Option to receive email notifications for new messages(?)

[KVonGit]

Now that the forums have moved to GitHub, I don't constantly check the site for new posts.

So, when I occasionally visit the site these days, I will sometimes have a message that's been there a few days. If it would be relatively easy to implement it, I would tick a box to optionally get email notifications when someone messages me.

[alexwarren]

That's a good idea. But then we might want to have email notifications for other things too, like new reviews and comments on your games?

I am slightly wondering if we really need a messaging system on the site at all. It was something I resisted adding when I was running things before. Now I'm back I'm not entirely sure it's something to keep, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on what it's useful for.

[Pertex]

I think it depends on how you see the role of the website. As I understand it, it actually becomes obsolete with Viva. Then there would be no need to extend the functionality. If the website is to develop into a focal point for text adventures, such convenience functions would be desirable. Perhaps also a small contact form with which you can write directly to the game developer?

Speaking of convenience functions, I would be happy to have the option of deleting published games

[alexwarren]

Deleting published games is something I'll be adding.

The role of the website should be diminished once we have a way of playing Quest games in a browser without a server. Not necessarily completely obsolete, but it should be just one of many places it is possible to publish a game.

I'm looking critically at what the website does right now because I'm just one person doing this in their spare time, and trying to maintain two IF systems and a central hub that tries to do all things doesn't actually work... one of the reasons I basically got burnt out when trying to do this before. So anything superfluous which I can stop doing helps, especially as one of the big projects right now is migrating the website from .NET Framework 4 to .NET 9 - fewer things to migrate means I can get this done quicker.

[alexwarren]

I did some digging around and looked at the usage of this feature - it's extremely low, so it doesn't seem worth porting to the new website.

So I've now made some changes to the existing website to start deprecating it:

• I've removed the button on the User Profile page for sending messages to people you haven't messaged before
• If a user has never used the messaging feature they won't see the link to it in the header on the top right
• Users will still be able to reply to existing ones for now, but I won't port this to the new website, so it will stop working when that goes live

[Pertex]

So anything superfluous which I can stop doing helps, especially as one of the big projects right now is migrating the website from .NET Framework 4 to .NET 9 - fewer things to migrate means I can get this done quicker.

That's absolutely right, so it's better to remove such things. You can always add it later.

Can you give us a brief update on the webpage? Is it still a migration or do you have to reprogramme it?

[alexwarren]

A bit of both really - ASP.NET is fundamentally different between .NET Framework 4 and .NET 9 so the "migration" process is basically me having to reimplement every feature, although I am able to copy and paste a lot of the code. I'm also updating Bootstrap from v3 to v5 so the front-end HTML needs changes, and things like the way to access Azure tables is different. Right now I'm rebuilding the game submission process, as the old one uses an old version of React, and stores info in the session cookie in a way that .NET 9 doesn't support. I'm reimplementing that in Blazor which is quite different. So that's the kind of thing that makes this more of a rebuilding than a migration.

Hopefully should I be able to launch the new site in a month or two, which will be great for two reasons - the site can be hosted on Linux so will cost less to run, and I can start focussing on Quest and Squiffy again!

[Pertex]

You let us know if we can help in any way

[DavyB-Text]

@alexwarren, I previously sent an email suggesting 'private' comments to replace messaging. Any further thoughts on that idea?

[alexwarren]

Yep, it's on the list! Once I've got a beta of Quest Viva WebPlayer up and running, I'll be picking up work on the site again - I've got quite far with migrating it to the latest .NET version. Private comments is something I plan to add.