From outside the Cauldron you can already smell the taste-tempting recipes that are being made by the chefs and cooks within.  As you enter you find a menu with a variety of options being offered and see in one corner a well stocked liquor cabinet.  A rather rotund tauren makes his way toward you a warm smile on his face as he takes your hand and shakes it.  "Welcome!  Come in please.  Welcome to the Copper Cauldron!"

GuildPortal Change Log Entry
7/30/2010 9:15 PM

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A problem with new posts sending you to the home page of your guild site after you were done has been fixed. We cornered the posts and explained to them that they were the ones who got sent, not the other way around. They put up a brief fight, but after a cheap shot, rolled up in a little ball.

When a new user applies to be a member of your guild site, a listing of characters they're signing up with will now be sent along with the mail you normally receive, as well as show up in any automatic forum post you may have configured.

The voting polls admin UI has been updated a bit, and you are now able to edit an already-created poll, so long as no votes have yet been cast for it. If they have, you will only be able to edit the close date and the minimum level to vote on the poll (old votes already cast from those below the new minimum level will remain, however).

The GuildPortal Admin Community (admins.guildportal.com) has had a bit of a make-over, though nothing terribly drastic. Well, except for "The WALL." Beware.

Finally, we believe we've got our maintenance scripts and backups now running on a schedule that should prevent too much overlap, although we're operating on a "wait and see" basis for the moment. If you've been on later in the evening (or early in the morning, depending on which side of the globe you call home), you may have noticed really slow response times or worse. Turns out that nightly full database backups colliding with full index rebuilds causes a bit of a bottleneck! Who knew?

GuildPortal Change Log Entry
7/29/2010 5:38 PM

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Forum and topic listings will now show the thumbnail image of the most recent poster next to their name link. This can be disabled by an admin by clicking the Edit button at the bottom of the forum widget and then clicking Display Options.

Only thumbnail images that were uploaded via the characters/settings page will display. Images that are hosted externally will not. This is for security, as browsers (like Chrome) are sometimes blocking pages that have images on them which are hosted on domains with a bad rep. If your thumb is hosted elsewhere and you would like for it to show up, right click and save it to your hard drive, then upload it in your Characters/Settings page.

The custom HTML editor in the Control Panel for banner, footer, and widget areas has been updated to occupy more of the available space, and the font size has been reduced a bit so that you can see more of your code at once.

When creating a new Ventrilo server, you now have the ability to specify which codec you would like for it to use.

If you try to edit the Footer Text under Style Tools, but you have Custom HTML defined for it, the Control Panel will now let you know, providing a link where you can either disable or edit your Custom HTML.

If you imported a theme through Control Panel > Style Tools > Browse Themes, it would not previously bring over the dynamic text banner settings, in order to avoid overwriting any existing banner. Now, it still doesn't overwrite your actual banner, but it will bring the settings over into your Banner Builder in order to make it easy for you to create a new dynamic text banner with the intended style set forth by the person who created the theme.

GuildPortal Change Log Entry
7/27/2010 5:55 PM

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We're happy to announce that GuildPortal now provides Mumble voice server hosting, at the same rate we provide Ventrilo hosting for (which is pretty darn low, seriously)! The only difference is the lack of a 5-slot option, which is due to licensing.

One thing to keep in mind: while the voice servers themselves are solid, the APIs aren't all that ironed out for querying server status and the like, so for the time being, the voice server status widget will display only connection-related information to your members, along with a link to download the client software.

Getting started is as easy as going into your Control Panel, clicking Ventrilo/Mumble Server, and selecting your options. The admin password you enter during creation of the server can then be used by you when logging into the server to manage user and access lists, but one thing that's different here is you must login to the Mumble server as "SuperUser" (without the quotes) with the Mumble client.

More information on Mumble is available at mumble.sourceforge.net.

GuildPortal Change Log Entry
7/22/2010 6:29 PM

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We've been pretty busy over the past week! Here's a list of some of the things that have either already gone live or are going live with today's code push:

• 28 new themes have been added!
• A problem with the signature generator import galleries redirecting to the guild home page has been fixed, and the signature generator has had some neat new features added to it.
• Importing a theme was automatically centering the banner, even if that was not how the theme was configured. This has been fixed.
• Auto-forum posting of applications, where an admin had previously (at any point) checked the box to disable it, remained disabled and the box wouldn't show as checked when they went back, so they were unable to re-enable it. Those who were affected will need to go back into the Application Questions area of the control panel and re-enable it by un-checking the box.
• Integrated rosters for DAOC have been updated to work with the new XML structure that Mythic is returning, and they have been updated to have all the features of the integrated rosters of newer games (client-side filtering, sorting, and an updated appearance).
• When applying a theme, users have the option to send a quick "thank you" note to the author of the theme. If you like their work, let them know!
• When sharing a theme, custom HTML for the left, right and center widgets will now also be exported as part of the theme, and applied to any site that imports the theme. Previously these elements were not applied, so only simpler themes could be shared to their full effect.
• Custom CSS additions are also now copied when sharing a theme. Keep in mind these are just for the "CSS Additions" part of your total custom CSS configuration. Total CSS replacements are not copied. CSS Additions only add on to the existing output, they do not completely replace it.
• If you have supplied custom images for your tabs, you now have the option to have them display even when using the "Side Nav" type of navigation. Click the "Display Tab Images Inside Side Nav" checkbox in the Control Panel, under Style Tools > Navigation Style (make sure you have Side Nav selected from the drop-down list at the top). This will display the images vertically (top to bottom). Full default/current/hover functionality is supported.
• Many, many new sets of forum icons are available. You can get to them via Control Panel > Style Tools > Forum Icons. Select from the "Available Sets" drop-down box and click Preview to check them out!

