Site Updates: 8/22/24

[FaeWhisperer]

New Winter Holiday Theme! 12/1/23

Take a look at the new forum theme, aka, RP Mansion (Christmas) - and the forum has tiny snowflakes! And of course, the new banner is as follows:

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as before, you can change the custom banner down below at the bottom of the page --->

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Anyways, happy holidays to everyone!

 

[FaeWhisperer]

New: Notice Pop up Fixing It- 12/8/23

So it turns out, activating the notice, even dismissing it, it keeps popping up, on every page- no matter what. I'm trying to fix this issue at the moment, if I can even do so. But I will try. In the meantime, yes, the notice was about Donations are now able to be accepted here! Our Payment Provider is through Paypal, and the page is located here:

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- check out the link for more information!

 

[FaeWhisperer]

Update 12/18/23

There's a new Spanish translator added to the website but it doesn't translate everything...The addon was only 10 dollars so I don't know what I was expecting. @Alinnex It's located at the bottom of this page on the lefthand side. This is in it's early stages so hopefully it can help some!

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Actualización 18/12/23

Hay un nuevo traductor de español agregado al sitio web, pero no traduce todo... El complemento costaba solo 10 dólares, así que no sé lo que esperaba. @Alinnex Se encuentra en la parte inferior de esta página, en el lado izquierdo. ¡Esto está en sus primeras etapas, así que espero que pueda ayudar a algunos!
(I used google translate!)

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Edit: Hopefully I'll find something better in the future, and will work on some missing phrases when I get the chance.
Editar: Espero encontrar algo mejor en el futuro y trabajaré en algunas frases que faltan cuando tenga la oportunidad.

 

[FaeWhisperer]

Site Updates: End of the Year and What to Expect~

Hey ya'll, just a friendly reminder that towards the end of the year, our web host service providers will be undergoing a major update. From Xenforo 2.2 to Xenforo 3. I am not too sure when the exact update will happen but I know it is projected to be at the end of this year, which is coming up very soon. So I just wanted to give ya'll a reminder and a heads up because more than likely, things on the website will be buggy. But rest assured that I will be on top of things if stuff happens to break! Don't forget if you see something that's not working properly, don't hesitate to shoot us (the admins/mods team) a message in the bug channel on our discord~! And for those who have not accepted the invitation yet, you can always PM either me or one of my staff members and we'll look into the issue asap.

Also keep in mind too that we run on a cloud base system, and they've been hella buggy recently so if anything happens, like website speed/performance ect. Unfortunately it's out of my control so I beg of you to be patient with it. I do hope that one day I can own my own self hosted system and whatnot and use that for the Mansion, but as of right now I am not that well versed in doing so. Plus, it costs wayyy too much for me to keep up with.

And before I end this, there are three side notes to mention:

1. I will be disabling the language chooser right now, until I can find something better for our website. I've been checking Xenforo's forums for an appropriate addon but it seems that perhaps we should wait until the Xenforo update, and then hopefully will find something noteworthy! Then we can add more languages too. But I will mention that I did find one of interest, but it mainly uses google translate to translate the whole page (which I'm sure that's what other websites do anyways.) I'll probably will have to wait until my next paycheck to get the addon though so I'll keep everyone updated!
2. The Mansion is now accepting donations! About two weeks ago I made a notice that would pop up on the forum's main page about it, but I figured I'd make a semi official post (unless I already did and forgot about it rip) Of course, these donations are completely optional and anything donated will be used to better the Mansion~ For some reason the donation button is hidden up top, which I have yet to fix lol. I was working on an widget (you know, those things you see on the right/left side of the forum? Aka who's online, forum statistics and whatnot) to showcase the donation functionality buttt it is fighting with me. Either way, the link to the donation page is here:
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   And the transactions are done through Paypal. At the moment I do not have any other payment providers that I'm working through but hopefully will have some in the not too distant future. And remember, anything is appreciated, and if you cannot donate that is totally okay, all I ask is to then spread the word about us so we can get more members
3. RP Mansion (Christmas) theme will be rebranding soon, but maybe I'll keep the red color. So far we have Purple, Green, and Blue. But perhaps I'll put a poll out on what new theme the color should be. So, look forward to that too!

So that's it for now, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and I hope to see you all in the upcoming new year too!

 

[FaeWhisperer]

Update 2/29/24

Hey ya'll! Just coming in with a quick update! The end of February is here and tomorrow or sometime next week, you should be seeing March's Monthly Newsletter. I apologize for missing Feb's but as we all can understand, life gets in the way and unfortunately it's such a new concept here that there is nothing in place to help my fellow admin @Knight_of_None to make one. Hopefully in the near future we can work something out so that it won't get missed. (That is, if we decide to keep the monthly newsletter lol)

Also, since today is Leap Day, there's a special badge for everyone who is online today or has been online today- And since leap day only happens every four years, this will be a one time only badge. So! I hope everyone enjoys the badge and have a wonderful rest of your day/night

Here's what that badge looks like btw:

Stand-alone image

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[Yukio Boreas]

Nice!

