Freegle Tech Report 2013-06-30

Freegle Tech Report June 2013
Messages 12253-12474
Members 98

Everyone is welcome here! We are always in need of people willing to check fixes and new stuff across a whole range of devices and toolbars. We need to ensure that all of our members are able to use all the new features.

Servers.

We had a fair bit of publicity this month and the servers coped well, with some forward planning by Edward.
Unfortunately we had a bad crash, later on in the month, causing a colossal amount of work for Edward, who had to work at his paid job as welll. If you come across any glitches, (links not working that were, repeated error messages or something taking you to the website down page), please mail support @ Ilovefreegle.org with as much information as possible.
We do need more IT staff and More servers, but enough money for one or the other would be nice.

ILoveFreegle Website

Something which we, like many organisations, are not good at is deciding to stop doing things. If something is not been used much.
The future of the News feed page is under discussion. It uses Word Press which is reported to have stopped working properly, and needs sorting out if it is to continue. If you have strong opinions either way please join us and contribute.

Direct.

Mark as TAKEN/RECEIVED
This has been changed and moved to use an API call under the covers , this is to enable those writing mobile clients to be able use it. Please let support @ ilovefreegle.org know if you see anything odd, e.g. TAKEN messages not being sent or sent wrongly, especially if your group doesn't use the standard OFFER/WANTED keywords.
Longer term aim it to rework FD, to:
Allow us to split it across more servers.
Finish off the work to have an FD API which has all the function we need.
We are also thinking of changing the look and feel of FD to make it a bit nicer.
An example of a revised login page is here: http://directv2.ilovefreegle.org/
It doesn't work, but it's just to see if people say "ooh yes" or "don't bother". The reaction on Tech is favorable. If you have any comments please join us to give them?

Events.

If you want to list any events your members have put on Direct on you Cafe page, put your group id in this link so you can copy the list to paste.
https://direct.ilovefreegle.org/main.php?&action=showevents&groupid= (Your group id if you don’t know it is obtainable by hovering on your group name at www.ilovefreegle.org/groups.
Stop press, A live feed of events is now available for Moderators to pass on to members who may have websites.
http://direct.ilovefreegle.org/plugins/plugins.php#eventsplugin There was already a feed available for normal posts which you can also find on this page.

Twitter.

A group has been having duplicate posts for quite some time. It has finally been resolved when the reason was found and the coding was changed, so that it now works correctly on groups using Direct and Twitter without the Facebook page.
Lorraine who is proving a wizard at rhyming tweets, provided another batch for the app to use.

Yahoo

The reissue of dormant Yahoo ID’s was raised. Yahoo assured us any of the information or subscriptions on them will be removed. Only time will tell, but it may be a good idea to clear out your bouncing memberships.

Problems which occurred and were fixed.

Some members reported difficulties in selecting offer or wanted on the Direct message maker.
Community event notifications now inform the moderator if you have already been approved.
FD signin issues.
A Google 414 error was coming up on a mobile.
Hopefully it has been fixed, though resulted in some members having to reset their passwords. They have been mailed.
Stopping the app from requesting categorisation of Admins.
A fix for this has been tried again. At the moment it seems to have worked. If your admins have Admin on the subject line and you are still getting them mail support @ ilovefreegle.org.
A member was getting no mail via Direct from a particular group.

Q&A

Q. We've had a CCed 'We've turned mail off for you' for a Yahoo AOL member, I thought these were for FD members.
A. No it applies to all AOL members who are marking our mail as spam . It took some time and effort to deal with our members complaints because the stopped receiving emails, and more to get them to stop blocking all Freegle mail, to all AOL users. We are hoping this will prevent that happening again.
Q I've got a member who has set up their blackberry incorrectly so whenever anyone posts to the group they get a delivery error message x 3, Can I turn her mail off for her.
A. No, you will have to send her email address to support @ ilovefreegle.org
Q .I have a member who has forgotten her Yahoo password. She wants to use Direct but it says her account is is already taken. She does not come up on the unsubscribe.
A. She has been removed . I could find a way to allow mods to do this themselves, as long as the user is only on the one group.
Q. A Yahoo member who joined via Direct is disappointed that members can’t search on his history anymore to check. He is an old and generous member.
A. It will join them up if it can or they use their Yahoo ID to log in. Unfortunately if they have picked up separate memberships for each there is not a lot that can be done.

Jean
Freegle Tech
01.07.13

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