I pushed a few updates live to the server early this morning.
You can undo your votes now. Yay! No more accidental downvotes for people with fat fingers.
Comments that receive 10 downvotes will be blurred (you can still hover over to see).
Comments that have a total of 10 or more points are highlighted in green.
In a thread, you can hit the 'n' key to jump around the newest comments (good for reloading gameday threads).
These were the most frequent issues people mentioned in the website survey a few months ago, so I wanted to hit them first. More updates will be coming throughout the offseason.
Post any issues you run into here.
Merry Christmas!
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
#TeamJoe
Flacco?
never
:(
Tyrod is my homeboy
Thanks for continuing to make this beautiful site better and better Joe, Merry Christmas everybody!
Ball so hard! Awesome.
Much thanks, and Merry Christmas to you too!
(I'm scared to try it though)
Thanks Joe!
upvoted you to watch it turn green. very pretty!
I'm freakin' color blind.
It just looks like a medium gray to me.
The "n" one works! I just did it! Yay, Joe!
Thanks a lot, I'm sure that took a TON of effort and time. It's much appreciated.
Just n'ed my way through the thread. Felt good.
I know we have the turkey leg "power rankings" but is it possible to have the most liked comments tracked as well? I'd be interested to see where pussy touchdowns and VT Lax Girl are in the all-time rankings.
On a related note (and I know that this is infeasible because of the ridiculous amount of data it would involve probably), it'd be cool to see who liked comments. I'm not sure there's any sites but Facebook and Twitter that have that functionality though.
Disqus allows you to do that but it would be a complete overhaul of the commenting application
Saw a green comment in a thread, got really confused, then suddenly realized what it was and looked for this thread. This was a pretty awesome early Christmas present.
All of the updates are fantastic (at least I can vouch for all but the 'n' thing, being on a phone isn't conducive to keyboard shortcuts).
Joe, thanks for all the effort you put in, not only for keeping up with server demand but also adding functionality when requested. It truly takes a more dedicated man than I.
Hooray! And there was much rejoicing.
Fantastic stuff, as always, Joe. Thanks for keeping TKP at the forefront of awesome places on the Internet. I know this must have taken quite a bit of time, especially during the holidays.
I bet it was nothing for Joe. He probably just farted and this wonder occurred.
Or he hired Sam Rogers to be a developer.
Yayy Christmas gifts!
And then Weezer sings Keep Fishin'
Merry Christmas! Thank you Joe! By far the best website editor/administrator for the best website!!! So thanks! Much appreciation! Many awesome!
Anybody want to down vote a comment to hell to test the blurred text? This will be the sacrificial comment if anybody is curious. Besides, a week from now half of the down voters could change their votes to bring the comment back to 0 if so desired...I don't care either way. I'm just curious. So start down voting!!!
Couldn't resist the invitation. Of course, I've also been downvoting random comments just so I can prove I can change my vote to a turkey leg. It's been a good day so far.
Looks like you have to refresh for the change to take place, but it does work. Sorry for the temporary up vote.
Never thought I'd ever actually see that.
And it may just depend on your internet connection, but I just spent the last 2 minutes or so flipping your comment from a turkey leg to a downvote and back... and back... and back...
I feel so shameful about downvoting such an innocent comment though
UPDATE: did it anyway
It worked!!! Man, Joe, that's awesome. Blurred out, but you can see it if you mouse over, just as advertised. Great work, and very creative.
UPDATE #2:
I FEEL LIKE I NEED GLASSES
Aw. I missed out the blurred out goodness. Everyone went back and upvoted you.
Still blurred for me...make sure your mouse isn't over it when you look
It certainly isn't. What browser is everyone else using?
it wouldn't show up as blurred on my step moms iPad but my dad's Mac with safari works
Maybe that's it. I'm rocking the Firefox.
But yeah, I use Firefox also and I've noticed the same
I am using new css3 effects to do the blurring. From what I've read it's supposed to be supported in Firefox 25, but isn't working for me in FF 26 on OS X. Firefox and Chrome are updated regularly, so my guess is if you have automatic updates going one day soon it'll just start working.
