We have purchased a new server in a new data center that we will be switching to in early January.

Our new server provider will be SoftLayer, which is a great company focused on high-end dedicated hosting. We are making this switch as SoftLayer can provide us with better upgrade options, access to a faster network and more control and information about our servers.

As part of the switch, our primary webserver is being upgraded to an 8 cpu-core, 16gb ram monster, which is a substantial upgrade from what we are currently running on. We will also be gaining Gigabit network speeds from our Server out to the net, and both a public and private network, which will prevent our backup scripts from disrupting public network traffic while they are running.

All of this means our site will be running faster and better then ever once we make the move, and we will have access to great upgrades when we need them in the future. We are planning to make the switch in about two weeks and will keep you guys updated about it here and through notifications.

Happy Holidays =)

*note: because we are switching to a different data center, the IP address of our web server will be changing. This will mean guilds which use a custom domain name will have to update the DNS for their domains to point to the new servers IP address when we switch - we will send out several notifications about this as we get closer to making the switch.

We have been working hard on the next update for a while now and thought you may like a preview to see what we're up to. The next update is to the theming tools, and to follow along with some of the changes we mention here is a screenshot of the new theme editor:


*click for fullsize image

Theming works on Actual Preview
One of the first changes you will notice in the screenshot is that the new theming tool works on the actual site preview.

Our current theming tool uses a small, simplified version of the site with no graphics - you had to switch tabs back and forth between colors and graphics to theme the site, and then click Preview at the bottom to see how everything actually looked.

In the new theming tool, you work on the actual preview, and everything happens instantly.

AJAX Powered
Our current theming tool has a few AJAX features, but changing any of the elements required a full page refresh, making the tool slower to work with.

The new theming tool is 100% AJAX driven, no page refreshes happen while you are theming your site, not even for image uploads, so it is very fast to work with =)

Custom CSS
The new theming tool allows you to add your own custom CSS to the theme, providing you even greater control over the appearance of your site.

New Colors and Elements
Quite a few new colors are available in the new theming tool, an example shown in the screenshot is the calendar table which has gained several new color options. Some elements that previously shared colors can now be themed individually, and some entirely new elements have been added, such as Notifications.

New Site Feature: Notifications
Along with the theming changes, we are adding a new feature to the site called Notifications.

Notifications will allow you to be notified when different events occur on your site, such as receiving a new private message or a new forum being posted. You can choose to be notified by ajax, email or none for each of the events.

If you set a notification to ajax, when you are on the site and that event occurs, a notification will appear in the bottom right corner - clicking the notification will take you to the event.

Our main goal with notifications is to make it easier for you to keep up to date on what is occurring on the site, and to guide you to new content. Rather then clicking through all the sections of your site to see if there is anything new, you can watch the notifications appear and when one interests you simply click it to view the content =)

End of Part 1
This update is by far the most involved we have done so far, and we plan to do one more preview before we put it live. In the next preview we will post several screenshots showing how the theming updates enhance many of the pages and blocks on your site. =)

Today is MMO Guildsites 1 year birthday!

What a difference a year can make, MMO Guildsites has been improving in leaps and bounds thanks to the great support we have received from you guys! We really appreciate everything and, as we mentioned last month, we got some great prizes to hand out to you guys!

But first, a quick recap of the past year. A busy year it was, with 72 posts on this blog and over half of them to tell you about new features and updates! We pushed live over 100 new features this year, including over 30 new blocks (such as Ventrilo Status, Recruitment and Guild Stats), several major new sections (such as DKP and Guild Banks), several game specific features (such as WoW Armory integration and server status for several games) and many unique features such as the Google Map and Firefox Addon.

We are very happy with the improvements MMO Guildsites has seen throughout the year, and next year things will only get better! We already have plans for many new features and will be working hard all year to keep this site the best option out there for guild hosting.

Now, on to the prizes! =)

As we mentioned on our blog last month, we bought 6 gaming-related prizes to hand out to you guys for our 1 year anniversary. The majority of the prizes are being awarded via random drawing, where every site owner has an equal chance to win - these prizes are the top prize, the Nvidia 8600 GT, along with the Logitech X-230 2.1 Speaker System, the Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard and the Steelpad Headset /w Microphone. The remaining two prizes, the Nvidia 7900 GS XT's, are being awarded as special status gifts.

Draw Winners

Nvidia 8600 GT Video Card
Randomly Drawn
Winner: First of Many

Logitech X-230 2.1 Speaker System
Randomly Drawn
Winner: Overload

Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard
Randomly Drawn
Winner: Apocalypse

Steelpad Headset /w Microphone
Randomly Drawn
Winner: Suncrown

Nvidia 7900 GS XT Video Card
Special Status
Winner: Avalorien
Avalorien was our very first customer, signing up just days after we had gone live and, despite our early state, hung around through the early bugs and is still with us. They have provided us with a lot of help, bug reports and valuable feedback in our first few months and it was greatly appreciated.

