12-13-2015, 01:31 PM
Hi everyone!
Shadowfang has informed me that Tapatalk has undergone some changes, meaning that now we get paid some from Tapatalk usage! Tapatalk paid us retroactively for June and July, generating a decent amount of additional revenue, which is helpful alongside Patreon. However, we did not get paid for the other months, meaning some kind of threshold is involved.
This means that sufficient Tapatalk usage also gets us money, which is something to consider if you don't want to / can't support us on Patreon. If you are capable of using Tapatalk on your devices, please consider browsing NAC that way if you'd like to support us.
As a reminder, our Patreon is the following if you wish to support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/neoarkcradle
Right now, our account balance is pretty good, the monthly server fee is sufficiently reached and Shadowfang made some use of the spare money too.
Thanks to everyone who has been supporting us so far, be it via Patreon or Tapatalk!
The other announcement is future plans to do as a System Administrator. My university semester ended, freeing up more of my time... or not, because exams. Regardless, I should have more time.
I previously promised I'd go through the smiley suggestion thread and add more smileys. I'll go through the thread sometime and see which ones can be added. For example, I won't add smileys that are too big in terms of file dimensions.
Right now, plugins seem to work as intended, I'll check though if upgrading the plugins is worth it, or if there might be issues caused by upgrading. This might be trickier since while I can upload/upgrade plugins on my own, I'd want Shadowfang around if, god forbid, the forum breaks somehow. Alternately, I could always do a test run via XAMPP first...
On which note, plugin bugs we are aware of, and at the present, can't fix it due to outside circumstances:
-Usernames showing up as #STYLE_USERNAMES_UIDXXXX# when you Like a post, or make a post, and so on. This is a present bug in Style Usernames, and cannot be used due to the plugin itself having merge conflicts (i.e., downgrading or reinstalling is not an option). Refreshing after making a post/liking a post fixes the username display, but the problem persists in other areas of the forum. There's a similar plugin for this purpose, but I don't know if that plugin works well. Currently, we are just waiting for the developer to do something about the plugin.
-Posts getting scrambled when you make a post. Initially I thought this was the cause of MySQL cutting off connections while posts were being made. However, the cause might be tied to a plugin we are using, "While you were typing", which makes a notification if there was a post made while you were viewing the thread, or were working on a post. If you post when the notification was made but didn't refresh the page by Previewing your post first, there's a chance that your post will contain glitches in it (e.g., it/'s). Seems avoidable if you allow the new posts to appear by not posting your post immediately, but Preview it first.
The other plugins should be fine, but if there's a bug not mentioned here, let us know.
We should be fairly covered in terms of functionality, and the forum runs alright with the plugins as well, barring the above mentioned issues. So we are not looking for new plugins for install. Except possibly the ability to report Private Messages.
I'd be more interested in possibly installing more Themes for the forum, since it would be possible to install theme(s) specifically for Patrons, making the donation more worthwhile. However, I lack CSS knowledge, making theme editing extremely limited on our part. i.e., I can get Shadowfang to add the header for simpler plugins, but not extensively edit a theme.
Maybe far, far, far in the future, I will possess enough knowledge to design themes specifically for NAC. Which would be cool. Maybe I'll go master Stride Fusion instead. Seriously though, maybe. One day.
On the coding side of things, the script for automatic MySQL restart has not been implemented yet. Seeing how the forum hasn't had MySQL crashes recently, this is fairly low priority, but I'll get to implementing it in the future, if only for the challenge, and to have it as a safety measure.
If you guys have any questions or comments, feel free to make a post.
Shadowfang has informed me that Tapatalk has undergone some changes, meaning that now we get paid some from Tapatalk usage! Tapatalk paid us retroactively for June and July, generating a decent amount of additional revenue, which is helpful alongside Patreon. However, we did not get paid for the other months, meaning some kind of threshold is involved.
This means that sufficient Tapatalk usage also gets us money, which is something to consider if you don't want to / can't support us on Patreon. If you are capable of using Tapatalk on your devices, please consider browsing NAC that way if you'd like to support us.
As a reminder, our Patreon is the following if you wish to support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/neoarkcradle
Right now, our account balance is pretty good, the monthly server fee is sufficiently reached and Shadowfang made some use of the spare money too.
Thanks to everyone who has been supporting us so far, be it via Patreon or Tapatalk!
The other announcement is future plans to do as a System Administrator. My university semester ended, freeing up more of my time... or not, because exams. Regardless, I should have more time.
I previously promised I'd go through the smiley suggestion thread and add more smileys. I'll go through the thread sometime and see which ones can be added. For example, I won't add smileys that are too big in terms of file dimensions.
Right now, plugins seem to work as intended, I'll check though if upgrading the plugins is worth it, or if there might be issues caused by upgrading. This might be trickier since while I can upload/upgrade plugins on my own, I'd want Shadowfang around if, god forbid, the forum breaks somehow. Alternately, I could always do a test run via XAMPP first...
On which note, plugin bugs we are aware of, and at the present, can't fix it due to outside circumstances:
-Usernames showing up as #STYLE_USERNAMES_UIDXXXX# when you Like a post, or make a post, and so on. This is a present bug in Style Usernames, and cannot be used due to the plugin itself having merge conflicts (i.e., downgrading or reinstalling is not an option). Refreshing after making a post/liking a post fixes the username display, but the problem persists in other areas of the forum. There's a similar plugin for this purpose, but I don't know if that plugin works well. Currently, we are just waiting for the developer to do something about the plugin.
-Posts getting scrambled when you make a post. Initially I thought this was the cause of MySQL cutting off connections while posts were being made. However, the cause might be tied to a plugin we are using, "While you were typing", which makes a notification if there was a post made while you were viewing the thread, or were working on a post. If you post when the notification was made but didn't refresh the page by Previewing your post first, there's a chance that your post will contain glitches in it (e.g., it/'s). Seems avoidable if you allow the new posts to appear by not posting your post immediately, but Preview it first.
The other plugins should be fine, but if there's a bug not mentioned here, let us know.
We should be fairly covered in terms of functionality, and the forum runs alright with the plugins as well, barring the above mentioned issues. So we are not looking for new plugins for install. Except possibly the ability to report Private Messages.
I'd be more interested in possibly installing more Themes for the forum, since it would be possible to install theme(s) specifically for Patrons, making the donation more worthwhile. However, I lack CSS knowledge, making theme editing extremely limited on our part. i.e., I can get Shadowfang to add the header for simpler plugins, but not extensively edit a theme.
Maybe far, far, far in the future, I will possess enough knowledge to design themes specifically for NAC. Which would be cool. Maybe I'll go master Stride Fusion instead. Seriously though, maybe. One day.
On the coding side of things, the script for automatic MySQL restart has not been implemented yet. Seeing how the forum hasn't had MySQL crashes recently, this is fairly low priority, but I'll get to implementing it in the future, if only for the challenge, and to have it as a safety measure.
If you guys have any questions or comments, feel free to make a post.