Site Changelog

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed donation button (not that anyone has ever used it.... literally)

[Kaisonic]

- Updated server back-end to PHP 7.4

[Kaisonic]

- Finally brought the sites into the 21st century with SSL! (https in the address bar)

[Kaisonic]

- Default theater to HTML5 player

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed videos/theater for videos longer than an hour
- Added support for Blu-ray quality videos
- Fixed downloads not showing GB correctly
- Fixed Rate/Comment link not properly counting ratings (poll votes)

[Kaisonic]

- Updated YouTube embed code to fix full screen, quality, and sizing issues

[Kaisonic]

- Updated download icons and video verbiage (Zune hasn't existed for a while...)
- Updated Theater & Videos FAQ
- Added "Last Updated" dates to all info pages

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed playlist quality calculations
- Enhanced video unavailable error checking
- Updated server PHP version
- Downloads now always open in a new window (or tab, depending on your browser preferences)
- Admin tool updates

[Kaisonic]

- Updated Twitter widget
- Removed phone number
- File cleanup, solved a couple potential 404 errors
- Fixed incorrect header on video podcast feeds
- Updated copyright years (and now they won't need manual updating anymore lol)
- Updated admin tools

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed video views and download counts being counted for me and bots

[Kaisonic]

- Reorganized media files on the backend
- Fixed the video opening in a new window when clicking the screenshot

[Kaisonic]

- Reverted content pages to the old top-and-bottom layout
- Move gallery text back to the side
- Updated copyright year (I should really get something to automate that....)

[Kaisonic]

- Updated admin content management modules
- Hid category counts except for "All" and in the title bar of the actual content listing
- Changed videos page to have the screenshot link to the theater instead of downloading the screenshot (you can still download screenshots on the theater page in the downloads section)
- Changed category-switching behavior on content pages to be consistent (page title will now change to match the selected category, matching behavior of when a certain category was directly loaded)
- Fixed watch count updating on theater view
- Encapsulated Twitter code (computer science majors UNITE)
- Fixed BAD_CAPTCHA warning
- Optimized many database queries
- Added video count and total view count to playlist theater page
- Moved content category panel to the side

[Kaisonic]

- Show only "All" for content parent categories with only one sub-category
- Added category name to content page titles
- Removed "All" from theater for parent categories with only one sub-category
- Removed "Videos" from category selector (so it's just a number of how many are in the category)
- Fixed Season 1 title on Videos, Theater, and Playlist pages

[Kaisonic]

- Re-capitalized "Terms of Use" and "Privacy Policy"
- Fixed copyright footer
- Updated code to read video thumbnails from a different directory
- Removed playlist link on videos page if a category only had one video
- Fixed noscript warning message
- Added additional functionality and messages for removed videos
- Cleaned up some javascript

[Kaisonic]

- Updated core phpBB to version 3.0.10
- Combined style imagesets so only theme is different between sites

[Kaisonic]

- Updated language to use custom file on custom pages
- Changed comments number format on news page
- Updated all language files with better capitalization and phpBB 3.0.10 changes
- Updated all colors (fixed random incorrect ones, new link colors, better readability, etc)
- Updated theme to proFormell 1.3.4
- Updated Twitter boxes to match new link colors
- Removed ucp_serials file
- Added link explanation to "Return to Help" links and "Back to Top" buttons
- Changed videos page to have "Watch" and "Download" buttons (uses JavaScript to show download buttons, falls back to loading theater if JavaScript is disabled)
- Copied videos page changes to featured video box on index page
- Removed "Return to Help" link on pop-up member list pages (like "Find a Member")
- Added link explanations for Terms and Privacy links in the footer
- Fixed download link explanations in the theater
- Fixed external links on popup windows like "Find a Member"
- Fixed copyright footer on popup windows
- Added link explanations for the "Return to" links on comment threads

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed the latest post on "Other Sonic Topics" (I guess I just could've posted there, but that's too much work...)

[Kaisonic]

- Heavily cleaned up the forums and memberlist from spam entities
- Implemented a new site-themed Q&A method of preventing spam registrations (should be extremely easy for any Sonic Tales fan)

[Kaisonic]

- Updated many video titles on sites and on YouTube
- Fixed XHTML validation on some video titles with quotes and ampersands
- Updated Twitter account to KaisonicPro (Kaisonic is now just a personal account)

[Kaisonic]

- Added reminder to include your own contact information if you use the email form without logging in
- Removed the home page welcome message

[Kaisonic]

- Added Featured Video to the front page
- Added category names to Featured Video
- Featured video is random out of a small selected set of videos
- Internally centralized resolutions and formats
- Fixed 404 error on invalid downloads for Quicktime-only videos
- Added a warning for users with JavaScript disabled
- Added "Latest Site News" to the home page

