Entry tags:
Weekly Post: October 19th, 2009
Hello and welcome to another weekly installment of What's New on Dreamwidth. Your host today is still ![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png)
mark, and I'm happy to have you aboard...
Our support team has some shout outs this week. Firstly, we'd like to congratulate![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yvi on hitting 300 support points. This ranks her as the most active support volunteer (as ranked by points) after our three support administrators. (And somehow she still finds the time to write new features and fix bugs for us, too!)
zarhooie, one of the aforementioned support administrators, would like to point out that this week they did a lot of work on the Known Issues box. If you run into any problems on the site, that should be your first step to figure out what's up. If anything is confusing or missing from that box, please send her a private message and she'll get it fixed!
I would also like to take this moment to remind you that, if you have a problem on the site that you aren't sure what to do, you can always submit a support request. Our team of volunteers will be happy to help you out.
We've noticed a slightly disturbing trend lately. Some people have started to, when deleting comments, marking them as spam even when they're not. We're not sure why this is, so I'd like to take a moment to remind people what exactly constitutes spam.
A spam comment is defined as unsolicted commercial advertisement, link farming, or other things like that. Someone commenting saying they don't like your latest post or being annoying isn't spam and we aren't going to punish them for being mean in your journal. Even if they commented twenty times to say it.
Additionally, if the spam comments are coming in anonymously and you have IP tracking turned off, there is very little we can do unless you turn on IP tracking. Therefore, if you allow anonymous comments and find yourself reporting spam, please make sure to turn on IP tracking. Thanks for listening!
This past week we did a code push that brought a number of new things to the site. Notably, we've integrated subscription filters with some other parts of the site. You'll start to see them showing up when you subscribe to someone or in other places that list that sort of thing.
We also added a number of new themes, of course. We're also still looking for more! If you happen to have a really neat theme on your journal, or you want to help contribute one to the site (we will give you free paid time!), please head on over to![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dreamscapes and take a look.
Another big feature we released this week is Site Search and the second edition of Journal Search. We're pretty happy with how it looks right now, we just need more usage! There are over 2.1 million posts ready to be searched. You can try it out here (all users, even free accounts):
http://www.dreamwidth.org/search
Also note that today we added the ability to specify how you sort your results, and we now respect phrases. I.e., if you want to search exactly for "ceiling cat" you can do so, just make sure to use the quotes and you will find 122 hits for that phrase. This should make searching for things a lot easier.
This week's new contributor ismeowth! Congratulations for getting your first submitted patch in -- and live! -- and thank you so much for your help. I'm happy to have you aboard!
As you've come to expect, we've done another code tour:
http://dw-dev.dreamwidth.org/26664.html
All of those fixes and features are already live, unlike most weeks, so you can immediately see anything that has changed and go try it out live on the site.
Now that search is "done" (for now!), we're taking aim at our next project. November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo!) and what better way to celebrate authors and writing than to point our focus at implementing Draft and Scheduled Post support for Dreamwidth?
If you are interested in being part of this process, Denise has a post up indw_biz soliciting feedback and telling you what our plans are so far:
http://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/3042.html
We'd love your help to make this project succeed.
Another really exciting thing I found out this week is that one of users has just recently published a book! This is great news, and I'm happy to link to Linux System Administration Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach by our very ownjuliet. Congratulations!
Also, for those of you curious, I have to date received almost three dozen postcards. Woah! Thank you so much to everybody who has sent one. I'll post a picture as soon as I get them all up. I have a lot of limericks to write, so I'll be slowly working on those... :-)
I think that's everything. As always, if you have any comments, questions, feedback, or whatever, please feel free to comment or email us. One of the best parts about running this site and being small like we are is staying close to the userbase. I love hearing from people, it really does make my day.
Enjoy your week!
mark, and I'm happy to have you aboard...1. Support Updates
Our support team has some shout outs this week. Firstly, we'd like to congratulate
yvi on hitting 300 support points. This ranks her as the most active support volunteer (as ranked by points) after our three support administrators. (And somehow she still finds the time to write new features and fix bugs for us, too!)zarhooie, one of the aforementioned support administrators, would like to point out that this week they did a lot of work on the Known Issues box. If you run into any problems on the site, that should be your first step to figure out what's up. If anything is confusing or missing from that box, please send her a private message and she'll get it fixed!I would also like to take this moment to remind you that, if you have a problem on the site that you aren't sure what to do, you can always submit a support request. Our team of volunteers will be happy to help you out.
2. Spam Fighting
We've noticed a slightly disturbing trend lately. Some people have started to, when deleting comments, marking them as spam even when they're not. We're not sure why this is, so I'd like to take a moment to remind people what exactly constitutes spam.
A spam comment is defined as unsolicted commercial advertisement, link farming, or other things like that. Someone commenting saying they don't like your latest post or being annoying isn't spam and we aren't going to punish them for being mean in your journal. Even if they commented twenty times to say it.
Additionally, if the spam comments are coming in anonymously and you have IP tracking turned off, there is very little we can do unless you turn on IP tracking. Therefore, if you allow anonymous comments and find yourself reporting spam, please make sure to turn on IP tracking. Thanks for listening!
3. New Features
This past week we did a code push that brought a number of new things to the site. Notably, we've integrated subscription filters with some other parts of the site. You'll start to see them showing up when you subscribe to someone or in other places that list that sort of thing.
We also added a number of new themes, of course. We're also still looking for more! If you happen to have a really neat theme on your journal, or you want to help contribute one to the site (we will give you free paid time!), please head on over to
dreamscapes and take a look.Another big feature we released this week is Site Search and the second edition of Journal Search. We're pretty happy with how it looks right now, we just need more usage! There are over 2.1 million posts ready to be searched. You can try it out here (all users, even free accounts):
http://www.dreamwidth.org/search
Also note that today we added the ability to specify how you sort your results, and we now respect phrases. I.e., if you want to search exactly for "ceiling cat" you can do so, just make sure to use the quotes and you will find 122 hits for that phrase. This should make searching for things a lot easier.
4. Development Updates
This week's new contributor is
meowth! Congratulations for getting your first submitted patch in -- and live! -- and thank you so much for your help. I'm happy to have you aboard!As you've come to expect, we've done another code tour:
http://dw-dev.dreamwidth.org/26664.html
All of those fixes and features are already live, unlike most weeks, so you can immediately see anything that has changed and go try it out live on the site.
Now that search is "done" (for now!), we're taking aim at our next project. November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo!) and what better way to celebrate authors and writing than to point our focus at implementing Draft and Scheduled Post support for Dreamwidth?
If you are interested in being part of this process, Denise has a post up in
dw_biz soliciting feedback and telling you what our plans are so far:http://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/3042.html
We'd love your help to make this project succeed.
5. Wrap Up
Another really exciting thing I found out this week is that one of users has just recently published a book! This is great news, and I'm happy to link to Linux System Administration Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach by our very own
juliet. Congratulations!Also, for those of you curious, I have to date received almost three dozen postcards. Woah! Thank you so much to everybody who has sent one. I'll post a picture as soon as I get them all up. I have a lot of limericks to write, so I'll be slowly working on those... :-)
I think that's everything. As always, if you have any comments, questions, feedback, or whatever, please feel free to comment or email us. One of the best parts about running this site and being small like we are is staying close to the userbase. I love hearing from people, it really does make my day.
Enjoy your week!
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