ipb

Sounds like you got some mod bottles. They're not prototypes

I don't know when it broke, but it should be back now. Please contact myself or Morrig if the link isn't working again.

I don't know about you, but 2010 was a crazy year across the board for me - personally, professionally, and here on the forum - and full of many highs and many lows.

Looking into 2011, I wanted to let you know of some of the things that we have been working on, and some of the things we are planning to work on.

The Forum Updates Blog. Morrig, SV, and I have a new blog on the forum (linked to the left), though I'm the primary person who posts to it. Some of you have already seen it - I've been linking to it from our facebook page (which pushes it up to our twitter). There's presently no RSS feed for it, specifically, and I've been working with Invision to try to figure out how to make one. I do have it set up to notify me of comments, so please - comment away! I know there's been some discussion already, but you're definitely encouraged to keep the comments hopping

Skins. We will be announcing our skinning contest soon! We want YOU to design our next skin! You don't need to know anything about how the Invision templating system works - we'll be paying someone to convert from images (or PSP/PSD files) or from HTML/CSS (with whatever images necessary). You're welcome to get started now, and you'll be allowed to submit up to three skins. One word about images: they need to be PG13 and either your work, public-domain, or royalty free (with the source). So, for instance, many of the Lab's Beardsley images would be fine to use, but their CD/Neil Gaiman/Hellboy/etc images would not be.

Feedback Center. In June, we lost our feedback system unexpectedly when the forum was upgraded. In some ways, it was not a huge loss - it was super slow, it was picky, there were many people who couldn't leave feedback (or get feedback) -- but having no feedback system in its place was terribly. I am so very sorry at how long it took me to put up the new system, because I was trying to design it in a way that made more sense. In any case, in December, I was finally able to bring back the personal feedback pages - but without statistics. One of the things I am presently working on is returning the statistics. I have no ETA for them at this time.

The Unresolved Swaps Center. WIth the feedback we've gotten from it, and the way the feedback system has been created, I have come to the conclusion that Unresolved Swaps is really redundant, and I will be removing the link and contacting those that have given reports to ask that they leave feedback (if they have not done so). Our old feedback system didn't allow multiple transactions, didn't really allow for me to configure it to have "non-ratings", and so forth, and with that system, a separate unresolved swaps area made sense. Instead, I will try to add something to feedback, to allow you to readily pull out certain kinds of feedback -- similar to the way Amazon allows you to only read the 1 star reviews.

The Stash Manager. Our newest little gizmo, I love it to pieces. I suppose this serves as the forum announcement for it - I have talked about it a little in the "How do you keep track of what you've tried" topic, and announced it on our blog a few days ago. What's the Stash Manager? It's a tool that will allow you to keep track of what BPAL you've tried, how well you liked it, whether or not you've bought it/kept it/sold or swapped it, and your personal notes about it. It's as private as PMs are (or, perhaps, more private - you can't currently share any of it). I've got some cool long term plans from it (recommendations, making cloud tags of your loved and hated notes), but it'll take time because I have to educate myself on data mining. If you have questions, comments, find bugs, or that sort of thing, please post them in in this topic!

The Scent Database. This is the database that runs, among other things, our Stash Manager and our Price Cap Database. Recently, we requested volunteers to help us add some of the missing scents to the database and got an outstanding result - nearly 50 people volunteered! We were only looking for a handful of volunteers for adding scents, and will be getting back to you later this week -- while not everyone will be selected for adding scents (so many people can be very hard to manage), those who aren't will be tasked with helping to go through the various forums, to double check that the links are correct, the release/discontinuation dates are correct, and so forth. Even if you didn't volunteer to help out, I would really appreciate it if you would use the Report button to let us know when you see things that are wrong or missing.

Links to Member's Posts in Forum / in Topic. I think I know how to do this now, though not as prettily as it used to be. I don't know when it'll get done, though - the new hovercard makes it kind of hard to add it in a pretty fashion.

View your own invisible topics/posts. Still broken, and the guy I talked to that thought he knew how to fix it wanted an obscene amount of money to do it for us It's probably a fair amount, but way more than I'm willing to spend.

Retail Therapy. The experiment still continues. We're continuing to evaluate your feedback (both what you've been telling us via PM or in the topic, and what you're telling us by your posting and traffic patterns).