Nvidia 7900 GS XT Video Card
Special Status
Winner: Conceited
Conceited has been one of our most helpful, and also most creative customers. Along with creating one of the most popular themes and providing great feedback, suggestions and promotional support, he has come up with very creative uses for many of our features, which has helped us to think up several site enhancements.

Those are all the prizes we have to hand out this year, we wish we had more, but keep an eye out for next year as we hope to do this again with even more prizes!

We would again like to thank all the guilds who have helped us out during our first year, your feedback, suggestions and promotional support has been amazing and we truly appreciate it. =)

Update: WoW Insider covered our one year anniversary on their site and did a short review on our service, thanks WoW Insider =)

We pushed live an update tonite, making a couple of new blocks available

Next Raid
The next raid block shows your next upcoming participation event (raid). It lists basic information about the event, along with the currently signed up participants and the order they signed up in.

You can sign up to say you are coming right from the block, which should help to make the sign-up functionality more visible and on the day of the raid make it easier to see who is coming.



Tabula Rasa Server Status
There is now a Tabula Rasa server status block you can enable for your site. Like the other server status blocks it reads your server from the guild settings tab, so ensure it is set correctly and that your game is set to Tabula Rasa.



Recruitment Block
Just a quick update on this block we added last week, it is now possible to change the text shown on the block - if you choose to leave it blank it uses the default message

We have pushed live a small update this morning, adding three new blocks you can add to your guild site

Recruitment Block
The recruitment block allows you to let potential new members see which classes your guild is interested in recruiting. Each class can be set to "Open" or "Closed" for recruitment status, and you can also specify an urgency, with "Low" represented by a blue down pointing arrow and "High" with a red up pointing arrow, and the amount of that class you are looking to recruit - you can set -1 as the amount for that class and it will not show the number.

If you are logged in and have admin+ permissions there is a small edit icon in the bottom right corner of the block you can use to quickly update your recruitment status.

If you are not logged in, the "Apply For Membership" link is shown near the bottom of the Recruitment block to allow new members to quickly apply.



Donations Block
Many guilds have setup a paypal donations block using the HTML block, so to simplify things we have made an official donations block, where you can just enter your paypal email address that will accept the donations and optionally a custom message.



Guild Stats Block
For guilds that love stats we have added a new stats block called Guild Stats, which shows tallies for your members and characters. The block will show the members count for each rank and the characters count for each class and race. The block can be configured to hide the ranks and races information.

Another round of updates is now live, enhancing the DKP section, adding timezones and improving the shoutbox.

Timezones
You can now set a default timezone for your guild site in the Guild Settings tab of the Site Admin. By default, the timezone is set to US/Pacific, where our web server is located.

Shoutbox Improvements
The shoutbox received several improvements. Previously it was on a 2 minute refresh timer, grabbing new shouts every 2 minutes. It has now been reduced to a 20 second decaying refresh timer.

What this means is while users are chatting on the shoutbox, it will use ajax to grab the new shouts to display to you every 20 seconds, keeping the conversation flowing - but if it returns an empty result when it checks, meaning no one has shouted in that 20 second period, it increases the timer by 1.5x, so it then checks in 30 seconds, then 45 seconds, then 68 seconds.. every time there is no new shouts it increases by 1.5 again. after a few minutes with no shouts the refresh timer will be back up to 2 minutes. When a new shout is posted, it drops the refresh timer back to 20 seconds and begins all over again.

Put simply, this means while you are using the shoutbox it will be nice and fast to chat with your friends, and while you are not it will refresh slower until some conversation begins.

Raid Listings
The raids list page has been improved to show more relevant information, it now shows the number of attendees and the number of item drops with the listed raid.

Raids Standings
The Raids Standings page no longer shows characters who do not have dkp, so alts will not clutter up your list.

Raid Show
When you click on a raid to view it now, it shows more information.

For normal dkp systems the old items table has been replaced with a "Events and Items" table, showing the boss kills, who attended them and which items dropped for each of them. A "Raid Hours" table has also been added, showing how many hours each member participated in the raid for.

For zerosum dkp systems the old items table has been replaced with an improved items table, showing each item and its buyer, and which attendees were there to earn dkp for the item.

zerosum example:

Our one year anniversary for MMO Guildsites is coming up next month, and to celebrate we will be handing out prizes in appreciation to our customers for all the great support this year! We have finished confirming our prize list and wanted to share it with you guys, so here it is:

1x Nvidia 8600 GT Video Card:
128-bit GeForce 8600 GT Video Card (540MHz clock)
256MB 128-bit GDDR3 Memory (700MHz clock - 1.4GHz effective)
PCI Express x16 Compatibility (PCI Express Compliant)



2x Nvidia 7900 GS XT Video Card:
256-bit GeForce 7900 GS XT Video Card (480MHz clock)
256MB 256-bit DDR3 Memory(700MHz clock - 1.4GHz effective)
PCI Express x16 Compatibility (PCI Express Compliant)



1x Logitech X-230 2.1 Speaker System:
Logitech X-230 2.1 Speaker System Black 32W RMS FDD2
Frequency Directed Dual Driver (FDD2) satellite technology produces a uniform sound field for full, rich sound
Ported subwoofer design displaces more air for deeper bass



1x Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard:
Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard Black Silver Programmable Backlit Keys USB



1x Steelpad Headset /w Microphone:
Steelpad 5H V.2 Headset W/ Microphone


Stay tuned next month for our one year announcement and to see if you are among the winners!

