Today we upgraded Grupthink to address a few minor issues:

• White tab in the green navigation bars was not showing up
• Couldn’t use thumbs up/down on any topics
• Some topic and answer thumbnail images appeared stretched in Internet Explorer 6
• Ballot now loads faster
• Links inside topic and answer descriptions showed up incorrectly when muiltiple URL’s were contained

- Steven

In a few minutes we’ll begin upgrading Grupthink.com to version 2.3.0! This is mainly a stability release, but there are a couple gems to be found. Here are some of the notable improvements:

• Significant performance boosts to front page, grupies page, and topic lists
• Grupie point award: Members with over 1,000 points will not be subjected to ads
• You can now delete comments on your own profile page
• New tools to manage style of site on the back-end
• Put member class in Grupie Badge tooltips
• Fixed: Couldn’t deny friend requests
• Timeline wasn’t working for some topics
• Addresses problem where a special character could disable the ballot
• "View anyway" content overlapping lower answer
• Grups are sorted alphabetically again
• Profile: "Hide swear words"was not working
• Grupie Points: Nothing was earned after successful invite
• Dropdown Boxes Show Through Full-Screen Images on Topic Pages for IE6
• Topics: Next topic filter doesn’t work correctly for Sponsored Topics
• Notification emails contain opt-out instructions again
• Registration: Incorrect grupie points given for registration.
• "Next Topic" Filter: Don’t include grup topics that can’t be viewed
• Deleting a Grup topic taking users to /top/
• Grups: Can’t add a grup topic after joining
• Grup admins couldn’t edit answers
• Answers: Can view inactive answers
• Sign In: Wouldn’t show username/password error when using dropdown
• Registration: Required fields wouldn’t show the first time the page is loaded
• Answers: "Finish and view the answer" fixed
• Topic List: Busiest topics presenting inflated numbers
• Added maintenance mode functionality
• Profile: Adding a comment on profile gave JS error
• Grups: Confusing flow for leaving private grup
• RSS: Error trying to view RSS when no answers exist
• RSS “live bookmark” icons available again for topics and main topic list.
• RSS: Private Grup Topics Can now be seen if you are logged in
• Thumbnails saved as PNG’s to support alpha transparency on different backgrounds
• Many images recreated as PNG to support varied background colors
• Many fixes, and minor enhancements too numerous to mention
• Cake and refreshments for all

I think that’s about it. Please help us find bugs by using the “Report a Bug Link” on the bottom of every page. Thanks!

Today at 3pm Mountain (5pm Eastern, 9pm GMT) we are releasing version 2.3.0, is primarily a stability release. We’ve also made some more improvements to performance and introduced a couple new features. Because we are making some modifications to the database, the upgrade may cause around 20 minutes of downtime.

I’ll be posting release notes shortly!

If you are in Missoula, come join us tonight, May 13 at 5:00 p.m., at the Missoula Art Museum. Jonathan Weber of NewWest is hosting The Secrets of Social Networking, a discussion including myself, Hank Green of Eco Geek and Nerdfighters.com, and Courtney Lowery of NewWest.

If you’re reading this story, you’re probably Internet-savvy enough to know that the hottest thing online is “social networking.” Facebook and MySpace are the kingpins of this phenomenon, but social networking happens in all kinds of ways and in all kinds of places on the Web. And if you think social networking is mostly about flirting and dating, well, you’d be surprised.

Here in Missoula, Hank Green of EcoGeek, Steven Sundheim of Modwest and Grupthink, and our very own Courtney Lowery have been at the forefront of the social networking phenomenon. In addition to the highly successful EcoGeek blog, Hank has created a hugely popular social network called Nerdfighters. Steven and his compatriots at the Web hosting company Modwest have built a unique social Web site called Grupthink. Courtney, for her part, is in charge of all things community here at NewWest.Net and has dipped her toes in almost everything new on the Web.

Please join Hank, Steven and Courtney for a discussion and, yes, networking reception on what online social networking can mean for you, your business, and your social circle. It happens May 13 at 5:00 p.m. at the Missoula Art Museum. Please call 406-829-1725 for more information, or email info@newwest.net We look forward to seeing you there.

http://www.newwest.net/city/article/the_secrets_of_social_networking/C8/L8/

See you there!