One of the things that has been mentioned many times is the lower traffic in Retail Therapy since the changes. This prompted me to take a closer look at the traffic patterns - not just from within 2009, but for the last five years. When analyzing the traffic patterns, however, I found a statistic that is absolutely puzzling. Normally, Retail Therapy experiences a significant drop in traffic from October to December. Typically, it's a 25-50% reduction in traffic, and is the biggest drop of the year. Traffic trends on this forum are, for better or worse, fairly consistent year-to-year, and have a cycle within the year. This year, there was a drop of 47% and has already started to recover (5 days into the year and there's already more posts than we had at this point last month). The puzzling part to me is that it was not the worse drop that Retail Therapy experienced last year -- between February and April 2010, the traffic was cut in more than half and never recovered.

The Guidelines. We have been meaning to rewrite them for years but never quite found the time to do so, and just kept adding things and adding things via announcements, pinned topics, and announcements, and not necessarily in places that are convenient - for you or for us! - to find what we want. We are going to move the guidelines into a different area, one that's easier for us to categorize and link to, so you can more readily find what you want. We're going to get rid of things that are out of date and (hopefully) going to simplify things - including the dreaded swaps area.

We have had an overwhelming number of volunteers. I'm awed by the enthusiastic response - nearly 50 people volunteered!

We only needed a handful of volunteers for Phase I (to add things), as too many people makes it hard to coordinate who's doing what. We're currently going through the applications. It'll take some time to sort through them, so it'll be a few days before we've selected our Phase I volunteers, and a few days for us to get everything set up for everyone to start working. I'm hoping to get back to everyone within a week.

You guys rock!

We're looking for volunteers to help us with the scent database! As you may be aware, the scent database is what drives several key things on this forum: the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab search engine, our Price Cap Database, our Stash Manager, and soon, the Reviews Summary that will be on the top of each of the Reviews topics (replacing the currently manually edited descriptions - but far more detailed!). Keeping it up to date is something that we find to be very important, and we'd like your help in doing so!

Qualifications:

* Attention to detail

* Desire to give back to the community

Responsibilities:

* Help add scents that are missing (either ones that weren't put in initially or are brand new).

* Communicate! We'll have a PM between the volunteers & the swap mods that will need to be kept around.

* Potentially, help edit scents -- including missing information (notes, release dates), finding label images, updating scents as they switch categories or become discontinued.

Time commitment:

* Stage 1 (Completion): Bringing the database up to date. We're presently missing about 500 scents/products. Adding 5-10 scents a day would be ideal, and in my experience, that would be about 20-40 minutes once you've got your tabs/windows set up. With 5 people working on it, adding 10 scents a day each, it'll take 2-3 days to complete the database for the rest of the missing BPAL scents and another 2-3 days to add the missing BPTP items.

* Stage 2 (Maintenance): After the missing scents are added, it shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes an update to add all the new scents. No one person is expected to add them all, though they're welcome to if they want to! As well, periodically looking through the database, to make sure everything is up-to-date and correct would be a great thing.

Rewards:

* Our volunteers will all get a free PM box expansion to 250 PMs.

* Probably will hear about some of the other potential uses of this database

How to volunteer:

* Click the "Report" button of this post to volunteer! In about a week, I'll send a PM to the volunteers and we'll get started!

The forum stash tracking app should be released by the end of the year

Hi everyone,

I was wishing that there were an easy way to search on this forum for the scent information. For example, if you had a search bar and could type the name in, like "Blue Fire" and it would show that it is part of the Tiki collection... and it is GC and available at $x. Or it would show that it was available only through the forum, or is an LE from 2009... I get so mixed up on the BPAL official site when I am trying to find things and I never know in what section the scent is hiding... Any suggestions for you experts out there?

Thank you!

tinytiki

I don't really read this part of the forum often, so I didn't see this until now, but I'm actually working on a few things to help with that!

#1) There is the scent database information. Of course, if you don't know the category, it's a bit of a pain to find things. (I have been working with Invision to make it so you can search between categories. It's pretty much stalled out until the next version, and it's not a guarantee it'll make it in.)

#2) Some of that is available on the BPAL site's search engine. It does not (or, rather, should not be) showing anything that is not presently available, but as I recall, it's showing the category, price, and a purchase link. The Lab requested it not display anything not presently for sale, so that will not be changing.

#3) In the next few weeks, I should be releasing something that displays the scent database information in review pages. Prices, purchase link from the lab, etc. While it doesn't solve the immediate problem, you'd be able to easily search the reviews forums for the name (limiting to forum results/title searches).

#4) To a lesser extent, the forum's scent tracker app (which should be coming out relatively soon) will be able to help. Once you've added a scent, it'll display the category & series name, and link to the review page. I won't be including pricing information - the prices aren't the point of the app, it's the tracking. Granted, if you're not doing any sort of tracking, it doesn't help you a'tall.