*note: the prizes are being awarded to site owners only, you must own a site to be eligible for a prize

We will be performing hardware upgrades on Wednesday October 3rd, adding additional CPUs and RAM to our webservers.

Expected downtime is 30-60 minutes. If you attempt to access the site while the upgrade is occurring you will not receive the standard maintenance message, the site will simply not load as it will be offline for the upgrades.

We have asked the technicians at our hosting facility to perform the upgrades as early as possible on Wednesday, and are expecting them to happen around 9-10am PST (12-1pm EST), though they may occur slightly before or after this.

The update to the guild bank has now gone live, featuring a new transactions based bank and a host of new features.

Bank Item Details
Bank items now have their own page, showing more detailed information about the item. The details page is divided into three sections:

At the top is information about the item - its name, category, value, and the amount available in the bank. Item's may now have a description, and if one is entered it will be shown at the top with this information.

Next is a summary of the member contributions for the item, showing totals for each member who has donated or bought the item. It also shows a list of all of the members who currently want the item.

At the bottom is the transaction log. A transaction is when a member either donates or buys some of the item or says they want it. The transaction log allows you to see the full history of the item by browsing all of these transactions.



Bank Member Details
The bank member details page has been simplified, showing the contribution totals at the top and the transaction log at the bottom. The transaction log here is similar to the item details one, but is for the members history, showing their contributions to the bank.



Customizable Bank Categories
You can now customize the bank categories, creating as many or as few as you need. When you have banker permissions you will see the edit bank categories link next to the categories dropdown - which is also shown in the Items List screenshot below.

Improved Items List
The main items list page has been enhanced and simplified. The list is now search-able and may be filtered by category. Buy, donate and want transactions may be performed on the items from this list with AJAX, making it very fast to work with. Some nicer icons for the bank have also been added, the green dollar sign for buy, the loot bag with the arrow for donate, and the hand icon for want.



Tracking Money
Tracking money in the bank was one of the requested features, and initially we went about adding it as its own feature. But as we moved to a transactions-based bank we realized tracking money requires many of the same features as tracking an item, and treating it as an item is the best option. You can create a category called money, and then create an item called Gold, and as all the transactions for gold are stored within the items details it provides an easy way to track the money within your bank.



Bank Transactions History
Another new page is the Transactions page, it is similar to the transaction logs in the item details and member details pages, but this one lists all of the transactions for the bank.



New Bank Blocks
There is a few new bank blocks to choose from to add to your site, such as the top donators and highest bank points.



Mass Upload
There is a "Mass Add Items" button next to the "Add Item" button for the bank that will allow you to add multiple items at a time.

Currently, the Mass Upload allows you to enter items as a comma separated list, an option you can export from spreadsheets. The order is: item name, category, quantity, value and donator - it states this below the text area you would paste the items into.

With regards to rpgo char profiler, we have found the author of the addon has decided to include a non-commercial license with it. While we do not wish to use or modify the addon, only parse its generated output, we have decided it best to contact the author and discuss this with him first; as we are awaiting a reply from him still, we have not included rpgo char profiler as a mass upload option yet.

We are still interested in other options for mass upload also, and will be adding a dropdown at the top of the mass upload allowing you to choose what type of text your are pasting in for the mass upload - ie comma separated list, rpgo char profiler, item2phpbb, etc. We did not wish to delay the bank any further so have put it live today and will be exploring some additional mass uploading options over the next few days.

The next update we are going to put live is to the Guild Bank section - we have a lot of new features planned for this, including customizable item categories, tracking money and splitting/joining stackable items - but we would like to hear your thoughts on uploading.

We would like to make it easier to mass upload Guild Bank data and would love to hear any suggestions you guys may have. For example:

- If you play World of Warcraft and use an addon to manage your Guild Bank that has an export function let us know about it and see can see if it can be supported. *if you could email us a sample output from the export function that would be helpful =)

- If you play another MMORPG that has a similar feature to WoW's addons that allows you to export bank data let us know.

- If you use a speadsheet or another means currently to handle your Guild Bank and find it easy to do so let us know, and we can look at adding a comma seperated list or xml import feature.

Basically any method that would make it easier for you to import Guild Bank data we would love to hear about it so we can look into supporting it during this update.

Please either post here in the comments section or send us an email to staff@mmoguildsites.com