Out of Cards Changelog - 2020-01-25

We've got a weekend update with some new stuff and a bunch of bug fixes. Part of the update involves some backend stuff that is going to be used in a larger update that is incoming.

New Features

• You can now rate news articles.
  • Dev Notes: I'm not sure how well this is going to go. I feel like people are going to downvote stuff because they don't like it even if it is quality content. If we find that to be the case, we may get rid of this since it looks awkward to have articles with low ratings and it may detract viewership. We'll see!
  • Article ratings are found at the top of articles, on the byline.
• Magic Portal is now live.
  • There isn't much on it yet, but it is using some improved tech that will later be applied to HS, Runeterra, and other games.
• Forums are now game aware.
  
  • Game portals will now only display forum threads from forums that are from that game.
    • Do note that non-game forums such as off-topic and site feedback and support also display here.
    • Due to the non-game forums display, you may occasionally see a feedback thread for a game that isn't the one that you're on the portal for. There isn't really a way around this unless we made feedback forums for each individual game - not happening.
• Additional portals are live for Eternal & Mythgard.
  • Do note that these are very early in development and we are not yet committing to regular news updates.
  • We will have some additional features on these portals in the future that will make greater use of the forums and the upcoming guides feature.

Changes

• Poll data is now cached more often.
  • To reduce database queries we're now caching poll data harder. This means you may not immediately see the results of a poll.
• We now link author profiles on news posts. Previously author names were not linked in the byline.
• Runeterra card images have been reimported after being optimized.
• Added additional structured data to news articles to provide search engines with more data.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that would bump forum threads when titles were edited or threads were moved.
• Fixed an issue where logged-out visitors would receive a "you must login" notification on pages where votes were present.
• Fixed an issue where voting hovers did not correctly highlight the previous stars.
• Fixed an issue with voting stars transitions not being smooth. (Goodbye flicker!)
• Fixed an issue with adventure chapters from displaying properly.
• Added CSS for the Galakrond's Awakening and Descent of Dragons expansion tiles that was missing.
• Fixed a typo in account management on the avatar field.

Quote From KANSAS

I am actually pretty excited about being able to rate news articles. Sometimes I read a very good article and I don't really want to make a comment just saying "good job" but I still want to show that I liked. Very often I wish that I could up-vote a news article just to show that I liked it without having to make a post.

Yeah, this is pretty much why this was added.

A while back we had talked about letting people let staff know they enjoyed an article. When we first brought on a bunch of new content contributors, comments on the news articles were high and spoke of praise but that stopped shortly after. Had we of had a rating or upvote system then, we likely would have continued getting that positive feedback.

Glad you'll make use of it! Though, don't ever be afraid to leave comments like "loved this article". It can encourage others to comment and of course it gives others warm fuzzies. Definitely at least rate the stuff you love though <