No one way is perfect for all situations, but between these avenues, you should be able to find what you need quickly and smoothly.

I have just finished updating the forum skins with the links to the new personal feedback pages.

As I mentioned in the forum updates blog earlier today, the personal feedback pages are coming back in two stages: a bare bones, very basic page that compiles no statistics, but allows users to readily view the feedback for one individual (and nobody but that individual). This page has the ability to report feedback and gives links for the feedback giver to comment or edit their feedback & the feedback recipient to comment. It does not show the comments, or statistics. Unlike the previous system, the feedback system does not require that we manually add people -- all members (even new members without feedback) automatically have feedback pages generated.

In the coming months, I will be regularly flushing out the personal feedback pages with all sorts of things, including: splitting out the feedback into several "views", adding all swaplift reports, adding the comments and statistics, making it prettier, and all sorts of goodies.

If you use earthlink.net, and you're using their opt-in, authorized-users-only white list AND have any sort of subscriptions, please list support@bpal.org as one of your authorized contacts. I have been getting several bounce messages from people who do not, and I am going to start switching subscriptions for individuals whose emails bounce to having no notification.

If you opt in, every time you get an email notification, I get an email that looks like this:

I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.

 

To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.

 

If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

 

Click the link below to fill out the request:

 

https://webmail.pas.earthlink.net/wam/addme

It was recently brought to my attention that it is possible for people who initiate PMs to continue to send PMs after the other person has deleted the conversation ("left the conversation").

Please check on the left to see if the other person has "left the conversation" before replying. The image below is an example of a PM I sent out that had been deleted by the other person.

If someone has deleted the topic you're replying to, you will need to start up a new topic.

There have been many miscommunications as a result of this bug (which I have reported to Invision).

FORUM SKINS

Our newest skin, Carnaval Diabiolique, has been released! It features art from the Lab's Carnaval Diabolique line. All of our thanks go to Jenn and Beth for letting us use their work & hooking us up with not only the backgrounds, but the font for our logo! As well, I'd like to shout out to jenpo for her assistance as well. (By the by: the image background was a compromise on download time versus large monitors. I may increase it up to 1600px from the current 1080px.)

We are getting together the images to start working with a skin developer to convert our old skins. I do not have an ETA for arrival, as we're still gathering the graphics and finalizing the negotiations, but after we shoot off the graphics, it should be about 2 weeks (though the holidays may kick it off an extra week). If all works well, after a version update that IPB has tentatively scheduled for Q1 2011, we will convert the remainder of our skins. (We will not upgrade the forum to that version before at least 1-2 of the skins are done unless there are critical security issues.). I hope that you will continue to be patient with us (and the software!).

OLD AND BUSTED, NEW HOTNESS

A couple of functions went away with the upgrade (like being able to easily grab a person's posts in a given topic) and a couple of them are broken. We're working on it. Many of our functions aren't standard with Invision Power Board (the software that powers our site) -- they're special mods that someone out there wrote. When new upgrades happen, these functions have to be upgraded and that is dependent on whom coded the mod, which wasn't always me. Once they're available we will implement them back into the forum, believe us we miss them just as much as you!

In the meantime, check out some of our returned functions - like feedback! Formerly the bane of my existence, once we had a few thousand feedbacks entered in, it became slow and unresponsive. After several months of polishing up the details, the first half of feedback has been released (complete with all the old feedback!), and it's lightning fast! I'm working on getting personalized pages set up, which will eliminate the current reliance on the "find by searching the name" issue that currently can bring up feedback from multiple people.

We're also working on front page sidebar sections separating out the various "recently posted" topics by area. You can see that the Announcements area has already been made (and it combines both the forum and Lab announcements). Swaps, reviews, and "discussion topics" (the various Chatters and their subfora) will also have little boxes coming up.

Another new feature is that the forum now tracks what time you leave or delete PMs! I am working on getting this visible in PMs, but it IS in the back end. If you have questions about when someone deleted a PM, just hang on to it - hopefully, it will be visible at the end of the month. (That said: anything deleted before yesterday was NOT tracked.)

RETAIL THERAPY REORGANIZATION

The great Retail Therapy reorganization experiment continues! We've had some great feedback from you all and we're working on making Retail Therapy a place that you guys will continue to frequent. Feel free to continue to post your thoughts here in this thread (PLEASE keep all discussion of the system in this thread only so we can actually follow it!) and remember, you can always privately message a moderator your ideas if you don't want to share them with the forum at large.

