Topic: New Liquiron main site + Changelog

Much thanks to Roph for helping on the more technical things with the integration, and to Blodeuwedd for testing.

Liquiron now has an actual main site, only around 9 months late. 

Just click the "home" link at the top of the forums to go there. We will aim to post all the relevant metin2 news for you, and provide you a place to discuss freely

Currently while you may login to the site, unless you have admin privileges (for creating / editing news) you cannot do anything there yet. This could change in the future.

[edit] Changelogs below, if you notice bugs or weird stuff after recent changes, posting them is helpful 

April 16th Update:

Updated design a little, added the dragon graphic found inside KR's files. Increased contrast overall too. Didn't realise it might look that washed out until I browsed liquiron on my laptop.

Rounded corners too, though only Firefox, Chrome and Safari support them. IE users, stop using such a bad browser.

If things look broken, press Ctrl+F5 to force your browser to download the updated CSS.

Also, wrote a more relevant URL system. As you see every news posts title is a link to that post alone, and now the link actually means something. Example:

http://liquiron.com/7484-Metin2_SG_-_A_more_efficient_method_to_bypass_the_IP_Block_-_SG_Antiblock.html

If you still want the short link (http://liquiron.com/?p=7484) to share, it's "hidden" in the bullet next to the poster name.

April 26th:

Now only 10 news items on the front page instead of 20 (got probably too long..). Added a link to see more at the bottom, and then a link to the archive if still isn't enough

Metin2 Blog DE (semi-official german Metin2 Blog) now links to liquiron, and vice versa.

Also linked to Metinworld.ES, mostly spanish Metin2 fansite.

Huuuge changelog update lol. Most of it old irrelevant stuff.

21 April 2010
Permission system updates, now not only admins but also regular members given write privileges can edit/post news and upload.

01 May 2010
Static page system introduced, accessed directly by /?i= and via rewrite at /page/[ID]-[Name].html

04 May 2010
Static page list / link generator added to the admin panel. This pre-formats links into the rewritten /page/[ID]-[Name].html scheme, which should always be used.

06 May 2010
Added a comments system to the main site, for single paged news items. This displays the first 25 comments in a simple threaded mode similar to a forum thread. Good for getting a quick idea of the response to a news item without having to bother navigating to the thread.

08 May 2010
Added TipTip notifications to various items on the site. Static page lists in the site admin panel, news summaries in the archive

11 May 2010
Added the ability to truncate news if desired. If the news IS clipped, a link to view the whole item is automatically displayed. RSS feed also updated to show ONLY first entries of news posts (comments omitted).

13 May 2010
CSS Link colour changed to a rich blue, to bring the site in line with the forums. Makes links on the site easier to read

15 May 2010
Added previous/next links floated right into the news title headers when viewing the news indexes. Lets users quickly jump to the next / previous item. Something I found myself wanting.

16 May 2010
Added a watered down uploader, specifically for guild flags. All users have permissions to use it. The flag is forced to 16x12 and JPG. It is named with their ID+timestamp to ensure a unique ID. The user may include their guild flag alongside their posts. New char userbars included next to posts on the forum. Users can fill out information about their character in their forum profile and have it displayed next to their posts.

20 May 2010
First tests of custom sig generator. At the moment only displays like the char userbars on the forum, a little bland, not ready for release yet

21 May 2010
Spent the whole day rewriting/redesigning the signature generator. Now it's very stable, secure, gracefully handles errors, and saves their signature as a static image (rather than generated on each and every view). Users may generate a sig if they've filled out enough information. They may hotlink their sig anywhere, so that re-generating their sig updates it anywhere it's displayed (only 16KB or so, meh).

22 May 2010
Added the ability to actually include the user's own uploaded guild flag and embed it into their signature.

24 May 2010
Added "metin2" menu section to the site sidebar. To include static pages listed as tutorials and for downlaods and so on. Mirrored the installer exes for all the severs we follow. Getting the standalone UK/GFUS installers was a bitch.

26 May 2010
Added a session check into the signature generator to stop people tricking users into generating signatures that they don't want. Was never done, but now it's impossible anyway.

01 June 2010
Added test DB page, began plans for an array structure and so on.

09 June 2010
Added option into the image uploader to disable watermarking if the uploader desires.

12 June 2010
The uploader will now, if appropriate, generate 2 thumbnails. The first is the plain 300px wide, but now also a second 200px high one. This allows showing of multiple thumbnails inline with each other, preserving a consistent line height.

