CyberArmy

Feedback Digest - June & July 2007

• Link to "Your Articles": A member indicated they felt adding a 'Your Articles' link to the top right userbox would be useful - this has been implemented.
• Recent Articles: After a feedback submission, the main library page was updated to include a list of the most recent articles.
• Direct Edit Link for Drafts: In /my/articles a direct link to edit the article was added following the suggestion of a member.
• Sign-out Time: A user had a problem with the session sign-out, seeming to be signed out regularly even though they had set the sign-out time to 24 hours. We did not reproduce this problem and could not contact the member due to them remaining anonymous. They also requested we add a "don't sign me out" feature. This will not be implemented as it weakens security, and members would always appear to be 'logged in' when viewing their profiles.

• Password Reset Confirmation Form: There was a typo that has been corrected.
• New Article Category: A member requested the addition of the 'Reverse Engineering' category under 'Security' in the Library. If you want to write an article but feel the relevant category is missing, just let us know via Feedback and we'll make sure it gets added.
• Article Discussion Problem: A member was concerned that it would be difficult to see articles that had recently been commented on. If you set your forum options to 'sort by latest post' then threads with recent activity are always listed at the top - I recommend using this option so you can always see the latest discussions. This option can be set using the small form at the bottom of the MOTD on any forum (setting will apply across all forums).
• Dead Links in Articles: Some articles have links which no longer work, or images that do not exist anymore. This is simply due to articles being old and the places they link to simply are not online anymore, or have reshuffled files. If you spot dead links in articles then feel free to let us know via feedback. Unless we know of an updated URL for a link/image (mainly on CA-related sites), we will not alter the article in order to maintain its content.
• Store Link: An old link to the CA Store was still present on the 'Donate' page - this has now been removed.
• cMS From Library?: One member was confused to receive a cMS regarding a status change on an article they submitted to the library when they had not submitted an article to the library! Well, this was due to articles from zZine and the old CAU sites being imported into the system. If you are confused about any messages you receive then feel free to doublecheck what the situation is by querying the matter via Feedback.
• Profile Signature Text: A member submitted suitable replacement text (slightly reworded) in order to fix a typo in the signature updating section. The section has been updated to use this.
• Banner Advertisement: We had a few banner ad requests - if you are interested in putting a banner up on CA, please get in touch with us via Feedback.

• Signatures in Preview: If you edited your signature in a forum post, when previewing the post the changes to the signature were lost. This has been fixed.
• Header Update: The CA network header was out of date for a short time after some brigade changes were made, this was soon rectified.
• Articles: live/draft: On initial release of the library, the explanations given in /my/articles/ for draft and live articles were identical. This was incorrect, as draft articles are articles that a user has not yet submitted and can only be viewed by them, while live articles have been submitted and approved - viewable by all. This was corrected.
• Article Summary: The summary section of articles was being truncated. Members felt summaries needed to be longer and as such this has been changed.
• 'Old' IE Fixes: A member submitted a CSS fix to correct the display of the right aligned boxes shown in /my/ and the library. Thanks for this, it is very much appreciated when members can chip in on helping with the site where possible like this.
• Forum Post Page Lacking <title>: On viewing a post, no title was set for the page, making the URL appear as the title in the browser. This has been corrected.
• Can't send cMS without a subject: This isn't actually a bug; the subject is a required field, since /my/messages/ uses the subject as the link to view the message. This feedback submission did highlight the fact that no indication was given as to what was wrong with the cMS - they were simply redirected to the preview page, unaware of the problem. As such, a small note at the bottom of the 'Compose' screen has been added indicating all fields are required, and a red error message is shown if you try to send a cMS with a missing field.
• Chat Client Problems: We had one or two members being unable to connect using the IRC Chat client. The client does work for some, while others have problems. The applet will popup a security dialog asking for authorisation for it to run - you must accept this in order for it to work.

• Library Resources: A member requested a 'Resources' subsection be added to categories in the library, which was done. Administrators can add resources (links, with a description) to any category and when present these are displayed in a box at the top of the first page in that category. An example is present in the Artificial Intelligence category.
• Ability to Remove Files: This is a repeat of an older feedback - asking for members to be able to delete, or request deletion of, files they have submitted. This has been given a low priority.
• cMS Navigation: It was pointed out that the 'GoTo' box, for navigating to different folders, was not available when viewing or composing a message. This has been corrected.
• Library Feedback: It was suggested that a feature for reporting bad articles should be implemented. For now, we have added an option to the feedback form, 'Library Feedback', but when the coders have more time we may add a link on article pages themselves for reporting bad articles.

• Recent Articles List: The recent articles list was ordered by when an article was submitted to the library. However, this did not necessarily reflect when the article was released. As such, the feature was updated to record and order by the article release date.
• Disappearing post?: One member was concerned that a post seemed to disappear - they received a 404 on viewing the post. This was due to the post being removed between the time the forum was viewed, and viewing the individual post. Any user can view the forum logs at /forum/<FORUMNAME>/logs to see if a post has been moved and why (where <FORUMNAME> is replaced with the relevant alias of the forum, e.g. /forum/public/logs).
• Improve Library Indexing: A member suggested the library navigation be improved to use links such as /library/article/1 rather than /library/article?id=1. This has now been implemented for articles and categories (both link types are valid).
• Profile PGP Section Text: A member submitted suitable replacement text (slightly reworded) to fix typos in the section for updating your PGP key in HQ. The section has been updated to use this.
• Library Front Page: Thanks to the Academy, specifically Ker Sefo, the library front page had a redesign. One member pointed out that the links in the intro section were not very obvious and as such they were updated to display in orange.

• Library Search: The library search was also searching articles that were not publicly available! This has been corrected.
• Headlines: All headlines were displayed to users regardless of forum access (or not). This has been corrected.
• Library Category 500 Errors: Guest users were receiving 500 errors on viewing library categories. This bug was introduced during feature updates, but was quickly corrected.
• Session Timeout: One member was concerned that they could set their session timeout to be larger than 24 hours. While this appears true, the backend code will restrict the timeout to 24 hours in these cases. Therefore the bug is only that this should be reflected in what is displayed in the profile login options section. This is marked as low priority to fix.
• Forum /info: Every forum has an information page accessed by appending /info when viewing the forum. Forums were incorrectly indicating they were set to 'replyonly' on their information page - this has been corrected.
• Recruit -> Trooper: As some of you may know, we recently added the 'Recruit' rank. Recruits are automatically promoted to Trooper on joining a brigade or project. However this was broken when joining a brigade queue and being accepted (rather than open joins). This has been fixed.