Software Updates and Changes

[Mike]

So I thought it'd be nice to have a thread dedicated to our custom software (TTM Manager) and, more specifically, what changes y'all can expect going forward.

After these first few days of having some help playing with this thing, from @kclj520 and @DFWGrapher, I realized that I never coded in a way to delete addresses. I can edit them but can't delete them. I'm not sure how I didn't think that would be a thing, but I didn't so that's something that will be added going forward.

While I'm in there I'll also add a way for members to delete their TTM requests for X days and a way to remove celebrities that are added if/when necessary.

Finally (finally for now, but not forever), I think we need to also add a way to set photos on celebrity overview pages of the latest requests from those celebrities. I'll also probably add a way to add a small photo of one of those requests to the main celebrity listing page next to each celebrity.

I'll try to have all of these things done by the end of the week. The hope is to have this bad boy dialed in and in good operating condition by the end of the month so that I can start advertising the site starting in April.

Thank you all for stopping by, and especially thank you to those who do, and will, contribute to the site. As always, if there is anything you'd like to see changed, please let me know and I'll look into it.

 

[Mike]

So I just got a few of these updates done. Members can now delete their TTM request trackers for up to 24 hours (for duplicate/accidental entries). I also added a way that I can delete addresses and celebrities. I'll start work on adding some photos to the celebrity pages (for ones we already have request photos for) soon too.

Work continues! Thank you all again for stopping by!

 

[Mike]

Ok, just a quick update. I did get it so that I could manually set an image per celebrity, but haven't quite nailed down the code to get it to set automatically once the first photo of a celebrity is updated. I'll get that finished at some point this week but, at least for now, I'll try to keep up with manually selecting them.

 

[Mike]

mjda added a new success for Richard Petty.

Looks like there's a bug here. The auto-post uses the username of whoever added the address instead of the username of the person actually posting the success. I'll look into getting this one fixed by tomorrow evening.

 

[Mike]

Looks like there's a bug here. The auto-post uses the username of whoever added the address instead of the username of the person actually posting the success. I'll look into getting this one fixed by tomorrow evening.

Nevermind...turns out it was an easier fix than I thought it could be. Consider this one fixed! It won't go back and correct all the posts that were already made but ones in the future should display the correct username.

 

[Mike]

Just as a quick update, I'm still working on a way to automatically add photos to each celebrity's profile when we get one uploaded.

Also, I'm going to add a search box to the celebrities page that will be like a quick search for celebrities, with auto-fill for the data we have.

 

[Mike]

Quite a few small changes made this weekend. I'll go through the main ones briefly here.

First, images are now automatically added to celebrities once a successful return request photo is uploaded. The system will check every hour for any new photos and update the celebrities where necessary.

There are now options to report both the celebrity and each individual address. For the celebrities themselves, you'll see a "Report" button at the top of the page, just below the celebrity name, next to the "Add address" button. To report individual addresses, those links are just below the address, to the right of the "Added by" bit.

The search bar will now include celebrity pages, instead of just the forum threads, in the search results. Also, celebrity pages are now searchable with the "search suggestions", so they will start to pop up as you type.

I've added a new "Find celebrities" block in the navigation area of the main celebrities page, as well as on each category page. The search will be limited to the category you're currently viewing, as well as any child categories of the category you're currently viewing. If you're on the main celebrities page, the quick-search will search all celebrities on the site.

As always, let me know if y'all notice any issues and/or suggestions.

 

[Mike]

A few more changes made to the site today, just to make some of the information more visible.

First, I've changed the way icons are displayed on both the celebrity lists and the request lists. Now, instead of the circles, that are similar to our site avatars, the icons are now square images, that are also a bit larger. The hope is that this will make things easier to see.

Also, on the celebrity listing page(s), I've added the overall celebrity success rate, along with all the stats for number of addresses, number of total requests, pending requests, successes, and failures. This same information has also all been added to the top of the celebrity overview pages. The stats are also still listed below on the overview page(s), separated by address.

 

[Mike]

A few more changes today...

I fixed an issue that prevented the celebrity search page from displaying at all:

Search celebrities

ttmcollectors.com

Made it easier to search celebrities if you're on the main celebrities page, or viewing a specific category. There are now options, in the main search box, to search all celebrities, or just the current category (including sub-categories).

 

[Mike]

Today I fixed a bug that prevented the page selector from displaying when viewing a specific member's TTM requests. This also affected when members are viewing "Your requests". The pagination is there now, so you should be able to view all of your requests. I'll be adding some filters soon so that you can change the way they're sorted.

 

[Mike]

New update posted today that will prevent "failed" and "pending" request images being used as the celebrity's active image. Also, any time a new request is updated, the celebrity's active image will be updated to use an image from one of the latest requests instead of always sticking to the first image uploaded for that celebrity.

 

[Mike]

Another small update today. First, I've set it so the home page will only show the latest successes, instead of the latest requests. Also cleaned up a few places where the code would require a few extra queries to the database on certain pages. Might not be too noticeable right now, but definitely would've slowed the site down the more it grew.

 

[Mike]

A few more small changes yesterday. First of all, I was able to fix the member address counts. Not that it's super important, but I noticed an issue with the way that number is calculated last week and I figured if it's something that's going to be displayed, it should at least be accurate.

While I was fixing that, I also noticed that there was an issue with the way "average wait time" was calculated per address and per celebrity. The numbers were right on the individual requests, but the calculations were off where they were being joined. So, that's fixed now. After I got that fixed, I also decided to add that data to the main celebrity listing page, as seen here:



After posting the update, I have decided to change the way the numbers display, too, to be somewhat like the success rate so that it'll show green for under 30 days, orange(ish) for 30-90 days, and red for anything higher than 90 days, so that'll (hopefully) be in the next update.

Speaking of the celebrity listing page, I made a change there so that the default listing order is by "last update". Celebrities are considered "updated" when they're added, when a new address is added for them, or when a new request is submitted. So, basically, any activity that happens with a particular celebrity will pull it back to the top of the main list.

That said, I've also introduced new filters, as shown below. You can now choose to only list celebrities with specific average wait times, and sort them by several different criteria. I also have plans to add a new option in the next update that will allow members to specify a specific success rate range, and only display celebrities that match that range.

Here's a look at the filter block, and where to find it on the celebrity listing page:



As always, if anyone has an comments or suggestions, please let me know. I can't guarantee I'll implement every suggestion but I can guarantee that everything will be considered. I'm always looking for ways to make the site better, or easier to use.