18 June 2010
Contact form added, submissions go through to a private thread on the forums. This way contact submissions reach all admins at once easily, much better than email.

19 June 2010
Updated contact form to allow anonymous submissions.

20 June 2010
Beginnings of a profile page system, containing information about their character and allowing them to insert their own page content.

21 June 2010
Added profile page center kind of thing, explains what they are, how to edit etc. Also a user's profile page link is automatically generated for them in the sidebar. Also added all remaining official servers to the site, for use in profile pages, custom sigs and so on. News item here.

24 June 2010
Custom database query to list newly updated profile pages, based on the custom page content being present. Listed in reverse by user ID.

26 June 2010
Added a more dynamic image to be displayed on the profile pages; now it is based on their class, gender and now level. A level 35 female mage will be shown in the level 34 mage armor, for example.

28 June 2010
Added a sort of "welcome" box to the top of the homepage. It explains what liquiron is and lists new posts as well was popular items. Only guests see the welcome part. The main content of the box is editable by admins.

01 July 2010
Rewrote the international information page to better reflect new services available. Got help with personal translation for almost every language

03 July 2010
Added PM links to the profile pages, also showing their liquiron username alongside, to help with identification and to lead back to their account.

13 July 2010
A huge re-write of every single function and page system to make the site more dynamic and efficient. Now everything runs in just a single query for the entire page.

17 July 2010
XML API Finished. This is absolutely pointless and nobody will use it, but I learned .

Currently it supports character info, based on the info users submit to their profiles. The example output for my profile: http://liquiron.com/?ext;format=xml;action=char;id=3

Profile page URL is generated and formatted (regexed) on the fly. If they have not filled in an IGN, it will fall back to their account name.

The "image" is the same that is displayed on character profile pages here on liquiron, it is determined from their class, gender and level.

The "guildflag"'s existence is validated first. A non-existent flag will be caught and replaced with the default question mark flag.

If certain attributes are not available (for example, they haven't filled in their level), default information is included, like "unknown" or "??". If a non-existent character is requested, the output will be blank. Considering sending some kind of error message instead.

18 July 2010

Reference API implementation completed. Simply takes a char ID and then fetches the data from liquiron, formatting it into an array tree. Example: http://metinworld.net/xml.php?charid=3. Metinworld.net is not on the same server as liquiron.com; it is fetching the data directly on request

27 July 2010

Wrote my own function to only retrieve what is needed for the news archive page instead of relying on SMF. Much more efficient; memory usage and execution time reduced by around 80%. You should notice that the archive loads much faster now

[edit] Also updated the image uploader to create additional 105px high thumbs for larger collections of inline images. You can see it in effect in this article.

28 July 2010
Fixed up timestamps on the news archive, as well as provided a total. Also added a new edit button for static pages (if the user is able to edit) up top.

01 August 2010
Fixed a bug in the API where some combinations of missing information would confuse the part I wrote to determine what char image to send. All fixed now, you cannot get a broken link image through the API anymore.

Also updated the reference implementation script to be a little more helpful to newbies. Maybe I'll release it sometime soon lol.

02 August 2010
Finished up tutorial page system. Similar to /page/, instead it's /tutorial/. Also created a new membergroup and permission check to allow regular users to edit tutorials in the future. The admin panel will also now list / format tutorial links in the proper way.

08 August 2010
Bug where thread replies when shown as comments on the main site weren't wordfiltered the same way they are as in threads.

14 August 2010

Wordfiltered custom content for profile pages. Dumb gold spam.

Changed the preview length for frontpage articles from 400 to 600 chars

Fixed image upload forms in the admin panel that weren't checking the watermark status or not

Regular, logged in users were seeing the admin link in the sidebar, apparently for a long time O_O Fixed it now.

Added tutorial moderation system, sort of a "tutorial mod panel". A new permission set and membergroup for tutorial mods. Lets a chosen user edit, post and manage tutorials. Mostly just formats the links for them.

Tweaked the uploader so that tutorial mods can now access it, offers watermarking and uploads to the same folder as news images, might change this later

Changed the way dates are displayed in the static page / tutorial lists to a more sane method

Sidebar now recognises tutorial mods and offers them the uploader and panel [edit] and now doesn't show admins both panels lol

Considering re-doing the comment system for the news that allows guests to post comments. Regular logged in users will be taken to a forum post form as normal, but guests will get a special simple form to add their thoughts without having to register or login. Unfortunately, they would have to pass a captcha to do so though.

15 August 2010
Fixed stuff I forgot to update for the older news page, read more links etc. Now behaves like the frontpage, just shows more items.

