May 03, 2024, 01:02:21 PM
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21
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 08/21/2016
August 21, 2016, 09:41:38 AM
Fixed an issue with moving nodes in the tree editing tools (reported by Engledogg).
22
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 08/20/2016
August 20, 2016, 03:33:13 PM
Fixed issue with drilling down into tree nodes while browsing the "missing info" pages (discovered by Tusko)
23
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 08/17/2016
August 17, 2016, 09:13:00 PM
Repaired bad part data for thousands of collection records. Long story, but the upshot is that the completion percentage numbers you see when browsing your collection in "brief" view should now be correct.
24
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 06/21/2016
June 21, 2016, 08:01:34 AM
I've been doing some API changes under the hood lately, and managed to break quite a few pages last night. Don't worry, every broken page you've encountered has resulted in an email with the details arriving in my inbox, and I've already fixed 'em all. Please let me know if I missed anything.
25
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 06/18/2016
June 18, 2016, 08:20:35 AM
A bunch of minor stuff that is putting even me to sleep:
- fixed a few more obscure exceptions
- upgraded SSO library (I had a report from a user having trouble logging in with Google).
- fixed another issue with logging out
- fixed formatting on the collection UI on the profile page
- fixed a few more obscure exceptions
- upgraded SSO library (I had a report from a user having trouble logging in with Google).
- fixed another issue with logging out
- fixed formatting on the collection UI on the profile page
26
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 06/16/2016
June 16, 2016, 10:07:28 AM
Bug fixes.
Related to recent upgrades:
- signatures work again
- collection downloading works again
- fixed graphical glitch on tree navigation widget (reported by Engledogg)
- fixed product/part submission queue page
- fixed "white page" issue when trying to review release date submissions (reported by SoS)
- collection page works again (reported by everybody)
Misc:
- fixed infinite loop issue when submitting changes to a record just after someone else updated the same record (Engledogg)
I'm out of bugs, here, folks. If you know of any that I don't please report them. Sure would be a shame if I had to sit here playing video games all day...
Related to recent upgrades:
- signatures work again
- collection downloading works again
- fixed graphical glitch on tree navigation widget (reported by Engledogg)
- fixed product/part submission queue page
- fixed "white page" issue when trying to review release date submissions (reported by SoS)
- collection page works again (reported by everybody)
Misc:
- fixed infinite loop issue when submitting changes to a record just after someone else updated the same record (Engledogg)
I'm out of bugs, here, folks. If you know of any that I don't please report them. Sure would be a shame if I had to sit here playing video games all day...
27
Bugs? On www.shmax.com? Ha ha, you kill me... / [RESOLVED]Known issues
June 15, 2016, 10:45:59 AM
Hey guys, we're still upgrading and tuning the server, and the following things are currently broken:
- dynamic signatures
- collection downloading
We'll get 'em fixed soon.
- dynamic signatures
- collection downloading
We'll get 'em fixed soon.
28
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 06/05/2016
June 05, 2016, 08:46:56 AM
- added a loading spinner to the photo upload input (suggested by Engledogg)
29
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 05/31/2016
May 31, 2016, 06:44:56 AM
More little bugs and suggestions from Engledogg:
- now showing a "File is too large" sort of error message *before* you upload that 130MB photo
- fixed issue where "0" would appear in the mold input box for parts with no molds
- fixed issue with cloning parts
- fixed page crash related to navigating to deeply nested nodes in the /view_lacks and /missing_info trees
Also:
- fixed appearance of the PRODUCT/PART tabs when viewing on mobile devices
- added the responsive icons to the same sprite resource as the other ones
- fixed /collectors page
- now showing a "File is too large" sort of error message *before* you upload that 130MB photo
- fixed issue where "0" would appear in the mold input box for parts with no molds
- fixed issue with cloning parts
- fixed page crash related to navigating to deeply nested nodes in the /view_lacks and /missing_info trees
Also:
- fixed appearance of the PRODUCT/PART tabs when viewing on mobile devices
- added the responsive icons to the same sprite resource as the other ones
- fixed /collectors page
30
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 05/27/2016
May 27, 2016, 08:13:22 AM
- fixed the little "►" icon in mobile browse view
- fixed the magnifying glass icon in the sku picker (reported by Spliffdizzle)
- fixed loading of the faction management screens
- fixed issue where "0" would appear in mold input box for parts with no molds (such as instruction booklets)
- fixed mod review of user-submitted part and product deletions
- fixed Toyline editor add node issue
- fixed issue where the "Date Bought" was initializing to today when adding items to collection
- fixed "Ask the Database" page
Thanks to Engledogg for reporting these!
