Freegle Tech Report 14-6-30

Freegle Tech Report June 2014
Posts 13606-13722
Members 93

If you are interested in participating then you are welcome to join us, even if you only want to dip in and out. Mods are wanted who are willing to try out new stuff, test any tweaks done, or just comment - please come along. General New server is now fully operational and most things running smoothly.

It is easy for a bug to be introduced during change over so do say it you have noticed anything not working in the normal manner.

For instance it has since been found that alerts had stopped working.

Spammers & Scammers.

• Again a quiet month and those we are getting are being dealt with promptly on groups using Direct. Yahoo only groups whose mods are not participating on Central are however continuing to let them through on their groups.
  
• If you have an outlook or hotmail email address, would you like to volunteer to be part of Microsoft Spamfighters? "They have a large number of members, who get one or two received emails re-sent into their inbox, and are asked to classify them as Junk or Not Junk." A moderator who joined in this has found she is being asked to classify quite a few Freegle ones. She is able to recommend people to join the team. If you have an outlook or hotmail email address and would like to help, then please mail your name and email address off-list to Chris at chris@phdcc.com Hopefully this will help keep Freegle's mail from being marked as Junk. Freegle geeks have applied for us to join the Microsoft Junk Mail Reporting Partner Program -

Facebook, Snaply, Twitter & Direct.

Direct.

• Reference to using the council ward as the location, has been removed from the group description
• Some changes to Freegle Direct have been implemented to take advantage of work that GAYL have done for us. Freegle Direct now:
  

Checks to see if you have registered with GAYL as a supporter and also checks to see if you have the browser plugin installed. If you have done both, you will see a combined Freegle and GAYL logo in the left hand sidebar showing a tick. If you have registered as a supporter but not installed the plugin, it asks you (once) to do so via a popup prompt. Thereafter it will display the combined logo with a cross to show you're not using the plugin, as a more subtle prompt.

Our hope is that this will increase the conversion rate from people who sign up to support us, into actual shoppers who will raise funds for us.

Sub groups

if you wish to set up a sub group on Direct then instructions are now on the WIki at http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Sustain_Eden_project#Setting_up_a_sub-group

Facebook

They have been changing things again. The offer wanted box is no longer clear and across the top of the page, it is now down the right hand side. How far down depends on other stuff on the page. but it is not easily found unless told about it.
It has been suggested that most of the benefits of having a Facebook page have now been removed, and as Direct members are able to use their Facebook account to log in at direct.ilovefreegle.org , you are possibly better giving that link out to all members.

Snaply

This is easy to add to your group if you are using Direct. Just tick the box in your group settings, and save. Don’t know how to find your group settings mail sueandjean @ gmail.com and she will send you the link or do it for you.

• To repost on snaply after accepting a response, and having a no show, you can now on an Android device just go to the conversation and press the “undo” icon and repost. There is no fix yet for IPhones but it in the pipeline.
• We were asked why a post marked as taken on direct is still showing as available on Snaply. This was caused by the app not recognising ‘Taken subject to collection ‘ This was promptly fixed and will now remove the offer.

Yahoo.

• The Message Maker has been updated to look and check for domain name variants when the email address isn't found.

If it finds one, then it will use that instead. If the email address is known to FD then the MM will use that.
The current list of variants is below, but if you are aware of others then they can be added if you let us know..
Also If the person using the MM misspells their email eg homail.com then other existing code suggests what it might be from a similar larger list.
"aol.com","aol.co.uk"
"yahoo.com","yahoo.co.uk","ymail.com","rocketmail.com"
"blueyonder.com","blueyonder.co.uk"
"btinternet.com","btinternet.co.uk","btopenworld.com"
"gmail.com","googlemail.com"

Owner Verification Script

https://secure.modplugin.org/verifymod.php?
This is used by (for example) Central to verify moderator status. It is hosted on the old modplugin.org domain, which is now virtually defunct and no Freegle person has access to the domain. Edward feels it would be a fairly easy task for someone else to do if they knew some PHP and had the time.

Problems sorted

Some members were having problems with repeat events and sorting them was taking quite a a bit of work for some groups. Edward has now:
Changed the email to have the end date in bold (for people who don't notice it at the moment).
Changed the post form to show you the last one (for people who get confused about how many times it repeats).

Questions asked and responses.

Q. A member is asking why he is getting a message to the effect that his email address is out of date when he logs in.
A, This happens if we get a bounce when mailing them. In this case the bounce was justified as it was for a spam message. This bug has now been fixed.
Q. One of our mods is not able to edit events on Freegle Direct but has all the permissions. .
A. Worth checking whether she is signed in to Facebook on Firefox, with the same ID as it could be a Flash problem..
Q. I've tried to add the same community event (for the beginning of August) a few times over the last few days. Other events I've added have come through and confirmed OK, but this particular one has not…
A. I can only think Yahoo is blocking this one for some reason. It was confirmed for them.
Q Is there someone I need to tell if I don't feel I need to be an admin on the Freegle fb page anymore.
A. No but I would make sure there are at least two other Admins on the page, in case something happens to one of them.
Q. Does anyone know how I find out who the admins are on our groups Facebook pages as I am not on them?
A. Try asking Jean as she may have set them up.
Q. When I sign into FD using my gmail ID I can’t seem to stop the Give as u live pop-up asking if I want to install the plugin
A. This is a result of you having multiple memberships and ways of signing into Direct. It has been sorted

Support Group

Email support@ilovefreegle.org
They can
Remove members for you .
Find out more information about a member if required.
Give advice if you are struggling to understand something.
Stop emails to members.

Jean
Freegle Tech

June 2014

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