Trovesaurus Development Diary - January 2018

February 2, 2018 by

Etaew

I've been working hard this month to bring about a long list of site performance, functionality and style tweaks. Find out all about them below.

Last month our featured site icon was Atronos, and this month we have little sage.

Passphrase Login

You can now login via character name and passphrase. This is set on the Account Security page of your profile.

This is for users who don't wish to wait for emails to login, but please note that it is only available to registered and activated accounts via email. You are still able to login via email at any point.

Guest Settings

Users who are not logged in can now change their site language and theme.

Console Rewards

Added support for providing rewards to other platforms (not just PC / ALL)
Please note that the other options are XBOX and PS4-EU and PS4-NA.
Rewards section now displays a condensed view, with context colours and direct claim buttons

Added a side box to the rewards page letting you know the latest arrivals in the rewards section.

Characters Tool

Added a Characters section to the user profile, you can optionally add information about your characters styles and background. This makes it easier to share your designs.

Fields:

Name
Title
Class
(Optional) banner image, replaces above
Short Description
Long Description
Head
Hair
Costume
Face
Weapon
Hat
Art lookup

For example take a look at mine: https://trovesaurus.com/user=1/etaew/characters

Modders

Attempted to clear up the view mod page

Split by tabs for Info / Downloads / Comments / Images / Likes
Info boxes and buttons moved to the sidebar on the right
Image moved to the top of the page
Short description moved to the top of the page, capped at 200px high (there is a longer text field folks)

Mod files are now pinned to the top of the mods page.

These files can be edited to include a separate description, what they replace, or even their own image, use the edit button on the downloads tab.

Other

Added new calendar sections for
- Mod Focus (month long)
- Mod Contest (anything else)
Added a like button further up the mod pages
mimic chest parts now import correct info into the modinfo tab, this was due to an awkward C_C prefix being similar to mimic_chaos
Collection pages now have a button to link to blueprints on the info sidebar
Temporarily lowered the modder requirement to have another 3 modders like their work, instead of 5, until we have more flagged modders
Animations page now allows grouping by type
Modders who now reach the criteria can now press a button to force the site to recognise them without uploading another mod, this is found on the new modders sidebar on the modders page
To help prevent misuse of the looking for artist / modder features, these are now only useable by people with the artist or modder ranks
Mods will now once again respect the featured image field, this allows you to set a url for the large image of a mod, please note that this image wont be used on the thumbnails
By default the modders page shows active modders (seen in the last 30 days), added a new button to view all modders
Marking used codes in the Code Vault no longer triggers a page refresh, making it easier to mark multiple codes as used
Fixed an amusing issue where saving a mod with a forum url took you to the forums after it saved
Fixed an issue preventing the mod likes counters from being updated (cache only - noticable in the modders page)

Artists

Contest entry sidebox now includes entry status and how to rectify it

Added an upload form to existing art so the artists can submit minor corrections, this should not be used for redraws, all requests are subject to approval by moderators

Trending art can now be viewed as a box on the side of the gallery

To help clean up the long list of contests we now only show active contests on the sidebar. To view older contests press Show Finished.

Other:

The rest of the art fields now handle non latin characters
Art Discord announcements now only use the first paragraph of the description
Fixed an incorrect link from arts page to category it was assigned
Art page now uses a panel, the title and author are shown at the top and the relation to the trove is shown at the bottom
To help prevent confusion, relation to trove warning for art contests are now displayed next to the relation to trove field, when the warning is showing the background of the art entry will turn red to match the preview pages, also added a quick button next to the warning to edit
Art large box has received an appearance update, it now uses a footer, and less awkward stacking of author / like buttons
View count is now displayed on art, please note that it will only display views since it started being tracked
To help prevent misuse of the looking for artist / modder features, these are now only useable by people with the artist or modder ranks
Decreased the amount of content above the image on art pages
Artists are now notified when their trovesaurus not on their art is set or updated
Fixed an issue where contest participation wasn't shown on the gallery page correctly
Art upload system now is unified in code with other image upload parts of the site, it now stores more meta data like dimensions and filesize.
Added a Character Generator page to give art ideas, these generate random biome, class and equipment.
Art uploads now require at least 200x200 px
Art with no metadata stored will hide those empty fields
Art that is successfully entered into a contest now shows the contest details on the right
By default the artists page shows active artists (seen in the last 30 days), added a new button to view all artists
Switched the editors of art relation to trove and description from full editor to light, this means less clutter on the box and the field will auto expand in height
Condensed the edit art form, removed option to transfer owner to another user (we don't need it anymore)
Updated the style of the art boxes (activity pages) and [artbox] tags
Added an ownership declaration to the art submission form, as well as grouped up the fields on the form some more

