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New Comment Notifications by Email	October 2, 2009, 10:10PM
by: eon
A new feature has been added which will make it a little easier to keep track of your DS account without having to log in: Comment notifications by email. Here's the skinny on how it works: If you have logged out or have been idle for more than 15 minutes and receive a new comment on DS, an email will be sent to your registered email address letting you know about it. You will only receive emails about individual comments sent directly to you. This means you won't be pestered about things like broadcast messages, group invites, etc.. As a measure against potential abuse (or just too much email), no more than one email will be sent to you per 30 minute period. Extra emails will just be dropped (they won't queue up or anything like that). Each email you receive will give you an updated list of all members who have sent you unread comments. This behavior is enabled by default. However, if you do not wish to receive email notices, it is easy to disable. Just go to your Control Panel and then scroll down the page to the 'Email Notices' section. Change the setting to 'Off' and you won't be sent any more notices. I hope you find this useful and . . . Enjoy.
topic: Site News
[reply] [19 comments]

New Site Theme	August 18, 2009, 1:38PM
by: eon
Thanks to a.better.kiss for our first original site theme, "Grey Deco". To try it out, go to 'Control Panel' and on the 'Edit Profile' page look under the 'Site Theme' selections for 'Grey Deco'. If you decide to use it, be sure and drop by a.better.kiss's profile and say thanks. If you'd like to design your own site theme, see the previous news post!
topic: Site News
[reply] [36 comments]

Remodel DS to Your Own Liking	July 16, 2009, 5:05PM
by: eon
I have added a utility which will allow you to completely re-write the site theme to your liking. This means that in addition to the default site themes located under Control Panel -> Edit Profile, it is now possible for you to code your very own site theme to give the entire site any look that you would like. To access the utility, go to Control Panel -> Look and Feel. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you will find a new section titled, Site Theme. Please read the short instructions which appear there, they will help you in getting started. Everything should be pretty much self explanatory beyond that. If anyone comes up with site themes they're proud of, I'd like to hear about it. I'll be looking at the custom site themes submitted by our members in search of the best ones so that they can be added to the default theme choices for everyone to use. This way, maybe we'll all have some more interesting themes to choose from in the near future! Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions, and be sure to point any of your friends who are good at layout work in the direction of this article. Enjoy...
topic: Site News
[reply] [20 comments]

More Better Email.	July 3, 2009, 4:41PM
by: eon
Email service for Andromeda members has been migrated to a new platform and a couple of new email features are now available: 1. POP3 email access. It is now possible to check your @darkstarlings.com email account from any POP3 client, such as Outlook Express or Thunderbird. This also means that you can add your DS email account to another mail service such as GMail or Live so you can automatically check your DS email when you log into those services. To view your POP3 setup info, go to Control Panel -> Email. 2. New email notifications. You will now receive a notice when new email arrives in your DS email account. The notice will appear in the same place where you see notices for new comments, new picture comments, new blog comments, etc. The old email platform, located here will remain until July 20th. Sometime on or after that date, the old email service will be removed, so if you have any old important emails there, please make copies as soon as possible. If you don't have a DS email account but would like one, you'll need to sign up for Andromeda access, which includes an email account along with lots of other perks. Click here to find out more. Enjoy.
topic: Site News
[reply] [8 comments]

Site IM	May 16, 2009, 2:40AM
by: eon
Site wide IM is now operational. You will find 'Send IM' links in various places throughout the site. If a member is available to receive an IM, you will see their link. For instance, on any profile page, if the member is online, look next to their "online" message for an IM link. Another place to look is in search results (online members, friends lists, regular searches, etc.). All preferences related to IM are located at: Control Panel -> IM Settings It should be pretty self explanatory if you try it out. I haven't decided for certain on this solution (that is, IM services provided by UserPlane) but I've tested it enough on my own that I figured I'd go ahead and launch it and see what you guys think. The major drawback would be the ads and some of the glitchy behavior (which I'm working on as much as possible). Anyhoo, give it a spin . . .
topic: Site News
[reply] [17 comments]

Comment Locking	March 8, 2009, 6:47PM
by: eon
On your profile comments, you will notice a new option grouped with all of the others: [lock] If you click 'lock' then you will be unable to delete the comment until you unlock it (by clicking the handy 'unlock' link which will appear). Pretty simple. This will prevent you from accidentally deleting important comments that you want to save. This will come in especially handy if you like to periodically clean out all of your comments via 'Edit Your Comments' -> 'Delete All Comments'. It might also be interesting to note that this will prevent others from deleting comments that they have left you, as only the recipient of a comment is able to lock/unlock. That is all.
topic: Site News
[reply] [15 comments]

New Post Icons	January 17, 2009, 12:55AM
by: eon
A small but useful update has been added to both the forums and groups. Now, when viewing threads, you will notice that an icon appears to the left of each thread indicating what type of thread it is. (Poll, Video, Locked, Pinned, Regular Post, etc.) These icons will change color depending upon whether or not there are any new posts in the thread which you have not yet viewed. If there are new posts waiting for you, the icon will be bright. If you've already read all of the posts in a thread, the icon will appear to be darker. This should make it easier to skim forums and groups and see what threads you need to catch up on. Enjoy...
topic: Site News
[reply] [9 comments]