- fixed the magnifying glass icon in the sku picker (reported by Spliffdizzle)
- fixed loading of the faction management screens
- fixed issue where "0" would appear in mold input box for parts with no molds (such as instruction booklets)
- fixed mod review of user-submitted part and product deletions
- fixed Toyline editor add node issue
- fixed issue where the "Date Bought" was initializing to today when adding items to collection
- fixed "Ask the Database" page
Thanks to Engledogg for reporting these!
31
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 05/24/2016
May 24, 2016, 09:36:28 PM
Site upgrade day!
I've moved the site to a new server (still just one--will think about scaling up if we ever get more than two people on the site in the same day), and with it comes a bunch of fancy performance upgrades:
* PHP 7. It supposedly executes code at up to double the speed of PHP 5.4, which is what we had previously. Does it? I dunno, you tell me.
* PHP-FPM. This is a new FastCGI implementation. I'm not particularly clear on what that is, but just because I don't know what it is doesn't mean it isn't fast.
* Enabled client-side caching of the big background image, and all the other little icons and doodads that litter the site.
* I'm now "spriting" all those same little icons and doodads. I've reduced the number of HTTP request on the main browse page from 35 down to 12.
* Optimized that navigation tree over on the left side of the browse page. Turns out it was spawning thousands and thousands of DOM nodes, and it was pretty much the sole cause of the sluggish feel to the page load. Now it only builds the DOM nodes for the visible menu elements.
So most pages should feel a bit zippier. The products browse page in particular now loads and is fully usable in less than a second on my machine (the old one takes around 5). Start thinking about what you're going to do with all the time you're getting back; I've heard that sports are fun.
I've moved the site to a new server (still just one--will think about scaling up if we ever get more than two people on the site in the same day), and with it comes a bunch of fancy performance upgrades:
* PHP 7. It supposedly executes code at up to double the speed of PHP 5.4, which is what we had previously. Does it? I dunno, you tell me.
* PHP-FPM. This is a new FastCGI implementation. I'm not particularly clear on what that is, but just because I don't know what it is doesn't mean it isn't fast.
* Enabled client-side caching of the big background image, and all the other little icons and doodads that litter the site.
* I'm now "spriting" all those same little icons and doodads. I've reduced the number of HTTP request on the main browse page from 35 down to 12.
* Optimized that navigation tree over on the left side of the browse page. Turns out it was spawning thousands and thousands of DOM nodes, and it was pretty much the sole cause of the sluggish feel to the page load. Now it only builds the DOM nodes for the visible menu elements.
So most pages should feel a bit zippier. The products browse page in particular now loads and is fully usable in less than a second on my machine (the old one takes around 5). Start thinking about what you're going to do with all the time you're getting back; I've heard that sports are fun.
32
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 05/24/2016
May 24, 2016, 09:33:17 PM
Site upgrade day!
I've moved the site to a new server (still just one--will think about scaling up if we ever get more than two people on the site in the same day), and with it comes a bunch of fancy performance upgrades:
* PHP 7. It supposedly executes code at up to double the speed of PHP 5.4, which is what we had previously. Does it? I dunno, you tell me.
* PHP-FPM. This is a new FastCGI implementation. I'm not particularly clear on what that is, but just because I don't know what it is doesn't mean it isn't fast.
