Delphy's JournalDelphyPublic MTS2 changelog, so you can see all the stuff I do here :)Changes October 20th, 20182018-10-20T18:50:24Z2006-10-25T22:59:05Z8206749345https://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=syndication&j=289&type=rsshttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=syndication&j=289&type=rss2https://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=syndication&j=289&type=atomChanges October 20th, 2018Full list of changes:
- On member profile pages, moved avatar to left
- On all profile pages, added background to all tabs
- Renamed "Groups" tab to "Posts & Groups"
- Renamed "..." tab to "Signature & More" on creators
- Moved posts/threads to "Posts & Groups" tab
- Changed "Fave Downloads" to...2018-10-20T18:50:24Z2018-10-20T18:50:24Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=7621TestThis is a test journal entry.2018-10-19T14:24:07Z2018-10-19T14:24:07Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=7620Changes, June 17th 2011* Changed backend to ignore views from the uploader when viewing their own threads (Saves 1 or 2 queries)
* Switched the language query to use mtscache instead of memcache - mtscache allows me to also pull from APC/xcache which is much quicker local storage, but fallback to memcache if it doesn't...2011-06-17T23:48:29Z2011-06-17T23:48:29Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5548Download Browser changesThe seperate "Filter" box has been removed, and incorporated into the box above that lists the forum description (and "Switch" box, ie the TS2/TS3 icons).
The text for showing / hiding the filter section has been changed.
The text for "To show the filters see the sidebar" has been removed along...2011-06-13T11:41:16Z2011-06-13T11:41:16Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5539Scorecard graph changesThe scorecard graphs now display Views and Thanks as additional lines on the monthly (per user) and monthly (per thread) charts. No additional changes have been made to the daily (per thread) charts except to make the bars smoothly gradient down, and to make them sorted from highest to lowest.2011-01-02T18:39:48Z2011-01-02T18:39:48Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5265Download view changesThe download view has been changed in the following ways:
- The colorbox to show favourites has been changed to a (Who?) at the end of the sentence instead of a full link
- The details of comments / replies, number of thanks and number of favourites at the top of the overview page now shows to...2011-01-02T18:38:23Z2011-01-02T18:38:23Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5264Changes to getimage.php on thumbs.modthesims.infoThe getimage.php script has been updated to:
- Only get the specific attachment fields it needs, and not the whole row (which included the zipinfo and other description stuff not needed for serving the file)
- Cache detection has been added, and cache times now sent back correctly
- Send back a...2011-01-02T16:56:47Z2011-01-02T16:56:47Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5263Who Posted changesThe "Who Posted?" page (how many people knew that even existed?) has been changed in the following ways:
- A link has been added to the top of threads with the Views (moved up) and the Who?, along with number of replies
- The Who? link opens a colorbox with the list of who posted and how much
-...2011-01-01T19:25:42Z2011-01-01T19:25:42Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5262More colorbox changesThe colorbox css and js have been modified to show the title in an overlay above the image, but only on hover (so you can move the mouse out of the image to see the full thing).
Additionally, the 2 sets of "Screenshots" on download pages now are defined in their own groups (so 3 images now shows...2010-12-28T15:00:16Z2010-12-28T15:00:16Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5254Colorbox / Lightbox / FaceboxI've gone through and changed all of the old "lightbox" style image popups, as well as the PM "facebox" popup into the new style "colorbox" popup with a new style.
I may, at some point in the next few days, switch to using Fancybox instead, since I like the look and feel of that a bit more (and it...2010-12-26T21:26:40Z2010-12-26T21:26:40Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5250Social Groups Home page optimisedI've gone through and optimised the code on the Social Groups Home page to remove the big giant list of public groups, and make it into an AJAX call. I've also cached some objects and generally made the page load faster.2010-12-12T21:52:54Z2010-12-12T21:52:54Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5219Interesting stuff with caches.Note, this post is highly technical. If you aren't interested in server-level optimisations, click away now!
So Membase came out very recently, and since looking at it at work I figured "what the heck" and installed it in place of memcached on static. It's a lot easier to track whats going on,...2010-10-13T21:29:12Z2010-10-13T21:29:12Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5124Reset password should now clear cache correctlyI have updated the resetpassword and lostpw scripts to correctly clear the cache for user accounts that have passwords regenerated.
Additionally, changing your password or email address should clear the cache, allowing you to login immediately with your credentials.
Lastly, the password reset...2010-08-08T12:35:53Z2010-08-08T12:35:53Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=5032MariaDB is now liveI've upgraded the database server from mySQL 5.1.41 up to MariaDB 5.1.42. The extra speed and functionality in MariaDB should help us in the future, especially when 5.2 comes out. :)2010-03-02T12:53:03Z2010-03-02T12:53:03Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4692Optimising queries... the pitfalls and the good stuffHi All,
As part of my "job" here on MTS, I am basically the guy who looks after the servers, and who makes sure the performance is adequate, and running ok, and so on.
One of the ways I do this is by looking at the mySQL slow query log. Here I can identify which queries are, well, basically slow....2010-02-25T10:54:00Z2010-02-25T10:54:00Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4677Changelog 21st Feb 2010* I have added the jQuery Lazy Load Plugin (http://www.appelsiini.net/projects/lazyload) to help with long image threads
* When opening/closing or stickying threads, they should now automatically get the information from the database, not the cache
* The member profile pages now have the EP icons...2010-02-21T13:11:07Z2010-02-21T13:11:07Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4666Searching is now partially re-enabledI have re-enabled the "Search for all posts by..." and "Search for all Threads by..." functionality of the Search system.2010-02-11T22:28:23Z2010-02-11T22:28:23Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4642Pageviews and MemcachedHi All,
I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes on the general coding of the site, and figuring out ways of improving the speed of day to day usage.
First off, how do we identify areas to speed? Well, I have a number of ways of doing that. Firstly, there is a script that I can run that...2009-12-17T10:32:05Z2009-12-17T10:32:05Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4523Test Journal EntryThis is a test entry.2009-10-02T23:17:13Z2009-10-02T23:17:13Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4352Changes 20th September 2009 Part 2- Member profile pages now have the "Show All" and the individual sections changed so they return all downloads across both games, not just using the default
- The download browser has been modified to allow it to show all downloads for both games when applicable
- The sidebar on the dowload...2009-09-20T13:56:55Z2009-09-20T13:56:55Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4309Changes 20th September 2009- Moved most of the menu HTML into an external javascript. This decreases the HTML generated on every page by at least 15k, and since it's cached it should speed things up a lot
- Added "x of y" counter to the news rotation ticker
- Some minor PHP bug fixes
- Resynced times on Nene, Linna and...2009-09-20T00:27:19Z2009-09-20T00:27:19Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4308Changes 18th September 2009- The "resize images" script has been moved to it's own Javascript file on static2
- The script has been modified to detect the width of the window
- If the width is 1280 or less, inline images get resized to 600 pixels
- If the width is 1024 or less, inline images get resized to 500 pixels
- Added...2009-09-18T11:38:22Z2009-09-18T11:38:22Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4301Changes 15th September 2009- Removed "Location" from postbit
- Added back post count to postbit
- Added extra spacing above avatar when user has special icons
- Changed wording of Thanks count in post bit to better flow with the rest
- Moved "Report this Post" to top right next to the post number
- Removed some extra...2009-09-15T09:46:29Z2009-09-15T09:46:29Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4289iPhone / iPod Touch applicationI got myself an iPod Touch the other day and so far am enjoying it - but it makes me wonder if there wouldn't be an area to have an MTS app that basically gets the latest news, downloads and finds from the site, maybe with some kind of list you could view later on?
I asked on Twitter and only got...2009-09-11T08:56:44Z2009-09-11T08:56:44Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=4274Finally recieved the drives from Chii!Thanks to daysies picking the drives up and shipping them to me, I finally have the drives that where in Chii.
I have already tried using SpinRite to see if it can access the drive, and that failed. Then I tried rebuilding the partition table using Parted Magic but that failed too.
So, finally,...2009-04-16T14:41:28Z2009-04-16T14:41:28Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=3760Changelog 10th April 2009Hi All,
Changes today:
- Recompiled Apache2 on Nene, Linna and Static, to include the mod_deflate module
- Fixed the PHP ini file on Nene and Linna to disable automatic gzip compression as it can be done by vBulletin anyway - re-enabled it and disabled vBulletins instead
- Added the lightbox...2009-04-10T14:12:58Z2009-04-10T14:12:58Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=3736Changelog 6th March 2009Another small change for today, this time to Scorecards, mostly behind the scenes - basically I've tweaked the database queries so instead of (number of downloads x 2) queries, it just uses a set fixed amount on every page. This should substantially speed things up when viewing scorecards with...2009-03-06T02:23:18Z2009-03-06T02:23:18Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=3580Changelog 3rd March 2009A few things changed today, mostly behind the scenes:
- Added and tweaked some of the database indexes used, to hopefully speed some things up and prevent more locking
- Changed the way the pagereferer code inserts fields into the database thus speeding it up
- Changed the front page Featured box...2009-03-03T17:27:30Z2009-03-03T17:27:30Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=3570Changelog 18th January 2009Added quick jumps on the About page to jump to specific news entries
Changed News menu to add "Latest News" at the top, which goes to the about page
Added header in News menu "News Sections"
Removed section in News Menu "Other"
Added option to delete a Social Group (only when it has zero posts and...2009-01-18T16:42:12Z2009-01-18T16:42:12Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=3395Changelog 15th January 2009Reports now have to be a minimum of 10 characters to submit.
Threads in the Social Groups forum no longer appear in New Posts, unless you are a member of that group.
The member profiles now have a fixed social group image
The screenshots on download pages have been added into a collapsible area...2009-01-14T23:22:06Z2009-01-14T23:22:06Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=3379Changelog 11th January 2009Adjusted the "Users who thanked this also thanked" code to only pick between 20 and 30 max users who thanked rather than all possible users as was happening in some circumstances
Added Creator Links dropdown (as of a few days ago)
Removed Upload Items from the User Tools dropdown
Adjusted the cache...2009-01-11T18:56:13Z2009-01-11T18:56:13Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=3366Changelog 6th January 2009Fixed bug with the takeover ad triggering all the time regardless of cookie state
Fixed bug with invalid posthashes in Upload wizard
Updated all base code to 3.0.14 vBulletin
Added Multi-Part/Custom Install/Related boxes to Stage 9 of upload wizard
Fixed bug with server redirects going to...2009-01-06T22:48:42Z2009-01-06T22:48:42Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=3338Small changes to the download view pagesI've spent a couple hours working on some small but subtle changes to the site today:
Swapped the vertical positioning of the news rotation box and the breadcrumbs in the navbar
Moved the "Featured banner" from above the thread title to the top of the download details box
Added number of...2008-10-27T01:27:51Z2008-10-27T01:27:51Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=3085Status report for server migrationI've spent the past couple of days bringing up to spec one of the new quad core servers that MTS2 will be running on. Today I also found the joys of memcached. After adding caching to a number of the scripts, I then brought the new server - called Nene - up and running.
What I usually do with...2008-09-24T22:57:10Z2008-09-24T22:57:10Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=3012Current To-Do list for MTS2Currently on my list are (not in any particular order):
iMTS2
Creator Policies
Journal comment editing
Journal entry page revamp
Clean up Chii/Thumbs
Figure out why graph2 isn't working when embedded in another PHP script - Not going to use graph2 for the moment
Optimise queries / throughput for...2008-09-10T11:41:36Z2008-09-10T11:41:36Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=2969Test entryThis is a test entry.
Does anybody have a size 6 sprocket?2008-09-07T13:24:36Z2008-09-07T13:24:36Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=29414k and countingOkay so short post. 4038 people on right now (1563 members and 2475 guests), and usually the site really slows down after about 2.5k ish.
However, earlier today, I upgraded the mySQL to the latest 5.0.x branch, did some more tweaking on the my.cnf and then proceeded to sit down and figure out...2008-06-13T23:19:16Z2008-06-13T23:19:16Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=2693Okay so maybe I am only semi-retired....Okay so I'm still working on bug fixing and adding new features, I just wont be as active in the day to day stuff.
I'm still looking after the servers, optimising and tweaking things, so I guess this is only a semi-retirement. :)
Expect more tweaks, fixes, and other fun stuff soon :)2008-04-24T12:32:03Z2008-04-24T12:32:03Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=2568Retiring from the Sims 2 communityHi All,
As of, well, nowishly (but definately from Jan 2008) I will be officially retiring from this site, as well as the other sites I run.
After this point there will be no more major coding updates, no more tools, and little in the way of bug fixing. I will still be around - just not really...2007-12-10T08:57:16Z2007-12-10T08:57:16Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=2181New user online recordOkay so it appears that the single query and index optimisation I did yesterday (see my previous entry) has had an absolutely massive effect on the site and sped it up immensely.
We went from a previous high of ~3600 up to a high of ~4144, and with a lot of times around that figure. It's the...2007-03-12T08:55:07Z2007-03-12T08:55:07Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=1113mySQL 5, FULLTEXT indexes, query optimisation and moreHey All,
Last Friday I upgraded the primary database server that MTS2 uses from mySQL 4.0 to mySQL 5. I had to fix a whole bunch of queries, but that was ok - I was expecting that. In the process, I found some really good mysql reporting scripts that have enabled me to determine which queries...2007-03-11T13:04:57Z2007-03-11T13:04:57Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=1110Changes 10th December 2006Hi All,
Todays changes to the site include:
Addition of /creator/ shortcut, to go directly to a creators profile by name
Addition of /member/ shortcut, which acts like the above
Change to the download pages, whereby the Featured items now get shown in pages other than the download root, so you...2006-12-10T14:44:43Z2006-12-10T14:44:43Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=816Changes 6th December 2006Hi All,
Here is the changelog for today:
Added a new IP address to the thumbnail server, and switched port 443 to port 80 on this new IP - should fix problems with people getting broken thumbnails
Added thumbs2.modthesims2.com to point to new IP address
Changed all scripts and templates to...2006-12-06T14:37:17Z2006-12-06T14:37:17Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=792MTS2 Changes 10th November 2006Hi All,
Okay I keep forgetting to update this (like most of my blogs), but here is a couple of changes:
Added automatic custom content viewer that looks inside zips/rar, extracts the Sims2Pack files, then looks into those to grab the custom content. This code has been in use in the moderation...2006-11-10T19:26:14Z2006-11-10T19:26:14Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=709Random facts of the dayMTS2 has had 799,000 members registered at one point or other.
We've purged a little over 203,000 members for inactivity.
The highest members online was 3,476, set yesterday.2006-10-30T20:14:35Z2006-10-30T20:14:35Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=670MTS2 Changes 25th OctoberOkay, changes today:
Created this journal :)
Revamped Game Mods section as per Site News announcement, and deleted the 2 Archive sub-forums
Fixed up the Creator Scorecard showing black/unreadable lines in some styles
Added an Edit button on the Creator Scorecard that takes you directly to edit...2006-10-25T23:17:27Z2006-10-25T23:17:27Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=653About this JournalHi All,
Okay so I've decided to try and keep a journal for all the public changes I do on MTS2, both so I can track things, and also so you all can see the things that change here - I'm doing it as a journal so as not to clutter up the news with stuff most people wont be interested in anyway...2006-10-25T22:59:05Z2006-10-25T22:59:05Zhttps://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showcomments&e=652