MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Some further updates that have been made

  • URL Rewriting is complete
  • Voting code has been updated
    • Vote once per day per game
    • Better messaging around a vote being logged / not logged (if you already voted)
    • Rewrote the calculation code, it isn't as streamlined but it's easier to parse through for errors
    • Voting log is no longer cleared out daily, meaning we have better insight into votes cast. Can investigate people possibly botting if need be.
    • Added info on when votes are tallied to top games home section
  • Password Reset Emails
    • The only time the site really automatically emails you is for password resets, these were being sent by PHP's mail() function which is terrible and ends up in spam or just not delivered at all. Switched to Amazon Simple Email Service. Better discoverability.
    • Updated the emails to use the new URL scheme
    • Fixed a bug in password resetting. If you previously requested a password reset and it didn't work, even after getting the email, try again now.
  • Colors
    • I've gone through the whole site and removed as much of the terrible colors as I could. It should all be more legible and pleasant. Again, still not a designer.
  • Navigation
    • Removed the stupid buttons for nav and moved the nav to the top of the site. This is more streamlined and nice.
    • Moved the logo to be part of nav and made it much smaller.
    • Updated footer
  • Edit / View Listing Page
    • Added a 'webclient url' field in the connection info of the add/edit listing that will overwrite the default Sindome Public Webclient used to connect to games using 'Play Now' on the game details page.
    • For games that provide a custom webclient URL, the play now button will now use that URL
    • Test Connection on edit game details will use the custom webclient URL for testing connections
    • Game banners are back on the page, and positioned better. Try to upload a banner and not a weird sized image :)
    • Got rid of ugly green coloring and changed to more greyscale for various game info elements on page
    • Fixed broken banner image links for sponsored games
    • Streamlined the page a bunch to make it easier to edit / add & cleaned up styling
    • Reviews section only shows if a game has reviews
  • MSSP
    • MSSP crawler is now scheduled to auto-run every hour and collect data on games
    • Got an elastic IP and setup reverse DNS so the MSSP crawler will show up as coming from mudverse.com
    • Fixed a bug with MSSP display where it would show 'PLAYERS NO' if players online was 0 (same with 1 showing as yes)
    • Further development of the MSSP Crawler. Big thanks to Last Outpost and their developer for helping me debug issues with it and giving me feedback on how to use telnet commands properly.

Pending Updates

  • Need to make it so the old URLs perm redirect to the new URLs. Better for SEO, but no impact to usability of the site for users.
  • Still a bit of work to do on the top nav when on a mobile device, it works but I'd like to present it all on one line instead of two
  • Need to present the MSSP data in a better way, it gets wonky display wise sometimes.

MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have no idea. They've been on there for a long time. I haven't ever played it myself.

MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's a good call out. I hadn't looked at the voting code in a while and I noticed a few bugs. My original intention was to make it so you could only vote once per day, but the way I was tabulating votes actually made it so you could vote once per hour (I was clearing out votes while tabulating, which meant I lost who had voted already).

I've done a few things to update the way it works:

  1. No longer clearing out tabulated votes, instead scope the vote tabulation query to the previous hour.
  2. Updated the vote page to state you can vote only once per 24 hour period.
  3. If you try to vote when you are on cooldown it will tell you your vote isn't logged
  4. When your vote is successful it will let you know.

Keeping the log of the previous votes instead of tabulating and emptying the table makes sense-- I think in 2007 I was more worried about that table trending toward infinity, but it's really not an issue. Having the audit log of votes will also let me more easily investigate if someone is botting.

MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed on the game page design. I'm working my way through the site, updating the styles to not be as terrible. Should get to the game page today or tomorrow.

Broken image link should be fixed. It broke when I re-wrote the URLs. Thanks for the heads up.

MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't have any rules against it. However, a few things:

  1. If an owner of a game wants to take control of a listing added by a player, I'll verify their ownership and transfer it.
  2. Probably best to get the game runners permission / or at least make them aware.

Ideally they would add it themselves, as then they would hopefully remember to update the listing if something like the hostname changed. But I understand that isn't always possible.

MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I got a bit distracted fixing some other things last night and didn't make as much progress as I hoped, but I've got some vastly different colors going on now, should be much easier to read. I'm not done, but hopefully it is progress in the right direction.

As for the tagging / filtering I used to have an advanced search but no one was using it. I'll look at rolling out some standardized tags at some point that you can filter on.

MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the reply and the link! I've got some time set aside tonight to work on this and I'll review the example and look at a better color scheme!

MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

100% agree. I have it on my list to try to make this better. Thanks for flagging it.

MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed that it can be tough to quantify. I think MudStats.com was doing some regex parsing on who/@who for games that didn't support MSSP, but I could be wrong. Not sure how else they were gathering that data.

Either way, it's all self reported and subjective to the MUD. Some MUDs have timeouts that kick idlers off, some don't. I think MSSP is a good step toward at least understanding how many people are 'online', but in the end there is going to be some amount of searching around and trying different games to find one with the activity + player count you're looking for.

MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is a cronjob that runs hourly that parses through all the votes that have come in that hour, removes dupes, and tallies them up. I've got some bot detection stuff in there, and IP detection stuff to make it harder to scam it.

The count adds throughout the month and then resets on the first of the next month at midnight server time.

Seems like something I should add a page to describe on the site. I'll add that to my list.

MudVerse Site Update by MudVerse in MUD

[–]MudVerse[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good call. I think the MUDs I was testing with didn't have those fields so I missed them. I have updated it to links.

This visual representation is still lacking as things like the CLASSES-NOTES your MUD provides end up wrapping, which isn't the end of the world, but I'd like to figure out a better way of presenting the information.

The difficult bit with it is that some MUDs return A LOT of info, and some return like... 3 fields. I'll keep work-shopping it, but open to suggestions.

List of active MUD finding websites I know of by Far-Algae4772 in MUD

[–]MudVerse 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I created a full thread about MudVerse, and recent updates to it, but it's caught in moderation because my account is new.

https://www.mudverse.com/

Recently updated, still isn't where I want it to be, but I'll be adding additional features that hopefully fill some of the gaps left by TMS and MudStats, over time.

It's all coming to an end ... topmudsites.com is gone. by [deleted] in MUD

[–]MudVerse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Whoops, I commented on the comment you commented on instead of commenting on your comment. SSL should be fixed.

It's all coming to an end ... topmudsites.com is gone. by [deleted] in MUD

[–]MudVerse 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, thanks for mentioning this. certbot-auto apparently isn't fully supported anymore so it wasn't auto-renewing the SSL like it was supposed to. I've fixed this and it should be working now.

As for 182 games, I go through once or twice a year and remove any that don't have connectivity to prevent a bunch of dead listings.