21 Aug, 2015, Davion wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 1
So after many years in the making, as you all can see there's finally a new MudBytes!

I know it didn't exactly go the timeline I had hoped, but I had to write a new backend and UI! I like to think it's functional! If you want any of your old stuff, you can still get it at http://live.mudbytes.net I'll probably leave that part of the site up for awhile. I haven't completely moved everything over (you'll notice the wiki is still very blank). I have managed to move over all the topics, posts, muds!


There's a few new things! You'll notice that scrolling is now infinite. The front page, mud list, comments, topics, pastes and file lists.
Unread comments are now tracked more accurately. With javascript enabled, you'll notice posts fade as they become read. So if you stop reading after a comment, even if the entire page has loaded, it wont mark as read if it hasn't scrolled past your screen.

The MUD list got the biggest overhaul. They get a whole bunch of bells and whistles to go with the new listing.

There's a new top 10 listing here on mudbytes. The ranking is based of how active your members are on MudBytes within the last 30 days. The 1st of every month, the rankings will be recalculated!

If for whatever reason you can't login, you can email me at davionkalhen@gmail.com and I'll try to get it fixed for you right away! Everyone will have to reset their passwords.

Enjoy and report bugs please!

Thanks,
Davion
21 Aug, 2015, kiasyn wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
holy moly
21 Aug, 2015, arholly wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
kiasyn said:
holy moly

That pretty accurately sums it up. It's a huge change. Not bad, just will definitely take getting used too.

I guess one thing to request is to be able to remove mud's from the listing. My Project Twilight mud is no longer up and I cannot find a way to de-list it.
21 Aug, 2015, Davion wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
arholly said:
kiasyn said:
holy moly

That pretty accurately sums it up. It's a huge change. Not bad, just will definitely take getting used too.

I guess one thing to request is to be able to remove mud's from the listing. My Project Twilight mud is no longer up and I cannot find a way to de-list it.


It's a lot less of a shock because I've been using this version of the site for a few months now. There's a few things I miss, but further updates will likely to be to restore features that were lost. One so unfortunate one is seeing which posts are unread on the front page. Because what you see on the front page is essentially a feed of a lot of things, passing permissions and readmarkers are tricky, so by default any forum with a rule on it will not show up on the front page. It will show up under mudbytes.net/forum because those are direct comment objects.

I've removed your listing. Eventually the spider will clean up muds that it can't connect too. I've also tweaked the site slightly so that the top 10 MUDs will only be displayed if their acceptance status is set to open. So if you don't want to show up on the top 10 just switch off your MUD listing. By default every MUD is open, and anyone can join them and use their forums.
21 Aug, 2015, Davion wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Also just a side note. On top of getting your own set of forums with a Mud Listing, the play now button will direct you to mudportal.com! surprise
21 Aug, 2015, Skol wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Davion said:
Also just a side note. On top of getting your own set of forums with a Mud Listing, the play now button will direct you to mudportal.com! surprise


Davion, trying to set my user icon and failing… is there a size/format req I'm missing?
I tried gif/jpg and png.

Thanks, looks great!
- Dave.
21 Aug, 2015, Davion wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Skol said:
Davion said:
Also just a side note. On top of getting your own set of forums with a Mud Listing, the play now button will direct you to mudportal.com! surprise


Davion, trying to set my user icon and failing… is there a size/format req I'm missing?
I tried gif/jpg and png.

Thanks, looks great!
- Dave.


Are you clicking the radio button next to upload avatar? It needs that so it knows which one of those 4 to use when saving.
21 Aug, 2015, Tijer wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Davion said:
Skol said:
Davion said:
Also just a side note. On top of getting your own set of forums with a Mud Listing, the play now button will direct you to mudportal.com! surprise


Davion, trying to set my user icon and failing… is there a size/format req I'm missing?
I tried gif/jpg and png.

Thanks, looks great!
- Dave.


Are you clicking the radio button next to upload avatar? It needs that so it knows which one of those 4 to use when saving.


Liking the updates.. but is there any chance of the actual text on the page being made smaller?…
21 Aug, 2015, Davion wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Tijer said:
Liking the updates.. but is there any chance of the actual text on the page being made smaller?…


You'll have to zoom out for now. I believe the base font is 14 tho. Can't get much smaller.


Also, you should be able to update your Mud Listing banners now.
21 Aug, 2015, Davion wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Skol said:
Davion said:
Also just a side note. On top of getting your own set of forums with a Mud Listing, the play now button will direct you to mudportal.com! surprise


Davion, trying to set my user icon and failing… is there a size/format req I'm missing?
I tried gif/jpg and png.

Thanks, looks great!
- Dave.