* Enabled client-side caching of the big background image, and all the other little icons and doodads that litter the site.
* I'm now "spriting" all those same little icons and doodads. I've reduced the number of HTTP request on the main browse page from 35 down to 12.
* Optimized that navigation tree over on the left side of the browse page. Turns out it was spawning thousands and thousands of DOM nodes, and it was pretty much the sole cause of the sluggish feel to the page load. Now it only builds the DOM nodes for the visible menu elements.
So most pages should feel much zippier. The products browse page in particular now loads and is fully usable in less than a second on my machine (the old one takes around 5). Start thinking about what you're going to do with all the time you're getting back; I've heard that sports are fun.
I've moved the site to a new server (still just one--will think about scaling up if we ever get more than two people on the site in the same day), and with it comes a bunch of fancy performance upgrades:
* PHP 7. It supposedly executes code at up to double the speed of PHP 5.4, which is what we had previously. Does it? I dunno, you tell me.
* PHP-FPM. This is a new FastCGI implementation. I'm not particularly clear on what that is, but just because I don't know what it is doesn't mean it isn't fast.
* Enabled client-side caching of the big background image, and all the other little icons and doodads that litter the site.
* I'm now "spriting" all those same little icons and doodads. I've reduced the number of HTTP request on the main browse page from 35 down to 12.
* Optimized that navigation tree over on the left side of the browse page. Turns out it was spawning thousands and thousands of DOM nodes, and it was pretty much the sole cause of the sluggish feel to the page load. Now it only builds the DOM nodes for the visible menu elements.
So most pages should feel much zippier. The products browse page in particular now loads and is fully usable in less than a second on my machine (the old one takes around 5). Start thinking about what you're going to do with all the time you're getting back; I've heard that sports are fun.
33
Feature Requests/Announcements / Advance notice...
May 23, 2016, 01:08:53 PM
I'm going to be disabling updates and collection management features sometime this week--most likely Wednesday. We're moving to a new server yet again (hopefully for the last time in the foreseeable future), and I want to minimize the risk of lost data. If things go smoothly (ha ha) it'll all be back up in a day or so, but you never know. The good news is that with the new server will come a whole slew of upgrades and performance improvements, and I know how much you guys like slews of things.
34
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 05/08/2016
May 08, 2016, 10:42:21 AM
Hey folks, I recently updated the forum software, and there were some hiccups. The version I installed is marked as beta, and there were dire warnings everywhere to scare me away from using it in production, but it had some new code I needed in order to make the upgrade to PHP 7 that I've been working on possible. And, what can I say, I'm the Evel Knievel (look him up) of upgrades.
So far the main damage seems to be that all your custom avatars were blown away. Sorry. I tried to restore them, but they're just gone. Please re-upload your various varmints.
That's the only issue we've discovered affecting regular users, but please be on the lookout for more.
So far the main damage seems to be that all your custom avatars were blown away. Sorry. I tried to restore them, but they're just gone. Please re-upload your various varmints.
That's the only issue we've discovered affecting regular users, but please be on the lookout for more.
35
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 05/03/2016
May 03, 2016, 09:37:26 AM
Bug fixes:
- toyline picker on the modify product page was semi-broken (but nobody noticed)
- scheduled backups were broken
New features:
- you can now add an item to your "preorders" before it has been released. These items will be added to your collection as usual, but won't be factored into rank, collection value, or any other statistical computations until their release date has come and gone. Thanks to KidTDragon for the suggestion.
- you may have noticed a shiny new background image on all the site pages. No, I'm not selling or promoting anything, it's just for fun.
- toyline picker on the modify product page was semi-broken (but nobody noticed)
- scheduled backups were broken
New features:
- you can now add an item to your "preorders" before it has been released. These items will be added to your collection as usual, but won't be factored into rank, collection value, or any other statistical computations until their release date has come and gone. Thanks to KidTDragon for the suggestion.
