TowersStreet Progress Log

[Joel]

Hello all,

This is a log used by the team to give you updates on whats news, changed and removed with regards to TowersStreet.com!

We'll make posts here about things going on with the site and community, and if you have any feedback or questions please post in the Progress Discuission thread within Guest Services forum.

Thanks!

 

[Joel]

12th June 2012

- Shoutbox added to TS Talk community
- Thanks button added to TS Talk community
- Tapatalk added to the TS Talk community - search "Towers Street" to find us!
- Chat page is under construction; ETA end of day 12th June
- News page is under construction; ETA end of day 12th June
- Home page is under construction; ETA end of day 12th June

11th June 2012

- TowersStreet is born! Project Aurora retired and moved over to new domain ( www.towersstreet.com )
- TowersStreet chat is launched; please see notes below if you used chat previously

Chat Help
If you used chat previously, you may need to update your settings if you use an IRC client (such as AndChat, Xchat, mIRC, Colloquy etc).

You now need to connect to:

Server: chat.towersstreet.com
Room: #chat

If you used the web clients previously, you will shortly be able to access them at www.towersstreet.com/chat (nb: not yet live)

If you used Mibbit, you can access chat using this link: http://mibbit.com/?channel=%23chat&server=chat.towersstreet.com

If you previously had a nickname on chat registered, due to a software upgrade at the same time the nickname database was lost - please reregister your nickname via nickserv - see /nickserv help register for information on chat.

Thank you.

 

[Joel]

12th June 2012 - Part II

- Added new temporary homepage to TowersStreet.com
- Added small team page to site at www.towersstreet.com/team/
- Added chat for mibbit and Java to the site at www.towersstreet.com/chat/
- Enabled YouTube embedding on the forum after requests
- Fixed Thanks bug that deleted previous thanks


Next up hopefully shall be our news section, and then unfortunately there will be a little break for a few days for major changes as I'm off to Europe, however little things will be going ahead still

Thanks all!

 

[Joel]

23rd June 2012

- Added new look TowersStreet homepage - check it out at www.towersstreet.com
- Added navigation across the site for the core aspects of the site
- Added Disqus comments back to news articles
- Tweaked the forum look to include the site logo and navigation as above
- Redirected towersstreet.co.uk to towersstreet.com properly

Some more to follow as usual, particularly now I'm back from Europe

 

[Joel]

23rd June 2012 - Part II

- Added favico.ico to the site for bookmarks
- Added Apple Touch icon for Apple iDevice bookmarks on iOS
- Added spam protection from StopForumSpam.com for new registrations
- Changed default captcha to peoplesign.com for ease/prevent robot registrations
- Changed forum URLs to more readable/increased search engine friendliness (happening shortly!)
- Made some background server changes to help with speed and loading

 

[Joel]

23rd June 2012 - Part III

- Pretty URLs is now live - please report in the feedback topic if you experience any issues
- SEO changes made to meta tags for topics/forums
- Canonical URLs added to topics for search engines
- Tweaks to forum template to move profile information to top and login to the top of the page
- Slight adjustment to template layout of forum, awaiting some further tweaks later

 

[Joel]

5th July 2012

- Added 'wiki' back to the site menu after putting it back online
- Launched 'about' pages for site stuff
- New team page
- New contact page
- New links & thanks page
- Moved our promise page
- Moved member expectations page
- Moved legal stuff page
- Added the profile card across all forum pages

 

[Ben]

16th July 2012

Nearly all attraction descriptions (bar a small handful) have been written, and checked for SPG.

All show descriptions have been completed and checked.

Some F&B descriptions have been completed, but several are outstanding.

The logo details are being finalised with the conclusion of the forum voting tonight.

A couple of brand new articles and features have been completed awaiting the site launch.

Our new weekly news update has been up and running for 2 weeks now.

Thats all I can see from the non technical side, but its very exciting times, we are steaming ahead - Ive seen some of the non-live 'live' pages and they look amazing. I'm not sure we have a set timescale to launch, but I wouldn't anticipate it being a million miles away.

 

[Dave]

Just to prove we are still working hard...

Most of the content for our SW7 pages are completed, just need to finish some techno stuff (you will be glad to know it's not me that does that )

Sazzle is blasting some rather amazing wallpapers out, she really does have a talent for that sort of thing

Further proof-reading and work on the main site content has been going on

And we have chained Joel to a computer, so i'm sure the site is well under-way and we have whips if he tries to sleep or anything

 

[James]

To add to Dave's post. Squiggs has been working through tones of photographs for the main site - myself and Saz have been editing these pictures too so they look all lovely for the site.

 

[Joel]

3rd August 2012

- First few resort/park pages have gone live*
- New menu launches with dropdown access**

* We're still working on these pages to perfect them, so your feedback is appreciated
** We've already spotted some issues affecting touch devices/tablets, and we'll roll out a fix for these shortly

 

[Sazzle]

- The SW7 mini site has been tweaked to make it that extra bit good looking, and a new timeline feature has been added (I'll let Joel and Craig do the talking on that!)
- All pages visible in the beta testing phase of the main site have been edited and brought up to scratch for SPG purposes, but please let us know if you've spotted anything that's not quite right!
- Work has been done to implement the weather feature on the homepage and make sure its working properly (well done Joel ).
- Work continues behind the scenes to get the image galleries full to bursting with park photos (believe me, there are hundreds...!)
- Page writing (and subsequent checking) on the site is steaming ahead, with great progress being made .

Hope that summarises enough for you all - we look forward to giving you another action packed update soon!

