MeetFighters News

Dear Members,

As you might have heard, the site's name is changing from AllFighters.info to MeetFighters.com. I'll try to summarize the information you need to know about the change below:

• The change will happen on the 8th of July.
• Your existing username and password will continue to work on the new site. Other than logging in, you will not have to do anything.
• The new site is essentially the same as the old one,

You can try the new site now and give feedback: go to http://www.meetfighters.com/! Be aware that the site is not 100% complete yet, e.g. some of the graphics are still being replaced.

So what's changed? Here's a non-comprehensive list of the most important changes to the site:

• The site design is new.
• The notification system is new, and hopefully, a bit easier to use.
• Viewing profile galleries and the list of new photos is improved.
• The compact user list view has been enhanced to fill the available space better.
• The Who fought whom? page has a better user interface, you can search for members to see where they are in that mess. :)
• Support for Internet Explorer 6.0 is dropped.

Summary: The site's name is changing from AllFighters.info to MeetFighters.com soon.

AllFighters.info is a fine name, and served us well for 3 and a half years. The reasons for change are:

• The .info TLD is not well-known and .com is preferred.
• There is an allfighters.com site that is unaffiliated with us.

Why MeetFighters?

I wanted a name that:

• Is available.
• Ends with .com
• Similar to the old name somehow
• At most two words
• Doesn't have the word "global" in it. :)

There were some great ideas proposed by members, most of them failing the first criteria.

• totalfighters.com was suggested, and I think it's the best name. Unfortunately there is a totalfight.com site, and the two names are too similar for comfort.
• wordwidefighters.com is also good. It's three words and a bit too long.
• worldofgrapplers.com was also a good contender, again it's three words and longish.
• Countless other brilliant names were suggested that were unfortunately unavailable.

In the end, MeetFighters.com expresses what the site is about and is familiar enough.

When?

Sometime in July 2012.

Is anything else changing?

I am working on a new site design, hoping to improve both the look and the feel of the site.

Other than that, the site will be same as before.

What will I need to do?

Nothing. Once the new site is live, the old site will simply redirect you to it.

Hi everyone,

Just when I thought I had every reason to hate Microsoft, they give me one more. Starting a few days ago, Microsoft started blocking all e-mail messages from our server. That includes activation codes for registering users, message and event notifications, etc.

The block is not aimed at our server specifically, and instead appears to be a blanket block on the entire IP address range. I would like to advise all users with hotmail, msn or live.com addresses to switch to a provider that doesn't disservice you with such idiotic and thoroughly broken spam filtering. Google's mail service has given me the least headaches so far, so I would recommend that.

So... Trial users... Who are they?

It is my new term for people who have just registered here, but they haven't uploaded a photo yet (or they have but their photos are just not good enough). They really get the short end here, don't they? No initiating messages, no sending challenges, no chat, nothing. On top of that, they get messages about photo moderation and how the photos they uploaded are just not gonna cut it here.

How did it all begin? It began two years ago, when I wrote about Providers and Consumers. It was written at a time when people who didn't bother to finish their profiles started to show up en masse, and went straight to the chat annoying regular members. They are the ones who never bother to check out someone's profile and just start asking and endless stream of pointless questions. Granted, back then the site was much more liberal (I didn't even require one to write an introduction at registration time).

After that, the site became a lot more demanding: complete your profile or no chat. Post a photo or no messaging. It made sense, but it also made the site very unfriendly toward new members. In the long run, this unfriendliness has turned away many people who would eventually post their photos and become site regulars, if only they got a better first impression.

So: I am instituting a small change in the site policy: trial users can initiate 5 messages per day. They can still reply to messages without limit. In turn, it is now possible for regular members to block these messages from trial members. Just visit your Administration page.

A related change in site policy is that members with 10 or more past opponents are no longer considered trial members.

Other changes since the last site news:

• The French localization of the site has been updated. Thanks to ladron fr!

• You can now create a bunch of "canned messages" to send (donating members only).

• The Statistics page now treats the USA and Canada as one country (previously each state and province was listed separately). It also shows now the top donating countries. I wrote a separate blog entry about the new insights, like how generous the UK guys are or how few members are from Africa.

• You can now download your private notes in a .zip file. It is also possible to sort your private notes by date.

• Rearranged profile pages to show all the "action buttons" at the top.

• The "who has seen my profile" link is back on the main menu by popular demand.

• Mobile browsers are now automatically detected and presented the compact site view. This can be overridden on the Administration page.

• Defunct fight venues are displayed differently on the list.

• Search results are displayed faster without a page reload.

• For photo moderators, the number of photos to be moderated is displayed more accurately.

• It is now possible to edit your comments for about 10 minutes after posting them.

• The site's RSS feed includes some pretty pictures.

• The site newsletter coloring problem is resolved.

• Your photo thumbnail appears at the top of the screen.

Dear AllFighters,

Yesterday I have moved the site to a new server, hopefully one that will prove faster in those busy hours than the one before. In peek hours, the site typically serves a few hundred pages per minute; and I estimate that the new server will be able to keep up with the present rate of growth for a while.

Unfortunately big changes have a tendency to cause problems. Last night, the automatic update mechanism (the one responsible for security updates) decided to update a software package that I have patched myself for this site. Unfortunately this undid the patch by overwriting it with a newer version! This has caused all kinds of hell breaking loose!

I would like to thank everyone for reporting these problems! I could fix them all very quickly, but your feedback has been useful.

So, the new server seems to be serving pages much quicker. It is the nature of things that the associated monthly costs are higher. If you are happy with the page and can spare the money, please donate! (The site's existence is not at risk if you don't so there's no pressure, I'm just looking to share the costs and motivation.)

Other changes since the news/2012-03-04 March site update:

• There is a new calendar feature available to all users.
• The Help & Support page now shows previous help requests by the same users, providing some context. Also, all supporters can now see the escalated entries.
• Added "Translate" buttons to all comment streams.
• Added an "Unread messages" and "Unreplied messages" views to the messages page.
• Fixed a bug that caused the gallery tab not to display on mobile browsers.
• Date selection on various pages has been improved (with a new date picker widget).
• Fight Venues now show map and location information.
• I can now delete superfluous Fight Venues.
• The "Search" form in the lefthand column looks nicer.
• Lots of small bugfixes and enhancements.

Looks like I've been busy there :)