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The forum is now updated. This was more of a cosmetic/functionality update, so it didn't add anything as far as new forum games or items for sale (those will added every other week, alternating, after finals are over for me at the end of the month).
We have new forum icons, which is Chat from Tales of Eternia. The "spinner" icon is now Kratos from Tales of Symphonia. Some of the forums (such as the User Blogs section), were moved to the forefront (since it's no longer tied to a mySymphonic account). The Bug Reports forum was absorbed into the Feedback and Support forum, since they both basically held the same purpose. Descriptions of each "category" were also added, as a helpful guide.
Also, the banner was updated to use Judgey's creation, and the Quicklinks bar has been updated with the new links.
As for the Video BBCode links when posting a new thread/reply, those are planned to be added with the first update, which will likely be items (the next week afterward will be forum games, and so on).
Since this is the week before finals, don't expect any big updates (save the minor "tag" revisions) till after the end of the month. ; )
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Due to all of the work that needed to be done on the main website during the "tagging" revisions, the forum updates were placed on the "backburner", so to speak. But due to Gamespy looking into the mySymphonic issue, I have had the time to update the areas outside of the main website. About a week ago, the Oekaki was properly reskinned, and now the Forum has been overhauled with tons of bugfixes, CSS touch-ups, the "proper" relaunch of the Inventory Shop, and some new games at the Arcade.
The Site Discussion section has been moved to the top of the forum, above the Tales Discussion section. Some other sections were renamed or had their descriptions altered to make them more clearer (such as the "Gaming" section now being Gaming & Entertainment, as an example).
The Inventory Shop now has some actual items (previously, there was just the Eternal Sword). There is also two categories of "non-Items". One has various "games" you can play, such as getting a random amount of money, or trying to guess a two-digit number (if you lose, 10 Gald is added to the "pot"). The other is a new feature that allows you to "invest" in the forum. After picking one of the options (new registrations, threads, or posts), you will get Gald for each new registration, thread, or post in the next 14 days. So you're helping to grow the forum, and get something extra in the process. ^ . ^
We also have new forum icons, which is Yggdrasil from Tales of Symphonia. Three new Games are available, as well.
I will be adding their link tomorrow, but please say hello to our new affiliate, Final Fantasy XIII(.net). I've personally seen the mockup for their new layout, and it looks very nice. They are planning to open in the next few weeks.
(As I said before, our next site update will be making sure our list of LiveJournal icons is current.)
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MyBB just released v1.2.11 of their forum software, which had some critical security fixes included. Our forum was upgraded to this versions earlier this morning.
This shouldn't cause any issues on the forum, but please notify us if you encounter any.
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A few weeks ago, we installed a plugin for male/female-specific forums. It seems that the plugin caused an error when new users tried to register. We just removed the plugin in question, so the issue should be resolved.
Kudos goes to Tuxedo Pengu1n from Tales Galaxy for notifying us of this issue. We apologize to anyone who tried to register an account while this issue was present.
(BTW, the "attachment" bug should also be fixed now. So when we have images/etc. attached to a news post, we should be able to include the link for visitors reading the news on the index of the website.)
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Like I said earlier, here's the second forum update post.
Many of the unneeded plugins were removed this morning, which inadvertently caused some errors to pop up. Hopefully, they should all be resolved now. The "Gald" system was updated, which fixed a few bugs and cleaned up some of the code. Our Inventory Shop was updated to the 1.1.0 Final version, which also fixed some bugs.
You may have noticed the items listed next to your HP/TP/EXP stats. Right now, they all say "Weapon". You will be able to buy items from the shop, as if you were buying them in the game. In the future, we will even have special items such as Swordians, Capacity Cores, etc., so be sure to check back every so often to see if any new items were released.
Three new Games were added to our Game Section, and Kratos was added as the new "post icon" sprite. Colette is the new "spinner".
Last, but not least, an old favorite from the SMF forum has returned --- gender-specific forums. One for the men and another for the women have been added. It can be found at the bottom of the list of forums. The plugin that allows this also has age-specific options, so we might have forums for certain age-ranges in the future.
(BTW, the BBCode button issue should be resolved in a few days, once I get the files from Gamespy's backups.)
Editor's Note: The old Inventory Shop was removed since this news post.
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(If you're wondering why it's Part I, it's due to more updates being posted during the month, related to the forum.)
The forum was upgraded to MyBB 1.2.10, which was a collection of bug fixes. This caused some initial issue with our custom skin at first, but those issues should have been resolved in the first few minutes after the upgrade. This upgraded only incurred a few minutes of downtime, at the most, to run the upgrade script. As always, please contact us if you notice any issues.