GuildPortal Change Log Entry
7/9/2010 6:57 PM

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That's right, someone handed us a headset and lots of coffee... Nobody is safe!

• Customizing widget appearance
• Navigation styling
• The Banner Builder
• Using custom CSS
• Setting default admin rights
• Explanation of the admin rights
• Configuring application questions
• On-page, drag-and-drop management

GuildPortal Change Log Entry
7/8/2010 5:22 PM

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Guild admins now have the ability to specify custom administrative rights to be assigned whenever someone's access level is changed either via the Control Panel, directly clicking the Member Admin link on any guild page, or via the App Admin widget that loads for those with that right assigned to them.

The ability to do this is useful in cases where you want to assign rights to groups of people based upon their access, for example, you could say that you want all people with Council-level access to be able to fully administer images and polls, and officers to have admin rights over polls, images and events.

After you've changed the default rights that are assigned to a given access level, whenever a person is assigned that level, they will automatically be granted those rights. Also, you will be asked whether you want to apply your settings to everyone already in the guild.

Note that un-checking admin rights when editing a member is still possible -- just keep in mind how granular you're getting if you decide to change rights for the access level later on and decide to overwrite individual rights you've already selected.

You can get started with the new feature by opening the Control Panel, expanding Member Management (on the left), and clicking Default Rights.  The UI is all wizard-y, and does a lot of explaining as you go along.

GuildPortal Change Log Entry
7/6/2010 5:54 PM

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Guild newsletters are now available! As a site admin, to enable and configure your newsletter, open the Control Panel and select Newsletter from the left menu. Users who wish to receive your newsletter will need to enable Guild Newsletters in their Characters/Settings page and be associate-level or higher in your guild. Moving forward, we might change this to being enabled by default, but for the moment we're making it opt-in to avoid "spamming" a whole lot of people at the beginning.

Some might have noticed a lot of ninja-enhancements going live over the past weeks:

• When editing a page's properties (Control Panel > Pages & Content > select a page and then click the Page Properties tab), you now have the option to specify a hover image, in addition to the previously available default and selected images.
• The Banner Builder (Control Panel > Style Tools) has an additional effect that you can apply to the text called "perspective." It renders the text at an angle (which you can also specify using the slider).
• "Nav Bar Builder" and "Navigation Type" have been combined into "Navigation Style" (Control Panel > Style Tools). You can now select the type of navigation you want your site to use (Nav Bar, Side Nav or Standard Tabs) and the interface will show the appropriate options.
• The Content Boxes (Widgets) styling options now allow for an icon to be shown in the header, without the need to provide custom HTML.
• The Forum Specific style tools now use the updated gradient generator/guild storage image picker, so if you're using images you've uploaded through the file manager, you won't need to go back and forth, copying and pasting URLs. Many image fields throughout the Control Panel have been updated to use this tool.
• You can now provide hover state images for the following forum icons: reply, quote, edit, and delete. In addition, pre-set forum icon themes are now importing all of the images they should. Check it out in the Control Panel, under Style Tools > Forum Icons.
• The signature generator, available in Characters/Settings, has been cleaned up, had some effects and options added, and has been given some more images that you can import from the gallery. If you have any packs of thumbnail images or backgrounds that you'd like seen added for your game, please let us know!
• The GPHelper add-on for World of Warcraft now imports bank items into more appropriate categories.

GuildPortal Change Log Entry
6/24/2010 8:46 PM

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Site admins will notice a new option to toggle between Preview and Edit modes on their guild pages. By default, you will be in Preview mode. Clicking on Edit mode opens a mini-menu in the top right corner of the site that stays in view when scrolling up and down the page.

The mini-menu offers quicker ways to do things that used to take more time to access via the Control Panel. You are able to swiftly add a new page, a new widget, or delete a page.

In addition, being in Edit mode makes it possible to move widgets around on the page by using drag-and-drop. Also, a delete icon appears in the title area of each widget. When finished, simply click the Preview link to return to Preview mode.

All of the above-listed operations are still available in the Control Panel, of course.

The Control Panel itself has been enhanced with a new front page that lists some helpful (we hope!) videos for site admins. It also provides the ability to search for videos and the answers to frequently asked questions. The change log is still available, it's just on the second tab.

A problem with the answers applicants gave to app questions disappearing after the original question has been deleted has been fixed, and will be no problem moving forward.