Ladies and gentlemen, UVA's vision for their football program.
This comment deserves to be green.
fat figured upvote...my bad
I just changed my downvote. It was a wonderful feeling. I felt empowered.
You have the power!
There will always be an asterisk by your name in the Hall of Turkey Legs...
Now I'm curious if a comment can be green AND blurred simultaneously...
It doesn't look like it...
i figured it was a long shot...you don't really count on a comment having 10+ downvotes AND enough upvotes to put the comment score at 10+
This blur feature is nifty. I like it.
Wow! We can fix fat-finger downvotes now??!
It's like viagra for my posts, which always are funnier after a liberal splash of bourbon.
Truly providing a great service to Hokie Nation. If I could give you a real turkey leg; I would. For now, just take my appreciation, which lacks the delicious juices of a real leg; but can be just as fulfilling emotionally.
The Sabre ain't got $@%^! on The Key Play!
The Sabre doesn't even have shit on..well...shit
This site continues to be the tits.
TOTS is tits too.
Tits > Breathing > Rails > The Key Play
The debate of the order of these is a whole different thread in itself
You forgot pie.
Paying a cover in Blacksburg is not cool
It's not that bad. I think of it as paying them to get all those girls in one place.
the n feature has really changed my life
Thanks Joe for listening to us! Merry Christmas to you and yours :)
I could just watch this gif all day. It's fantastic. He's even better in high-speed gif than he is in normal speed.
It's too bright, help its sucking me in.....AAAAaaaaaaahhhhhhh.........
The 'n' feature is something that I always wanted but never knew I wanted.
Thank you, Joe Claus!
Was gone for a couple days and only could get on using my phone so I missed this thread. Just got back and noticed the green boxes. Great updates and just in time for Christmas.
Glad everyone likes the updates. More good things to come (especially on the free content front).
OH GOD JOE IT'S BEAUTIFUL EVEN ON MY PHONE
but really, even the blurred out comments work perfectly on mobile.
I'm not usually this good, but when a chick has her 1 eye on you....
Haven't been on the site in a while and just saw this post. These updates are beautiful, and I really really love the n functionality. Brilliant stuff, will make my keyplay ux that much more enjoyable.
I want to log in to keyplay.com in 2014 to sign up for my health insurance.
The n jump feature is so clutch!
Love the new features Joe! I feel like the next thing you should look into is putting the search bar in a more prominent place and making it actually work (or maybe it just doesn't work for me?). But anyways I love this site, and am super impressed by all the hard work you do to make this the best website for Hokie Sports.
Wait there's a search bar?!
The martinis aren't very good but the bourbon is perfect.
Which is why: We. Must. Do. Basketball!!!!!!!!!!
waoh!! Just had a crazy thought! Okay, so Joe, you know how you have buttons above all the comment boxes to make whatever text you hightlighted bold, or italicized, or even underlined?
Well, how about we (TKP) pioneer the first ever 'sarcastica' font? You could have a 'sarcastica' button and it would change whatever is highlighted to a distinctly different font. Is that possible? Thoughts?
This.
In my head, I'm just picturing the most awesomely annoying, glittery, MySpace-like font. Otherwise, a simple button to insert this GIF might work:
It's an interesting thought I'll keep under consideration. Thanks.
Awesome! I have no idea how involved that would be...I appreciate your consideration at least :)
You could have it just show posts in comic sans in that portion, like bold or italic.
This is perfect! Egbert just created sarcastica.
The only down side to it is that in some way it is mocking VT's letter of scholarship offer to recruits.
I'm Comic Sans, Asshole!
also, I keep getting noisy political ads for Sen. Kay Hagan at the top of these topics..it's annoying.
Noisy, annoying ads, FOR, not AGAINST, correct? (not trying to start a discussion, just curious)
I think they're pro but I don't really pay them any attention..I hate all things political regardless of party affiliation or slant
I pushed some more updates live to the website this afternoon. (Coding while watching basketball dulls the pain a bit.) The footer contains a lot more call to action items, and it's not quite as puny as before. I moved the search bar to the header since people had no idea it existed the bottom of the sidebar.
