Guild Launch News
Version 4.8 Released - ItemStats, Warhammer & More
Greetings Everyone,
We've just released Guild Launch Version 4.8. This release is a large release with alot of important functionality improvements, additions, enhancements and bug fixes. There is literally something in this release for nearly every guild in every game.
This is our fist release since our forced office move due to a fire in the office next to us, so it was delayed a bit. We're now settled in the new office and back in gear so to speak, but due to the office move scheduling and preparing this release has been "adventurous". If you've got a feature you were hoping for in this release then feel free to ask about it, but we did have to cut a few things we were hoping to add such as some advanced Private Message filtering. Those changes are scheduled for the next release though, as are many others.
We hope you enjoy this release and remember if you encounter login issues please clear out your cookies and close your browser and try again before posting in here or sending a ticket. We've tested login heavily and it is working, but cookies on your machine can cause some wierdeness.
Enjoy!
Stephen
NOTE: We're currently working on an issue with Availability info tracking in guild applications. It doesn't effect applications, you just can't turn the feature on unless you use the advanced Application type. We'll have this fixed on Friday.
We've also released a 4.8.1 mini-release to resolves some issues found in this release. Details are here:
http://support.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=5561344
Major Features
Guild Availability and Depth Chart
Guild Availability
We have added a new set of features that allow you to poll your guild for their weekly availability for raiding (or anything else). With this feature your guild members can enter what days they can raid and how often they can raid using a Once A Month, Twice A Month, Three Times A Month, 4 Times A Month, Always sort of entry. The idea here is that if a person can always raid on Thursdays they can enter "Always" or "4 Times A month", if they can sometimes raid on Tuesdays they enter "Once A Month" or whatever they feel is appropriate in general. The idea is not for them to guarantee once a month attendance, but to allow them to give a general idea of their availability. This information is then calculated and a display is presented that shows what days your highest percentage of raiders are available.
Depth Chart
The depth chart is a similar feature but instead of showing member availability in general it shows character availability for specific days. You can choose to have members only enter data for their mains then have raid leaders extrapolate that info to alts, or to have users enter info for all of their raiding characters. You can choose to have members only enter info when they are "unavailable" or to enter info for everything. The tool is flexible and you will need to create your own policies within your guild.
This tool provides a calendar view for each month, then a member can select their character from a dropdown and enter their monthly availability. This info is then shows on a calendar for the guild where raid leaders and guild leaders can see what classes and characters are available through the month.
Some guilds will choose to use this calendar as a vacation notification, which is one way to use it. Others will use it for raid planning since it also gives you class makeup breakdowns. There are certainly other ways to use the functionality, the choice is yours.
Enhancements
- Spoiler BBCode Spoiler (Click To Show):
- Ranks can now be set to auto synchronize or manually synchronize between characters and members. Note, you may still need to perform some manual adjustment, but this change will greatly simplify management for many guilds.
- The adjustments page now links to the character's profile.
- The last profile upload date now shows on the character profile
- Custom pages can now be set to individual privacy settings (member or non-member visible). The Member only content settings now represent the default.
- A "Manage KOS" link has been added to the KOS widget when it is empty so users can more intuitively interact with this content.
- We've improved the Recruiting By Class UI:
-- The recruiting items are now sortable. The default sort is by sequence order and then alphabetic. If you leave the sequence all set to 0 then you get alphabetic sorting. If you want to group them differently you can modify the sequence to arrange them how you want.
-- We've added the ability to add a seperator line to the Recruiting By Class UI by entering three dashes "---" into the class field.
-- Recruiting by Class data is now editable
- The official career icons have been added for Warhammer
Multi-Language Support
- Various foreign language encoding issues have been fixed throughout the site.
ItemStats
- ItemStats has been added/improved for:
-- Age of Conan [Harness of Violent Rage]
-- EQ2 [Sandstalker Legplates]
-- Hellgate: London [Existential Core]
-- Lotro [Aermal]
-- Vanguard [Flawless Prophet's Keen Tunic]
-- Warhammer [Annihila Cloak of Cerulean Rule]
- World of Warcraft ItemStats are now fully supported for the following languages:
-- French
-- Spanish
-- German
-- We will have Russian when WoWHead adds it
- ItemStats refreshes have been made faster
- The "Raid Item" type of itemstats has had it's raid item history link moved to the Magnifying class and the text will now link to the info site. This is so that raid item and non-raid item ItemStats links all behave the same when interacted with in the same way. It may confuse long time users for a bit, but this implementation is the correct one for usability and for long term use.
