[Herocraft Development ] Minecraft Server Status Block [Paid] [Deleted]

Ah
Hey Matthew, I'm working on the update right now. The reason this hasn't been updated for so long was because my college life got really busy towards the end of this year. That's all over now! There will be an update out soon!

@Everyone Else
I did say in a post that this update would be out this week but I've run into a few problems while developing it and I've also stumbled upon some new ideas which will improve how this add-on queries minecraft servers. I really want to make this update as stable as possible before release because of all the problems people have had in the past with this add-on. So I'm going to take as long I need too... but to make up for that I'll make a post describing what changes I've made in the update and post images up of the new functionality sometime soon! I'm also going to make some videos to help people install and configure this add-on as well once the update is out, so look out for those too.

It won't be too long though. I promise :).
thanks for the quick reply:) I've seen some 1.2.3 users got this running, can't wait for the update;)
 
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*
 
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 :p) 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)
AdminCP.webp AdminCP Edit.webp

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 :p.

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 :p. So if you've got any questions about the update or anything else - feel free to ask! I'll get back to them ASAP.
 
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This is better than expected!

Well written and informative. XenPorta block :thumbup: I'm no code-man, but I know it's a lot of work. I hope you get funded well for this. I bet many xenforo forum that have minecraft server, want this add-on.
 
ahh nice, but may i suggest taking a look at xPaw for Query references? is a pretty nice tool and works with the new 1.7 issues for querying
Thanks for the tip. I've just followed the information here and here which tells you the information you need to know on how to query servers. (Bit technical :p) So I've pretty much created my own version of what xPaw has done. All the query stuff I've seems to be working fine and I think I've ironed out all the problems but hopefully any issues that do come up will appear in the beta testing.

I'll update the post above to make it a bit clearer but just because I haven't implemented the new query system in 1.7 doesn't mean the update won't work with 1.7+ server's! There's just a new way to do it in 1.7, the old method is still supported and still works. The only real benefit of using the new method is that it allows you to get the server icon and a sample of the players online.
 
How we doin? Xmas is in everyone head, except the developer. (wishable thinking).
I've been pretty busy round Christmas with other things but that's starting to die off now, I haven't really gotten the chance to work on it much for the past few days. I'll be getting back to it as soon as I can though!
 
I noticed while browsing through the code, there is a lot of reference to staff. Is this something you were going to incorporate in the future? You you can easily see which staff are on the server?
 
I noticed while browsing through the code, there is a lot of reference to staff. Is this something you were going to incorporate in the future? You you can easily see which staff are on the server?
Yes, I was going to add a section to the block that could list the current staff online. I probably still will in the future. I can't automatically tell from the query but I was just going to add an option when setting up a server where you could input staff member names (and uuid's in the future).
 
shadrxninga updated [Herocraft Development] Minecraft Server Status Block with a new update entry:

Major Update. Beta Release.

I'll be updating this in more detail later today. If you want to see the changes made take a look here.

You should have gotten an email with a download link. If you haven't just contact me with the email you used to purchase the add-on. (If you are an early purchaser of this add-on, you won't have received an email yet. I'll be doing that later today!)

If you have...

Read the rest of this update entry...
 
I'm glad you're back shadrxninga! Been using this addon for almost a year now on my Minecraft server's forums page. It works perfectly and it's been a fantastic addition to my site. Definitely worth the $10. I'm glad your back updating this even more! I highly recommend this addon to any fellow Minecraft server forum administrators! If you want to see it on my site, go to www.ioncraft.org. Thanks
 
@shadrxninga
Hello, thanks for the Addon, It's working perfectly! I just have a question, is it a bug that a head appears when there are 0 players?
Utt8zfK.png

Thanks for the Addon!
 
@shadrxninga
Hello, thanks for the Addon, It's working perfectly! I just have a question, is it a bug that a head appears when there are 0 players?
Utt8zfK.png

Thanks for the Addon!
Yep, it looks like there's a problem there. I haven't seen it myself but I'll try it out today and get a fix out soon.
 
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