TW Site Updates

[Brel]

The following updates to the TW site has been made:

Latest Exclusive Reviews
The 5 most recently added records in the Exclusive Reviews section in the Forum are now segregated and displayed in the upper-left area of the Home page.

Registration Page Fixed
The validation errors in the Registration Page due to the reCaptcha modification that was made late last year to combat spambots are now fixed.

Mozilla Firefox Browser Friendly
The layout code has been adjusted so our website should now display correctly when viewed in the Mozilla Firefox browser.  Firefox is the second browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer is the first) mostly used by visitors in the site.

Added BBCodes
Three new BBCodes were added:
[1] BoardGameGeek.com Top/Hot Games Widget
[2] iframe
[3] MetaCafe

To learn how to use these BBCodes, please click
here.

Introduce Yourselves Link
The link to the forum topic "Introduce Yourselves" has been added to one of the messages that appear in the "Attention" box on the top page.

Undecoded HTML Characters in Home Page Fixed
Some sections in the Home page were displaying undecoded HTML texts.  They are now fixed.

[maskmanjoe]

wow it supports the Geek widget cool! Thanks for the website updates Brel, it looks great now in Firefox

[Titus]

Thanks, Brel!

I appreciate the latest Exclusive Reviews displayed on the front page. Maybe you can also add the latest Session Reports?

BTW, I'm noticing a lot of overlap between the Exclusive Reviews and Game Discussions forums and between the Session Reports and Events forums. Maybe you can look into consolidating some of the forums as it looks like there's too many sections right now with info spread too thin.

Just some suggestions.

[Brel]

I am thinking about that since the site was setup.  But currently this is the most applicable setup considering that the core of our website is a Forum.  If we want to totally fix the data and consolidate everything, the most ideal solution would be to pattern it to BGG and make the core of our website the games database and then the other types of content like Session Reports, Game Images, Rules Errata etc. are just a branch of each record therein.  But in order to do that, the site will require extensive change and programming.  I don't see it as a viable investment right now.

I believe segregating the "Exclusive Reviews & Articles" in the Home page gives more exposure to the reviewer/writer as well as the game reviewed and/or articles written.  I feel that that kind of information is very valuable compared to the other game info hence the change.  This will also make it easier for us to notice new exclusive reviews & article additions and help us properly reward the good reviewers.

If anybody has other suggestions to make the site better, please feel free to let us know or post your wishlist.  We'll check if they can be done and/or can be included in the next site update.  Thank you. 

[Brel]

Added the ff. New BBCodes:

[1] Insert Bordered Table
[2] Insert Bordered Table Row
[3] Insert Bordered Table Column
[4] Insert Table Column with Background Color

These BBCodes will only work with each other and will NOT work with the old unbordered Table BBCodes EXCEPT the "Table Column with Background Color".  The latter will work with the old Table BBCodes. 

For instructions/examples on how to use, checkout post #2 of this link.

I have also changed the "Latest Exclusive Reviews" to "Exclusive Reviews & Articles" in the Home page to accomodate not only the latest eight original Game Reviews but also original articles posted by TW Members.  The original non-specific game related articles should be posted under the root "Exclusive Reviews & Articles" in the Forum.

[Brel]

Corrected the appearance of the "New" icon image for the postings under "Recent Topics Posted" in the Home page.  Newly created threads will be marked as "New" for 7 days.  But the Forum page still has these errors.  I don't have plans to fix those in the meantime.

I've also added the parent board's name & link if a particular thread is a childboard.  This still pertains to the records in the "Recent Topics Posted" located in the Home page.

[Brel]

Added a code to the "Exclusive Reviews & Articles" and the "Headlines" sections in the Home page that displays a blinking green icon when the last post/comment is dated within 3 days.  This should alert people that there are new comments or the post is new. 

[Brel]

Sorry Howl, I accidentally deleted the thread about TabletopWars.com being accessible in mobile phones.  Here's the link in case anybody wants to access the website through their cellphone using WAP: http://www.tabletopwars.com/bb/index.php?;wap2.

If using a modern cellphone, I recommend just using it's browser and directly access http://www.tabletopwars.com through the internet instead of using WAP.  It will load graphics as opposed to the text-only wap version of the site.  Load time will be slower but website will be more colorful.

I am still researching about using short-URL instead of the long URL for the WAP.  Will post updates if I find solution.   

[Brel]

Added a BBCODE for BLIP.TV.  It is now allowed to embed videos from BLIP.TV. 

[Brel]

Due to potential security issues, I've disabled the BBCode "iframe" and have modified the following tags:

- MetaCafe
- blip.TV

To learn how to use these BBCodes, please click here and scroll to the 2nd post in that page.

[Brel]

I've changed how the "Exclusive Reviews & Articles" in the Home page works.  It now displays the five (5) recently posted records in that section of the forum sorted descending.  So even old threads can be resurrected and displayed in that section whenever somebody posted a comment.

I am just not sure how long will the records be displayed as there seems to be no control in the built-in function I used.  All-in-all, this should work like the "Recent Topics Posted" section in the Home page but only displays those topics in the "Exclusive Reviews & Articles" forum.

[Brel]

Added a BBCode for displaying videos from Vimeo.com.    It's used the same way as the other similar codes (metacafe, blipTV, etc.) wherein you just copy the value in the Embed Source code and remove the URL starting from

Code:

http://www.domainname.com

(example URL only) up to the end of the quotation mark.  Then paste the copied text between

Code:

[vimeo]

and

Code:

[/vimeo]

BBCcode. 

[Brel]

Added BBCode for podbean.com podcast audio toolbar.

[Brel]

Please note that the BGG BBCode has been updated to allow any widget originating from BGG.  Just copy the embed text code starting just after the URL (starting from trailing slash) up to the end (just before the end quote).

Sample of a generated code:

Code:

<script language="javascript" src="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/jswidget.php?username=brel&numitems=10&header=1&text=none&images=small&show=top10&imagesonly=1&imagepos=center&inline=1">
</script>

BBCode Example:

Code:

[bgg]/jswidget.php?username=brel&numitems=10&header=1&text=none&images=small&show=top10&imagesonly=1&imagepos=center&inline=1[/bgg]

Please update your codes for BGG widgets to display correctly.