MeetFighters News

Hi everyone,

In the last week, I have been working with the site's hosting provider on fixing the performance issues that we have been experiencing since the hardware upgrade.

AllFighters is the largest website that I have ever created, and I am slowly gaining experience about how to set up and administer a site of this scale. The most critical time of day is usually the 9PM to 11PM (GMT) period of the day, when 150-200 people are online simultaneously. I have managed to tweak the site code and the server configuration enough to be able to comfortably accommodate this load on the present hardware, and the hosting people seem to have fixed whatever was wrong with the server.

In other news:

• Tracker/2008-12-26: I have created a bunch of link banners that you can stick on your site. Please link "http://www.allfighters.info/" from your pages and help others find our site!
• Tracker/2010-08-22: Some international character encoding problems with the weekly newsletter have been fixed.
• Tracker/2010-06-07: The way AllFighters is handling languages has been changed. It is now easier to change your language, the site will simply set a cookie to remember your latest setting.
• Tracker/2010-11-18: The Body Mass Index (BMI) metric is no longer displayed in profiles as a default. Apparently some guys believed tha BMI is the work of the evil one. Those of you who like evil can enable the BMI on the preferences page.

Now, the big question:

What next?

I was thinking about creating a mobile version of the site, or perhaps enhance the world map feature. What do you think?

Dear members,

My previous greatest idea, the Battle Reports feature has basically imploded on the launchpad with zero (0) battle reports having been created in about a month. So, I'm removing them, the battle reports are gone from now until I can think of a way of making them more appealing.

So, I'm presenting you the Latest Greatest Idea: the Special Interest Groups. What are they, you ask? Oh, they are great. Basically they are for discussing a specific topic, like, say, submission holds or Turkish wrestling. Anyone can start a group, and other members can join to start discussions. Oh, and they will also appear on your profile, so people will know what your Special Interests are.

Further recent site changes are:

• The favorites page is now broken into tabs and looks less like the dashboard of a commercial airplane. I hope you guys will like it better now.
• Tracker/2010-11-14: Profiles and the statistics page now show something called BMI (Body Mass Index).
• Tracker/2010-10-19: Wording of recommendations has been changed slightly.
• Tracker/2010-10-29: There is more detail on your "Who has seen my profile?" page.
• Tracker/2010-10-15: Your past opponents now appear with thumbnails on your profile.
• The main site forums now appear as a submenu on the lefthand menubar. I also fixed something that has caused the submenus to disappear in Microsoft Internet Explorer (scourge of the web).

There have also been a bunch of behind-the-scenes work, like optimizations for better site performance. The photo moderation was simplified a bit: the "clean with face" category was eliminated.

Happy wrestling!

Admin out

Hi guys,

Thanks to all your donations, I have been able to afford a hardware upgrade to the allfighters server. This will probably be enough for another few months, considering the constant increase in site load.

Happy wrestling,
– Admin

Dear AllFighters,

So, the big news this week is that Battle Reports are here! It has been one of the oldest entries in the Tracker, entered in April 2009, when our site was still in its infancy. I delayed it for a good long while, but now, following some feedback to the previous site news, I decided to finally finish it.

So, here it is!

How does it work?

The idea is that some guys get together, they have a good match or series of matches, and, in fact, it was so good that they decide they have to share their experience with the rest of us, because not doing so would be a crime!

So, one participant starts the battle report], sets the date, style and some of other info, adds his past opponents to it, and writes an initial draft. So far so good, but the report is not yet approved by the other participants. They can each log in, find the unfinished battle report, and edit it. They can each add their perspective on the event, perhaps even their own photos.

In the end, when a version of the new Battle Report emerges that epveryone can agree upon, the report is published and the rest of the site can finally read it. This process, while it might be a little difficult at first, ensures that the finished report represents everyone person involved fairly.

In the interest of finding interesting Battle Reports to read, each report is in one league:

• Competitive matches are those between opponents of comparable size and skill, where both are determined to win the match, within the agreed-upon rules.
• Recreational matches include give-and-take, "pro wrestling", teaching or practicing holds; basically any match where winning is not the goal.
• Cyber matches are entirely fictional online affairs, conducted by those so inclined. Regardless, they might still be of interest.

In addition to the leagues, Battle Reports are also labeled with one or more of our familiar fighting styles (such as submission wrestling or boxing).

This is all about the Battle Reports for now. I have some more plans, like indicating the Battle Reports in member profiles, and those enhancements will be coming in the following week (or months? :).

Blog Photo Attachments

On slightly related news, it is now possible to attach your personal and gallery photos to your blog entries. You can even go to your older entries, and add photos to them.

That's it for this week,

Admin out.

Dear members,

This week, I bring you a number of small-to-medium, incremental updates to the site:

• Thanks to boine, we now have a Swedish AllFighters edition.
• Tracker/2010-09-19: Blocking a member in the site will also block him on Chat.
• Tracker/2010-06-20 2: It is now possible to remove a recommendation you wrote for a profile which no longer exists.
• Tracker/2010-03-05: Compact members list. You can now choose to see the members' list and the results of advanced search in a grid, instead of the detailed list view.
• Tracker/2010-01-14: Glossary of terms. Hovering your mouse over any of the fighting style icons will bring up a tooltip describing that style.
• The statistics page now shows the top countries. The UK leads mountain high!
• Worked around an issue in older versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer that caused connection problems for some members.

About future plans: I'm thinking about some enhancements for the World Map feature, perhaps showing your favorites and/or past opponents on the map, planning road trips, etc. Do you think this would be useful to you? Let me know!

Also, the battle reports have been a long time coming. Does anyone still have interest in this feature, or is the Wrestling Stories forum a sufficient replacement?

That's all for this week!

Happy wrestling,
Admin.