– Steven

Tomorrow at 4pm Mountain (6pm E) we’ll be updating the community to address a couple bugs related to answer point calculations. The server will be down while we repair existing ballots. We believe the downtime will be less than one hour, but we will update you when we have a better estimate.

*UPDATE*
The upgrade went smoothly and the site was only down for 30 minutes as we fixed broken ballots. Thanks for your patience.

Today we updated Grupthink.com to address a couple minor issues:

• Some topics could not be edited
• Some comments were incorrectly being hidden
• Link to topic in syndication method #1 wouldn’t work)
• Adding an answer incorrectly caused you to be auto-subscribed to a topic notifications
• A few security-related issues and administration bugs

We discovered a really “stupid” bug (and, by stupid, I mean kinda clever). Members couldn’t post topics!

I know. You’re thinking we didn’t test at all. The funny thing is, we’re doing more comprehensive testing than ever before. This bug juked it’s way through our sentry guns and snipers by turning our new creation against us. You see, while testing, we happened to be logged in as Admins (a new concept in Grupthink), and this bug happened to be invisible to Admins. We could post topics and do everything else just fine.

Anyways, the bug is fixed now! Thanks to everyone who reported this for us, and I’m sorry if this caused you grief over the weekend.

We’ve addressed a few nagging bugs. Here’s a breakdown:

• Notification digests (daily and weekly) not working
• Users getting logged out randomly
• Javascript Functions Without “return false;” Causing Links to Go to Top of Page
• Syndication: Method 2 does not work
• Topic RSS feed does not render because of a XML Parsing Error
• Use New Comment Links in Link Tags
• Old Javascript being cached and used after new releases, causing brokenness
• CSS not named correctly
• Lost /poll/### URI backwards compatibility.
• Topics: Comment count doesn’t match actual comment number
• Comments are Showing Incorrect Days Ago
• Child comments can’t be edited
• New answers aren’t marked as “New!”
• Grupie Quilt Broken
• Admins can’t edit answers in their own Grups anymore
• Child comments inherit feedback badge of parents
• Comment summaries in /top having display oddness
• /mystuff without trailing slash yeilds 403; Triggered by “Change Password”
• bug report form does not include Nickname in report
• Grup Admins Can’t Edit Grup Topics That Aren’t Theirs
• Add Topic: Clicking ‘Finish and View Answer’ gives JS error in IE7
• Topic Answers: Spellcheck functionality adding extra words
• Grups: New grup doesn’t show after accepting invitation
• Private Grup Topics: Ask to join link doesn’t work.
• Can’t Leave a Grup
• “Your favorites topics” typo on /mystuff/
• Profile: Private Profile setting not working
• Topics: Admin badge not shown for admin users
• Topics: Admins can’t view deleted topics
• Adding an answer to a topic induces notifications for any new answer to that topic
• Topics: Link to topic in syndication method #1 doesn’t work
• Topic Invitations: PHP error when trying to invite a user
• Voting When Not Logged in and Returning Without Logging in Causes Error

If you are having an issue where topic links don’t work, just clear your browser cache. How to clear your browser cache…

Old, cached Javascript can cause broken links on the front page of Grupthink, or an error message that says “It looks like the required parameters were not provided.” In the future releases, we’ll be sure to rename this file so your browser always gets the latest version.

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve successfully upgraded Grupthink.com. In terms of the amount of code we’ve changed, this is the most significant release we’ve made since our initial launch. Yet, it is one of the least significant releases when it comes to user-facing changes. How’s that for an anticlimax!

With that said, I think you’ll be very pleased by these improvements:

• Major Performance Increases: Topics load about 5x faster, and the front page is about twice as fast as it was before. In the next few weeks we’ll be optimizing other areas.
• You can now browse all non-hidden grups at http://grupthink.com/grups/
• Code re-factoring that helps performance and code management. These changes will allow us to improve Grupthink faster. We also have another project in the works that depends on these improvements.
• Full Administrative back-end : Now, we can easily manage members and content, plus tweak many of the algortithms that keep Grupthink interesting.
• Minor UI enhancements & bug fixes

Thanks to the work that has been put into Grupthink.com over the past 5 months, we can expect many more frequent updates to come.

Please help us by reporting bugs. There a handy “Report a bug” link at the bottom of every page on Grupthink.