Have yourselves a good one.	December 24, 2008, 8:05PM
by: eon
I think I would be remiss as a webmaster if I did not wish the entire site a wonderful and joyous holiday season. And since I live in unmitigated, abject terror of the possibility of being remiss: Have yourselves a wonderful and joyous holiday season. I hope your Christmas is the best fucking Christmas ever and that your New Year ain't too shabby either. All I ask is that you find yourself a mistletoe to share with someone or just do something really nice and unexpected for someone for whom you might otherwise not. One or the other, it's your choice. ILUGUIZE, be good and be safe.
topic: Site News
[reply] [30 comments]

A few small things.	November 23, 2008, 1:46PM
by: eon
Just a few small updates to the site today: 1. Image uploading. a. It is now possible to upload an image from a URL. For example, if there is a picture you have already uploaded to photobucket or some other site, you will now find a place where you can enter the address and it will be copied over to your gallery on DarkStarlings. This saves you the step of having to download and then re-upload images that you find on the web. b. Previously, there was a 2 MB limit on the file size of the images that you could upload. In consideration of growing file sizes (and lazy people) I have upped the limitation to 5 MB. Note, this will have no effect on the final image which appears in your gallery. This simply makes it easier for you to upload images if you have large file sizes. (Normally, you'd need to resize or compress a large image before uploading, now you may be able to upload it directly.) 2. Friends. a. You will now receive a notice in your comments when someone has added you to their friends list. In the notice, if you have not already added that person to your own list, you will have links to easily add them back or (if they're really gross and ugly) to remove yourself from their list. b. When browsing your "friends of" list (the list showing people who have added you to their friends list), you will now have a convenient link to add people back if you haven't already done so. This will make it easy to quickly scan for people who have added you, who you haven't added back and allow you to easily add them or remove yourself from their list. As always, watch out for any creepy-crawlies and enjoy...
topic: Site News
[reply] [9 comments]

Forum and Group Updates	August 2, 2008, 7:51PM
by: eon
I've made a series of small updates and refinements to the forum / group platform. While small, some of these changes will make things a lot easier or more interesting to use. Updates: 1. Video posts, BBCodes and you: It is now possible to display YouTube, Google and MySpace videos directly inside of forum and group posts. Previously, if you tried to do this, the embed code would be stripped out (for security reasons) and the video would not appear. Well, if you use an embed code it will still be stripped out, but I've introduced new BBCodes which will allow you to do this safely (and more quickly and easily). It's as simple as taking the address of the video page and putting it inside of the correct BBCode tag. As an example, you could post a YouTube video with a code like this: [tube]Address to YouTube video page goes here[/tube] In addition, when you post videos this way, a 5-star rating icon will appear, allowing viewers to rate the video. These ratings will be unique to DS (separate from the video site where the video is hosted). To view the guide to the new BBCodes, click the New Post link and then click the link for BBCodes. Or just edit any post and scroll down a bit. There are other newly added BBCodes which will make it easier to add links, images and other things to your posts. 2. Search functions. Searching in forums and groups has been updated to include two new fields. One will limit the age of posts you search (so you can narrow down your results if you only want more recent posts). The other will let you display search results as either 'Topics' or 'Messages'. Previous search results have all been in 'Topic' format. That is, when you search for a certain keyword, you just get a list of topics containing posts which match, and you need to go hunting through them to find whatever you're looking for. Now, if you set results to 'Messages' you'll get to see a preview of each individual post which contains the keyword you searched, as well as a link directly to that post. In most cases, this makes it much easier to find what you're looking for. Try it! 3. Andromeda signatures in forum and group posts. The optional 10 rotating signatures that are available to Andromeda members will now appear in forum and group posts. This is significant because images are allowed in these signatures (they are not allowed in regular signatures). Previously, my concern here was that I didn't want the forums cluttered with too many large or obnoxious images that are repeatedly posted in sigs. To help keep our forums and groups from being cluttered this way, I have set a limit on the size of images which may be posted inside of these signatures. That limit is 400 pixels wide by 100 pixels high. 4. Refinements and bug fixes. I've made a number of other small refinements and bug fixes to the forums and groups. For example, signatures and "updated by" notices are now stored separately in the database from the actual messages. What this means is that when you quote posts, the sigs and "updated" notices will no longer appear in the quoted text. They will also be absent from search results. This will reduce clutter overall and make things easier to read. I fixed quite a few pesky bugs as well, many of which were long standing. So if you had any favorites, they are probably gone now. (Sorry.) This is all a part of my overall plan to modernize our forum/group platform to increase it's features and ease of use. There will be more to come in this department (eventually). For now: Enjoy...
topic: Site News
[reply] [6 comments]

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