BPAL/BPTP UPDATE

The Yule updates were FREAKING AWESOME! The Nutcracker! A Christmas Carol! The returning of the usual suspects! Aeaeaeae!

Update: Commenting now fixed.

Update: editing has been fixed. Comments have not been. Waiting to hear from them.

Dude, I am so over this Mercury retrograde, and it's not even started yet.

Apparently there is some f'd up driver problem happening with the new version of the IP.Content. I've submitted a ticket with invision to make them fix it, but yadda yadda. It will take time, they will start off blaming me (because there's a plugin, and they always blame the plugins first), but I think I beat them over the head with the fact that the SQL error trace doesn't even touch my code. Why can't I have nice, smooth upgrades?

Unfortunately, computing time is NOT something I have much of for the rest of this week. My laptop's power supply literally tried to set my house on fire earlier today -- it started melting, turned yellow, and was smoking even after I unplugged it. Needless to say, I am waiting for a replacement power supply and battery from Apple, which will take a few days. I have roughly 2 hours of battery left until then.

Gallery has returned!

When I was updating the description links (the new update stopped allowing a mix of fURL links and non-fURL links), I went ahead and did some minor rearrangements for forums, for organizational purposes.

Fantasy Island is now part of BPAL Chatter!

The swaps area has been slightly reorganized. No forums have been eliminated, but there are two new organization "parent forums". The forums for Circular Swaps and Decant Circles/Group Orders share a parent forum (and if we ever have more "group swap/sale" forums, they will also go here), and the links to the two forums directly are in the description, so you don't need to open the forum to get to where you want. Likewise, the redirects for the three forum swap/sale tools (the price caps database, feedback, and unresolved swaps) also share a parent forum - and you can get to our tools either from the navigational bar on the top of every page, or from the description of the forum in the swaps area.

When we were tweaking the settings of the database (in an ongoing attempt to try to resolve the "cannot connect" problems we've been seeing sporadically), the posts database crashed. It has since been repaired, and we're back!

As I noted in the other topic, our BBCode problems have been restored.

If you missed my frustrated haiku from the forum's offline message:

Once more, posts have crashed.

Must repair. No ETA.

Why must updates suck?

The mods are now testing a brand new skin - but you'll hear more about that later this week, when it should be going live.

The software update is now complete & the BBCode has returned to its working condition. Hooray!

Now to tell y'all about the updates!

Forums had actually a really boring update - it just fixed bugs and was setting things up for the big update that's scheduled to come out in Q1 2011. I know, all that fuss and nothing changed as far as what we see! There will be a new skin, but that's independent of this update.

Blogs update is actually pretty big. Many of the changes were back end related, but here are some of the things you might notice!

• New "Like" system on Blogs and Blog Entries.
  
• Notification support for new blog entries, and new comments, so you can watch a member's blog or an entry.
  
• Uses a new comments system.
  
• New "Manage Blogs" area.
  
• Facebook Like and Twitter Tweet buttons on blog entries.
  
• Cleaned up design.
  
• Single column layout on individual blogs.

Gallery problems have been escalated to Tier II support. Hopefully they'll get that fixed shortly!

Feedback / Unresolved Swaps / Price Caps / Cookbook all had backend updates that will let me start working on some cool things, but you won't see it for a few months yet!

The software update's been applied, but there are still some minor things we've got to tweak (including some of the BBCode).

The update's been scheduled for 2am today (approximately 2 hours from now). Sorry about the short notice, but since the gallery is unusable without this update, I felt it best to update sooner than later.

Just wanted to give you guys a heads up that we'll be upgrading our forum software over the weekend, in order to fix a bug with the gallery. (Thanks for letting us know there was a problem, puddingirl!)

I'm still working with Invision to schedule the time of the update, but it will probably be tomorrow night. When I have a time, I will let you know.

If you've noticed while browsing the feedback that it jumped from 14 pages to over 2000, that's because I just imported all of the old feedback.

Anything that changed in scale from 1-5 to "positive/neutral/negative" in scale was updated in the following manner:

- Anything rated 4 or 5 became "Positive"

- Anything rated 2 or 3 became "Neutral"

- Anything rated 1 became "Negative"

One important item to note is that all imported feedback have been locked. In theory, this means it cannot be edited or commented on, but I'm not entirely sure if that is true in practice.

As you may have noticed at the top of the page, skins have been updated to have links to the indices of the swap feedback, the incomplete swaps, and price caps. As well, I am in the process of updating the skins to link to an individual's feedback and reported incomplete swaps on their profiles.

You should be getting PMs when you have new or updated feedback now.

Just a reminder to everyone that this topic is not the place to arrange for swaps.