DatabaseTop ^

Updated the classes index so it uses a less dated style and looks less odd on a dark theme, replaced the classes sidebar to use panels instead of wells and made the art previews more consistant with site styles
internal, added a way to remove wierd update requests (item and collection pages)
re-added link to subclasses to the nav menu
Updated the style of the packs page
Fixed an issue where specific collection filters did not apply unless a page number was specified
Hair styles are no longer duplicated per class
Added support for username designer credit in styles and fixed a case where designer credit with , as a seperator would fall over
Fixed an issue with tooltip rendering where collections linked to an item which generated its own tooltip made it look weird
Restored the ability to optionally filter styles by a group as well as type

GeneralTop ^

Fixed the dev tracker pagination when filtering by a specific developer
Custom profile image, banner and stream banner for gold features no longer accepts invalid urls (not direct images)
Fixed an issue where the dev tracker couldn't filter by an author with a space in their name, looking at you din othar
Added new developers to stalk, Brasse and Tynaut
News dropdown menu now has icons and added a new page for Trove Developers
The Trove developers page gives an overview of the ones who interact with the community, and highlights things we have done with them, like the cute snek, and interviews
Only blog images use full width previews now, the other site announcements we made used small logos which looked odd zoomed in
Likes are no longer shown in the user activity feed, art pages and mod boxes are now in the site standard style
Boxes on the sidebar of the user page now use panels instead of wells
Condensed the image upload form, removed the optional title field
Header of pages now use a new source field to display the source of the article
Changed the way we create pages internally
Removed country flag, forums link and twitter link from the user profile as seperate buttons, they are now part of the user role labels
Added 15 translation slots for user profile headers and buttons
Added a bunch of translations for mod pages
Added support for custom troxel links on collect pages, this is a tool that our team can use to add links to items that are missing on Troxel
Giveaway pages are now open to translation
Migrated a number of users with language packs which had less progress than the accepted ones
Removed a number of language packs with very few translations
Updated the mod announce background task to be less performance intensive, it was responsible for some occasional site slowdown taking 20s to process (down to 0.02s now)
Removed the option to reply to Trovesaurus private message notification emails
You should be able to use non latin characters in site mail now
The giveaway results mail now gives information on account linking for console users
Because I'm not that lame, ads are no longer shown on the 404 error pages or login pages
Emails are now sent out with utf8 charset
Build pages now hide the subclass section when no subclass has been selected
Accepted a Russian language pack from Vitalius
Updated the edit tags form to be more condensed
Fixed an issue where links on the navbar -> followed users, and the titles in the art idea generator looked horribly blurry on a white theme
To address the issue for some acceptable large tooltips not being able to render proper we have changed the following:
- Increased character allowance for user tooltips from 500 characters to 1000 before they are stripped
- Added two passes of newline to breaks over the stripped results to add paragraph like spaces
- Added information for the character count in the edit profile field
Fixed the top pagination for page search results
Tweaked the top navigation to be a little less ugly on light / dark

Support

Trovesaurus is supported by Adverts and Trovesaurus Gold, you can support the development of the site by not blocking adverts or purchasing Trovesaurus Gold. Gold features include the ability to hide adverts and feature livestreams, and refer-a-friend codes.