PM Forwarding is now live. You can now add new people to a PM thread where you see fit.
To do so, simply click to view a PM thread. At the bottom of the thread is the reply form. In the recipients field above the subject field, simply click the field and enter the name of the user you wish to add to the thread. Then click submit.
The new user will be added to the thread and will have full access to the entire thread as well as the ability to reply.
PM News: Hey guys - just a heads up to let you know that we just pushed out some new PM code that is much more stable and scalable.
When we launched the GiantBomb redesign, we made a few (what we thought were optimizations) changes to the PM inbox and outbox logic in an effort to speed them up. We launched GB, everything was a-ok so we assumed the changes that were made were good.
Turns out, with larger data sets, as found on ComicVine (which is about a year older than GB), this new logic crapped the bed. So we had to take PMs on ComicVine down until we could get a fix out.
Fixed the problem over the weekend, but had to do a bunch of data migration/testing to make sure all of the data was consistent in the new system. Anyway, we just pushed the new PM code out this afternoon on CV and about 20 minutes ago on GB..... everything should be back to normal now.
New PM Features: Since the main goal was to get CV up and running asap, we deferred the new features until later this week. They are (in no particular order):
* PM Forwarding = The ability to forward a PM thread on to one or more people.
* PM Delete Forever = The ability to completely remove yourself from a PM thread.
* PM Search = The ability to search your PM inbox/outbox (this prolly wont happen for awhile)
* PM Blast = The ability for staff to kick important notification emails out to the entire userbase. This will help us announce events, downtimes, etc....
* Smarter Auto-Completer = The new auto-completer will search your friends and staff first before it moves on to other users in the system.
* Next / Back Functionality = The ability to move fwd and backwards between PMs without having to go back to your inbox.
Quick heads up as to what the engineers have been working on the past week or so.
Dave: Completely re-styled ComicVine and it looks absolutely amazing. He's going to take some time now and give AnimeVice the new GB treatment as well. On the side, he'll be helping me fix lists -- any ideas on what you guys want to see out of the list feature, pls send them our way!
Andy: New back-end queuing and messaging system..... this will allows us to do a lot the heavy lifting in outside processes - hopefully speeding up performance across the sites. He's also been improving the API for our new iPhone app while simultaneously de-bugging my bullshit.
Ethan: Upgraded our javascript framework to work w/ the newest version of mootools.... ninja'd up the rest of the image editing tools (how fucking sick is that shit -- ethan is the damn man when it comes to js -- I'm constantly impressed with what he's doing on that side of things.
Sean: Upgraded all of our code to work w/ the newest Django release. Something we've been putting off for awhile, but its nice to be close to trunk. Aside from that, I've been working with Dave on ComicVine and I'm currently re-working our private message system.... there's a few bugs that are completely crapping out ComicVine (there's just more data over there) -- so we've actually had to take pms down until we get this fix out..... which is actually what I should be doing right now. BACK TO WORK!
Just pushed out a small bit of code that allows you to add your XBL Gamertag and PSN ID into your profile...... Hopefully this'll mean a lot Ken vs. Ken matchups online ;)
Still making a bunch of fixes to the redesign... be back shortly.
I love how the wall is a more prominent feature on the user profile pages now -- it feels more natural there, and I think it really encourages more conversation between the community.
Anyway, a feature I have always wanted (just haven't had the time to hook up yet) has been a 'Wall to Wall' view --- so you can see a more timelined conversation between you and one of your friends...... so I spent a few minutes hooking it up tonight. Nothing big (and not that hard to do), but I hope you guys dig it :)
We've been knee deep in redesign goodness the past two and half weeks and we're almost there. I think we're looking at about another week worth of work before we get GiantBomb to a state where we feel comfortable launching the redesign and I have to say it looks absolutely brilliant. Dave did such a good job rethinking the design and layout of the site I for one cant wait to start using it live.
What we've been working on:
Dave
Dave's been leading up the redesign effort from the design and css side. He really did a masterful job blending the design patterns currently employed on the live site while streamlining and highlighting the most interesting information on every single page. You'll see what I mean when you take a look at our new game pages.
He's been css'ing up a storm lately and is moving on to the Profile pages this weekend.
Sean
I've been spending the past two weeks helping Dave get at some of the new data we're floating at the wiki level.
I've also been going through and making a bunch of performance tweaks all over the site. I've really been focusing on trying to make use of memcached where possible.... we're surprisingly not using it in very many places yet - but as we continue to grow this is going to be more and more important.
I'll be moving on to profile stuff next week.
Andy
Andy's been working really hard on the html parser he launched earlier this week. There are a few kinks he's working out - but the end result of this feature is a huge win for the site.
Ethan
Ethan has been charging so freaking hard on our new image gallery tools its crazy!!! You guys have to see this stuff to believe it -- its all this crazy drag and drop image management and it will blow your mind. Every time I update and look at the image stuff I am simply stunned.... its getting to the point where Dave can design anything and Ethan can make it work in javascript. Brilliant.
So like I said, we're all very hard at work on the redesign and we're really trying to get it out as soon as we can. Hope everything is going well w/ you guys -- can't wait to drop the new site on you dudes!
So I just bought a new TV for my place and finally got my 360 set up again after about 8 months of going without either. That said, I've been spending the past week catching up on a bunch of solid games I haven't had the chance to get to yet. Thoughts on what I've been playing:
Super Street Fighter II HD Remix:
Fun game, great graphics and solid online support. To be honest, my favorite version of this game is Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting (I kinda think Super Street Fighter II comes off as cheesy - with those new characters and the Super Combos, etc), but I've been having fun with the game and definitely gearing up for some SF IV when it drops.
Braid:
What can I say. Brilliant, beautiful game. It amazes me that, with all of the different games there are out there and all of the different genres we've seen come and go - that a small team, can develop such a unique, beautiful, interesting and compelling game. Had to use two walkthroughs to get two of the more difficult pieces (Crossing The Gap - and Fragile Companion ugh!) - but I absolutely loved this game.
Assassin's Creed:
Popped this sucker in last night and I swear, I couldn't get past the stupid tutorial level where you have to brush past the women walking with the pots on their head. Ridiculous! Either I suck or Ubi sucks... I'm going w/ the latter ;)
Mass Effect:
Dude - just popped this game in last night after the fail that was Assassin's Creed and was immediately sucked into this awesome (and HUGE) game. I haven't played a game like this (ever?) since Star Control 2 (which is a fantastic game - check it if you get a sec.). The story so far is awesome, the voice acting is great , the graphics are top notch and the world is breathtaking and well done. Can't wait to really get into this game.
So we've been talking about site performance a bit lately and we've been kicking around some ideas on how to speed everything on the site up. We have already gone through and made a ton of performance tweaks with our sql queries across a lot of the major pages - and although we're not using memcached as aggressively as we could be, this isn't where we seeing a ton of our performance issues.
What we noticed is that the media on the site is the main performance dragging culprit. Since we serve a very robust site with a bunch of inline wiki editing tools, custom forums and image functionality there is a ton of site-specific CSS and Javascript powering everything..... these are the files that are needed for pages to render and these files are large. So, last night we completed phase I of our performance enhancement by adding a new step to our media deployment script. We're now crunching all of these large js/css files during deployment to our prod boxes.
We pushed GiantBomb last night and we immediately noticed a pretty significant improvement in performance here at the office.
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