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed thumbnail bug on picture management page
- Changed forum title to include "Season 1"
- Made the changelog show newest posts first

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed incorrect hover color on vertical lines in download list and topic lists

[Kaisonic]

- Small favicon adjustment
- Changed category selector style on Videos
- Added some functionality to hide unselected parent categories
- Changed "All" to "General" for Videos and Pictures (makes sense, right?)
- Made sure "General Videos" and "General Pictures" appear first
- Added additional sorting functionality for custom sorts on categories
- Fixed a value parsing error on content pages
- Changed back to KB and MB (to celebrate the new MiB, coming this month!)
- Updated all FAQs (they're a pretty good read, honestly)
- Fixed simple page header for home page
- Made page titles more informative (for Google!)
- This includes category titles on certain videos and pictures pages as well as video titles in the theater
- Added / fixed hover text on most links
- Removed playlist link for empty categories
- Changed to The Sonic Tales: Season 1 to make the new page titles more descriptive

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed "Email Another Staff Member" link on Contact page

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed the playlist using the wrong image
- Fixed favicon.ico access for each domain

[Kaisonic]

- Moved screenshot download link to the downloads area to have size and download count
- Tried to add an aspect ratio switcher to the playlist theater, but the problems outweighed the benefits
- More code optimizations

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed error handling on the info page
- Slightly optimized video statistics on info page
- Various other code optimizations
- All videos now have full screenshots displayed in the theater
- Added video screenshots to the Picture Gallery
- Fixed thumbnail handling in the backend
- Video screenshots are now automatically added when a video is added
- Changed podcast title

[Kaisonic]

- Enhanced Definition and High Resolution (quality "nd") are iPod/Zune compatible
- Podcast shows highest resolution compatible with a device

[Kaisonic]

- Updated Login/Logout link to redirect back to where you were before logging in/out
- Updated the Theater's playlist to load different qualities with JavaScript, like the plain Theater, heavily increasing quality-switch times

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed that annoying gray color when hovering over menu buttons on the control panel

[Kaisonic]

- Added Return to Help link on the Site Changelog
- Fixed "Return to" links on forum and topic pages
- Standardized "Return to" links for Theater and Video Archive on forum threads that are used for video comments and rates
- Changed first post text of those topics

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed quality selection on the playlist

[Kaisonic]

- Removed invisible "Skip to Content" link in the banner
- Moved Moderator and Administrator Control Panel links
- More minor language changes
- Updated FAQs even further
- Changed quality switcher in Theater to be much faster
- Updated compatibility with javascript-less browsers

[Kaisonic]

- Minor language changes
- Fixed seeking on the theater player

[Kaisonic]

- Removed YouTube link on the videos list
- Removed Rate/Comment link on the videos list
- Fixed hover titles and image alts on download icons on the videos list
- Shortened "Choose a Resolution" to "Quality" on the theater page
- Added playlist functionality to the theater
- Every category of videos now has a "Watch All" link that will take you to the theater and load a flash-based (or HTML5-based, dependin on your device) playlist in the JW Player the theater uses. It defaults to every video's highest quality, but the quality selector is still there. Since most videos have different resolutions, I generalized the selector to Highest, Medium, and Lowest. For videos that have less than 3 resolution options, multiple quality selections will result in the same video being displayed.
- Playlist scrolling - for some reason, the mouse wheel is not yet supported. Also, to scroll on an iOS device, just drag with two fingers.

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed img alts on videos page
- Updated theater player to latest version
- Made control bar overlay (so viewers don't suffer from oh-this-much-time-is-left-so-these-are-my-expectations)
- Slightly increased player width (mostly because it wouldn't center align properly)
- All videos are back online

[Kaisonic]

- Standardized formats - all non-YouTube videos have both Quicktime H.264 and Windows Media formats
- Working on getting downloadable versions of all YouTube-only videos since we have the space now
- Videos will be on media.thesonictales.com (for stat-keeping purposes)

[Kaisonic]

- Refreshed video download sizes
- Re-added download options (not all files are up yet, however)

[Kaisonic]

- Changed the way files are attached to posts and PMs
- Changed the CAPTCHA to use Google's reCaptcha
- Removed secondary anti-spam measures
- Fixed spacing on parent category selection on videos

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed slight HTML error in the footer for PMs and forum topics

[Kaisonic]

Basically cleaned up the site even more, moved a lot of "cluttery" pages to a central "Help & Information" page:

- Moved about, contact, history, staff, forum faq, members list, and changelog to new Help & Information page
- Combined backends of those pages (like about.php is now info.php?i=about)
- Simplified header to just have main pages on line 1 and user/login functions on line 2
- Moved "Delete Board Cookies" to footer
- Removed current time and last visit time from index page and news page
- Moved donation button to info page
- Updated CSS validator link
- Fixed online indicator on profile pages, private messages, and topics
- Moved video statistics to info page
- Removed who is online from news page (still on forums page)
- Various code and site optimizations
- Changed footer bar to just have RSS links and print/email icons for forum topics
- Removed "Feed" verbiage from page RSS feeds (check out Firefox's or IE's "Subscribe to this Page" links)
- Updated all About, Help, and History texts
- Added "Return" links to most of the Info/Help pages
- Fixed titles on subscription links on Videos page

[Kaisonic]

- Updated phpBB base code and database to latest version 3.0.9
- Updated base style proFormell to latest version 1.3.2
- Updated all custom code and styles to comply with latest versions
- Most importantly, this fixed the weird in-between-videos border on the Videos page in Internet Explorer. So if you've only ever viewed the site in IE, check out the Videos page again - it should look much cleaner.
- For the latest enhancements to the forums, see the changelog for phpBB.
- The style code has been completely re-written and should look "cleaner" across all browsers (in fact, if you'll look real close, the content of the page is now centered between the gradient edges just before the background - I never knew it WASN'T centered)
- This includes updated images for the nav bar and any forum functions

If you encounter any bugs please use the contact page to let me know. I'm not perfect, and updating the site manually takes a lot of time.

Short version: If you're not too perceptive or detail-orientated, the site should look exactly the same. Let me know if it doesn't.

If it looks really funky (like doubled borders on the left and right) just do a full reload of the page (Ctrl+F5) and that should fix it (on Firefox and IE at least).

[Kaisonic]

- Added ability to download video screenshots (click the thumbnail in the videos list or "Download Screenshot" in the Theater)

[Kaisonic]

- Updated contact information.

[Kaisonic]

- Added YouTube links for all videos (except the original Episode 2 and the original Episode 4 with commentary)
- To watch a video on YouTube, click the corresponding link on the Videos page
- To watch the YouTube video embedded on this site, click "Watch in the Theater" then choose YouTube for the resolution

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed an error on YouTube links for non-widescreen videos

[Kaisonic]

- Changed to XHTML Transitional to allow for YouTube embeds in the Theater
- YouTube options will be added to video pages soon

[Kaisonic]

- Changed the podcast to retrieve the highest resolution available of a video instead of the highest resolution compatible with portable devices (which didn't work anyway)

[Kaisonic]

- Removed "key folder" functionality

[Kaisonic]

- Added error handling for features not available on this site but available on other sites in the Kaisonic network

[Kaisonic]

- Made Gamertags on the staff page clickable, which goes to his/her profile on Xbox.com
- Fixed Alex's gamertag

[Kaisonic]

- Made the site banner clickable (goes to the home page)

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed category switching on return to the videos page from the theater

[Kaisonic]

- Changed the style of the videos page

[Kaisonic]

- The Videos page now lists the number of videos in the category selection bar
- The selected category also turns bold once selected
- Keep in mind JavaScript must be enabled

[Kaisonic]

- Updated the home page with new banners and my Twitter feed

[Kaisonic]

- Added my Twitter feed to the News page
- Removed my avatar from the News page

[Kaisonic]

- Added video management backend (so I don't have to go directly into the database every time I add a video, or add a forum thread every time I add a video)
- Fixed XHTML validation on many pages; they should all validate now

[Kaisonic]

- Disabled auto-play in the theater (good thing? Yes? No?)
- Added screenshots for when the video is stopped (I'm working on getting high-res ones up for each video, right now they just use the ones from the videos page)

[Kaisonic]

- Updated the theater to the latest version of the JW Player. Browser and system detection are now supported, so the player will automatically load the proper module for whatever you're viewing the site on. This means you can now view the player on basically ANY device. Computers with Flash get the regular flash theater, devices with HTML5 (like iPhones, iPads, etc) will load the videos in their own way, and devices with neither will just get a download link.
- Removed the HD theater (it was just an extra click to start the video and you can get the same effect by clicking full-screen)
- Standardized the theater to be 816 pixels wide

[Kaisonic]

- Replaced post date with filename in the downloads lists

[Kaisonic]

- Standardized all downloads to have a Quicktime and Windows Media version available for each resolution of each video
- Links to download each version also appear on the videos page under a video

[Kaisonic]

- Fix for "Return to Videos" link on theater page (on return to the videos page, only the category of the video you were watching is showing)
- Video views and downloads are no longer counted for bots

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed the donation button

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed any errors in anti-spam fields on registration

[Kaisonic]

- The video page has been updated to load a lot faster.