- Multi-Game Guild Feature: ItemStats can now be linked for any game we support itemstats for regardless of what game the Guild Site is set to. There are now BBCodes available like [waritem], [lotroitem] etc. You can get the full list in the BBCode extension dropdown when you make a post.
Session Management
- We have modified our Session Management a bit to provide more security and functionality, the following changes have been made:
-- If you change your password all auto login and any active session you have will be logged out. The purpose of this change is to allow you to clear all possible sessions for your login by changing your password.
-- Sessions now last 2 hours, but are auto extended as you use the site. So, if you are actively using the site you will not be logged out. If you let the browser site for 2 hours, you will be logged out. Auto-Login sessions will not be logged out after 2 hours, but *will* be logged back into the site automatically.
-- We've modified the encryption algorithm used to be more performant.
Profile Uploads
- The bank for a character is now automatically uploaded on profile uploads. However, you can choose to make your bank private on the character profile page.
- When you upload a profile on a character profile page the character that you are on will be updated. When you upload a profile on the character list, then the character will be searched for and updated if found or created if not found. Currently the latter approach is always taken. This approach will allow users to "force" an update of a character.
Rapid Raid
- You can now import a list of Members into a Raid event with a text file line seperated list or with a standard EQ2 raid dump. This option is below the existing lists for adding members to an event.
Performance
- Some queries have been removed and optimized to improve page load times.
- PM performance has been improved
Instructions
- A note has been added to the adjustments page to let people to know to use commas as thousands seperator.
- How to disable the "Special Features" in the section linkboxes has been documented on the Section Links page.
- The "Email Address is Already In Use" message for creating an account has had detail about how you can use a Guild Launch account with any GL site added to it. This should make registration more clear for some users.
Warhamer Additions
- Official career icons have been added for your roster and other areas.
- We've added many Warhammer headers to the Header Gallery on the Template tab in the Admin area. In addition we have added more Everquest II, Eve Online, Everquest and Age of Conan headers.
- Itemstats from WarDB have been added. You can now link items using the Item name using a traditional itemstats BBCode and you can link Spells, Quests, NPCs and Items using the link from WarDB and custom BBCode for these.
General
- The description has been removed from the Guild Browse pages. This is due to formatting issues. We will be launching new features at a later date to improve the guild discovery features.
- The email icon at the top right of the pages has been changed so that it won't "flash" when clicking around the site.
- Action confirmation pages have had their display modified so they are more readable.
- The "bad login" page on the guild sites has had a reset password link added to it.
- A form to use to login to the Ventrilo control panel has been added to the Subscriptions tab on all "My User Page"s.
Bug Fixes
- The left hand navigation on a site will now collapse when the column is empty.
- Sections link ordering was broken in certain cases, this has been fixed.
- Users can now PM users with special characters in their name by name.
We've just released Guild Launch Version 4.8. This release is a large release with alot of important functionality improvements, additions, enhancements and bug fixes. There is literally something in this release for nearly every guild in every game.
This is our fist release since our forced office move due to a fire in the office next to us, so it was delayed a bit. We're now settled in the new office and back in gear so to speak, but due to the office move scheduling and preparing this release has been "adventurous". If you've got a feature you were hoping for in this release then feel free to ask about it, but we did have to cut a few things we were hoping to add such as some advanced Private Message filtering. Those changes are scheduled for the next release though, as are many others.
We hope you enjoy this release and remember if you encounter login issues please clear out your cookies and close your browser and try again before posting in here or sending a ticket. We've tested login heavily and it is working, but cookies on your machine can cause some wierdeness.
Enjoy!
Stephen
NOTE: We're currently working on an issue with Availability info tracking in guild applications. It doesn't effect applications, you just can't turn the feature on unless you use the advanced Application type. We'll have this fixed on Friday.
We've also released a 4.8.1 mini-release to resolves some issues found in this release. Details are here:
http://support.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=5561344
Major Features
Guild Availability and Depth Chart
Guild Availability
We have added a new set of features that allow you to poll your guild for their weekly availability for raiding (or anything else). With this feature your guild members can enter what days they can raid and how often they can raid using a Once A Month, Twice A Month, Three Times A Month, 4 Times A Month, Always sort of entry. The idea here is that if a person can always raid on Thursdays they can enter "Always" or "4 Times A month", if they can sometimes raid on Tuesdays they enter "Once A Month" or whatever they feel is appropriate in general. The idea is not for them to guarantee once a month attendance, but to allow them to give a general idea of their availability. This information is then calculated and a display is presented that shows what days your highest percentage of raiders are available.
