May 2014 Website Changes and Updates

[Mike]

Good news to all! A barrage of updates has taken place and more are planned for the future. Specifically, we are looking at updating our database platform and the web server itself.

Here are the updates for May 19, 2014:

PHP has been updated.
Our database server has been updated with new software to improve performance x3 magnitude.

Forum software updated. This is a maintenance release:

• Bug fixes related to pasting and formatting text in the editor

• Bug fixes related to the formatting of messages for the rich text editor when editing

• Updated the Facebook integration to use version 2.0 of their API

• Only show entries on the notable members page where the member actually has posts, likes, or trophy points

• Fix the attribution of tagging alerts generated in a profile post comment

• Support all languages that Twitter supports in the tweet button

• Add isolation to usernames to improve display in RTL when LTR and RTL text is mixed

• Add-on update/export buttons appear when creating an add-on

• BB code blocks now all have overflow auto for float containment/preventing overlap with floated ads

• Call to action buttons have vertical-align top for improved cross browser display

• Added scrolling to the avatar overlay to handle add-ons inserting additional rows

• Account upgrades now use the "full" link generator to create the return URL

• Fixed unexpected padding on the breadcrumbs with narrow displays

• Fixed ReCAPTCHA image overflow with narrow displays

• Added an open graph description to forum views and pages

• Fixed inconsistent positioning of stay logged in/lost password links on login forms

• Fixed overlay only buttons displaying on the follower/following lists when viewed as a non-overlay

• Adjusted the display of voters on a poll when there's a deleted user

• Fix positioning of several overlays in RTL with narrow displays

• Fix JS errors when the hash part of a URL has non-alphanumeric characters

• Reduce the amount of entries shown on the users/content awaiting approval pages to prevent timeouts and speed up display

• Silence a potential race condition when creating directories

• Fix a display issue when displaying a shortened IPv6 string when it ends with a collapsed section

• Remove leading and trailing white space from Twitter app keys and secrets

• Improve the error handling of Twitter integration to aid in debugging

• Fix a potential duplicate ID error when importing from XenForo and maintaining IDs

• Fix a race condition when inserting image proxy records

Resource Manager updated:

• Fix deleted/moderated resources not being removed correctly when a resource category is deleted

• The main resource overview page now canonicalizes the URL

• Add rel=canonical to some resource pages

• Fix the resource prefix list not always removing non-visible prefixes

• Fix situation where resources with a file may not always allow the full text of updates to be viewed by users without download permissions

• Add a maximum to prices to prevent a database error

• When moving a resource from a category with a discussion thread to one without, the discussion thread will be removed (it will be restored if the resource is moved back)

• Clean up some additional data when hard deleting a resource

• Trim the resource discussion thread title to ensure that it does not cause an error and prevent a thread from being created

• Fix a situation where the discussion thread is associated with an IP address by the user approving the resource

• Fix invalid method call in the resource watch data writer

• Clean up the resource attachments better when uninstalling the resource manager

• Limit the top resource authors on the notable members list to those who have posted a resource

• Fix missing breadcrumbs on the resource category watch page

• Fix word wrap issues on the resource list

• Do not display the microdata for ratings when a resource has not been rated

Our search system has been upgraded and overhauled:

Now running Elasticsearch 1.1.1

Default Relevancy Sorting

The built-in XenForo search does not support sorting by document relevance, so previously searches always defaulted to being ordered by date. Now, the default sort order can be set to relevance. (This is enabled by default.)

Recency Weighted Relevance Scoring

Relevance scoring can now be influenced by how recently a document was created. This follows from the idea that information from several years ago may be outdated but should still be returned if it matches the search closely.

This is implemented with a half-life system that halves the document's score for each time period that has past:

This option is enabled by default.

Failed Index Queueing

If the Elasticsearch service goes down or is inaccessible for any reason, documents which are unable to be indexed will now be stored and inserted later. The indexing process will be tried several times (with increasing delays between tried) until the document is successfully inserted or the index request has failed too many times.

Additional Small Improvements

• Titles now receive higher weighting in relevance scoring.
• Compatibility with Elasticsearch 1.0 and 1.1 has been improved.
• Several Elasticsearch statistics are displayed to admins.

To give you an idea of our internal search engine capability, here are some statistics:

Documents:
388,238 (203.3 MB)
Index Updates:
388,238 (0.0004 seconds average)

Over a 5 day time span:

Searches:1,338,340 (0.0027 seconds average)
Fetches:698,746 (0.0008 seconds average)

What to expect next:

• Updates affecting the efficacy of our database.
• A major web server upgrade to accompany this.
• A time/date for a staff/team meeting will be made available to the public!

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

 

[kemical]

Lookin good.. Not only the above we also have a meeting toboot!