorry for the inconvenience.
 * - CarbonPhyber pushed out a fix for the dropdown arrows in MyGaia.

12 Site Outage
Site Outage

We've fixed the cause of the temporary site outage. Sorry for the scare. No data was lost.

12 Inventory Change
Inventory Change

Store item preview in inventory is going live pretty soon; it'll be at the bottom, way below the fold. You may see some temporary visual glitches for a few minutes.

13 Invisible Car Glitch
Invisible Car Glitch

As part of our modern-day emulation of Sisyphus, we've released changes that should fix the autos glitch that causes cars to vanish. Please see this thread for details.

13 Miniwing Counts Fixed
Miniwing Counts Fixed

Sorry for the delay. Our servers are tip-top and healthy, and the miniwing counts should be correct.

14 Bug Fixes
Bug Fixes
 * - fixed wrapping of page numbers in the forum topic list
 * - re-enabled Photobucket. In celebration, a mashup of XKCD #303 that is an inside joke:
 * User Image - Blocked by "Display Image" Settings. Click to show.

15 Accidental Message
Accidental Message

Sorry!

15 Garages
Garages
 * - the fix for invisible cars / locked items in Garages seems to be working okay; please see this thread for details and to report issues.

Two common problems with Garages and their solutions:


 * - if you try to go into your garage and you get a white exception page, please make sure that all your auto items are out of storage.
 * - if, when trying to equip an item, you get a red exclamation mark, make sure the item isn't in storage.

Bottom line: storage is bad news for Garages.

15 Frontier Skies-ing/Booty Grabbing
Frontier Skies-ing/Booty Grabbing
 * - Frontier Skies will be taken down for a couple of weeks for some tweaking and to make it less event specific. It should go back up in the middle of November.
 * - Booty Grab fix pushed for IE / some Chrome users.

15 AutoCash and Paypal
AutoCash and Paypal

A number of users had asked for a Paypal option in AutoCash. If you go to the AutoCash page, at the bottom there are two icons by the "Pay With" where you can choose between credit cards and Paypal.

There will be a full announcement next week.

15 Gender Bender Potions
Gender Bender Potions

We've run out of the free potions that are granted through the account settings. We have emergency shipments of raw materials due Monday, so the free grants should be re-enabled then.

18 Flash Errors
Flash Errors

Some intermittent glitches with flash games as we roll out Tiles. We're looking at it.

18 Busy Monday
Busy Monday

Our rockin' dev team has today pushed out Tiles (and fixed some related glitches in the flash spaces), repaired some forum and arena issues, restocked the supply of Gender Bender potions, closed a few obsolete grants, and this is only the start of what will be a busy week.

19 Forum Tweaks
Forum Tweaks

Some forum changes going out this morning for like / dislike. There may be some intermittent glitches.

19 Tuesday Stuff
Tuesday Stuff
 * - the "Server security" error that was stopping some people from playing Jigsaw and other flash games has been fixed.
 * - Fixed ad that was showing up even if "show ads" was disabled
 * - Like/dislike live, announcement coming soon
 * - Added Tiles link to the Games menu. For today you'll find me in the Tiles game, cursing horribly!

20 SuperReward payouts
SuperReward payouts

Payouts on SuperRewards were lower than they should have been, due to a configuration error on their side; the issue has been fixed.

21 Home Page Changes Tomorrow
Home Page Changes Tomorrow

We're adding a module to the home page tomorrow, and we also have a bunch of stuff planned for the next 6 weeks. If you want the early scoop the details are here.

22 Trick or Treat
Trick or Treat

If you hadn't noticed, trick or treating in towns is up! So grab those candies while you can. For those that prefer hitting the shop for candies, the npc's are working as hard as they can to get setup and hope to be ready to hand out treats early next week.

22 Forum Glitches
Forum Glitches

Some minor forum glitches as we prepare for our Friday Night Party. Will be fixed shortly.

26 Daily Chance Payouts
Daily Chance Payouts

Soft launched new DC payout scheme -- Daily Chance now pays better if you log in a) 2 of the past 7 days, or b) 6 of the past 7 days.

We'll be watching payouts for a bit before tweaking them and announcing.

27 Trick or Treat Shops
Trick or Treat Shops

The shopkeepers are open for business and dressed for the occasion. If you haven't already started trick or treating in towns...or heck even if you did, head over and do it in shops!

28 CDN Tweaks
CDN Tweaks

We had reports of problems with inventory poses vanishing and/or images not loading, especially for users in Europe / Australia and some of the eastern seaboard in the United States.

Operations changed some stuff last night -- the problems should be fixed for now, although you may have to clear your cache to get the new images. Many thanks to the users who helped us out with diagnosing the problem!

28 Temporary Glitches
Temporary Glitches

Some minor glitches as we roll out a code push for zOMG. Everything should be fixed shortly.

28 "No Bait"
"No Bait"

Fishing servers have been kicked and kissed, prodded and praised, bribed and begged, chastened and coerced, flattered and flattened, threatened and tickled, and have agreed to recognize bait again. If you were having problems with fishing recently, please try again.

28 Site Issues
Site Issues

We're dealing with some wonky load issues at the moment; site will be slow for a bit while we get everything sorted out.