We also added a new section, entitled Video Gallery. This is a Tales-centered place to find all of the Tales videos you want to view, straight from YouTube. This section was just launched after some beta testing, so there's only a few videos up there at the moment. Thus, we allow any registered users to add videos. Just grab the URL of the YouTube video, the title, and select the proper category. Then we will approve it, and it will be listed for everyone else to see it. We will be checking it every day or so, so the longest it should take to be approved is less than a day.
"Part II" will include updating some of the plugins we use, showing off what items you own from the Inventory Shop, and removing some unneeded plugins (which should help the forum run faster).
BTW, Quick Reply was re-enabled, so feel free to use it again. Also, the YouTube/Google Video/etc. BBCode buttons are missing due to this upgrade. I won't have the time to fix this until sometime tonight/tomorrow, so I apologize in advance for this inconvenience.
Editor's Note: The Video Gallery & the old Inventory Shop were removed since this news post.
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Some new additions, plus some new post/spinner icons were added today.
The HP/TP/EXP plugin has been reinstalled, since the issue we had with it before is now fixed. It can be found underneath your signature. The Post Date + Time indicator for each post has been moved up next to the name of the post you make, so it should now be easier to see at a glance when someone made a post.
We also have an Inventory Shop, which in time will have items available for all of the Tales games. Right now, there's only about seven or eight available, but more will be added in due time, on the same schedule as adding new forum games. On that note, five new forum games were added this morning.
Suzu is our new post icon, and Lloyd is the new icon for the "Loading" spinner.
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This is a smaller update compared to last month, but there's still some neat changes. ^ . ^
All of our currently installed have been upgraded to the latest versions, as always. Five new forum games have been added --- due to getting the correct permissions set for uploading the games, it will only take me a minute or so to upload new ones, so expect to actually see new ones more frequently from now on (like every week or two weeks). Lastly, the news articles from October have been moved to their respective forums.
The Gald system has been tweaked properly, and everyone's values have been readjusted. A topic explaining how much Gald is given for each action will be posted shortly.
If you want to see a new feature, click on a date in the Calendar. You will see a list the threads posted on that day.
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In all of the latest website updates (mainly to sections like mySymphonic), the forum hasn't been updated that much. This weekend, however, a lot of CSS/presentation fixes and new features were added.
Some minor graphical glitches were fixed, namely some buttons not having the gray box around them. Some other minor "goofs" were also fixed, although there wasn't anything major that had to be fixed. Just some "tweaks' to make it look better. ^ . ^
The MYPS plugin that was installed earlier, but not configured properly, has been fully installed. Now, you can see your "Gald" total next above your post, and you can also donate money directly from there, or in your Profile, if you prefer. The Post Count for each member has also returned, right above where your Gald total is. The new Achievements for mySH for submissions has also been added, and the people with Achievements should be up to date on the Forum again.
Some of you will probably be ecstatic that the Games section is back online, after being down for a few weeks due to issues with updating the script. Due to those issues, the only game data we could save was for Pac-Man, which happens to be the default game installed with the script (it was an issue where the database still had the info, but the game weren't there anymore). I have added four other games to make up for this. Each month, I hope to add around 10-20 new games, depending on what's going on. To stop people from joining just to play games, you must have at least 5 Gald to play. If you earn a high score, you will earn 10 points.
New fields have been added to everyone's profile. You can now add your mySymphonic username, and Gender has been re-added as a mandatory field (you can pick Undisclosed if you do not wish to reveal your gender). Groups for mySymphonic, the Oekaki, and the Blog Program have also been added, under Group Memberships in your UserCP.
This last change is important for all members to read --- we are implementing a new forum warning policy. If you break one of the rules, you will get one point. After five points, you will get a one-day ban. One more warning after that equals a one-week ban, then a one-month ban, then a permanent ban. For each week you do not incur a warning, your level will go down by one. This is to replace the old percentage system we used in the past.
Gamespy will be copying over the data to the new server on Monday, if everything goes well, so note that any posts after Monday (I will make a note of it) will be "gone" once the move is complete. This applies to anything else on the site as well.
EDIT: I forgot to note a few other things earlier. First, the Archived News was moved around. Instead of having them archived by month, they have been archived by categories. All news for the games that have their own forums have been moved to the specific game, and all of the others have been moved to the Other Titles in the Tales Series section.
The games with their own forum also have a link that redirects to that game's content. In the case of a game that was on multiple platforms, it will have multiple redirect links.
