In which James talks about recent changes to the site, copy/pastes a change-log, answers some questions, and talks about some nifty tool or website.

Hi all, It's that time again! Time for another report from your friendly neighbourhood Seneschal with the latest ins and outs related to the site.

Deployed Code Changes

Below is a list of most of the code check-ins done to the site since my last report. This isn't an exhaustive list, and does not contain code changes that have not yet been deployed to the main website. To summarise, here's the TLDR:

1. Upstream library updates
2. Performance improvements for the news page to make it snappier
3. Updates to transfers and the join assignment to account for the clannification™
4. Updates to competition code to account for several GJW rules
5. Deletion of exams in progress
6. PvP formula changes
7. Lots of small fixes and tweaks

[James Entar] Don't use the same cache fragment for collapsed and expanded news items
[James Entar] Fix RSS caching
[James Entar] Fix typo
[James Entar] Cache fragments on news index page
[James Entar] House -> Clan on welcome mail; update backend CoJ stuff
[James Entar] Update HRLD staff permissions
[James Entar] Update leaderboard code
[James Entar] Don't error out admin interface when viewing ancient news items with a nonexisting position
[James Entar] Sort ranks in position administration form
[James Entar] House Leadership -> Clan Leadership
[James Entar] Disable 'people can't promote above their own rank' rule
[James Entar] Kallisto: Add Arconae to Arcona mailing list candidates
[James Entar] SA: Allow deleting exams in progress
[James Entar] Stopgap fix for ActiveSupport threading issue
[James Entar] Rework transfers and join rotation to reflect clanning; update introductory texts to match join assignment
[James Entar] Change some navbar links
[James Entar] New RO CI calculation; Fiction Activity bugfixes
[James Entar] Re-enable FIST/MAA staff access
[James Entar] Update text on varioius request forms
[James Entar] Sort Competition Award Levels in competition form
[James Entar] Small comp form adjustments; Remove min score requirement from ACC Qualification; enable join overview for rest of CoreDC members
[James Entar] Update some text on the competition request form
[James Entar] Trigger score recalculation when scoring method is set to unweighted pvp score
[James Entar] Update external libraries
[James Entar] Auto-sync Discourse Moderators
[James Entar] Fix a rare bug in the join mailer
[James Entar] Log less stuff in production
[James Entar] Fix bug in pending gaming competition display
[James Entar] Allow competitions to award double CFs; calculate all places for GamingComps
[James Entar] Add spambot IP to blacklist
[James Entar] Make PvP scores for running competitions publicly visible
[James Entar] Merge ToI PoC; fix dev theme switcher
[James Entar] Show object IDs on PvP/PvE details
[James Entar] Fix GamingCompetitions only auto-calculating first 5 places
[James Entar] Attempt to stop vendetta listing from randomly switching member order
[James Entar] Some UX tweaks
[James Entar] Engage Vendetta lockdown for competition and gaming admin
[James Entar] Fix some stuff related to Dev VM
[James Entar] Allow entry of competition placements up to 10th place
[James Entar] Ruby <2.2 compat
[James Entar] Allow adjusting PVP scoring formula platform weight
[James Entar] Fix friendly IDs
[James Entar] Solve some deprecation warnings
[James Entar] Upgrade to Rails 4.2; might break stuff. Retire some themes
[James Entar] More style overrides
[James Entar] Tweak some colors (thanks Vosh/Nameless)
[James Entar] Bump up SA similarity threshold
[James Entar] (Hopefully) unbork checkboxes

Seneschal's Nifty Tricks

• Want to brush up your JavaScript and problem solving skills? Go play the Elevator Saga!
• Are you a fan of Markdown and need to give a presentation? Look no further, Remark is here!
• And especially for Orv, I'd like to highlight this Markdown editor ;)

On the Horizon

This section provides some sneak previews of upcoming site changes and the larger things on my todo-list in various stages of completion.

1. Test of Lore Revamp
   An ongoing project to replace the Test of Lore with something less... wall-of-texty.
2. Badges/Achievements
   Work towards achievements by doing things (or not doing things) on the site. This is low-priority project at the moment, but I will expect to pick it up again in the near future.
3. Possessions
   Progressing slowly but steadily. Expect Phase 2 of the phased rollout to drop in the near future.
4. Clan Alignments and Path Changes
   I'm not entirely sure yet what's going to happen here, but it will surely have coding-related consequences :)
5. Random Bugfixes and Things That Come Up™
   A wild Dark Council member appeared. It uses Feature Request!
   [FIGHT][ITEM][PKMN][RUN]

Closing/TLDR

So, lots of fixes and additions to the site, and even more to come. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to either e-mail me or throw in a comment.

James L. Entar
Seneschal of the Brotherhood