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Patch 1.6

 
Site Info & Updates
Last Post by Syturio 6 years ago
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 teebling
(@teebling)
Posts: 1611
Noble Member
Topic starter
 

images/media/bchat6.png
Patch 1.6
25th February 2019

Updates to tools and guides
I got a lot of positive feedback about the stats and comparison tools when they were released. There were however a lot of issues highlighted too - bugs and and oversights on my part mainly.

Besides this constructive criticism some people also shared more knowledge, ideas and suggestions that could be made to improve the content in question. This also applies to some of the guides I have written.

So I have taken everyone’s comments on board and made some long overdue updates to these tools and guides to improve them and bring them up to a high standard of accuracy and quality:

Classic Race/Class Comparison Tool

  • Added a new section ‘appearance’ to each race/class combination - providing links to wowhead’s 3D model viewer for that choice’s T1, T2 and T3 raid sets so you can compare looks as well :smile:

  • Fixed incorrect level 1 base stats for Gnome Mage and Undead Warrior

  • Fixed incorrect level 60 base stats for Human/Dwarf Paladin and Dwarf/Gnome Rogue

  • Removed the Night Elf Paladin option (lolwut)

  • Reinstated the missing Night Elf Priest combination

  • Fixed misleading text about troll racial regeneration (HP only not mana)

  • Modified UD warlock synergy text about water breathing due to all locks having Unending Breath anyway

  • Modified NE rogue synergy text about Shadowmeld being useful against humans (they’re on same faction) to ‘useful against enemy stealth detection’

    • Base Stats Calculator

  • Removed incorrect Block calculation from Strength for Druids in bear form

  • Adjusted Spirit values for Paladin and Rogue which were a bit off of generally accepted figures

    • Level 19 Rogue Twink Guide + BiS

    I did actually update this at one point but it was somehow lost in a database repair and honestly I don’t know why. Anyway here are the changes which I’ve remade:

  • Added missing Legs section from BiS gear list

  • Removed Polymorph from text concerning WotF since it isn’t dispellable by this racial

  • Mentioned that Serpents Shoulders are not BoP making them fairly easy to obtain

  • Changed BiS gloves to the rare world drop Scouting Gloves of the Monkey 4/4 stam/agil

  • Changed BiS arcanum head enchant from Voracity to Constitution (adds an extra +20 HP)

  • Removed wrong enchant for ranged weapon (can only be a Scope at this stage)

  • Added green Arena Master trinket as alternative whilst building up to the blue Grand Arena Master trinket.

  • Added Nat Pagle’s Boots as BiS for Combat rogues and highlighted FotL for Ambush rogues

  • Added Greater Stats (+4 to all) as BiS chest enchant for Combat

  • Added missing enchant for Gloves (Superior Agil)

  • Added missing enchant for Bracers (Superior Stam)

  • Added Explosive Sheep to list of damage dealing engineering items.

    • Styled hover preview text
    /images/updates/tooltip.gif
    Formatted the hover text to parse HTML (was showing unnecessary code tags before) and also styled it look like a framed tooltip in the WoW UI :) Hope that this is useful for folks and adds more to the warcraft-y theme of the site:

    Support for PHAT mobile screens
    Used some javascript to detect the user’s viewport and adjust the initial render scale, so that people with massive phones will at least see an edge-to-edge site that doesn’t waste screen real estate on either side:

    Before:

    /images/updates/before.gif

    After:

    /images/updates/after.gif
    I tested this on about 20 different virtual devices (not just iPhones either - Samsungs, Pixels etc. you name it). Only chose the iPhone range as a simple example which I could make into the GIFs above :smile:

    Let me know if this is working correctly on your device and if it has made a difference. You should still be able to see the desktop version of the site on any phone when you orientate it to landscape.

    Performance insights
    We’ve had a lot of new people join recently and there has been some great posting going on which makes me really happy :) For me the site is successful if people are enjoying it here and using it to talk about Classic, ‘performance data’ be damned.

    That said, as an admin trying to actively grow our community stuff like this is important for me to keep an eye on in order to better understand how I can get the word out about BC. I thought you guys might also find it interesting to see some of the data too so here are some graphs for you:

    /images/updates/analytics.png

    /images/updates/searchconsole.png

    Carousel discontinued
    Removed the carousel feature from the site. It was very resource intensive, didn’t look right, had lots of cross platform bugs and was a bitch to update and maintain altogether. Guests will still see a welcoming banner as a static object, because it does look nice on its own and provides a simple and succinct ‘wtf is this website’ answer straight away for guests and crawl bots.

