View Topic

I haven't forgotten, I just haven't had a chance to look at it yet.

Okay I was just making sure, seeing as how you never said anything about it...

The Buddylist Update, Part 2

The buddy page has been updated once again, this time to slightly change the concept of the buddy list. Now, you can follow people and people can follow you, but if you follow someone AND they follow you they will become your friend. Besides allowing you to see who you have followed back and who you have not, this concept of friends will be carried further in future updates...for example, your friends may have access to portions of your profile that mere followers will not have.

I guess I'm letting it out of the bag that a profile privacy update is coming soon, at least.

I see your big plan now, you will develop us until such point that Facebook notices your creation. You will then sell us for... at least 2.4 billion dollars (I'd say) and then wander off, spending that money on things that makes IRS agents blush when they search for signs of tax evasion or other illegalities (wow, that's a word? really?)

._. I don't want to move to Facebook. Please don't sell us.

That would certainly be an interesting route to take...

I wouldn't mind at least 2.4 billion dollars.

We already discussed the idea of a Wintbook.

lol, to be honest, I would like to see Wintreath go in an even more personal direction, if that's even possible...but since I understand that not everyone will want to be up close and personal with everyone that reads their profile (which at the moment can be literally anyone, even guests), I would like to give people the ability to better control who they get close with. At the same time, I've never really liked where you had to send people friend requests and then have them confirmed...I think this system feels more casual.

In any case, there's only a few more updates until the user profile expansion is complete. After that, it's the roleplay expansion, which is coming along really nicely in the design/thinking-out phase.

The Contact Privacy Update
When adding a contact to your profile, you can now choose who can see the contact in your profile. The default setting will be members only, but you can modify this to one of the following options:

Everyone: All users and guests can see this contact.
Members Only: Only people logged into an account can see this contact.
Friends Only: Only your friends can see this contact.

As an example, I added a contact to my Facebook for my friends, which other groups shouldn't be able to see. Just a reminder from the last update, my friends would be people who I have added and who have added me.

Also fixed a few minor things with the skin...for example, the contact header appearing even if there weren't any contacts to show.

More Forum Changes
I made some additional forum changes...the RP area is now its own separate category on the main page, and the Civil Service has been renamed The Guilds. The guilds will house all the guilds (except the RP guild, at their request), and eventually will be set up so each guild subforum can be private or public, with private guilds being able to have a sign-up topic in the main area.

In the future, the guilds will also likely be merged with Frosthold Castle. While Frosthold Castle used to be a place for announcements and discussion from the Monarchy and Cabinet, we've been using the Announcements forum and the Citizens' Platform for those in the last year, so Frosthold Castle has fallen a bit into disuse.

Edit: Also removed the announcement box...it hadn't been updated in some time, in spite of many people being able to do so...so it was really more of a hindrance than a help.

Subforum Changes
As discussed here, on the forum front page subforums now display in columns instead of one long list with each subforum separated by a comma. I really like how this came out and how much easier it is to tell what the subforums are...for the first time in our history this opens the door to us having more subforums without them becoming lost in everything on the page, so to speak.

Can you please at least add an option to change it back for lower resolution screens so this way I don't have to disable access to certain features and areas of the forum in order to be able to have a slightly decent looking forum page so I don't have one column?

If I recall, I did this at several points in the past, including keeping the old forum index design, but at this point I'd rather spend my time coding new things than maintaining old ones. The recommended fix for lower resolutions is to disable the sidebar...it only has a donation link, the government listing, and the shoutbox (which has never been terribly active).

In any case...

Another Forum Layout Change
The Guilds and Frosthold Castle have been merged...this puts the entire Executive in one area. I've also updated a lot of the subforum names, so their purpose is hopefully clearer to people that are browsing through them.

Header Updates
I've rewritten the header code so that it uses floating divs instead of a table...the table format was clunky to work with and didn't look nice on smaller screens, but the current header should look decent on resolutions as small as 890 pixels wide. While I was at it, I moved the Steam Group and Facebook out of the menus and gave them their own icon links, and I also removed the Gaming menu...Civ V hasn't been a thing for a while, and Minecraft can now be easily found in the forums.

I think this looks much better

Thank you! I'm glad that you like the changes.