Thanks for moving the search! I'm sure I wasn't the only one that didn't know it was down there. Keep up the good work boss.
Joe, thanks for all the incredible work you put into this website! Everything looks great except 'opportunities' is spelled incorrectly in the footer. I checked, and it is spelled correctly on the actual Advertising Opportunities page so it's just one quick fix!
Thanks for pointing this out. Software engineers cannot spell worth a damn.
I think the random quotes might be better suited in a more prominant position. Centered across the top or bottom, centered. I know they're orange, but the effect may get lost in the "list". Just instant opinion, not really thought out heavily. Oh...and Paul Johnson's quote is missing a ".
Can I get a filter that screens out any comment that includes the words "Logan" and either "TE" or "tight-end"?
If you're decent at Javascript-Fu, you could probably make something for Greasemonkey. I've seen much more complex things accomplished.
Drew Brees rolled his ankle this weekend. Sean Peyton is expected to put Logan Thomas in at the "Feeding tight end Jimmy Graham" position.
haha - well played, sir.
The only other thing I've ever wanted is a way to give legs straight to people who make the posts. Whenever they're good posts but they don't comment on them, there's no way to reward them for posting. Just a thought
Joe, when did you change the mobile layout? It looks great!
It's not a "mobile" layout, it's a dynamic layout that changes depending on the width of the window, IMO a HUGE improvement over mobile sites in general.
If you reduce the size of it on your desktop you'll see the same thing. I know on my phone, if I have it in landscape it's one format, and in portrait it's another.
Ahh, silly me I should have looked into that. I'm not a website guy by trade.
Oh snap, I didn't realize it was based on the width of the browser.
My only request would be that the header stayed locked in portrait mode. If I'm in the middle of a really long thread on my phone, I have to scroll to the top (to get to the tracker) or to the bottom to see the recently updated threads.
This comic strip...so I'm not the only one! Can't remember, either Times Dispatch or the Daily down in NN does this. Google News set to "virginia tech +football -west" was my blackberry homepage for a long time, but you could tell after a while which headlines would only take you to the mobile
siteshomepages.Joe, thanks for this. I love the 'n' key especially. Suggestion: could you make capital N (or something) cycle through the new posts in the opposite direction?
This is a good idea, I will look into it.
Joe, Great site. I like the changes that you've been implementing. One thing that might be useful (especially for newbies and those of us that might be technically challenged) is a FAQ/Help section. It would give you a dedicated area to answer some of the repeat questions (How do I embed a jpg again?) and a consistent place to publish some of navigation tips you've recently updated and include things that are currently buried in individual thread (e.g. Mascot Mock FAQ)
Edit - I would recommend a link to this page provided in your "Resources" link list.
There is somewhere around here. It surfaces from time to time and then get buried under all the new topics. I know there's a link to the "Welcome" blog post, maybe he should edit that to include a link the the Newb FAQ
That's part of the reason I was recommending a more traditional FAQ instead of a thread that continually gets buried by newer and/or more relevant threads.
Random thought for Joe to consider. Some of the threads get tons of posts that become hard to follow, i.e. figuring out who is replying to whom. Is there any way to add maybe a dotted vertical line to illustrate the flow of the conversation? Example: Person B replied to Person A, but the reply is dozens of posts down and I don't know that without having to scroll up the screen a few times, so I've lost track of what Person A's post actually was, but with a subtle connector between the two posts, it would be easy to follow. Maybe that would clutter things, but it's just an idea to think over.
or could just have a name tag associated with it as in:
Replied to: VTGuitarMan with an automatic link to that post if you click on it, much like how typing "N" goes to the next new post.
I think all the vertical lines would get really busy on the page but this is an excellent idea.
Joe I just wanted to let you know that this website is one of the best if not the best website the I visit on a daily basis. The way the forums and information are formatted on the page are just dead on and the integration of reddit ideals are a very smart way to run a website. You have some serious talent in terms of understanding what people want and need out of a website. I look forward to your continued updates in the future.
It looks like the "Replies" column is no longer available on the Tracker page when in portrait mode.
Basically, it makes it difficult to jump straight the first unread comment when viewing on a phone.
