If GWJ is an Office, We're the Custodians

Section: 

Update: Sat., Aug 11

We've rolled out the responsive design, and also added a link to the popular forum tags to the left sidebar. To try out the responsive design, simply resize your browser or visit the site on a phone or tablet device. Please note that there will likely be some areas that need improvement with behavior on various devices, so if you run into any issues, please let us know!

Original post

It's hard to believe, but I've been helping keep the Gamers With Jobs site running and functional for over five years now. In that time, we've rolled out new features, made improvements to the server and application architecture, and fixed lots of bugs. We usually keep discussion about changes to the site relegated to a thread in the forums, and we don't make a big deal about changes we roll out. But, it's been a while since we've told the community as a whole what we're up to, and tonight's new feature release provides a good opporunity to do some looking back.

First, a quick run-down of what we're rolling out tonight. No matter the site, finding the content you care about on a highly active, large community forum like ours can be really challenging. A long-standing request to help with this problem has been that we provide some sort of thread tagging mechanism. Tonight, with some help from Pyroman[FO] we're doing just that.

IMAGE(http://img.skitch.com/20120809-kxdnnhtqrx3u6herus6mnsxx3w.jpg)

Below every thread in the forums, you'll see an area that allows you to tag the thread with a comma-delimited list of tags. Click on one of those tags, and you can see all posts tagged with that same term. Are you looking at a thread about Baldur's Gate?, tag it with "RPG" so that anyone browsing RPGs can find it. We've seeded the site by tagging existing "Catch-all" threads with the term, so that you can easily find the catch-all thread about the game you're looking for. There's also a tag cloud that allows you to see the top tags on the site. We think that over time this functionality will help you find new content that you otherwise may not have stumbled upon.

IMAGE(http://img.skitch.com/20120809-ebc1ee86572jmbrard43wdfegk.jpg)

Next, I've got to call out a few community members who have helped grow the site's functionality over the past year. These folks have donated their time to fixing up and improving our home here, and they've done so without much recognition for their efforts. Late last year, we rolled out the Favorites functionality, built by Kosars. This has been an invaluable tool in my personal day-to-day use of the site and I'm so thankful we have it. If you haven't tried it out yet, give it a shot by simply clicking "add to favorites" while you're reading a forum thread. Kosars also provided some bug fixes to quoting behavior. We've also had help from Bonus_Eruptus, who provided a YouTube button for while you're composing a post, and provided other nice improvements to YouTube video handling (e.g. support for timecodes). Finally, trueheart78 provided improvements to spoiler tag handling and other YouTube improvements (HD and fullscreen playback). Buy these guys a beer and / or gift them a game during the next Steam sale!

I'm missing here a whole slew of folks who have participated in our issues and features thread, reporting bugs and giving us great ideas for what to do next. Please swing by that thread and give props or help us discuss what we're doing next.

Finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about what's coming next for the GWJ site. In the short term, I'm working on creating a responsive stylesheet for the site. This will mean that GWJ looks great no matter what device you're reading it from. I've been testing on my iPhone and iPad, in both portrait and landscape modes, and it's really great to read the site in a fluid format. This work is nearly done, and should be ready for Certis to review any day now.

In the long-term, we're working on upgrading the site's platform from Drupal 5 to Drupal 7. This is a big undertaking, requiring rebuilding many site features from scratch, migrating data, and all the fun stuff that goes with that process. However, it provides us the opportunity to do some amazingly cool things with the site, as well as address some long-standing feature requests. You can expect to see far better site performance and stability; a powerful site search; cool user points functionality; and better profiles, spam control, and much more. We're aiming for the initial Drupal 7 migration to maintain feature parity with what we have now on the site, but it will open the door to all kinds of cool potential features for our writers and community members.

I hope you all really enjoy the tagging functionality, and look forward to our responsive design and Drupal 7 migration!

Comments

And since no good deed goes unpunished I would like to make an additional feature request: it would be great to have an obvious link to the tag cloud in the site UI.

And oh yeah, thanks for the new features to make a great site even better!

The tags show up for everyone, but you don't get that option to add them like that first image above if you're not the author of the root post.

I think that's the disconnect people are having.

IMAGE(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y209/Magnusnews/10d5f2385bc02df9a34f6daaecdd6e7b.jpg)

Thanks you guys!!!

momgamer wrote:

The tags show up for everyone, but you don't get that option to add them like that first image above if you're not the author of the root post.

But you do unless the latest update gave me admin powers and I didn't notice.

This is what I've been doing in, say, the Blacklight Retribution thread, which I am not the original author of.

Scroll down to the bottom of the original post. Click "(add tags)":

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/bo4is.png)

Enter tags and after each one click "Add" or press Enter:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/PDKZH.png)

Then click save. Logout, refresh the page, and there they are:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/BRACT.png)

Is that not working for everyone else?

ClockworkHouse wrote:
momgamer wrote:

The tags show up for everyone, but you don't get that option to add them like that first image above if you're not the author of the root post.