Depth Chart
The depth chart is a similar feature but instead of showing member availability in general it shows character availability for specific days. You can choose to have members only enter data for their mains then have raid leaders extrapolate that info to alts, or to have users enter info for all of their raiding characters. You can choose to have members only enter info when they are "unavailable" or to enter info for everything. The tool is flexible and you will need to create your own policies within your guild.
This tool provides a calendar view for each month, then a member can select their character from a dropdown and enter their monthly availability. This info is then shows on a calendar for the guild where raid leaders and guild leaders can see what classes and characters are available through the month.
Some guilds will choose to use this calendar as a vacation notification, which is one way to use it. Others will use it for raid planning since it also gives you class makeup breakdowns. There are certainly other ways to use the functionality, the choice is yours.
Enhancements
- Spoiler BBCode Spoiler (Click To Show):
Spoiler
- Code: Select all
[spoiler]Spoiler[/spoiler]
- Ranks can now be set to auto synchronize or manually synchronize between characters and members. Note, you may still need to perform some manual adjustment, but this change will greatly simplify management for many guilds.
- The adjustments page now links to the character's profile.
- The last profile upload date now shows on the character profile
- Custom pages can now be set to individual privacy settings (member or non-member visible). The Member only content settings now represent the default.
- A "Manage KOS" link has been added to the KOS widget when it is empty so users can more intuitively interact with this content.
- We've improved the Recruiting By Class UI:
-- The recruiting items are now sortable. The default sort is by sequence order and then alphabetic. If you leave the sequence all set to 0 then you get alphabetic sorting. If you want to group them differently you can modify the sequence to arrange them how you want.
-- We've added the ability to add a seperator line to the Recruiting By Class UI by entering three dashes "---" into the class field.
-- Recruiting by Class data is now editable
- The official career icons have been added for Warhammer
Multi-Language Support
- Various foreign language encoding issues have been fixed throughout the site.
ItemStats
- ItemStats has been added/improved for:
-- Age of Conan [Harness of Violent Rage]
-- EQ2 [Sandstalker Legplates]
-- Hellgate: London [Existential Core]
-- Lotro [Aermal]
-- Vanguard [Flawless Prophet's Keen Tunic]
-- Warhammer [Annihila Cloak of Cerulean Rule]
- World of Warcraft ItemStats are now fully supported for the following languages:
-- French
-- Spanish
-- German
-- We will have Russian when WoWHead adds it
- ItemStats refreshes have been made faster
- The "Raid Item" type of itemstats has had it's raid item history link moved to the Magnifying class and the text will now link to the info site. This is so that raid item and non-raid item ItemStats links all behave the same when interacted with in the same way. It may confuse long time users for a bit, but this implementation is the correct one for usability and for long term use.
- Multi-Game Guild Feature: ItemStats can now be linked for any game we support itemstats for regardless of what game the Guild Site is set to. There are now BBCodes available like [waritem], [lotroitem] etc. You can get the full list in the BBCode extension dropdown when you make a post.
Session Management
- We have modified our Session Management a bit to provide more security and functionality, the following changes have been made:
-- If you change your password all auto login and any active session you have will be logged out. The purpose of this change is to allow you to clear all possible sessions for your login by changing your password.
-- Sessions now last 2 hours, but are auto extended as you use the site. So, if you are actively using the site you will not be logged out. If you let the browser site for 2 hours, you will be logged out. Auto-Login sessions will not be logged out after 2 hours, but *will* be logged back into the site automatically.
-- We've modified the encryption algorithm used to be more performant.
Profile Uploads
- The bank for a character is now automatically uploaded on profile uploads. However, you can choose to make your bank private on the character profile page.
- When you upload a profile on a character profile page the character that you are on will be updated. When you upload a profile on the character list, then the character will be searched for and updated if found or created if not found. Currently the latter approach is always taken. This approach will allow users to "force" an update of a character.
Rapid Raid
- You can now import a list of Members into a Raid event with a text file line seperated list or with a standard EQ2 raid dump. This option is below the existing lists for adding members to an event.
Performance
- Some queries have been removed and optimized to improve page load times.