Also changed the "recent posts" thing on the main site; it always excluded the news board (to avoid redundancy), now it excludes the flaming boards too.

18 August 2010

Added a lightbox to the main site images. Try clicking a thumbnail in a news post

Also combined all local javascript into a single file.

21 August 2010

If a user had filled in custom profile content but their IGN is blank, the character profiles page would still include them in the "newest profiles" list. But since they don't have an IGN, there would be nothing to build the link from and so it failed. Fixed for now by simply replacing an empty IGN with "unknown". Eventually I'll have it also check that they have a valid IGN also to exclude them altogether.

30 August 2010

Small fix for opera browser. The way that SMF cuts off news items when returning a truncated preview is very dirty. If it cuts off linebreak, the resulting HTML outputted can be cut off / unclosed also. Gecko and Webkit (so firefox, chrome, safari) handle this ok, but opera simply strictly obeys the malformed tags and the layout can break pretty badly. Because of that, now if opera loads the frontpage or older news pages, it will receive the full length of news items for each one. Reported.



I've also noticed that after some recent tweaks, internet explorer is having some problems of its own. I'll write some extra CSS to get it to behave later :/

[edit] Ok, for now IE gets the uncut news too. It's having the same issue as opera. Though IE is shit, I'm hesitant to really blame opera and IE for this, rather SMF =|

September 2010 Updates

Added windows live alerts so readers can get notifications direct to MSN or their phone when something new is posted

Added a border around the main content container, looks much better I think. Also put a slight gradient on the headers.

Added a live server timezone page to help myself, writers and visitors keep track of what happens when. You should probably link to it when mentioning the time that some event might happen.

Changed the small version of the icon database. Now the viewer still sees large icons, but they're given small urls. This helps me and them to pick their icon easier.

Changed a certain easter egg for the main site from a boring text notice into an asteroids mini-game.

October 2010 Updates

Comment threads for news items on the main site now accommodate up to 100 replies. The old 25 limit actually got reached a few times. If 100 is surpassed, the reader is linked to read more in the respective thread, starting at the 100th post.

Added a guest comment system where guests may post "through" the shell liquironbot account. Works similar to the contact form. I'll probably add a simple form so that logged in users can directly comment also. That requires a little more work though.

Updated the profile fields and signature generator to be able to support 3 digit levels, but only those up to 120. Might limit the level to 99 still if the server is not Korea lol.

Wrote the ability for the signature generator to load in custom backgrounds, as passed in the URL by the site. If it doesn't exist, default to the ..default.

Updated the sig generator page to dynamically detect/offer new signature background choices to the user, as they are uploaded.

Fixed up a few spelling mistakes in various parts of page text around the site 

And now we're in the present.

November 2010 Updates

 - The logo has a facebookish home icon that appears when hovered over lol.

 - Updated the signature generator page so that the version of it that guests see is more user friendly. Example:


 - Guests are no longer pointlessly shown links inviting them to comment, but that only lead them to a post form which they can't access. Now a guest sees a link that takes them to the guest comment form.

 - Site admin and site mod panels now format/list special items in the same way the archive does, more speedy.

 - The forum now displays the sidebar, taken right from the main site.

 - Sig generator auto select of the bbcode when they click in there

 - At the site, CSS & JS is now loaded with the update ID on the end, to prevent browsers using cached copies after an update.

 - Updated footer

 - If a user from SG or any GF server generates a sig, a little help in how to use the sig on that server's forum (if that's what they're after) is shown.

December 2010 Updates

Liquironbot is no longer an admin account. The way the content is passed / posted through the account bypasses permissions checks anyway, and now users won't be able to use admin-restricted bbcodes (if they knew them ) in things like guest comments or contact form submissions.

Guests no longer see the link inviting them to comment but that ends up as a login form if they view a news item that doesn't have any comments yet.

Server timezone page updated to show every server's current time. Almost trippy watching the seconds all update together.

News archive now numbers the entries, and made the date more sane.

Sig generator page and guild flag page are now smarter, they recognize currently existing sigs/flags and offer you them in case you lost/forgot them.

Newly generated sig previews have garbage on the end of the URL, so the user's browser is forced to display their updated sig. Fix for this. Also bypasses the dilemma of offering their current sig and showing them their new one on the same page.

January 2011 Updates

Added (new style) epic armors, epic boots, new helmets, dragon claws and dragon scales into the icon db.

Logged in users can now comment directly on news items from an article page, in a similar way that guests could.

