Freegle Tech Report 18-01-31

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Freegle Tech Report January 2018
 Posts 24449-24619
Members 116

General

More work has been done on the website and modtools, so it has had a few slow days. Edward produced a map of Freegles. It is pretty easy to fathom, https://dev.ilovefreegle.org/recentfreegles Chris has had to do some amendments on our app to keep up with the main code changes.


Chat

Disappearing Reply Text Box reported. It is a problem which has been narrowed down to newer iPads/laptops using Safari. Mobile app seems to work fine. Some changes* which may or may not help with this, and which also remove the silly bounce effect you get where the message box at the bottom of chat moves up a bit, have been done. We would like those who saw this to test chat on dev.modtools.org and dev.ilovefreegle.org.
It might also break things on some devices and browsers, especially older ones, so I would be grateful for any other testing that people do on this. Also testing rotation of devices that change the layout when you do that.

Q. A member has accidently blocked another member and wants to unblock them.
A Sorry there isn't an option for a member to unblock someone (if they've blocked them) as no Chat from the other person would be visible. As they have only blocked one user I've unblocked that one for them.

Direct

Edward put a volunteer request out for animated Freegle logos . He has received some and found about half of them are usable, they don't have to be perfect, but some of them just don't work at the size we've asked for. By putting some more out there we may encourage more people to do better ones. Code is being written and these will be automatically in the bar on the top on the appropriate day(s) - Valentine's Day is coming up. That way we have the work of collecting them, but then we might have them for years. Current ones are here: https://www.ilovefreegle.org/doodles.php Obviously if you or anyone you knows likes making animated stuff then please point them at https://www.ilovefreegle.org/volunteering/4245
Some of the more noticable changes made this month.

  • Improve layout of group info on My Groups page* Don't offer business cards too frequently
  • Introduce Google Ads on selected pages
  • Problem replying to posts for some members fixed.
  • Allow emojis in chat* The info and nudge tips in chat get quite annoying after you've seen them a lot and get in the way of typing so allow them to be turned off.
  • In chat review, button added to allow adding a note to the users
  • Business card option after community event had no Next button
  • Indicate if there is a significant gap between chat messages
  • Change from talking about "groups" to talking about "communities", to reflect how lovely and nice freeglers are
  • Can't reply to message when you're not a member of the group
  • Showing results from too far away in some cases

Q. On groups that have auto-repost enabled, can members disable it for themselves? (If so - how?)
If the answer is "yes" - is there any way Yahoo and TN members can disable this?
A. Reposts only happen for Direct users. They cancel them by posting a Taken, Promised, Received or by withdrawing the post.
Q. Today I had a report of someone who replied to a wanted post and was let down. Is there anything that can be done on a similar vein to offers, so people know if they don't collect an item it will show as a non collection on the non collectors profile.
A I have in mind a bit of a rework of how replies are shown in My Posts, which might help. I'll bear it in mind there.

Events
Q. Is there a limit to the amount of times an event will show on FD? I have an event in pending with every week on it from now until September. I don't want one post to overwhelm the events.
A I don't think it will overwhelm.

Fundraising.

After a couple of weeks it was found Google Ads at the present rate will bring in around 5k a year rather than the 48k hoped for. Ebay adds were tried instead but these brought in less, so we have gone back to Google for now but will try other stuff. We will also be adding ads to emails fairly soon.


Mobile

The latest app versions are Freegle app 1.3 3 is now released.
After some problems getting the wording right for the iOS app it got to version 1.3.5 which should be in their app store now.
The mobile app is no longer able to post as you are taking the photo. You need to take the photo first then store it where it can be accessed. You can still do this if you use the browser to post from.
A user kindly told us that the Facebook sign in wasn't working on the current version 1.3.0 of the Freegle app on iOS.The problem was found and fixed. The app description now refers to communities instead of groups.

Modtools

Mapping
Q. Can locations be combined into one or is it a matter of deleting the polygons and making the other larger? I assume it's not ok to have 2 with the same name?
A. You delete one and make the other larger. Having two with the same name won't cause any major problems - but it's neater not to.


Native

Switching groups to/from Yahoo A moderator accidently changed a groups Native setting to allow posts back on Yahoo.
Edward was going to change it so only Owners could do this. However some groups are being run by mods with full privs so a better answer may be to allow mods to move a group but hide that button once a move has gone ahead. It is very rare that an owner will want to reconnect a group to Yahoo.
Q. Some members are still reporting multiple emails saying they aren't a member. One got it 41 times in a day..
A I think what's happened here is that we had messages patiently waiting for a membership on Yahoo, when the group was switched native. It wrongly keeps trying those messages even though the Yahoo group is no longer relevant. I've applied a fix. Can you keep an eye on that one and see if they get any more messages?

Publicity

We are now charging for business cards but it was found no one had actually paid. It was tested and there was a bug found.


Yahoo

Several days this month Yahoo has not updated some of the group websites. Many posts seem to have been a day or two late and some never arrived. Some groups' logs have stopped being updated and maneuvering around the websites has been painful.
Q. A member has just posted several offers. Each post shows a different country of origin should I be worried?
A .Probably someone who is keen on privacy and is anonymising their IP address using a service such as Tor. There is a tool to check if an IP address is a Tor address at https://exonerator.torproject.org/, but there are others. Not necessarily a worry.


There are now 178 groups who have left Yahoo behind.

Jean
Freegle Tech Report
January 2018


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