New Features: Profiles, Improved Comments

Tony posted this on June 7th, 2009.
Tagged as , , , .
Categorized as News, Site Updates.
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1792

I just fin­ished adding in some new fea­tures thanks to some assis­tance from my friend, Alan. This took a lot of play­ing around with PHP and while I was able to do some of it, Alan really made sure it worked right.

You may now make an account on MMeOw, if you wish. Accounts are not required to com­ment, but they do give you some neat new features:

  1. Hav­ing an account allows you to stay logged in until you log out, mak­ing com­ments even sim­pler than before.
  2. You will be given a pro­file page. You can edit this at any time by click­ing the “Edit Set­tings” link in the top­most navigation.
  3. You can upload your own avatar if you wish, up to 1MB in size. If you do not upload an avatar, your Gra­vatar will be used instead.
  4. By default a pro­file con­tains your user­name, avatar, join date,  last 5 com­ments and last 5 posts (if you’re an author here).
  5. Your pro­file may also dis­play a link to your Web site, a link to your MyLotRO pro­file, an about sec­tion and your server name. These are han­dled sim­ply through text boxes and drop down menus.
  6. Pro­files are auto­mat­i­cally linked to in your com­ment. Addi­tion­ally, your MyLotRO pro­file will be linked to if you add it.
  7. Update: You can enter your main character’s name and it will auto­mat­i­cally point to the character’s pro­file on my​.lotro​.com. This is optional.

Just click Reg­is­ter on the top­most nav­i­ga­tion bar to get started.

There are more plans for the future that I’m still work­ing out. I’m hop­ing to allow peo­ple to to enter their main character’s name which will then auto­mat­i­cally link to its myLotRO pro­file on the proper server.

You may also now use some HTML in your com­ments. The com­ment form now has a small tool­bar which allows you bold, empha­size, link and more. I’ve also added but­tons for var­i­ous LotRO Lore­book func­tions. For exam­ple, sur­round­ing the item name Coal with tags cre­ates [Coal]. Keep in mind the name has to be exactly the same as in the game/Lorebook.

In the more dis­tant future, this site will also be mak­ing use of the XML data that Tur­bine is now pro­vid­ing. This means we can show your character’s stats and equip­ment in your pro­file if you wish. As with your myLotRO link, server name and so forth, this is com­pletely optional.

I hope every­one likes these addi­tions.

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9 Responses to 'New Features: Profiles, Improved Comments'

  1. Jaxom92 says:

    Glad to see all the cool stuff you’ve added. I almost regret syn­di­cat­ing all my blog read­ing to Google Reader and miss­ing out on the indi­vid­ual blogs, but it would take me way too long to actu­ally visit each and every page I read. But if I com­ment, I get the good­ies. Nice job on the redesign and fea­tures. Keep it up!

  2. Alan says:

    Tony would be lost with­out me, this much is true.

  3. Westnovote says:

    Love the new fea­tures but can’t help feel­ing more than a lit­tle left out when­ever mylotro is men­tioned.
    There seems lit­tle prospect that non-US play­ers will ever see this, and although it’s not by any means a deal breaker for me, it would be nice to be able to inspect my char­ac­ters out of game.

    • Tony Tony says:

      Yeah, that is dis­ap­point­ing. I’m not sure why they haven’t worked that out. I have to assume the data they pull is han­dled the same way …

      Maybe some­day I can set up an inter­view with some­one there and try and get some info on that one.

  4. Rex says:

    Should start up some forums, IMO. It’d be very nice to be able to keep track of dis­cus­sion that way, rather than just the blog-style com­ments. Just my 2 cop­per, though. :)

    • Tony Tony says:

      I’ll con­sider that … I’ve ran forums in the past and they’re often a headache. They seem to facil­i­tate argu­ments more than blog comments.

      We shall see. It’s crossed my mind sev­eral times.

      Thanks for the sug­ges­tion! :)

      • Alan says:

        Please don’t try that stu­pid­ity again. Remem­ber how well it worked last time? It just became a soap­box for angry com­mu­nity mem­bers to rake you through the mud for per­ceived laziness.

        I am not say­ing your cur­rent users will do this, but I think its best not to tempt fate and save your­self the has­sle to begin with.

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