Geek Developers' Blog

All testers now have access
All who have applied for being beta testers now have access, over 1000 helpful! A big thank you to everyone! If you have filled in the application form but have not received the invite, please contact me.

Additional attachments now work
The BugDigger developers have been very helpful and added a workaround to limitations in JIRA. It is now possible to upload additional files with a report.

Reporting without BugDigger
Thanks to the workaround (it is on the server side), it is also possible to create reports and upload files without using the BugDigger plugin. It takes more time, gives us less information, but if you cannot install the plugin for some reason (using another browser, having a restricted computer) you can still create reports. How to do this is now added to the Instructions, see the end of that post.

Changes to Search
We have done changes to search, and working on more changes. We hope to release both Search and Advanced Search next week, so please wait with reports on Search until that time.

Search
The main Search bar now shows the current type you are searching for instead of the generic "search the geek" phrase.

Advanced Search
If you do a search on a type on the advanced page, and click on the tab to change to another type, the search will be repeated (sans options, only the search query) on the new type. Example: if you are searching on RPG Items for "test" and click on the RPG settings tab, it will reload the page searching for "test" on RPG Settings.

If you do not have the ajax search enabled (you can change it on My Geek > Account > Layout Settings), typing a string and then clicking on any type inside options, will take you to that advanced search page, and automatically perform the search.

If you DO have the ajax search:
- If you lose focus of the search, the term and results will simply be hidden, instead of destroyed. Clicking on the bar will show them again.
- If you perform a search and afterwards change the search type, it will now redo the search with the same term, for the new type.

Weekly focus
This week (from today until next Thursday, that is) we focus on testing GeekItem Creation. The update email accidentally listed Profile, Search and Advanced Search too, but please wait with reporting on those systems. Remember that what you do on the beta site is done also to the live site. If you create any new items this week, please create them on the beta site and verify that everything works.

GeekItem is the system that includes games, companies, people (such as designers and artists), weblinks, versions, Properties, Families, categories, podcasts, periodicals, honors (awards like SdJ), video game characters, walkthroughs and more.

In the menu, under Misc/Create, everything there are GeekItems that want to be created

Thanks for your help!

Some of the issues that were fixed during the last week. Please check, especially if you reported it.
GeekMail was broken at last week's release with the editor update. It was not possible to reply. Fixed.
GeekMod sidebar doesn't load. Fixed.
Errors when deleting geeklist items. Fixed.
Special characters look wrong when searching. Fixed.
Search box at the top is not intuitive. Many changes, fixed.
Search text does not appear in search box. Fixed.
Account: Option to buy avatar, overtext, badge, uberbadge, or adblock still present when they have already been bought. Fixed.
Can't edit personal information. Fixed.
VGG Character Versions unnamed on items contributions page. Fixed on both current and the beta site.
Overtext doesn't work. Fixed.
Patron 12 badge not showing. Fixed.
Editor tools not working. Fixed.
The flag mouseovers do not work. Fixed.
Emoticons in profile text are not appearing properly. Fixed.
Subtype inspector for Geekitems missing. Fixed.
Platform pages take a LONG time to load. Fixed.
Going to page 2 of geekmail seems to hang. Fixed.
Clicking a bucket nav item in certain ways gives an error. Fixed.
Create category frontpages. "Overview" added.

BETA SYSTEMS STATUS

Tested and complete
None

Tested, needs bugfix
Forums
GeekItems
GeekAccount
Front Page - Inc. customization
Image upload
GeekMod

Current testing
GeekItem Creation

Working
Profile
Search
Advanced Search
GeekLists
GeekItem Admin Queue
GeekItem Admin Tools
Subscriptions
GeekFeed
GeekMail
Blogs
Browse Page
Image Page
Video Page
File Page
Default Home
Wiki
Microbadge
Podcast
GeekGold (Give/Browse)
Tags (including browse/edit)
QuickBar
Collection (only board games)

Not working
Gone Cardboard
Collection Portability
GeekItem Accelerator
Homepage Banner Rotator
Plays
Flag/User Browser
eBay
Guilds
Trades
Polls
GeekBuddies
Publisher Sorted Geeklist
Marketplace
GeekExchange
GeekAuctions
GeekCurrent
GeekChat
GeekQuestions

Changing Domains
If you want to change domains you click on the images on the footer of the page, the URL won’t change but until you do something to change again you should still be on the new domain.

New Global Forums
Although there are three “domains” to the geek, in the end it is only one big site, instead of a simple network of sites. In face of that there has been a change to the organization of the forums. The old GeekDo News got some new friends, and they are now visible on the Forum list under “Global Forums”. The new forums are:
- How to Geek;
- Geek Bugs;
- Geek Suggestions;
- Complaints Department;
- RSP;
- Spam;
- Testing;

When we launch (but not before as this change would affect the live site as well) threads that are now on the equivalent domain forums (for Geek Bugs it would BGG Bugs, RPGG Bugs, etc) will be moved to the Global Forum. Also, a new forum, again only on launch, will be added to each domain called “Domain Discussion”. This forum will be a catch-all type to encompass domain specific bugs, suggestions and how-tos. These will become rarer as time pass, so it should be easy to manage only one. The Off-Topic forums (Arcade, Chit Chat and Tavern) will be kept separated and will be moved from the Everything Else header to the DOMAIN Related header. We have not decided on the Creative Fodder yet.

Empty pages
Some pages, especially things that are sorted by Hot might appear empty the first time you check. If you recheck it after about 5 mins it should show correctly. This is because you might hit a cache that is not created yet. And after the first hit it is created.

Other known issues
Geeklists are getting reworked. The functionality is there, it works, but it will be changed in layout.

The customization has changed completely. You can click on customization on the bottom of the navigation panel and change what block of information to show, and edit the details of each one.

Checking your geekmail or a subscription might not correctly mark it as read, so there might be a difference between the beta and the live site.

Image caches have not been regenerated. This means that for example the hotness images look very odd.

The laurel image on the ranks is a placeholder.

If you change the page or filter on the hotness and hit the back button it opens the hotness on the center bucket.

The “Next Unread Item” might hit an error page. That is because some of the subscription types have not been converted yet, so if you hit one of those it won’t work.

The social web bucket is not there.

The recent activity is not styled yet.

Most of your old quickbar links should be converted, although there is a bug where the pages are shifted 1 to the right (so your first page is now page 2). They are not synced with the live site and will be converted again before release.

The site loads slow from time to time.