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If you check the forum last night / this morning, you would have noticed it went offline. This was due to an error with altering some fields in the database, which caused every forum to get messed up, rendering the forum unusable. Thankfully, Gamespy had a recent backup of the database, so it was uploaded and recovered later this afternoon.
As for the updates, Klarth/Claus is our new mascot for the Status icons, and Regal is the new mascot for the "Loading..." spinner when using the Quick Edit feature on the forum. A new "point" system was also installed. Every time you post a topic, post a reply, etc., you will get Gald. In the future, we will have a "shop" of sorts, where you can buy items. This system also allows you to donate Gald if you wish. It was just installed, so there's still some tweaking left to do on it (should be all ready in a few days).
Before the crash, I was moving the topics in the Archives to individual forums like Forum, Gallery, Tales of Symphonia, etc. This will allow us to take advantage of the "tagging" system --- for instance, in the Tales of Symphonia section, there will be a page of just Symphonia-related updates. This will mean that the News Archives will be messed up for a few days while we move everything over to the new system. The new folder scheme was what accidentally messed up the database, btw.
Just as an FYI, all of the current month's posts will stay in Current Site News till the next month --- then they will be properly categorized.
(For those of you who used the Games section of the forum --- I had to disable it due to an error in the newest version, which crashed the forum. I am trying to fix the error and bring it back online soon.)
Editor's Note: The News Archives section was removed since this news post.
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If you checked out the forum this morning, you would have noticed some changes in its skin. Today, the final changes were finally made to the forum, which means it's finally finished (unless a small bug crops up due to a new plugin/feature/etc.).
The biggest change will be the new look of the posts and threads. It has a semi-vB like touch, but it was developed to arrange the data more efficently and bring more attention to the post itself, since this way reduces the unused space the old scheme used. We also made some minor changes to other parts of the skin, but they weren't anything normal visitors would pick up on (basically just some CSS issues I had to iron out).
I sent a newsletter to all of our regular Members, so hopefully it will reach you all in a few hours. If you didn't get anything after a few days, please contact us so we can see if there is an issue with the Newsletter plugin.
(On a side note, the Video section is progressing very nicely. I am hoping to have the IGN section launch in a few days.)
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The Forum's skin has been revamped to match the new layout on the main website. This also included an upgrade on the forum's software, which fixed some bugs, as well as a security vulnerability. The skin should also load a tad bit faster now, as well.
If you have been checking the Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology section of our forum, or the thread on the Official Tales Forum, you'll notice that I have been gathering screenshots from the game. This will be used to create the content on Symphonic Heaven. Since they are taken directly from the game, that means we will have sprites of the monsters, as well as the elemental icons, among other things.
We hope to start this after the few minor site fixes are made in the next few days (i.e., adding the new Tales games, adding the Wii console icon, and getting proper banners up for the website).
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June has finally come, and that means new updates on the forum. I've decided to change the Status Icons once a month (along with the Spinner). This month, by accident, happens to feature Sheena for both of them (just picked a sprite sheet randomly xd).
If you use Firefox2, look at the Search bar. Notice that the little arrow is lit up? You can now add our forum as a search option, so you can search for topics from anywhere on the net.
As for new forum games --- I am planning to add them weekly. Some weeks might have one, or might have two...all depends on how many I pick for that week.
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When you visit the forum next, you might notice a few changes.
New icons were added for the BBCode, which were taken from the Tango Desktop project, as well as adding back in the User BBCode that was missing for a while. Additionally, remember how BBCode like Acronym were hard to use because you had to add in the = part? Well, now, when you click the link, it will have a "insertexthere" line. Just replace that with either the full term (Acronym) or the user's name (User). The BBCode section of the help menu will be updated shortly with all of the new BBCodes, btw.
On the skin front, the two v4 skins we used before have been consolidated into one skin, due to the change from using Verdana to Tahoma. Things should look alright, but please contact us if you notice a glaring text bug due to this change.
I am hoping to have v2 and v3's "layouts" available for use again on the main website and the forum tomorrows, barring nothing comes up.
EDIT (5/16): The forum has been upgraded to v1.2.7 (security / bug fix). From my testing, there is no errors that occurred due to the upgrade.
EDIT (5/21): The Forum now has v2-v4's layouts available for use, and the Gallery has v3-v4's layouts available for use (v2 will come later, due to a template change needed in how Coppermine handles right-left layouts). The font size has also been changed to 12px instead of 13px, so the text should appear slightly smaller than you were used to before. As for the main website, only a few "changes" are needed to be made before those layouts go live again.