    Other changes

  • Board-wide notifications implemented to notify existing members of new guides, tools, tech, and site updates (currently unusable due to a bug - waiting on a pull request for core phpBB before fully functional)

  • Changed profile pages to remove the ‘quote’ box styling and use dividers instead to make things look a bit nicer

  • In profile pages put the user’s banner image upload on top

  • Rearranged order of field options in UCP Profile Appearance page

  • Credits page updated with some new descriptions

  • ‘WWW.’ removed from domain name to make all traffic go through one canonical address

  • Hearthstone topic icon and Blizz topic icon adjusted for line height

  • Added a small string at the bottom of Guides inviting people to write

  • More ‘noise pages’ removed from Google’s index to enhance search performance

  • Made a media pack with BC graphics to help other sites and fans share the site

  • Added a slew of new signature userbars to the existing collection

  • Added an ultrawide wallpaper for each zone and city to the existing collection

  • Changed default og:image that shows up in Reddit and other social media submissions when a bchat URL is used

  • Changed icons for Manual of War and Avoiding Ganks guides

    • Bug fixes

  • Fixed broken [size] BBcode not being entered correctly by using the BBcode editor button

  • Fixed issue where whilst using the Report Post function links in the navigation header would stop working

  • Fixed ellipsis text overflow bug on topic titles in mobile version (again)

  • Fixed over-padding underneath similar topics box

  • Fixed slight mispositioning of pagination rows under topic titles on index

    • Comments
    Again, not a very feature-rich update because I am still focusing heavily on content creation and publicising the site more than anything else. This patch is more of a refinement with only very small changes to make the sure the site is fast, streamlined and ready for the visitor spike on release which is not far away!

    As usual, any comments or feedback just reply to this topic. If you find any new bugs do leave a report in the thread for me so I can fix them :smile:

    Your boy,
    Teeb

     
    Posted : 25/02/2019 3:47 pm
    Firelord
     Firelord
    (@firelord)
    Posts: 212
    Estimable Member
     

    A slow, but growing userbase! I think you have come a long way with this website, since it makes me want to return and post here every now and then. It's certainly a website that has caught my attention and makes me feel at home.

    Every update doesn't need to have a massive new feature. Performance and function is important too.

    Will be fun to see how this website will grow and what future updates will come to it.

     
    Posted : 02/03/2019 4:48 pm
     acrmojt
    (@acrmojt)
    Posts: 71
    Trusted Member
     

    I wondered where the heck the carousel went >:(

    I really liked it actually. The site has lost a lot of personality by removing them, they looked unique. What were the issues? I could help you fix them.

     
    Posted : 02/03/2019 9:14 pm
     teebling
    (@teebling)
    Posts: 1611
    Noble Member
    Topic starter
     

    What were the issues? I could help you fix them.

    There were a few issues. I would normally attempt to fix them like I do with other bugs but this was a monster of it's own:

  • After being hidden for some time, re-showing the carousel would render incorrectly with all slides sitting on top of each other. This is due to the css property position:absolute which is required to display the slides as they are functioning normally - I'd be able to fix this with a listener in the JS file that 'reset' the CSS by changing the property to relative and then back again, but this is a pretty messy solution and I struggled to get it working as intended.

  • Due to the way the carousel worked, I was not able to lazy-load the images on each 'slide' because the script worked by loading every slide and then just hiding the invisible slides beyond the borders of a frame. That meant any page load a dozen or so http requests had to be made before the rest of the page was loaded - not to mention the size of all the images combined. This slowed stuff right down and reduced pagespeed insight score by 20 on mobile and 10 on desktop. No bueno.

  • They didn't look all that great to me - there was something about them that just didn't fit in with the general theme of the site. It also meant that any time new content was uploaded I would have to design a new slide image, code in the HTML for it in a template file, and code in the CSS class for it in the main CSS file. Quite a bit of work every time a new guide/tech release made.

  • Finally, the lightweight script I used called 'siema' didn't work out of the box. I had to do a lot of extra script just for basic functionality like making the carousel pause for 1 min when the user interacted with it by using the next/prev buttons or by dragging it. I finally got it working and was happy but then using my mobile device saw that the 'dragging' listener wasn't working at all. So a user on mobile swiping left and right wouldn't do anything - it would relentlessly keep autoplaying. To fix this I would have to install more JS library to detect touch events, and then get siema to recognise the touch events and pause the autoplay etc.

    • So yeah, the technical difficulties combined with the fact that I didn't like the way it looked and didn't think it was worth all the extra regular work to keep updated were the contributing factors to discontinuing it.

     
    Posted : 03/03/2019 4:27 am
     acrmojt
    (@acrmojt)
    Posts: 71
    Trusted Member
     

    Btw teebling you have a little bug with alignment of what remains of the carousel. (Using FF I don't know about other browsers.)

