Aelyria Update 3.0.4
PATCH NOTES :: AUGUST 28, 2008
General
Today's Aelyria Update featured numerous bug fixes, several major new site featuers, and task progress based directly upon user feedback. Users who regularly participate in our User Surveys, or who help out in our
Projects center will be able to assist us in identifying and prioritizing new features that are feedback driven. Aelyria is your community, and if you have any ideas or suggestions on how to improve it, please feel free to share those thoughts. With that said, on with today's patch notes!
SUMMARY- Aelyria Magazine
- Personal Sticky Threads
- User Albums Increased
- Feedback Forum
- Media Embedding in Blogs, Guilds
- Companions FAQ Updated
- Forum Software Update
- Links Directorate Updated
Aelyria Magazine
A new feature to Aelyria announced during the last patch has been undergoing considerable testing in the past few weeks: the Aelyria Magazine. Aelyria Magazine is a system that will enable our subcommunities (such as cities, guilds, and teams) to create periodicals and journals and publish articles and issues for them. This is a huge feature, with tons of settings and a great deal of customization. It's still in the testing phases, but I put up a demonstration of the sorts of things we can do with the Aelyria Magazine up at
The Chronicle. Soon, I will be publishing documentation in our FAQs on how to use the Aelyria Magazine, how communities can get their own magazines and how editors can begin publishing articles and creating issues. It is my hope that active cities, diverse teams, and energetic guilds of players will be able to start up their own magazines and be able to share them across the Aelyria spectrum. Expect news to have a central portal that features our magazines and Herald articles all in a single place. Feedback is most welcome!
Personal Sticky Threads
A new feature for
Companions, subscribers (and moderators) can now sticky threads in forums that they visit. Using a "Personal Sticky" sticks a thread at the top of the list of threads, and is denoted by a turquoise sticky thread icon (
), distinguishable from staff sticky threads (
). Personal Sticky threads can be stuck/unstuck using the "Thread Tools" pull-down menu at the top of the page when you are reading a thread. Personal Stickies are a great way to organize information that matters to you, personally, by helping pull up threads that you want to keep an eye on, or just threads that help you play and participate in Aelyria more easily.
User Albums
All users should now have access to
User Albums, personal storage areas for images intended for use in Aelyria. The User Albums were a feature that was introduced back in December, and it gives users the ability to upload and store graphics that they might use with profiles and posts. I have increased the quotas and limits for User Album use as follows:
- Players (and Level 1 Contributors) - 100 Pictures.
- Moderators (and Level 2 Contributors) - 1,000 Pictures.
- Companions (and Level 3 Contributors) - 10,000 Pictures.
User Albums are a prerequisite for decorating your profile and attaching images to
Guilds. However, not all users know that they have User Albums, so hopefully this announcement can publicize their availability to eveyrone now. As usual, our Companions receive the highest quotas for use.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALBUMS AND GALLERY
There has been some confusion regarding the use of User Albums and the
Art Gallery, so I wanted to clear some of that up. The Aelyria Art Gallery is intended for
original artwork, music, and photographs that are specifically related to the Aelyria community (Aelyria creative content, Aelyria users, Aelyria storylines, etc.). You should have created, or own the rights to, anything that you upload to the Art Gallery, because this is a public space where people can show off their creations and their artwork. The User Albums, on the other hand, is a private/personal storage area for any images -- things like interface artwork (titles, beautification images, background art, etc.) that you later insert into your posts or profiles, but that wouldn't be suitable for public comment ordinarily. This is just a suggested use, and there's no right or wrong way to use our resources; however, I wanted to put out this distinction as a way we can keep our graphic materials more easily organized. Let me know what you think.
Feedback Forum
[
FEEDBACK]
Sharing feedback is like giving a free gift with no strings attached: you're providing valuable advice and perspectives on how you feel that Aelyria can be made better, stronger, more responsive, and user-friendly. I am pleased to announce that I am launching a new
Feedback Forum, an experiment designed to encourage users to give feedback about Aelyria. You can post comments, suggestions, and concerns, and even make them Anonymous if you would like. Aelyria belongs to everyone, and anyone should be able to have the opportunity to share their views on how our site can be made more efficient and our game improved. The Player Team and I will be monitoring the Feedback Forum over the next few weeks and then, based upon its use, making a determination on whether we should keep using it, or find another avenue for encouraging our users to submit feedback. To reflect the new Feedback forum, the "Feedback" link on the bottom of all pages now points to it. Several things to note:
Media Embedding
UPDATE 2.0.2 -
WHAT IS IT?
Our Media Embedding tool -- which basically embeds rich media music, videos, images, or books from sites like YouTube, Google, Amazon, etc. -- has been updated to correct some minor bugs, and, more importantly, support Guilds messages and Blogs. Posters can now automatically embed their media into Blogs and Guilds as well as in their posts (as was previously possible) just by typing out the complete URL of the resource that they want to include (no other bbcodes or markups required), and it will be embedded into their submitted content. Here's an example of the embedded song "You and Me", the official theme to the 2008 Beijing Olympics:
Companions FAQ Updated
[Read the
Companions FAQ]
Subscribers to our
Circle of Companions program now have an expanded supplemental that outlines some of the most frequently asked questions about using your account, controlling your subscription, and making the most of the growing list of Companions-only exclusive subscriber benefits and features at Aelyria. Like our other Frequently Asked Questions areas, we will be making ongoing additions and improvements to this area of our site so that Companions can always have updated information. Feel free to check it out and let us know how we're doing.
Forum Software Update
VERSION 3.7.3
Our forums software was updated to the latest release, containing a number of bug fixes. Additionally, a major change has been made to prevent users from setting their password to their username. In this release, users will no longer be allowed to set their username and passwords to the same value. Users who have already had a password that is the same as their username have been forced to change their password, and their passwords have been reset with details sent to their last registered e-mail on file. There were several hundred users who were affected by this (though most of them were not active); if you find that you cannot login to your account, feel free to use the
Reset Password link. In addition, several site enhancements to take advantage of the opcode and varcache speed boost I performed a couple of weeks ago have been implemented; most users may notice some more modest speed and improvement performance gains.
Links Directory Updated
Version 3.0 Release 1
We've updated our
Links Directory software to the latest version from the software developer, and among the features which have been added are RSS Feeds and RSS Subscriptions to Links, Link Categories, and Link Updates, faster optimization, inline moderation, AJAX Functionality for instant voting, Suspended Links replaced by Soft-Deleted Links, Link Preview System for submitted items, Category Icons, Status Reports on Link Use and Cross-Site Linking, MySQL Fulltext Searching of Links and the Link Database, Custom Fields, a "Heart" Favorite Link indicator, and numerous new settings and customizations for users. If you are a fan of our Links Directory, be sure to check out the improvements.
Aelyria Update 3.0.4
Linear Mode