 

[Craig]

*pops in*

The timeline feature will be updated periodically to include major milestones in the construction of SW7. We'll also add one or two "headline" images from construction updates too. Eventually we hope to have a full rundown from 2005 to opening in 2013 for visitors to look back on .

 

[Joel]

Good news!

We have now increased the post editing time back to infinite as we have now once again activated the post history feature so that the team can keep track of those naughty people editing their naughty posts to hide naughty things and all.

You should now be able to edit all of your posts once again, although please let us know if you have any issues as usual

 

[Ian]

13th September 2012

The wait is finally over! This evening we've launched our new Theme Park site area It's brimming with facts and info about the Alton Towers theme park! You can find it by clicking theme park in the navigation bar, or by visiting www.towersstreet.com/theme-park.

Please bare in mind that these pages are in beta for now. If you spot anything wrong, or discover any issues please let us know by either contacting a Team Member, or posting in the Progresses Discussion topic

 

[Joel]

27th October 2012

Oooh hello, we've not updated in a while, so here's an update about some things going on right now...

Speeeeeeed

We've been working heard behind the scenes to make sure that TowersStreet site (especially since launching to our new Wordpress platform) and the TowersStreet forums remain working at top speed, delivering great content in the blink of an eye for you.

We know that things had been slowing slightly over the last few weeks, but we've made some great changes to try and speed things up a little for you.

A couple of those changes are behind the scenes, but a couple of them are also changes that you will see more obviously.

Lets start with the behind the scenes stuff...

- We've installed APC accelerator to speed up the PHP code by implementing opcode caching. And if I've lost you now, thats great, dont worry - basically we have a new bit of software that stores the PHP in a special code that makes it REALLY fast for the CPU to process.

- We've installed some other accelerating and caching software across the main site (which was causing problems earlier, sorry about that!) to speed things up for everyone

- We've also implemented a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to help file caching and speed - so no matter where you are in the world, you'll receive TowersStreet from your nearest and fastest location in a compressed and speedy fashion. You might notice some odd things though with file locations being slightly different in the code or when the page is loading, but it shouldnt affect your experience. The CDN also helps us by keeping the site up and running 24/7 no matter if our server has a wobbly with its DNS.

And the in front of the scenes stuff....

- You'll now notice that "topic participation icons" are no longer available - this is where the icon was slightly changed to show where you had participated in a topic (but not searches! they remain unaffected, so your 'new replies' search will still work).

- You'll also notice that the forum stats have now gone and will stop tracking - this isn't being we don't want you to see them, but rather they add upto 5-6 queries per page load just to track what's going on, and for the sake of some pretty numbers that is a fair performance hit on the server as we grow.

None of these options are without great benefit to the speed and usability of the site, and in fact if you read the SMF forums they recommend making these changes to help keep your forum running smoothly for everyone, particularly as forums grow and become more and more popular.

We need to monitor our resource usage also as we're on a super duper expensive dedicated server that costs thousands per month VPS (or Virtual Private Server) that is generally cheaper to run yet offers great power and customisation, but shares resources with many other websites, and we don't want to fall foul of usage policies that may see us kicked out of the door for becoming too popular.

Obviously there is a lot more still ahead for us, but for now thats the big updates in the mean time!

As usual please post any questions or feedback in the Discussion topic located just beneath this topic.

Thanks all

 

[Joel]

29th October 2012

- We're aware of some layout problems in the Private Messages Inbox. We'll roll out a fix as soon as possible for them.

- We've renamed the link to the Talk forums - you'll now find us under the forums button on the main menu, rather than 'talk'... Why, you ask?

Well, new visitors to the site simply don't know what "talk" is... so to make it easier for those new people and less frequent visitors, we've made the link simply say "forums" instead - because someone looking for a discussion board would easily associate 'forums' with discussion rather than 'talk'.

We did trial an extra link under the "more >" menu for it, but it wasn't really prominent enough to catch the attention of new guests.

Rest assured, the forums will always be known as "talk" (and TowersStreet Talk!), and always available at the same URL - but just the link name has changed!

Thanks all

 

[Joel]

4th November 2012

Good news! We now have Facebook Integration and can support logging in and registering with Facebook!

To activate this on your profile, you'll need to click the "Profile" button on the membercard at the top, or on the forum menu.

Then click on "Associate account with Facebook" on the left, like so:

You'll then be taken through the Facebook Auth steps in the popup that appears.

Fear not, we never post as you or spam your friends - you are always in control! You'll see a new Facebook button appear on the menu and you can like us, share us with your friends or even update your Facebook status from here (no idea why, it came as part of the package! )

The option to login with Facebook is a *little* bit hidden at the moment, but we'll be making it more prominent soon (its tucked away on the actual login page - you'll have to click 'login...' on the membercard to see it if you're not signed in).

Any questions feel free to ask in the discussion topic as usual!

 

[Joel]

8th November 2012

News has now been migrated onto our new site platform.

You shouldn't notice any differences other than the URLs are now more readable. The old URLs continue to redirect to the new ones also.

If you used the RSS feed for news, the address had changed to http://www.towersstreet.com/news/feed/ but the old links will also redirect still too.

Any problems as ever please contact us in the Progress Discussion thread.

Ta!

 

[Dave]

10th November 2012

Christmas and Feb Half term event pages have gone live

Obviously October was a busy month theme park wise and attention was diverted to Scarefest and SW7 parts of the site. I can say though that lots of exciting things are happening behind the scenes at TS Towers. Watch this space.