 

[Maxolotl]

:3

 

[FaeWhisperer]

Update 5/29/24

Hello once again to my fellow RP Mansion users - as we are coming to the end of May, I do not think I'll make a monthly newsletter again as not much has taken place since the last one. But, I will come in and post here that we have had troubles with our notification system. I will mention a few key points down below. These are the current additions or add-ons as they are called in our admin panel, that help improve functionality throughout the site and make life just a bit easier. Unfortunately we lost support for one of the addons as the developer is charging a lot of money for it - and until I am able to purchase it, hopefully nothing wrong goes with the old version in the meantime. I just tested it out and it seems to be working so far... Anyways, again, down below I will mention a few of our add-ons and what they do, and some suggestions that I've done to help in certain situations.

1. Websockets - What are they?
   • "This add-on eliminates the need to refresh the page to see new content or changes."
   • i.e. - if I have three tabs open with three separate threads, and I'm in tab #2 while tab #1 receives a reply, our server will automatically assume that you have 'read' that notification and the bell icon located at the top of the page will not show if a new notification was received, instead it will log it as 'read'. (it will still be in your notification log, it just won't show up as a [1] number to tell you if you have any new notifications)
   • I last updated this one from the same developer (thankfully it's still free) today -- and as the above mentioned, this is the most annoying feature I've seen, as there really is no way around it for the notifications, unless I disable the add-on and we'll have to go back to manually refreshing the page to see a new reply. I have not noticed this being an issue on mobile though. (More on mobile later)
2. Real-Time Threads - This is the one we lost support for
   • Essentially it shows the current activity in a thread, located above the text editor, it shows you who is currently typing in a thread.
   • This add-on uses the Websocket feature too, and is supposedly sending signals in between each. I've updated the pusher key for the websockets again after four months, because once in awhile we run into our notifications acting buggy again, which sucks, but if this is what works then it's what works.
3. Alert Improvements - This is from a different developer and I believe this impacts the first and second point in someway, as it was in the error log details.
   • "When events happen that affect individual users, they are alerted via this system. If you are using a supported device, alerts can be sent directly to the device as a push notification. As large volumes of alerts are generated, they are periodically pruned from the database."
   • The only issue I've had with this is when my bookmarked page on my iphone - the 'enable push notifications' option resets back as if I hadn't chose to enable them at all. This is under your account as 'preferences'- and double check to make sure that it is checked so you can receive push notifications- especially on mobile.
   • Also, when you do save it to your home screen, the icon shows this---
     See More

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   • But after re-enabling it, it seems to be directing push notifications back to my phone once again - so if notifications stop coming to my phone once more the best solution imo is to just double check that option is selected (again, which is annoying, but what isn't anymore lol)

So, I've also heard from another user @Kkjib that they were getting delayed notifications, as was I- which was new news to me, and I can only assume that it was because of the websockets and the direct connectivity to the website -- but looking at the pusher error log details it never has anything. So it really boggles my mind in what out of these three could be the problem, and I'm assuming it might be #3, but the developer hasn't issued an update since January of this year, so it's hard to say.

Lastly I will mention that we are on a cloudbase system and that that system was meant to undergo a huge update at the beginning of this year but they've pushed it off and are doing smaller updates instead, which in turn does break some add-ons but thankfully most developers are on top of these things and get the bugs fixed asap. It's just these three that I've noticed time and time again.

And remember, I appreciate feedback and if you see something weird / have something weird happen to you please let us know as soon as you can! By us I mean @Knight_of_None and @RedCoat -- they usually communicate with me outside of the Mansion if I'm not on the site, so they truly do help me in a ton of ways.

But, that's all for now, and I hope you have a good rest of your day/evening!

 

[FaeWhisperer]

8/22/24 -- Major Overhaul Coming to RP Mansion (At least, that's what I'm getting at from this update I'm reading over at our web hosting site)

Hey guys! Fae here - I know I've been on hiatus for quite a bit, but with my own chronic illnesses, life, work and major burnout getting in the way there just hasn't been a moment for me to actually come back on here. But, I've worked hard bringing life into the Mansion and making it what it's worth right now, and we're approaching our 2 year anniversary soon in November, so it means a lot to me. I came back on today to address some updates to the addons used here and check the error logs again, and surprise surprise - the updates to those addons (before I can even install them) require our Xenforo (aka look at the footer of the website) version to be 2.3, which is now available for us to download and update -- and will be automatically put into to effect Jan 8, 2025 anyway. And I'm over here holding onto all the customizations I've worked on certain page templates making RP Mansion look the way it does now, and reading what templates were affected in this update, I can only imagine the template nightmare I'll have to go through and fix. Not to mention some addons I've downloaded and that you're used to using for functionality will be integrated into this new 2.3 version of Xenforo -- they will become obsolete unfortunately and sadly that's how some upgrades tend to be.

So !

What I'm saying is,

RP Mansion may be forced to have a major makeover coming soon. Hopefully not too many things design wise will need to be changed!

Unless ya'll want something different, I'm open to ideas :3 I just know in the past once I got comfortable with a layout I always hated when things would change :/ without notice that is, but I definitely would love to hear back from everyone!

Until then, I'll try to push off the update as long as I am able to and unfortunately will not be able to update anything to 2.3 versions until we update our website to 2.3, so fingers crossed !