[Kaisonic]

- Changed About/Help page titles
- Moved the "Mark All Forums Read" to the footer
- Fixed the fix of the language file
- Fixed the gallery for pictures with periods in the filenames

[Kaisonic]

- Optimized various template code
- Added category switcher to Gallery, just like new About page
- Added a description and keywords in the header of every page (do search engines even use that anymore?)
- Made those meta tags site-specific
- Updated the header nav bar

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed validation on videos with quotes in the name
- Re-ordered header and footer navigation bars
- Added About/Help page to replace the FAQ
- Moved Forum FAQ to original place
- BBCode Guide is accessible from the full post editor page
- Changed the main navigation bar to reflect the changes

[Kaisonic]

- Guests are now allowed to view profiles and send emails to users
- Added email links to the Staff page
- Updated the contact page to be simpler and have more information
- Updated robots.txt
- Increased anti-spam measures on registration

[Kaisonic]

- Optimized feeds, added feed links to footer
- Optimized images database
- Optimized images database and code
- Changed image downloads to come from gallery instead of downloads
- Removed admin download count incrementers
- Updated the downloads list on the theater page so you can click anywhere in the highlighted box to start the download (gotta love JavaScript!)
- Fixed JavaScript-related display issues in Internet Explorer on the splash, videos, theater, and FAQ pages

[Kaisonic]

- Clicking a video's screenshot on the videos page now takes you to the theater just like clicking the name.
- Added a splash page, moved site news to news.php.

[Kaisonic]

- Implemented a security feature to prevent URL guessing on the theater and videos pages.

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed downloads optimization for videos with no downloads
- Fixed error handling on the videos_list
- Code optimizations on the FAQ and theater pages
- Removed "Miscellaneous" from the title on the theater for misc videos
- Added site-specific titles to some pages
- Various other code optimizations
- Updated all video comment threads to have polls with 5-star rating systems. The number of ratings (i.e. votes in the poll) count toward the Rate/Comment count that appear in the videos list and the theater page. You can rate a video even if you're not a registered user.

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed the theater incorrectly counting video views
- Slightly optimized the downloads listing code on the theater page

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed div id's on the home page to comply with XHTML standards
- Fixed parsing of bbcode on the home page news posts
- If quick reply is enabled, the Post Reply button will open the post entry box and take you there (click Post a Reply and then Full Editor for legacy behavior)
- Fixed the donation button
- Used some fancy javascript cheating to make new-page links XHTML compliant (http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/s ... nt-world/3)
- Applied the above cheating to both [link] and [url] bbcode tags
- Updated the theater JWPlayer to the latest version

[Kaisonic]

- Updated the back-end, made many changes (see phpBB 3.0.2 to 3.0.7 changelog for details)
- Fixed the Gallery link
- Fixed the FAQs

[Kaisonic]

- Changed where uploads from posts and private messages are stored on the server.
- Made all links made in posts open in new windows.

[Kaisonic]

Haha, so you know how the private messages weren't displaying correctly? And I was confused because it used the same code as the posts in the forums and they're displaying just fine? Well it turns out I was right. The code was fine. The post body was just too wide by 1%, and was wrapping to the next line. So that's fixed now.

[Kaisonic]

- Made some small updates to the Videos and The Sonic Tales FAQs

[Kaisonic]

- Updated the copyright statement at the bottom of the page

[Kaisonic]

- Removed the ads
- Removed the Google Search
- Moved the donation button to the welcome message box

Known Bugs
- Private messages don't display correctly
- Some videos have graphical glitches due to a poor encode.

[Kaisonic]

- Fixed the incorrect release date on the episode 5 bloopers.

Known Bugs
- Private messages don't appear correctly.
- It seems the new MP4 encoder I used for all the videos here isn't as great as I thought. There seem to be a lot of random graphical errors here and there (like Sonic's face near the beginning of episode 5) so I'll have to switch back to the old one. I'll just have to go back and re-encode those videos.

[Kaisonic]

- Made some small changes to the FAQ texts.
- Changed the FAQ so "Loading..." appears above the FAQ and doesn't make the page "jump."

[Kaisonic]

- Moved the Login box to the top of the page on the Forum index (to match the home page).

[Kaisonic]

- Removed "H.264" and "VC-1" from the Downloads listing cause it's a little unnecessary and made it look too cluttered.
- Added an appropriate question in the Videos FAQ.

[Kaisonic]

- Rolled out the new version of the website.
- Fixed "All" and "Miscellaneous" podcasts.
- Removed the mistakenly-put "Explicit" markers from the podcasts.

[Kaisonic]

This is a special topic for all the small changes I make to the website that don't warrant their own full updates.