- you may have noticed a shiny new background image on all the site pages. No, I'm not selling or promoting anything, it's just for fun.
36
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 03/01/2016
March 01, 2016, 08:18:46 AM
Improvements to product/part modification:
- caching of submissions by regular members now happens at the model layer
- improved the review submission view, such that you see the original values using the same form inputs in a second column so that you can more easily gauge the changes
- now tracking a version number for each part and product record; each time an update happens, the version gets bumped
- if the version number goes up while you're busy editing a record, then you will see a warning when you submit, and you will get the same two-column view that moderators see during review
Misc:
- error handling improved, in an effort to ferret out more subtle bugs
- fixed dozens of little warnings and notices
- fixed modify faction functionality
- tightened up page render flow control so that it is easier to do redirects without having to worry about the output stream
And more stuff I can't remember. I had to make changes to every single page on the site to get all this to work, so please be on the lookout for bugs.
- caching of submissions by regular members now happens at the model layer
- improved the review submission view, such that you see the original values using the same form inputs in a second column so that you can more easily gauge the changes
- now tracking a version number for each part and product record; each time an update happens, the version gets bumped
- if the version number goes up while you're busy editing a record, then you will see a warning when you submit, and you will get the same two-column view that moderators see during review
Misc:
- error handling improved, in an effort to ferret out more subtle bugs
- fixed dozens of little warnings and notices
- fixed modify faction functionality
- tightened up page render flow control so that it is easier to do redirects without having to worry about the output stream
And more stuff I can't remember. I had to make changes to every single page on the site to get all this to work, so please be on the lookout for bugs.
37
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 01/25/2016
January 25, 2016, 08:43:35 PM
Some general site health improvements and bug fixes for stuff that I fished out of the error logs:
- redirecting old contest meter graphics to 404
- redirecting old-style forum topic links to current format
- added universal 404 handler to forum pages
- fixed site-crushing url; googlebot found some screwy link in the wild that looked like /part_details/parts, which resulted in the back end trying to load every part record at once. I think this might have been the source of the occasional site outages we've been seeing
- redirecting missing_info page for non-existent users to 404
- fixed exception in bbcode for potd tags that refer to non-existent part records, and another for POTDs that don't exist
- fixed another long-standing bug that we somehow never found before: if you set a mold id on a part, then later clear it, the "base_mold_id" that we use for populating the shared mold list was never getting cleared.
- updated the user profile links on the /collectors page
- made the parsing of tech spec rating bbcode more robust; you can now use rating=strength syntax, as well as rating name=strength
- fixed page crash when creating a new part record
- redirecting old contest meter graphics to 404
- redirecting old-style forum topic links to current format
- added universal 404 handler to forum pages
- fixed site-crushing url; googlebot found some screwy link in the wild that looked like /part_details/parts, which resulted in the back end trying to load every part record at once. I think this might have been the source of the occasional site outages we've been seeing
- redirecting missing_info page for non-existent users to 404
- fixed exception in bbcode for potd tags that refer to non-existent part records, and another for POTDs that don't exist
- fixed another long-standing bug that we somehow never found before: if you set a mold id on a part, then later clear it, the "base_mold_id" that we use for populating the shared mold list was never getting cleared.
- updated the user profile links on the /collectors page
- made the parsing of tech spec rating bbcode more robust; you can now use rating=strength syntax, as well as rating name=strength
- fixed page crash when creating a new part record
38
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 1/19/2016
January 19, 2016, 10:29:44 AM
A number of subtle bug fixes and other efforts to improve site stability:
- made the graphical links on the "Missing Info" page not navigable for guest visitors
- fixed issue where the graphical links for "MSRP" were not reacting properly to mouse hover
- fixed page crash (1. do any kind of filtering on missing info page 2. click on "Advanced Search")
- tuned some server settings around max number of open file handles and max request workers
- now properly handling some old-fashioned shmax urls (googlebot still occasionally finds them in the wild), and redirecting to 404
- updated forum software
- tightened up some of the API definitions
- got rid of the "Stop what you're doing..." page for unauthorized access--now I just send the user straight to the log in page
- fixed permissions for an admin page
And I'm officially out of known bugs, so please pipe up if you know of any.