    I think it's the span you're using to style "World of Warcraft Classic" causing the content in the second box to get pushed down.

    Just add the following property to fix it:

    .topicboxswoosh {
    float:left;
    }

    Note: I didn't test this too extensively so just be sure to check it didn't mess anything up elsewhere.

     
    Posted : 03/03/2019 1:19 pm
     teebling
    (@teebling)
    Posts: 1611
    Noble Member
    Topic starter
     

    Thanks for the report I’ll check it out.

     
    Posted : 03/03/2019 2:27 pm
    Firelord
     Firelord
    (@firelord)
    Posts: 212
    Estimable Member
     

    A silly question in here perhaps, but is there a way to see my own post history? Been clicking around a little bit but can't actually see any link to it, only 'recent.'

     
    Posted : 03/03/2019 3:07 pm
     teebling
    (@teebling)
    Posts: 1611
    Noble Member
    Topic starter
     

    A silly question in here perhaps, but is there a way to see my own post history? Been clicking around a little bit but can't actually see any link to it, only 'recent.'

    This is planned for next patch which will introduce site wide search - you'll be able to search your own post history all the way back to post 1. Currently you can only see your last ten posts on your profile.

    Grats on dinging 30 btw! :biggrin:

     
    Posted : 03/03/2019 4:34 pm
    Firelord
     Firelord
    (@firelord)
    Posts: 212
    Estimable Member
     

    A silly question in here perhaps, but is there a way to see my own post history? Been clicking around a little bit but can't actually see any link to it, only 'recent.'

    This is planned for next patch which will introduce site wide search - you'll be able to search your own post history all the way back to post 1. Currently you can only see your last ten posts on your profile.

    Grats on dinging 30 btw! :biggrin:

    Sounds great. Will be easier to find my own quotes.

    - and thank you, halfway there!

     
    Posted : 04/03/2019 2:07 am
     teebling
    (@teebling)
    Posts: 1611
    Noble Member
    Topic starter
     

    acrmojt I tested the site on various Firefox versions (OSX and Win10) but it looks fine to me.

    What I've noticed is you seem to be overriding the default sans-serif font (Helvetica) as defined in the CSS with a serif font which looks like Times New Roman or something like that - is this with a FF extension or overriding user settings? - I think this is what is causing the text to spill out of bounds and make the other slide pushed down.

    Could you tell me your OS/FF version and any settings regarding fonts so I can emulate the bug?

     
    Posted : 04/03/2019 9:29 am
     acrmojt
    (@acrmojt)
    Posts: 71
    Trusted Member
     

    I'm using xubuntu 18 LTS. Firefox 65.0.1. I do not have any font modifying extensions or settings in my browser. I've checked my inspector and I am rendering the Helvetica font.

    The good thing about floating those boxes is it will eliminate this issue on all browsers, whether or not they have the spacing overflow.

     
    Posted : 04/03/2019 1:21 pm
     teebling
    (@teebling)
    Posts: 1611
    Noble Member
    Topic starter
     

    I'm using xubuntu 18 LTS. Firefox 65.0.1. I do not have any font modifying extensions or settings in my browser. I've checked my inspector and I am rendering the Helvetica font.

    It isn't rendering Helvetica - this is what Helvetica looks like:

    So it's probably like a default font from xubuntu or something? I don't know it's weird man.
    The good thing about floating those boxes is it will eliminate this issue on all browsers, whether or not they have the spacing overflow.

    It won't hurt to put a float property in so I'll do that for you next patch - I have no way of testing for xubuntu FF though so you'll have to let me know if it worked or not :biggrin: Thanks again.

     
    Posted : 04/03/2019 1:32 pm
     acrmojt
    (@acrmojt)
    Posts: 71
    Trusted Member
     

    I just tried the site on Safari and I realize you are right about Helvetica not rendering correctly. It seems xubuntu has the wrong font for Helvetica because in my font browser Helvetica is the serif font you see in my screenshot.

    Very weird, but hehe after comparing with Safari I actually prefer a serif font for a fantasy look :P

     
    Posted : 04/03/2019 3:37 pm
     teebling
    (@teebling)
    Posts: 1611
    Noble Member
    Topic starter
     

    Very weird, but hehe after comparing with Safari I actually prefer a serif font for a fantasy look :P

    I actually experimented once with using WoW's default sans-serif font 'FritzQuadrata TT' on barrens.chat just to see what it looked like. It looked pretty dope but wasn't very readable at small sizes and also performs badly as a web font (no google fonts support or anything). Maybe one day!

     
    Posted : 04/03/2019 5:08 pm
     Syturio
    (@syturio)
    Posts: 179
    Estimable Member
     

    Found this little bug:

     
    Posted : 11/03/2019 6:06 pm
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