Setup Sphinx to index and provide search for all my SMF powered sites, which includes liquiron. See me fawning over it here

News archive now numbers the items.

Finally could be bothered to get rid of the black background on many of the icons in the db. They're there in the source TGAs. Boring.

If a user starts replying on a news item and then decides they want the smileys/bbcode stuff, they can now "go advanced" (somewhat like how vBulletin lets you) and take what they've already written to a proper post form.

For news items that have surpassed 100 replies, the "read more" now takes you directly to the 101st post instead of just the page that it was on. The notice also now appears above the comment form, makes more sense.

Source code for reference API implementation thing if anyone cares to use it. Doubt so, lol.

Finished additions to the "m2data" stuff, which was originally just the icondb. Now there are monster pics (almost 1k) and hi res pics of every weapon. Every image has three different resolution thumbnails, and BBCode to embed any combination is offered. Mob also supports search by ID (pointless for weapons really, only 3 pages worth). You can also link directly to a result (the search result number is a link to that result).

Sidebar's icondb link now instead goes to the m2data section.

Now all browsers receive full length news items for the homepage. Firefox 4 breaks layout on possible malformed line breaks coming from SMF. Hope they fix it in the next release

February 2011 Updates

Guest/User comments from the site would disable smileys for that post, with the problem persisting even if they edit it afterwards via the forum, fixed

Removed live alerts, Microsoft shut down the service

A guest comment from an IP that is included in a ban will now be rejected.

Finished more compact postbits. No more messy info floating about everywhere. The char info now shows all info including the server etc, laid out in the same way that sigs are.

Side note, can't believe I've made over 200 revisions to liquiron, lol. The site started off as a little 120 line 4KB script, now it's a little over 3,000 lines across 7 scripts nearing 150KB o_o

March 2011 Updates

Some extra maths on guest comments; some bots were getting past the recaptcha.

April 2011

Added "Did you know?" lines that appear randomly at the bottom of the site and forum

Updated icon db with new event items.

V1 Frozen due to work starting on Liquiron Version 2

July 2011

Liquiron Version 2 live, news post about it here. Can't even remember the number of changes and fixes aside from the new look. Most features required some editing/fixing to fit the new widths or colour scheme.

Added Player statistics page, aggregates all users' character data.

August 2011

Guest comments' titles aren't bolded in HTML anymore, but in bbcode with SMF handling it. Fix for quotes.

Footer changed to include a facebook widget and plug some of the tools behind the site.

News images now go into a /2011/ folder; planning to have year/month/ folders once 2012 rolls around.

Custom RSS feed for facebook, formatted properly for the mainsite instead of the forum.

Now guests can no longer comment on a news article if it has been over a month since it's been published. From this recommendation.

October 2011

Admin comments on news items (when viewed from the mainsite at least) now have a distinction. The title fades to blue on the right with an admin note.

Icondb updated again, mostly devil's catacomb related items added.

December 2011

If a user views the news archive for GFUS or UK, they'll be guided towards an archive of Gameforge news too, since many articles affect all GF servers and end up in that category.

Metin2blog.de link added into the sidebar. German only site, but liquiron gets a lot of German traffic and the site's owner is a nice guy

Added a rudimentary Wallpaper gallery. For whatever reason google thought liquiron was pretty relevant for Metin2 wallpapers even though there was no such section. So whatever, gotta keep google happy.

Updated the icon database with reindeer and xmas event related icons.

Started to work on a class suggestion tool. A score is tracked for each subclass based on answers given, and the highest scoring class gets recommended at the end.

January 2012

Class recommendation thing spits out some custom images, still needs more work.

Image uploading now stores into /year/month/ folders, new large/small watermarks reflecting the new Amaranth font too.

Project wonderful ad bidding added, this is a test to see if it's of any use. Mainly aimed at server owners. thread here.

XML API now includes the user's generated signature, if they have one attached to their account.

Player stats page now caches the results.

February 2012 Changes

Language files updated, more of the site relies on external language files now, but still not ready for translation yet.

Secret radio function accepts a boschi parameter, for his radio lol.

The Guild flag tool will now show the user any other guild flags that they have previously uploaded, if there are any.

Switchable notice bar can be turned on at the top of site pages, used for notices etc. First used to mention metin2blog.de's GM tournament livestream.

Footer changed around a little bit

Fixed robots.txt, don't even remember why it had those entries in it =/

Icondb updated, mostly valentines day items.

Comment display limit for news articles bumped from 100 to 500.