Scheduled maintenance

Osian

Osian

Technical Lead
Staff member
Area Moderator
The mine database, edit request system, photo gallery, document library, and Pit & Putt will be temporarily unavailable from 18:00 tomorrow, Friday 28th. This is expected to last no longer than half an hour, after which all systems will become available again.

This is to perform various system upgrades, including performance optimisations and ui improvements.

Cheers,
Osian
 
Everything's back online. I'll soon have a follow up post outlining the new improvements.

As always, do let us know if you spot any issues.
 
The majority of this update was focused on internal system/infrastructure upgrades, to:
  • improve the robustness of our ever-growing codebase, so that new features are easier to develop and bugs are quicker to fix
  • lay some crucial foundations for some exciting upcoming features.
However, we did also use this opportunity to put the new technology to good use in existing portions of the site.

Here's a list of some of the changes introduced in the update:

General:
  • Optimised browser scripts to both load and run faster
Photo viewing:
  • In almost all places where images can be found on the database portion of the site, e.g MineDetails, Gallery, Pit & Putt, etc., images will reserve the necessary space before they've loaded in. This avoids unexpected size/layout shifts during/after loading, and is especially noticeable on slower networks, and looks particularly satisfying on the Gallery page.
  • The full-screen lightbox that appears whenever you click on images in the database now supports smooth panning and zooming. This pan/zoom section can be fullscreened independently of the lightbox to let you make the most of your screen if you want to.
  • The lightbox now interacts more consistently with the back/forward buttons in the browser. This is especially useful on mobile devices, where you can now use your device's native back function to exit the lightbox to just the page itself.
  • The lightbox no longer shows the image at the wrong size for a splitsecond when going backwards/forwards
  • The Featured Images carousel found on some mine entries now has smooth scrolling animation when you click the buttons on either side
  • The left-right buttons on the carousel are now disabled if there aren't enough images to allow scrolling
  • The searchbar in the top-left of the images in the Gallery page now automatically performs the searches as you type
Flickr Submission Page:
  • This page has had a minor redesign to improve ease-of-use, especially when it comes to assigning your photos to mines in our database. The general usage of the page is similar to how it originally was, so shouldn't be particularly unfamiliar to those of you who have already used it in the past. Overall, there's too much to list, but I'll list some highlights
  • The photo preview when you're assigning titles, descriptions, mines etc to images now supports panning/zooming, just like in the lightbox on other pages
  • Some additional warning messages have been added to prevent unintentional loss of progress
Mine Addition/Edit Request Pages:
  • Both of these pages have also been revised for ease-of-use, with a more useful selection of fields for you to input mine information
  • After making an addition/edit request, you will once again be updated via forum notifications when an Area Moderator resolves the request, or otherwise contacts you for further information.
Pit & Putt:
  • The image shown uses the same pan/zoom technology as the lightbox, so that it's now way easier for you to spot small clues in the distance
  • The individual sections can be resized by clicking and dragging on the dividers
  • The mobile layout of the page is now easier to navigate, by:
    • Adding extra padding on the sides of the page to let you scroll the page easier instead of accidentally panning the map, image, or the mine entry that appears after you win
    • Making the sections taller overall
  • The various ways to recentre the map (e.g the home button, or clicking the rows in the guess-tracking table) will now do so much smooth than before
Miscellaneous:
  • The mine dropdown selector used in a couple of places has had an overhaul
    • It now supports infinite scrolling, instead of just showing the first hundred results (without affecting performance!)
    • It is now much easier to deselect a mine
    • It now loads the aliases of mines in the list (e.g Parc Mine is also known as Gwydyr Parc Consols)
    • It now shows a thumbnail for the mine on the right
  • A pop-up that can appear in the top-right of the page in certain circumstances (e.g winning a game of Pit & Putt) now has a progress indicator counting down to when it will disappear
  • In various situations where text has to be loaded from the server, a placeholder will now be displayed
 
The above is essentially a consolidation release. That means we can now get on with new features.

In the pipeline:
  • User photo upload (as well as Flickr linking)
  • User document upload
  • Rationalisation of mine entries using 'Features' for geographically distinct features belonging to a specific mine

Feel free to suggest any useful addition you would like to the site or any enhancements to existing features - and if you come across any bugs or issues, please report them using https://buddlepit.co.uk/community/index.php?threads/mine-database-mine-docs-photo-issues.517/
 
I cannot seem to link all photos across from a album , only
Single photo url is working any ideas ?
 
Have emailed you the images Robin , have posted here as it’s been since a update , I usually click copy url


Then paste that in there and that next box turns blue .
 
The blue button for next is not turning blue when I insert the URL for all photos out a album
 
If you send me the link in a PM, I can have a look at the issue
 
That bug's now been fixed.

As a reminder, the Flickr submission utility currently supports the following link formats (Where the dashes are either letters or numbers):
  • links to an individual photo (starting with flickr.com/photos/------@N--/--------)
  • links to an album (starting with flickr.com/photos/---------@N--/albums/---------)
  • links to a gallery (starting with flickr.com/photos/---------@N--/galleries/----------)
  • shortened links to individual photos (flic.kr/p/--------)
  • album share links (flickr.com/gp/--------@N--/-----------)
Do let us know if we've missed any other types of Flickr URLs that aren't in this list
 
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