- PM performance has been improved
Instructions
- A note has been added to the adjustments page to let people to know to use commas as thousands seperator.
- How to disable the "Special Features" in the section linkboxes has been documented on the Section Links page.
- The "Email Address is Already In Use" message for creating an account has had detail about how you can use a Guild Launch account with any GL site added to it. This should make registration more clear for some users.
Warhamer Additions
- Official career icons have been added for your roster and other areas.
- We've added many Warhammer headers to the Header Gallery on the Template tab in the Admin area. In addition we have added more Everquest II, Eve Online, Everquest and Age of Conan headers.
- Itemstats from WarDB have been added. You can now link items using the Item name using a traditional itemstats BBCode and you can link Spells, Quests, NPCs and Items using the link from WarDB and custom BBCode for these.
General
- The description has been removed from the Guild Browse pages. This is due to formatting issues. We will be launching new features at a later date to improve the guild discovery features.
- The email icon at the top right of the pages has been changed so that it won't "flash" when clicking around the site.
- Action confirmation pages have had their display modified so they are more readable.
- The "bad login" page on the guild sites has had a reset password link added to it.
- A form to use to login to the Ventrilo control panel has been added to the Subscriptions tab on all "My User Page"s.
Bug Fixes
- The left hand navigation on a site will now collapse when the column is empty.
- Sections link ordering was broken in certain cases, this has been fixed.
- Users can now PM users with special characters in their name by name.
Last edited by GL_Support on Thu Sep 11, 2008 1:50 pm; edited 2 times in total
Woothdye wrote:
In the calendar section. I've got to work a kink out on it. I named them backwards. I'm not sure at what point they got screwed up in my head, but the depth is supposed to be the availability and vice versa.
-Stephen
Where do we access this "Guild Availability and Depth Chart"?
In the calendar section. I've got to work a kink out on it. I named them backwards. I'm not sure at what point they got screwed up in my head, but the depth is supposed to be the availability and vice versa.
-Stephen
Woothdye wrote:
http://indomitable.guildlaunch.com/calendar/calendar.php?mode=month&month=09&year=2008&gid=24271
Look to the top left side navigation.
Regarding the ItemStats. We developed this functionality, then upgraded the WYSIWYG. It seems the newer version of the WYSIWYG is formatting the ItemStats tags incorrectly. I should have a fix today.
-Stephen
I still can't find it
and the item links don't seem to be working in my wiki
and the item links don't seem to be working in my wiki
http://indomitable.guildlaunch.com/calendar/calendar.php?mode=month&month=09&year=2008&gid=24271
Look to the top left side navigation.
Regarding the ItemStats. We developed this functionality, then upgraded the WYSIWYG. It seems the newer version of the WYSIWYG is formatting the ItemStats tags incorrectly. I should have a fix today.
-Stephen
Woothdye wrote:
Actually, was going to put in the Feature Request board to maybe make the Availability links available on the "My User Page" as well. Ideally on the Character tab you could have a link there for each character to add their availability.
It isn't intuitively obvious where that selection is from the start...although when you think about it calendar is a good choice, I know half the people I've talked to first went to "My User Page" to look for it...
Damn now I just feel retarded.
Actually, was going to put in the Feature Request board to maybe make the Availability links available on the "My User Page" as well. Ideally on the Character tab you could have a link there for each character to add their availability.
It isn't intuitively obvious where that selection is from the start...although when you think about it calendar is a good choice, I know half the people I've talked to first went to "My User Page" to look for it...
One Safari issue so far in our guild:
mr-mac wrote:
Seems more of a formatting issue than anything but will post the SS when he gets it loaded to our site...
I'm having issues with the top bar and the login button not appearing correctly... when i get home i can submit a screenshot.
Seems more of a formatting issue than anything but will post the SS when he gets it loaded to our site...
Please refer me to the relevant section if I'm missing something here, but would it be possible to get WoW spell links and quest links working just like the WoW item links do currently?
The WowHead API has supported this since March 2008, I believe. And yeah, I realise I don't pay you guys any money and you work real hard. It's terrific what you guys have accomplished so far.
It's awesome how rapidly you've adapted to Warhammer Online (including support for spell links...), just don't leave your support for older games behind? /hug!
The WowHead API has supported this since March 2008, I believe. And yeah, I realise I don't pay you guys any money and you work real hard. It's terrific what you guys have accomplished so far.