Edit: my fat fingers
That was by design, I wanted to make that table less cramped, but it was bad design. It should be fixed now.
Much obliged.
Joe,
I wonder if there's a feature you could intergrate in Mobile browsing mode, where you could scroll all the way to the top and bottom?
Love the site, love the navigation for the most part as well. one question: could we get all external links to open in a new tab? i'm too lazy to remember to right click and do it myself...
keep up the great work!
I think a TKP app would be awesome. I wouldn't mind paying for it either. ;)
is the forum powered by vBulletin? i'm no tech guru, but wouldn't it be easy to get existing vB apps to support TKP?
No, it's not powered by vBulletin. The website uses Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS) that manages everything. That's why you don't need multiple user accounts (i.e. one to post in the forum, one for articles), and everything is part of one overall design. There's also a lot of custom code that I wrote.
ahhh, thanks for the clarification...and good work!
Considering the amont of time and work Joe put into making the site mobile friendly, I doubt you'll see a TKP app.
Correct! A TKP app is unnecessary. The website automatically adjusts its layout based on the device the user is browsing from. And I think I mentioned it before, but it would provide an unnecessary overhead and complexity to the code base. Right now when I add a feature, I only update one piece of code and it automagically works on all devices. If I had to support an iPhone and Android app as well, it would be three times the updates. I can't fit that into my schedule.
If someone wanted to make a six-figure donation, I could hire a full time engineer, but I think that money would be better budgeted for more content.
Somewhat related, you can donate money to us: http://www.thekeyplay.com/support.
Smart move!
man I love shit that works automagically
Anyone else having issues with TKP?
Profile pics seem to be being hacked. Mine got replaced by some random dude's head and I noticed happened to Chazz and a few others have as well. I also can't see more than half of profile images, and some pages seem to not load correctly. Others are being replaced by Bitter's head. Is that just me? Because for the life of me I can't imagine how just my computer would show that.
How do I reproduce the error?
What device/browser are you using?
Can you post a screenshot?
What should your current profile picture be?
man... shits getting crazy. just checked and random heads are gone but still can't see more than half of profile pics. My profile pic was the cartoonish decade of dominance image I made of the Hokie Bird hitting Cav Man with "Boom" in the background.
I've been trying to reload it but for some reason every time I hit save it goes to an error page, however I was able to load a different image of Hokie Bird and Smokey from UT on mario karts. Not sure if that is what you see.
I am on my laptop using Chrome and Explorer. But I am using a VPN to tunnel through the great firewall. That thing acts up now and then but I've never seen anything like this happen.
I checked and Chazz and others that had changed now just don't appear. Will get a screen shot but it looks like it's just me. Running the full sweep of anti-virus, etc now too.
Alright, well I sweeped with every program I've got and downloaded and installed latest version of VPN client and now profile pics back as they should be... except, for some reason I keep getting an "Internal Server Error" when I try to change my profile pick back to the Decade of Dominance image I had before. I tried re-sizing the image and still doesn't work.
Not sure why that is but it's 2:30 am here and time for bed. I'll check again tomorrow.
Must be that Chinese internet and apparently China likes Bitter fernley.
haha... you don't know how accurate that is man. Could be some douche on the great firewall having some fun.
I imagine it to be something like this:
NEWMAN! I knew it was you... +1
(I realize that is from J-Park)
Joe,
is there a way to blow up Avatars so they can be seen more clearly? They're sooo tiny!
Yeah, I wish that if you went to someone's profile, you could see a full-size (or at least larger) version of their avy.
Not to go complete OT here buuuut...is there a way to change my username? Ideally I'd like to be "War Damn Hokie" or "War Hokie", but I suppose it's up to the discretion of the site admins/programmers since there doesn't seem to be a way to do so on the account edit page.
Thanks in advance!
Joe can change it - email him thekeyplay(at)gmail(dot)com
I figured it was something like this. Same protocol over at SBN. Thanks!!!
Suggestion for Joe and the crew, just posting it here so that it (hopefully) doesn't get lost in the shuffle of a very busy week:
http://www.thekeyplay.com/comment/177471#comment-177471
Just something to consider for the future.
seconded