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Welcome to Revision 3609, up from 3520. Two small deploys to fix bugs with potential security implications, one giant bug fix release and one emergency fix for that thing where we decided to reinvent the alphabet on fandom listings. Cesy, Elz, Enigel, mumble, Pixel, Rebecca and Sidra all contributed code to this release.
Reminder: Archive downtime this week
This week, we're moving over to our brand new servers! This requires several periods of downtime as we move the old servers to their new rack (now with extra power!) and then switch on the new servers. Our first extended downtime was yesterday (when we deployed this release); the next two will be today, Monday 7 February, c. 17.00 UTC, for approximately 30 minutes (What time is this where I am?) and Thursday 10 February, c. 18.00 UTC, for approximately 6 hours (What time is this where I am?). For regular status updates follow our Twitter AO3_Status.
If you're at a loose end while the Archive is down, you might want to join in our server naming festival. We're looking for creative ideas for names for our seven beautiful machines.
Highlights
History feature
We've polished our history feature a little bit so that clicking the 'Mark to read later' button on a work results in a 'to-read' list on your 'History' page (instead of just marking the individual work). We have lots more improvements planned for the history feature in future (tag filters YES PLEASE) but while we work towards those we think that this small tweak will make a lot of difference to how useful the history feature is.
Importer
The lovely Rebecca has done lots of work spiffing up our import function. The problems with importing from Livejournal and Dreamwidth have now been fixed, and we've added import from DeviantArt (it still gets stuck on the adult content warning at present, though). We've also added an option to manually set the encoding for a site when you import - our importer tries to recognise the encoding itself, but sometimes that's not possible. If you get strange characters when you try to import, try manually setting the encoding and try a few different options to see which gets the best result.
Kudos
We've had lots of discussion on how and where kudos should show up (it was turning up in some unexpected places!) In order to keep it simple, we've made it belong to the work as a whole, not to individual chapters. This means a few kudos will disappear as we tidy up and make all consistent. Don't be alarmed! Your love has still been registered, but it will no longer show up multiple times.
Media page - new order!
Our Media page has been alphabetized - instead of the random order it was it before it now starts with Anime and Books & Literature and ends with Video Games. We're planning some more changes to this page in the future in order to make it more useful to users and more international in nature.
Known Issues
See our Known Issues page.
Release details
Features
- added a button to the History page to only show to-read items, removed unnecessary preferences button
- importing works: a custom import for DeviantART posts has been added, other features have been tweaked
- CSS classes are now allowed in notes as well
- more automated tests for new features and bug fixes
- made media category page alphabetical
Bug fixes
- fixed a security hole with user logins
- fixed a glitch that made private bookmarks visible in some circumstances
- kudos can now be left for the whole work only (and not on a chapter-by-chapter basis), but the list and button will still show up on every chapter for more convenience
- cosmetic fix to prevent kudos section from spilling over the hearts icon
- fixed a pesky bug that would prevent proper unrevealing of works in a gift exchange challenge
- gift counts should now be accurate even if a work is a gift for two pseuds of the same user (if your gift count has changed, this might be the reason)
- systems: changed re-indexing to run once a day, not every two hours
- systems: some deploy branch maintenance
- importing works:
- importer now properly ignores LJ metadata
- DW import has been unbroken
- tweaks to the Yuletide story importer
- importing stories from fanfiction.net now sets the proper posting date
- timeout during import now produces a meaningful error message
- importer doesn't eat special characters anymore
- span and div tags in imported works will now be preserved
- in case you run into problems, you can now manually set the encoding for your work
- usage hints on the import page have been tidied up a bit
- fixed a glitch where a fic for 'General Audiences' would get imported as 'Mature'
- neatened up homepage title a little
- added a "try clearing your cache" note to the maintenance 503 page
- fixed a bug where putting in non-canonical tags for a work would give an error message meant for challenge signups
- autocomplete for tags is now prioritising the most used tags again (A side effect for this fix was a temporary jumbling of the fandoms pages - if you were disconcerted to see formerly alphabeticized lists in a strange order, this was why. It was swiftly fixed by our awesome coder, Elz.)
- fixed a bug that would only find/allow characters and relationships for the first fandom if more than one fandom had been specified in a new work or a challenge signup
- unbroke tag comments and links in comment notifications for wranglers
- signing up as a tag wrangler for an unassigned fandom now fills in the fandom in question for you
- fixed a HTML glitch on the abuse report page
- closed an open div on work preview pages that would lead to wonky-looking bottom navigation
- made the media type dropdown on fandom indexes stand out a bit more
- if a media category from the dropdown is empty, a "No fandoms found" message is shown
- the 'reason for your request' box for invites was shrunk to a less intimidating size
- abuse reports are now listed by date
- fixed a bug that made it possible to create posted work with no posted chapters
- when you post a new work, the "Does this fullfill an assignment" ticky box will not display challenges that you defaulted on or already posted your assignment for
- fixed a bug that would prevent some users' series pages from loading
- the external bookmark form now fills in the URL and title field
- small cosmetic fixes for chapter editing and previewing
- fixed a glitch that would lead to wildly unrealistic wait times for invitation requests
- improved handling of cookie errors
- setting the posting date for a work to the future now doesn't silently uncheck the "Set a different publication date" ticky after preview
This edition of the release notes compiled by AD&T staffer mumble \0/.