It's awesome how rapidly you've adapted to Warhammer Online (including support for spell links...), just don't leave your support for older games behind? /hug!
WoWHead Spell Links should work in 4.8, just by linking to WoWHead.
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=16924
or
Celestial Focus
Quests too:
My Quest
We don't any intent to leave WoW behind. At the same time I can't guarantee everything we do for Warhammer will be available for WoW immediately. Just like I don't guarantee the other way. However, feature parity (in as much as it is possible) is our goal, it just mike take a release or two for things to come full circle. Or we have to make everyone wait for everyone else's features, which is no good either.
-Stephen
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=16924
- Code: Select all
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=16924
or
Celestial Focus
- Code: Select all
[url=http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=16924]Celestial Focus[/url]
Quests too:
My Quest
- Code: Select all
[url=http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=1369]My Quest[/url]
We don't any intent to leave WoW behind. At the same time I can't guarantee everything we do for Warhammer will be available for WoW immediately. Just like I don't guarantee the other way. However, feature parity (in as much as it is possible) is our goal, it just mike take a release or two for things to come full circle. Or we have to make everyone wait for everyone else's features, which is no good either.
-Stephen
Excellent work guys and with this update, I will definitely be extending my subscription!
One question. Is there any plan to add guild bank support for Warhammer? I'd love to be able to put links to wardb.
One question. Is there any plan to add guild bank support for Warhammer? I'd love to be able to put links to wardb.
Gator_Shawn wrote:
Guild Banks are supported, in a limited and more manual manner, for all games. If mods support getting bank info in Warhammer then we'll eventually add it. Our priorities for mod development are:
1. Guild Rosters
2. Character Profiles
3. Raid Tracking
4. Anything else
Excellent work guys and with this update, I will definitely be extending my subscription!
One question. Is there any plan to add guild bank support for Warhammer? I'd love to be able to put links to wardb.
One question. Is there any plan to add guild bank support for Warhammer? I'd love to be able to put links to wardb.
Guild Banks are supported, in a limited and more manual manner, for all games. If mods support getting bank info in Warhammer then we'll eventually add it. Our priorities for mod development are:
1. Guild Rosters
2. Character Profiles
3. Raid Tracking
4. Anything else
GL_Support wrote:
I guess what I mean is, would it be possible to use the [wardbitem] code to enter items into the bank?
Gator_Shawn wrote:
Guild Banks are supported, in a limited and more manual manner, for all games. If mods support getting bank info in Warhammer then we'll eventually add it. Our priorities for mod development are:
1. Guild Rosters
2. Character Profiles
3. Raid Tracking
4. Anything else
Excellent work guys and with this update, I will definitely be extending my subscription!
One question. Is there any plan to add guild bank support for Warhammer? I'd love to be able to put links to wardb.
One question. Is there any plan to add guild bank support for Warhammer? I'd love to be able to put links to wardb.
Guild Banks are supported, in a limited and more manual manner, for all games. If mods support getting bank info in Warhammer then we'll eventually add it. Our priorities for mod development are:
1. Guild Rosters
2. Character Profiles
3. Raid Tracking
4. Anything else
I guess what I mean is, would it be possible to use the [wardbitem] code to enter items into the bank?
Gator_Shawn wrote:
GL_Support wrote:
I guess what I mean is, would it be possible to use the [wardbitem] code to enter items into the bank?
I'll take a look at it and make sure the itemstats are loading in the bank for Warhammer guilds. THey should be already.
-Stephen
Gator_Shawn wrote:
Guild Banks are supported, in a limited and more manual manner, for all games. If mods support getting bank info in Warhammer then we'll eventually add it. Our priorities for mod development are:
1. Guild Rosters
2. Character Profiles
3. Raid Tracking
4. Anything else
Excellent work guys and with this update, I will definitely be extending my subscription!
One question. Is there any plan to add guild bank support for Warhammer? I'd love to be able to put links to wardb.
One question. Is there any plan to add guild bank support for Warhammer? I'd love to be able to put links to wardb.
Guild Banks are supported, in a limited and more manual manner, for all games. If mods support getting bank info in Warhammer then we'll eventually add it. Our priorities for mod development are:
1. Guild Rosters
2. Character Profiles
3. Raid Tracking
4. Anything else
I guess what I mean is, would it be possible to use the [wardbitem] code to enter items into the bank?
I'll take a look at it and make sure the itemstats are loading in the bank for Warhammer guilds. THey should be already.
-Stephen