02 March 2007

New httpd deployed and other updates

After a week of trying to get it out, the new httpd is live. The next few days are going to be a shakedown cruise for this httpd. Already, a few small bugs popped up.

The new httpd was written from scratch in Java. It's no longer database-backed, and it's safely multi-threaded, giving it a significant increase in scalability. (Many thanks to TIGGR and MASA for helping to test it out.)

Hot sites is back, but already broken. It mistakenly flags every page as private. A fix for that is ready to deploy. But, another high-priority fix is more important: auto-refresh server update.

Because the new server isn't MySQL-backed, restarting the httpd flushes all of the messages. This causes clients and servers to be out-of-sync on the sequence numberings used to ensure message delivery. Long story short: after a server update, clients stop getting messages.

The biggest change in this release is the foundation for moderator support, plus a host of options for customizing your chat. When creating your link to Yaplet, you can add css=[url-to-css-file]&, nick=[nick]&, nicklock=1&, swear=0& and private=1& to before the url=[url].

nick=[nick]& and nicklock=1& are useful if you are generating the chat link dynamically, and you want to fill it in with a username from your site.

private=1& keeps your off hot sites.

swear=0& turns off auto-ignore on swear for everyone. IGNORE now acts as a toggle, too, so you can unignore someone without refreshing.

css is deliberately undocumented, but it's the foundation for allowing themability. Brave souls may experiment with it.

Log-wiping has finally been added. Moderators wipe the log instantly. Non-moderators wipe everything but the last 5 minutes.

Lots of other small fixes found their way in. You'll notice that the frames version now says
[domain] :: yaplet
instead of Yaplet Beta! in the title.

Thanks for your understanding as we try to improve yaplet and make it a better place!

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