Ok, it should work now. They were still trying to put them in a directory that shouldn't be modified. I got away with it because it was in development for so long! Should be good to go now.
22 Aug, 2015, Tyche wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
The Files section is mystifying, mostly because it went from heirarchical to tags. It looks like directory names became tags.
While that might be useful, it is going to require quite a bit of fixing.
That said, while I can find the old TeensyMud 2.10.1 (via the top DL list), I can't find TeensyMud 3.0 or the associated projects.
The tag "Teensy" only appears when you look at TeensyMud 2.10.1 but when you click it it goes back to the main list.
22 Aug, 2015, Rhien wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
The Files section is mystifying, mostly because it went from heirarchical to tags. It looks like directory names became tags.
While that might be useful, it is going to require quite a bit of fixing.
That said, while I can find the old TeensyMud 2.10.1 (via the top DL list), I can't find TeensyMud 3.0 or the associated projects.
The tag "Teensy" only appears when you look at TeensyMud 2.10.1 but when you click it it goes back to the main list.


I agree with this, it's a little difficult to find things with the tags (I like the tags, but I would also like the option of the hierarchical view). With muds the hierarchical view becomes useful when finding other derivative code bases (e.g. Diku has like slew of ancestors and you can reasonably assume that if you're looking at RoT that it will be very similar to Rom, when you're looking for code that might already be written this is handy).

That said, I highly enjoy this site. Thank you to whoever is keeping it up, hats off to you.
22 Aug, 2015, arholly wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
I don't know if you know this, but from the home screen, because of the number of messages it considers I've not read, I can never scroll to the bottom and see the ad's or whatever is in the footer there.

Edit: The random picks to clarify.
22 Aug, 2015, arholly wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
The other thing I miss is seeing who is actually on right now.
22 Aug, 2015, Davion wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
arholly said:
I don't know if you know this, but from the home screen, because of the number of messages it considers I've not read, I can never scroll to the bottom and see the ad's or whatever is in the footer there.

Edit: The random picks to clarify.

Go slow? There's a big box that you gotta scroll by before it kicks in. Also, that's not based on what posts you haven't read, that's an activity feed of the site. It's the same for everyone. It includes all public activity on the site. mudbytes.net/forum is comment/topic specific. It keeps scrolling because it'll get pretty busy.

arholly said:
The other thing I miss is seeing who is actually on right now.


I do too! Feel's so lonely sure. I'm working on that one.
22 Aug, 2015, arholly wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Wow, totally missed the going slow thing. Thanks.
22 Aug, 2015, Davion wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
The Files section is mystifying, mostly because it went from heirarchical to tags. It looks like directory names became tags.
While that might be useful, it is going to require quite a bit of fixing.
That said, while I can find the old TeensyMud 2.10.1 (via the top DL list), I can't find TeensyMud 3.0 or the associated projects.
The tag "Teensy" only appears when you look at TeensyMud 2.10.1 but when you click it it goes back to the main list.


There should be everything now. I lowered the threshold.
22 Aug, 2015, Tyche wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Davion said:
There should be everything now. I lowered the threshold.

It looks better. I can't figure out how to work the search box though.
22 Aug, 2015, khyldes wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Okay so being that I'm a web developer/designer by trade, I'm going to throw some constructive criticism out there. This isn't meant to trash anyones work, etc. I appreciate when someone takes the time to improve something, especially when they're doing it for free, for the community.

Pixel Perfection & Responsiveness

A lot of the content areas are not consistent in their sizing, because it appears you're fighting with Bootstrap rather then letting it do it's magic. Add some padding to all of your containers, to help separate the content from the edges of the screen. Adjust your font sizes using em's or rem's, so they scale in a responsive manner. Heading styles could also use some em/rem treatment as well in how they degrade. Right now all text elements are huge.

Look into being consistent with your design choices. Some elements have borders, some don't. Some content is displayed as list blocks, some aren't. If you want to use the list blocks, maybe adjust the border radius of your lists so things don't look like stacked bubbles (this will help the visual elements to come together). An example is the left sidebar in contrast to the right content area.

User Experience

Button styles could use some work. The site is taking on a flat design, but the buttons still have the old bubble-esque feel.

The WYSIWYG editor controls need some padding and layout modifications.

Finally the bread and butter of this site, the files section, needs to go back to its hierarchal roots. Tags are nice, but they shouldn't be used as a primary form of navigation.

Accessibility standards seem to have been overlooked.

Finally the infinite scroll feature prevents the footer from ever being viewable and your Random Picks section won't ever get the traffic it deserves. Disable it, or allow a control to load more content.

I think you're on the right track here and I applaud what you've accomplished, I just hope you take the time to refine some things.
23 Aug, 2015, quixadhal wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 1
One slight bug (or missing feature) report to add… I typical use the site from the recent activity page/sidebar, and it would be nice to have comment anchors as the primary target when clicking on something in the activity feed.

Currently, it always takes you to the root of the post. With infinite scrolling and some of the epic threads (*ahem*) we get on occasion, my poor mouse wheel will wear out having to scroll down to comment #503. :)
0.0/102