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Symphonic Heaven's forum finally reached 1,000 posts today. This is quite nice, considering the mishaps the forum has had in the past (like losing the posts from the SMF forum).
How long will it take us to reach 2,000? Hopefully not a long time.
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Today, we have a bunch of small updates. First off, this week includes all of the forum's updates, which includes new Status icons (Lilith from Tales of Destiny), a new "spinner" for February (Colette from Tales of Symphonia), and a new Game (Collapse!). As an FYI, next week will only be a new arcade game.
The transition from the current CMS to the new CMS is going along smoothly. Most of the backend issues have been worked out, so hopefully it won't be too long before site updates start becoming more frequent.
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You might notice that most of the news articles are gone today. XD
I moved all of December 2006's news articles to a sub forum. And in February, all of these news articles will be moved to one for January 2007, and so on. Also, our new forum game for the week is the arcade classic Donkey Kong, so go to the Games section and try to get the high score!
(The new General/Forum/etc. icon's borders are off in retrospect to the layout, which I didn't notice till I uploaded them. I will fix that later on in the day.)
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The staff at Symphonic Heaven has been hard at work working on the forum, upgrading the skin (more on that later), adding some new features (such as the Games section), as well as general fixes.
At first glance, the forum skin shouldn't look all that different, at least font-wise. But if you go to the bottom and click the Quick Links drop-down menu, you will see a new option called "v4 - Segoe UI". As some of you know, this is the font Windows Vista uses, and IMO, makes the forum easier to see, due to the clearer font. If you do not have the font installed, we have it available via our Downloads section, for free. The Verdana skin is the same one we always have had, and is still the default, btw.
The skin has become more Tales-ish, with Tales of Phantasia icons along the top, and in other places. These are from the sprites I ripped earlier (which will be going into the section on the site). As for the banner, it is still the same one, due to that being our only banner (plus it is the "advertising" one used in signatures if people wish to use it).
New BBCode options have also been added. The User, Acronym, YouTube, and Google Video buttons have been added. One thing though --- on the User tag, you need to put the name like =*namehere*, ala how a link is done. As of right now, I cannot get it to work like that, but I will try to find a way to do it. The same logic follows for the Acronym tag, which needs the full term name in the =*fulltermhere* area. The video codes are unaffected by this (remember to only pull the number, not the v=/docid=).
Now, to the new stuff. You should notice the following...
- New New/No New/Closed (aka Status) Icons for the Forums. Changes bi-weekly.
- The Games section. New game added each week.
- An image of Lloyd replacing the "spinner" when you do a Quick Edit. Changes every month.
The times they are changed are listed above. These will always take place on a Friday, unless something occurs, in which case it will be Thursday (or the nearest day before / after in case that is taken up as well). So February 3rd will be when the Status icons are changed, and will also mark the third forum game added (this week's game is 1Balloon). The only deviation to this is the Spinner, which is always on the 1st of every month. Don't worry if you didn't follow all of that perfectly --- new additions will be announced when they are added.
I will be away this weekend, so please forward any immediate issues to DBAM or KeiKusanagi. I will also be working on the site for the rest of the month (in between doing college assignments), so I may periodically be away from the forum at times during this month.
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Two new BBCode's have been added to the forum today, one for YouTube and one for Google Video. Use [ youtube ](text after v=)[ /youtube ] and [ google ](text after docid=)[ google ] --- proper buttons for each will be added in a few days (remove the spaces from the tags).
Also, expect news about the forum "contest" later this week.
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Until late last night, you may have been given a message that said new registrations were disabled on the forum. This was due to a setting I had enabled during testing, and I didn't realize it was on till KeiKusanagi and Midian (long-time forum members) informed me.
All new registrations should be accepted. We at Symphonic Heaven apologize for the inconvenience.
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(I've been playing Elite Agents recently. Those who played it should find some humor in this title.)
Symphonic Heaven has a new forum, running on the MyBB forum software. This will replace the SMF forum --- if you want something from the old forum, you need to save it by December 8th, 2006. The /smf directory will be deleted by that time.
In the next few hours, the forum link will be changed to the new directory. Unfortunately, the Gallery at this time cannot be bridged with the Forum, so you will have to create an account there if you wish to have a Personal Gallery.
I will be sending out e-mails to all SMF members to inform them of this new change, since it was impossible to transfer the members and posts into this new forum.
We will be having a contest for our members to find the new changes in this forum, so be sure to keep an eye out for that. There will be a nice little surprise for the winner and the two runner-ups.
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