MeetFighters News

Hi everyone,

I would like to start with a big thank you to all the people who have helped me run this site. I'm thinking about the guys who have helped translate and are active on the Help and Support page. It takes a big burden off my shoulders and frees me up to improve the site!

So, starting this month, the top 5 supporters get a special medal on their profiles. It looks like a red gem with the AllFighters pictogram on it. (I will also be giving something similar to the localization team soon.) In addition to looking cool, the supporter medal grants all the little perks that donating members get.

Want to become a site supporter? If you are black or brown belt photo moderator, have at least 3 recommendation and willing to help the site, apply with management! :)

In other news:

• I have completed a big performance tuning on the site. It should be considerably snappier in those peak hours.
• E-mail notifications of messages are now limited to at most 1/hour.
• I started purging users who haven't logged in in over a year. This involves deleting their blogs, their profile data and other residuals. The end effect, in addition to freeing up some system resources is that these old profile names are again available and someone else can register them.
• Redesigned the Administration page, grouping all the options in three broad categories. This should make it a bit easier to find what you need. I also removed all these links from the "main" pages in the interest of cleaning up the interface a bit.
• I have split the list on the photo management page into four tabs (profile, private, gallery and unmoderated) to make it the interface a bit easier to understand. I also moved the photo upload form to a separate page.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally caused the unread message count to become negative.
• Lots of behind-the-scenes changes.

On a brighter note, there is a new site feature, called the Match Request. Enjoy! :)

Dear members,

Unfortunately I bring you sad news for the otherwise happy new year. Last month, one of our members has died in a fight, apparently one that he has arranged on this site. The news reports that I have read are a bit sparse (and sometimes downright wrong) on details, and a police investigation is ongoing, so I am not in a position to go into details.

This really made me think hard about safety, and what I could have done to prevent a tragedy like this. Now the deceased was an experienced fighter, who has been practicing various combat sports and MMA since childhood. He knew and loved fighting better than most of us. There's little advice or warning that I could have given him that would be of use. I also realize that this site has facilitated lots and LOTS of matches, none of which have ended in tragedy during the three-year existence of the site, until now.

Still, I have a feeling that I had an indirect role to play here, and so, I'm thinking about what I can do to promote safe fighting. As usual, any tips are welcome. Let's try to deal with this constructively, without over- or underplaying the issue or scaremongering. This is both an isolated incident and a wakeup call.

Site updates follow:

• The Chat system has been upgraded; it now supports international letters better. It also has a webcam feature! (Flash only.)
• You can re-activate your e-mail address by requesting a new activation code. This is useful if your e-mail address was bouncing and the system deactivated it.
• A bunch of small, behind-the-scenes fixes.

On an unrelated note, Happy New Year!

After a day of gradually more and more severe performance issues, I think I managed to nail what was causing it and fixed it. I hope I'm not jinxing that :) After some software and hardware tweaks, the site is now running faster than ever!

Other than this, there have been a number of small and medium changes:

• Upside down and sideways photos can be rotated now after upload (Tracker/2011-11-24).
• Fix for searching for city without selecting a country in Advanced Search (Tracker/2011-09-02)
• You can now delete your blog entries (Tracker/2011-11-29).
• The Admin bot on Chat no longer repeats itself when a user uploads several photos.
• A small update to the site's appearance (better looking headings).
• The videos page now shows the latest uploads.
• You can now turn of individual "logged on" notifications for your favorites (Tracker/2011-08-22).
• The flash chat has been upgraded, it solves a bunch of issues related to international characters (Tracker/2011-11-13 2).

I am now working on a calendar project, mostly for my own use. If it becomes mature enough, I might end up incorporating it in AllFighters too. Stay tuned...

Also, season's greetings and Happy New Year to all! :)

Admin out

Greetings gentlemen (and you very few ladies),

I'm bringing you the latest site updates!

• General performance optimization. The site was just getting slow in the rush hours!
• The Message list can now show your unread messages (in fact, this is now the default).
• Tracker/2011-10-16: Changed the wording of the "Gay" "Straight" and "Bi" interests to describe the profile owner ("I'm gay", "I'm straight", "I'm bi").
• Tracker/2011-09-18: Fixed a bug that prevented members from changing their blog settings.
• Some miscellaneous tweaks to the Help and Support and Photo moderation pages.

– Admin out