Freegle Tech Report 15-11-30

Freegle Tech Report November 2015 Posts 16271-16455 Members 106

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General

Edward was busy transferring stuff over to a new server earlier this month. This caused a few small glitches but they were fixed quickly and it was on the whole a smooth transition. We should now have more capacity and both Modtools and the new app will be hosted on it, enabling full integration. As part of the new platform, there is a rewrite of ModTools ongoing - you should expect to start seeing an early version of this, which will be free for Freegle groups, late this year/early next. Sub groups which were introduced so that moderators who wished to provide a single category group could do so, have not proved very successful. They were meant to encourage those who would not like to be in a general group but may be interested in Gardening or Children and Baby items. They have not worked full since FD v2. It has therefore been decided to stop supporting these as separate groups, though they may re-emerge in some form in the new platform. Members can still choose to see single categories of posts if that is what they desire. Other groups which offer free stuff. There is a proliferation of these starting up, but we were wondering how well they are actually doing. They usually also allow buy, sell, swap etc. If you have any experience and can give an indication of how many posts, and members, and how successful it seems compared to your group we would be interested.

Mobile App

A discussion was held on having push notifications. This is viewed as being useful but needing work and money. It was agreed to wait until funding is available and it has to be rewritten to fit in with the new Direct platform. It was pointed out that there was no way to view All posts on the app so check your taken/received has been published. The phone app has to leave out several things to keep it simple to use and uncluttered. Phone apps have to be kept as small Stats on the mobile app are here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y6tz_tgz9eKyQ6aKaM0i37EMkr_0SQaboBYlEjGZpgo/edit?usp=sharing Total downloads are 14,077 though this doesn't include installs for iOS version less than 8. The average rating is 4.21 over 52 ratings - and a retention rate of 52% on Android which is actually quite good. I’m looking at in-app purchases to make a donation (and so remove the footer bar asking for a donation). I've provisionally opted to use these names Bronze supporter £1.49- Silver supporter £2.99- Gold supporter £4.99 The iOS in-app purchase system seems to work OK but I've had difficulties getting the Android system working. Problem with mobile photos. There appears to have been some problems with photos. Sometimes a message says ‘ It could not send’ but it still sometimes go through. Some work has been carried out to try and fix this but if you see or hear of a problem still, please report it to geeks@ilovefreegle.org with as much information as possible.

Twitter.

Q. If you delete a message from a group would it delete from twitter as well if the messages went to twitter as well. No. Just go on Twitter to delete it if you wish to, although all links will stop working once it is removed from Direct. Q. member said that they could not see their message in My Posts on FD. I searched for and found it and I wanted to give them a link to show them that it is there. Is there any way that I can get a URL for a post on FD? Not easily but if it shows on Twitter the link in the post on there can be given.

Yahoo.

Message makers no longer work for Yahoo only members and so you should remove it if you don’t have Freegle Direct or if the majority of your posting members use the Yahoo interface to post. If you need help to do this just contact Jean at sueandjean@gmail.com and she will do it for you. Any recommendations to use it should also be removed from your files. For groups which have been on Freegle Direct for quite a while, then most of their active members have been issued with an FBuserid so they can still use the message makers. It is still recommended that they be removed though as they may cause new members to be confused. Links We have been informed that Yahoo are no longer including links to post directly to the group in their digests. They have also stopped adding a link to contact moderators. It was suggested that we include a contact link in our Digests. However it was felt that they have lots of links in already, and it add confusion and the use of the wrong link. It is easy for Direct members to find the contact moderator link on the main website.

Settings

It was pointed out to a group owner that the photo settings in the control panel should be set to plain text as opposed to the html attachment setting otherwise people are going to have problems. ("Yahoo Mail services are notoriously broken; they do not enable genuine W3C compliant HTML-based email and they do not handle attachments correctly, using the proper MIME types in the correct manner.”) This could result in attachments being stripped out completely depending on the members system it seems.

The recommended setting we use  is HTML - Include Attachments as links.  However Edward things he is being a bit pessimistic, as though it maybe non compliant,  members are more bothered about function and for most it does work. 

Problems Sorted.

It was reported by a member that when they click on the 100px picture in the posting details nothing happens and they can only view the picture in its o reduced size. Edward agreed to add something to allow this. Some messages had been arriving for moderation containing just the member's email address. This is hopefully now fixed, but if you see one please report it. A few bugs were introduced in migrating the servers. They have all been fixed once reported. Please do report if you find something.

Questions & Answers

Q. A members post on FD just isn't making it to the board. Yahoo is rejecting it. We're seeing a few of these per day, where Yahoo wrongly thinks that a mail is spam (it looks like they are more aggressively rejecting mails now). It’s unlikely that we can do anything about this. Q. On the 'pending messages' page of Modtools we have a very easy way of reporting potential spammers . Could we please have a similar thing on 'Pending Members' which would enable us to report highly suspicious applicants? This will be looked at in the rewrite. Q. A member's posts are not getting through neither are those of his wife who has also tried. This turned out to be because of a dodgy link they were including in the post which Yahoo were blocking. Edward will look at whether we could do any checking for dodgy links ourselves. Q. Not all the information on my post shows up on the MyPosts tab. For instance the FOP. To save space we assume that you probably don't need to read it yourself. So we remove most of the information for the My Posts tab.

If you wish to join this group just send an email to freegle-tech-subscribe@yahoogroups.co.uk stating which group you moderate for. Any queries or need help! Send an email to support@ilovefreegle.org who will be able to deal with it or know someone who can.

Jean Tech Report November 15