root log: October 2002

October 2, 2002: For the heck of it, removed lastnode_id from the Guest User page loads per in10se and pasky fuzzie's (he rules) suggestion on edev. This should keep google from spidering under more than the necessary amount of information about the pages. It should also keep people from linking to us with lastnode_id information in it. This hit:

• parselinks
• parsecode
• displaywriteuptext
• softlink

Each of the changes involves passing linkNodeTitle undef somehow for the second node, or making sure that urlGen gets {lastnode_id => undef}. mmmm, undef.

October 12, 2002: Okay, now that security updates have been released on sourceforge and an announcement is pending on Everydevel (as soon as nate's set), I can go into the problem of the 12th. Basically we have a function in ecore-pre1.0 called updateNodeData(), great for easy interfaces, awful for security at times.

The story goes as this. For whatever reason, both nate and I had tested this previously, but this hole slipped past. By forcing a node_id into the hash pending update, two intrepid edevers created a psuedo node reference that they still owned (because their node_id was still in author_user, thus causing ecore to think that they owned whatever object they morphed into (they chose nate's account and guest user). The fix was to add node_id to the list of restricted and non-mutable fields.

This caused some downtime because of the destruction of the guest user account. After re-inserting those records, everything looks correct now.

October 13, 2002:

• Fixed blank spaces problem in the user settings personal nodelet editor.
• Added superdocnolinks and room support to the xmltrue outputs, per fuzzie's request in clientdev.
• Added secure room checking support in the Universal Message XML Ticker
• Added var exporting for client writers in Raw VARS XML Ticker
• Added Time Since XML Ticker. Takes args:
  • user => Comma-delineated list of usernames
    - or -
    
  • user_id => Comma-delineated list of user_ids

October 14, 2002:

• Honor roll goes live. This touched the following items, in deployment order:
  • altered the user dbtable to add merit
  • altered the user dbtable to add numwriteups
  • added merit to restricted fields
  • added numwriteups to restricted fields
  • altered setupuservars to push $$SETTINGS{numwriteups} into $$USER{numwriteups}
  • Populated the all $$USER{numwriteups} values with a script
  • Populating the all $$USER{merit} values with a script
  • Updated: statsection_personal to use $USER instead of $VARS for numwriteups and such
  • Added getLevel caching, which works primarily out of setupuservars and general container
  • Added function to Experience.pm getHRLF() to calculate all of this. your LF is also cached to make page loads easier.
  • Added statsection_advancement for the level system components.

October 21, 2002:

• Fixed a bug in a year ago today, where the back link wouldn't respect year
• Removed the ability for editors to kill with penalty per policy decision.
  • coolit
  • massacre
  • killing floor II
• Removed the devotion calculation from statsection_personal

October 27, 2002:

• Fixed Message Inbox where Guest User's inbox wasn't accessible by gods.
• Fixed writeup update maintainence where Content Editors had a hard time getting definition to stick on writeups (I think).

October 31, 2002:

• Added a pref per panamaus' request to have the chatterbox on, but hide your private messages leaving a link on top.

More as it happens with up to the minute excitement at:

THIS MONTH'S ROOT LOG