Happy New Year everyone!

This is our first build of 2009… we haven’t had one since Dec 22nd… so there are a lot of small tweaks and fixes in here, but also some pretty big changes that mark the start of some big ongoing enhancements.

We are in the process of relocating where you fill out your gamerDNA. Long time members know we have this thing called the "DNA Panel"… well… that is going away bit by bit. We started that process this build and will hopefully have it complete by the end of the month. Next week almost everything will be moved over to the new "Manage your gamerDNA" section:

http://www.gamerdna.com/dna/home/

In the coming weeks, we will be significantly revamping the "experiences" and how they work, so that will be the last thing to move from the panel.

The other big changes this week were the addition of new Player and Game directories. Go play around with them. You can discover some fun stuff!

Here is the full list of changes:

General Changes/Enhancements

• Built a new Game Directory that allows you to explore the games available on the site. Filter by Genre, Trait, Platform, or those actively being played.
• Built a new dynamic trait widget that displays on the game and member directory pages. It shows the traits being added to the system. It is not real time, but lists the newest ones rolling in, who added it, and on what game.
• Implement a new Player directory that makes it much easier to browse through the community. Filters are by game or location (string match) with sorts on # games, # characters, Fame, and #traits.
• Corrected a data issue that was preventing darkfall from being added as a game to a guild.
• Repaired a critical issue where the quidget (widget based quizzes) was not working properly for IE7 users. It should now behave and log all use and quizzes correctly.
• Fixed an error where trying to display image descriptions was throwing a non-fatal error.
• Fixed some javascript errors that would sometimes appear while taking a quiz in some cases.
• Repaired a javascript error on the homepage.
• Fixed the counter of users that appeared in the search results to use the new data model and therefore be more accurate.
• Build out a cache for member information to increase performance
• Added performance enhancements to the quiz results and index pages.
• Fixed a bug that was causing people with more than 10 achievements to not show the newer ones in the WoW signatures.
• Repaired heavy performance issues to the user tables.
• Fixed an issue where the music quiz was not displaying rolled up stats on the quiz index page.
• Corrected some grammar on the quiz results page.
• Fixed an issue that was not properly informing the user when they entered a username that was too long (greater than 25 characters)
• Added classes to Shaiya and allow for levels on characters entered.
• Added a not to game list and game pages that the release dates are estimates and subject to change.
• Added logic to parse out special characters if they are found in the WoW character names (like line breaks, tabs, etc). This was causing the WoW data jobs to fail.
• Fixed an issue that was causing characters in the site to appear incorrectly next to games when the characters where actually deleted. If a character is removed, it will no longer try to display in association with a game. This was due to an out of date system that was tracking screen name separate from character name.
• Corrected a typo in the RTS quiz reported by andyg8180.

Group Hosting Changes/Enhancements

• Changed the default for a new guild to be one announcement to clear up confusion with announcements not appearing.
• Fixed the guild signatures to properly handle encoding of html entities.
• Repaired some issues with the guild page editors not properly knowing when the editor was hidden or showing.
• Corrected a small typo on the guild signature config page.
• If there is no newest member or applicant it will now say "none" instead of being blank.
• New guild theme: Really Big Guns! – Based on TF2 and Battlefield Heroes, this theme will also work for a variety of FPS, war, or sci-fi oriented games. It offers a selection of different characters to choose from, and several different colors of dusty sky backgrounds for the main heading. However you can also completely customize this theme by replacing all of the borders and backgrounds with your own images.
• Fixed an issue where a guild leader was receiving an error when accepting applications.
• Some errors with checking guild member rights was causing guild site display to break in IE7.
• Fixed some issues with changes to the guild page editor validation.
• Fixed an issue where the guild charter was being saved to two different places due to legacy code. they now save to the same place and will be synced no matter what page you use to edit it.
• Fixed an issue where the "Return to members tab" button in the guild invites section was not working in IE7.
• Disbanded guilds no longer show up in searches.

Member Profile Changes/Enhancements

• A new member info page has been created to upload the avatar, add your quote, and set your location.
• Built a new section for managing your gamerDNA. Currently it is a mix of both using new screens and the DNA Panel… it will transition over to full interfaces next week.
• Built out a new AKA page for the DNA section for adding your game network IDs and social network IDs.
• Built out a friends list page in the DNA section as well as a new invite and pending invite interface.
• Added the new gamerDNA card display to all of the places we display badges/signatures.
• Fixed a bug where the gamerDNA cards were showing the same number of characters, games, etc. It should not reflect the proper number of items the member has created.
• Added backgrounds for GRID and Guild wars to the custom member header options.
• Cleaned up the way the gamerDNA card is built from all the required assets.
• Corrected some inconsistencies in the way game counts were reported for members in various parts of the site.
• The badge count in the activity summary was not correct and needed a tweak.
• Fixed an issue where the activity on the member sig wasn’t giving the title of the image, if uploading/editing an image was your most recent activity.
• Cleaned up the display of game box art on the game pages so that it is more uniform in width when the images are extra wide.
• Groups in your member drop down no longer show pending groups, only ones you have accepted invites for.
• Fixed an issue where non-escaped characters in the motto were preventing the member signature image from displaying properly in some cases.
• Fixed some layering issues when giving respect for IE7 and Opera.
• Fixed an issue where a member could "like" a game more than once in their history in a row. Now we only write history entries if their judgment changes.

That’s it! Welcome to 2009 at gamerDNA. We have plans to make this a game-changing year! I hope you stick with us and help out by spreading the word.