Update 12/13/20: At the beginning of August, we had an emergency pop up totally unrelated to this site. It pretty much brought any work here (and especially on a new main site) to a halt until mid-October. Than after putting in about 2 weeks of work into a new main site here, the chief developer working on the new site became ill. I kept believing that it was a very temporary set-back. Instead of it being a week or two recovery, it's dragged on to present, and could potentially turn into a long term issue, with no instant resolution other than to try and expand resources here.
As such, I'm going to start searching planet Earth for 2 additional developers, one which would be dedicated to this site. I'm looking for the top 5% of full-stack developers proficient in Laravel, Vue, PHP, MySQL, and Unix (Centos). 40-hours a week preferred but I'll take 20+. Someone who enjoys and appreciates video games isn't essential but would be a plus. Although a significant expense here, we're happy to pay market rates or better for great talent. I'd prefer someone we can have a direct relationship with, as opposed to being someone else's contractor as I'm looking for a long term (ideally multi-year) relationship here...
---
To Do List and Pending Issues (Top Priority)
As such, I'm going to start searching planet Earth for 2 additional developers, one which would be dedicated to this site. I'm looking for the top 5% of full-stack developers proficient in Laravel, Vue, PHP, MySQL, and Unix (Centos). 40-hours a week preferred but I'll take 20+. Someone who enjoys and appreciates video games isn't essential but would be a plus. Although a significant expense here, we're happy to pay market rates or better for great talent. I'd prefer someone we can have a direct relationship with, as opposed to being someone else's contractor as I'm looking for a long term (ideally multi-year) relationship here...
---
To Do List and Pending Issues (Top Priority)
- Recommend Friend for Membership - Prospective members can currently join with a $1 donation to our favorite charity. The alternative method of being recommended by a friend isn't online yet [ETA 12/31/21]
- Main Site Upgrade -- There should be an update (first step only) beginning to roll in on the main site in the next 30 days. This won't change the look or organization much, but does involve an entire rewrite of the existing site to modernize it and will provide a foundation for us to move forward. Most importantly from a user perspective, we will begin to fix a few broken features. Also, while we won't be fully optimizing the site for mobile at this time, it will utilize responsive web design so it will begin to get at least mobile useable. [ETA 2021Q2, with some functionality getting upgraded through the end of the year.]
- Fruit Symbol Updates - Fruit symbols are showing, but are not syncing yet and reflect data as of the date of system upgrade. [partially complete, finalized ETA 12/31/20]
- User Location Syncing - This also isn't syncing from the main site. This will be most noticed when looking at posts made by new members who joined after the site migrated over. [ETA 12/31/20]
- Thread Post Prefixes - Currently online in the for-sale sections, not in the other sections yet. [ETA 1/31/21]
- Moderator and Admin Functions - There are some moderator and admin functionality that needs to be fixed.
- Avatars - Animated Gifs - These were causing system errors, though we know why. The goal is to turn them back on, at least for donors (exactly as before). [ETA 2021Q1, if all goes well]
- Tagging Post System - Currently online and being tested by all in the Variety of Life forum sub-sections. [ETA 2021 Q1 or Q2]
- vBulletin Transition Style A Contrast Issues - There are a few places on site that display with dark text on dark background while using this style. We haven't yet been able to solve the problem. [Not scheduled, will take another look late this year]
- Email Other User - we can, likely will, explore this type of feature. [unscheduled]
- Ability to exclude certain forums on New Posts List - A member and staff favorite we had added to our previously forum system [unscheduled, but actively looking for a solution.]
- @ name tag notifications not working - reported, issue not explored yet.
- Email Notifications Check - some people aren't getting email notifications on PM. I'll look into it, but I'm getting mine, so please check your spam box. [unscheduled]
- Search Term Highlighted in Posts - A feature of our old system, it isn't supported by either our new system by default, nor by any known addon. [Not forgotten, but no short term solution expected.]
- Surveys/Polls - The ability to create polls and surveys isn't online currently. It will be slowly phased in, meaning at first a few people will have the ability to create some, then as we get familiar with the functionality here, we'll add a few more...
- Test Message Notifications - We are looking to add some text message support features on the main site. At the same time, maybe we will explore the concept of adding text message notifications on individually selectable posts....maybe (2021 Summer?)
- Conversation Export - Not a stock feature, we also added the ability to export conversations (private messages). However, the download zip files contain individual files with data corruption. [trying to diagnose and understand the issue]
- Picture Upload Size Limits Currently there are no dimension limits on photos. We launched with a 1MB file size limit, then increased to 2MB, and then on 8/3/20 increased to 4MB. Note, it is **MUCH** preferred to hit the image link on the post edit bar rather than to copy, and then paste (or ctrl-v) directly into the message. The latter will add an image as an uncompressed PNG file. If you receive an error about max file size that you think is unwarranted, it is probably because you are trying to paste an image from a browser or phone, instead of uploading an image.
- Countless other things - We drop things off this list regularly.
- Browser Push Notifications - By clicking on your username, and then Preferences, and then clicking 'Enable Push Notifications' your device will proactively let you know when someone responded to your private message (conversation) or post. This is supported primarily by Chrome, Firefox, and probably Edge browsers, and thus is not supported by iPhones. We also are trying to troubleshoot some issues with this feature [Currently limited to $20+ donors]
- Auto Thumbnail Large Images in Posts - I'd like to allow the uploading of large images, but not have them take up a full screen. So I'd love to have them inserted as thumbnails if larger than a certain size. This by default can be done by the poster if desired, but isn't default behavior. I'm surprised there isn't an option for this. I found one plugin that claims to fix this, but it doesn't work right.
- Thread Title Edit Time Limits - This isn't working properly, and some threads you should be able to edit titles on (for up to 30 days in the general section), you can't. It's annoying. We know about it. It might take some custom programming to resolve.
Last edited:
