Has the train arrived at the station? Is the deal sealed? Has the bear been shot? Has the fat lady sung yet?
In other words, status update? I'll get it immediately after update. *Chuuu-chuuuuuu*
Haha! I'm nearly there
. I thought I'd given a status update before explaining why it'd be a little later but I'd just left it as a draft in my editor! Here is what I forgot to post (updated a little to reflect changes).
Status Update on Status Block (pun intended)
I've been working hard on this update on and off for the past few weeks (Christmas is a busy time...!). It's taking a bit longer than I thought it would have... but it's going to be so much better because of the delay. There aren't too many new features as such but the whole add-on has been re-written from the ground up and is (in my opinion anyway
) about 1000 times better than the previous versions.
TL : DR
For those of you too lazy to read what I've written below (it's quite a lot...) I'll try some it up with some bullet points! Basically though the update will be heaps better and hopefully easier to install and setup.
- Better query system.
- Complete support for XenForo 1.2.
- Improved AdminCP GUI.
- Widget Framework Support.
- Better Error Handling (No more spam in your logs... sorry about that!)
- Style options so you can easily tweak how the block looks.
- There's probably more. I'll post more updates if I think of anything.
- New Release Cycle, if you want to beta test the update head to the bottom of this post.
Querying
The main thing which has taken up the time has been writing my own querying code instead of relying on libraries written by other people. This means I've got a much better understanding of what's going on behind the scenes now, I'll be able to give better support and fix problems in the actual query logic if there are any that come up.
Minecraft has a few ways you can use to query servers and I've implemented two of them so far (The 3rd one is a recent addition and is only compatible with servers running 1.7 and up. I'll be implementing this too in the future. Note: Just because there is a new system in 1.7 doesn't mean the next update won't work with 1.7+ servers. All the ways of querying minecraft servers can be used on 1.7+). Really it doesn't affect you too much as to how these work but there is a few differences between them that you should know about which will be explained in an FAQ and in the add-on itself.
How servers are queried by the add-on is pretty much exactly the same as it was before. I'll explain it anyway though! Servers will be queried via the XenForo Cron Jobs and the result is stored in the database, this is much better to querying the servers every time a page is requested. By default your servers will be queried every 5 minutes, in reality it though it could be less than this as cron jobs are only triggered when there are people visiting your website.
Since the only way to tell if a server is offline or not is by catching errors, lots of people were finding that their server error logs were being spammed with error messages... in the next release the add-on has it's own separate error log for query errors which also tells you which server is causing each error
. Note that this is only for errors relating to actually querying your servers, not for example MySQL errors relating to the add-on.
I've also saved a timestamp for when each server is updated so you can display a "last updated" statistic by your server's or just in your control panel.
Admin CP
Adding, Editing and Deleting server's is pretty much the same as it's always been. Except now it's just a much better experience. Instead of writing a lot of words... I'll just show you some images. (Note that the error message displayed will be a bit more helpful in the actual release
. There's also a few other things that need fixing up)
Front-End
I've just started work on the front-end now, so I can't show you any screenshots yet but here's some features I'm adding or planning to add!
- Support for xfrocks fantastic Widget Framework.
- XenPorta block , like before.
- Style options so you can easily customize how things look a little!
I probably won't include it in the next update but I'm hoping to add in a server status page too. To get it the update out ASAP the block won't auto update via AJAX (as it has done in the past) as I want to go back and make that heaps better than it was before.
why Won't it WORK!?????
This is along the lines of the typical question I get PM'd on a regular basis
.
The problem with this addon is it's a bit more fiddly then most other addons as it has quite a few requirements, it's not necessarily plug and play. To help people out more with getting all this setup I'll setup an FAQ and I'm thinking about creating some videos to help people with the install process explaining some of the common problems people have had and how to fix them along the way.
Release Process and Beta Testing
In the past I've only tested the updates myself before then releasing them into the wild! In hindsight this process is not the best... I get flooded PMs and comments from angry people (rightfully) complaining that the addon doesn't work! So I'm going to start with a small beta testing group to get feedback and fix obvious problems before releasing updates to the public from now on. This does mean that the update will be delayed even more but it's a lot better getting a product that works well as it can, then one with problems.
If you would like to be a beta tester. Read on!
I'm only going to take a few people and it won't necessarily be first in first served. I looking for people who will be willing to give good constructive feedback as well as some bug reports if they find anything wrong
(You can also check up on my spelling and grammar too...) I'd also like to get a range of different server setups as well, people on shared hosting vs vps vs dedicated, large vs small minecraft servers etc.
So if you're interested fill out this form
here!
____________________________________________________________________________
I've think I've written enough
. So if you've got any questions about the update or anything else - feel free to ask! I'll get back to them ASAP.