- made the graphical links on the "Missing Info" page not navigable for guest visitors
- fixed issue where the graphical links for "MSRP" were not reacting properly to mouse hover
- fixed page crash (1. do any kind of filtering on missing info page 2. click on "Advanced Search")
- tuned some server settings around max number of open file handles and max request workers
- now properly handling some old-fashioned shmax urls (googlebot still occasionally finds them in the wild), and redirecting to 404
- updated forum software
- tightened up some of the API definitions
- got rid of the "Stop what you're doing..." page for unauthorized access--now I just send the user straight to the log in page
- fixed permissions for an admin page
And I'm officially out of known bugs, so please pipe up if you know of any.
39
Feature Requests/Announcements / Photo Contest!
January 10, 2016, 04:29:35 PM
Naw, this isn't like the ones we did in the old days--this time it's very simple and involves only a single winning photo. The goal is to create a funny photo for shmax.com's 404 page. What's a 404 page? It's a page that you ideally shouldn't encounter very often, and usually indicates that the user has browsed to an outdated link, or something else has gone wrong.
Because the 404 page isn't really front-facing content, it has become traditional for websites to get a little creative/drunk when coming up with them. Here are some examples:
404s of all the Nations
See what I mean?
We have a dedicated 404 page on shmax.com already, but it's not a lot of fun:
www.shmax.com/404
As you can see, it could benefit from a little creativity. I googled around for things that might be appropriate, and came up with things like this:
But I'm way too lazy to chase down rights and whatnot, so I'm turning to you animals for help.
Bear in mind that, strictly speaking, your photo does not necessarily have to feature Transformers--that ship has long since sailed--anything vaguely toy-related is fine. Post your submissions in this thread so we can all enjoy 'em, and we'll decide who wins at the end of the month with a poll. You can post as many as you like. Bonus points for coming up with a clever/corny caption (eg. "I guess the cat got that one").
Winner will get $100 out of shmax.com's profits, which as of now are hovering firmly around -$36,000.
Because the 404 page isn't really front-facing content, it has become traditional for websites to get a little creative/drunk when coming up with them. Here are some examples:
404s of all the Nations
See what I mean?
We have a dedicated 404 page on shmax.com already, but it's not a lot of fun:
www.shmax.com/404
As you can see, it could benefit from a little creativity. I googled around for things that might be appropriate, and came up with things like this:
But I'm way too lazy to chase down rights and whatnot, so I'm turning to you animals for help.
Bear in mind that, strictly speaking, your photo does not necessarily have to feature Transformers--that ship has long since sailed--anything vaguely toy-related is fine. Post your submissions in this thread so we can all enjoy 'em, and we'll decide who wins at the end of the month with a poll. You can post as many as you like. Bonus points for coming up with a clever/corny caption (eg. "I guess the cat got that one").
Winner will get $100 out of shmax.com's profits, which as of now are hovering firmly around -$36,000.
40
Feature Requests/Announcements / Update 12/28/2015
December 28, 2015, 10:54:01 PM
Mobile changes:
- there is now a button ("...") up in the title bar of any page with a right column (in the desktop view). Clicking it when on a mobile device will cause the page to scroll down to wherever the right column has moved to.
- restored the "Add it yourself!" button. Thanks to KidTDragon for reporting it.
- spruced up the Products/Parts tabs when on mobile, with fancy new icons and a cleaner, simpler look
- there is now a button ("...") up in the title bar of any page with a right column (in the desktop view). Clicking it when on a mobile device will cause the page to scroll down to wherever the right column has moved to.
- restored the "Add it yourself!" button. Thanks to KidTDragon for reporting it.
- spruced up the Products/Parts tabs when on mobile, with fancy new icons and a cleaner, simpler look