But you do unless the latest update gave me admin powers and I didn't notice.

This is what I've been doing in, say, the Blacklight Retribution thread, which I am not the original author of.

Scroll down to the bottom of the original post. Click "(add tags)":

Enter tags and after each one click "Add" or press Enter:

Then click save. Logout, refresh the page, and there they are:

Is that not working for everyone else?

Awesome Write up on how to! But definitely don't see that Add Tags option, just the actual tags.

Thanks for all the hard work!

Infyrnos wrote:

Awesome Write up on how to! But definitely don't see that Add Tags option, just the actual tags.

One note: Coffee Grinders are currently not allowed to tag threads just so we can avoid spammer abuse of the feature. But several of you that are reporting the issue are definitely not coffee grinders.

It sounds like there might be some permissions issues I need to work out. If you're following the instructions by ClockworkHouse and still having trouble, please reply back or PM me, and I'll do some investigation.

Yay! Now please add Tapatalk support and we'll be golden.

Damn all of you taggers who were the first to tag a subject and started your tag with a lowercase letter...

doogiemac wrote:
Infyrnos wrote:

Awesome Write up on how to! But definitely don't see that Add Tags option, just the actual tags.

One note: Coffee Grinders are currently not allowed to tag threads just so we can avoid spammer abuse of the feature. But several of you that are reporting the issue are definitely not coffee grinders.

It sounds like there might be some permissions issues I need to work out. If you're following the instructions by ClockworkHouse and still having trouble, please reply back or PM me, and I'll do some investigation.

My issues were entirely PEBKAC and an assumption I made based on how this sort of thing worked somewhere else. I need new glasses.

Stele wrote:

Damn all of you taggers who were the first to tag a subject and started your tag with a lowercase letter... :D

I have a couple tags I accidentally started with a lowercase letter that I'd dearly love to change.

Ugh. Especially company names. atlus instead of Atlus.

Stele wrote:

Ugh. Especially company names. atlus instead of Atlus.

You can blame me for that one.

So, uh, new request? Can we edit the punctuation and capitalization of tags we originate?

Apparently people aren't waiting for auto-fill before they tag either.

We now have tags for:
Space
space game
space games
spacesim

And a whole bunch of other stuff that means the same thing.

You know what would be awesome? The ability to link tags to other tags.... kinda like a wiki!

I would dearly love a new mouse now, pls!

Stele wrote:

Apparently people aren't waiting for auto-fill before they tag either.

We now have tags for:
Space
space game
space games
spacesim

And a whole bunch of other stuff that means the same thing. :?

I think this is just one of those things that's going to happen with a forum or anything where real people are involved. Go search for any popular game and see the long list of similar duplication.

Stele wrote:

Apparently people aren't waiting for auto-fill before they tag either.

We now have tags for:
Space
space game
space games
spacesim

And a whole bunch of other stuff that means the same thing. :?

You got a problem wit dat?

Stele wrote:

Apparently people aren't waiting for auto-fill before they tag either.

We now have tags for:
Space
space game
space games
spacesim

And a whole bunch of other stuff that means the same thing. :?

That has happened in every tag system I've ever been involved with.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Is that not working for everyone else?

Nope. For me, the (add tags) option does not appear on any thread.

MeatMan wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Is that not working for everyone else?

Nope. For me, the (add tags) option does not appear on any thread.

Good. That means it's working properly.

Fine then. I didn't want to use your stupid tag system anyway.

Spoiler:

I do, actually.

UPDATE: After closing and restarting Chrome, I now see the (add tags) option, and it is working properly.

I think you back-end kids are really swell. Thanks for all your work!

Scruffy, the Janitor
IMAGE(http://deadmanlimping.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/scruffy.jpg)

Oh well at least we can have fun with some tags, right?

I noticed that threads in the Front Page Articles forum don't have the option to be tagged. Is that intentional? If so, why?

MeatMan wrote:

Fine then. I didn't want to use your stupid tag system anyway.

Spoiler:

I do, actually.

UPDATE: After closing and restarting Chrome, I now see the (add tags) option, and it is working properly. :)

Not sure if its because I did the same, or something else got fixed between when I was at work and now, but its all showing up =)

Thanks, to all of you improving the site and maintaining it

A couple of things to try if you're not seeing the tagging form:

1. Make sure you have JavaScript enabled. The tagging form requires it.
2. Clear your browser cache. There's a chance your browser isn't picking up the new JavaScript without explicitly telling it to.

Regarding duplicate tags, etc. -- This is something we knew would happen. There are some options for dealing with it, but I'd like to see how everyone uses the system for a little while first before we make any decisions.

Thanks for the awesome improvements. The favorites has allowed me to be more active in the forums. I visit like its a facebook game with 3 minute visits when I have time. I cant wait to see more thread tags to help me find new threads. I often start a game from my pile and can't find the catch-all thread for it because something shiny distracts me in the results.

Best community ever!