Update to the Massively makeover
Hello, readers! It's been a few weeks since our massive Massively site overhaul landed, and our web gurus have been scurrying in the background fixing bugs and responding to your reports. Not all of the bugs have been vaporized just yet, but we'd like to update you on the status of some of the problems that most affect you.
RSS -- Our most-reported problem over the last few weeks revolved around our RSS feeds. Many users reported a doubling-up of posts as the site spewed out two copies of every post. Others reported an inability to subscribe to specific categories and bloggers, and still others were finding that every RSS feed was producing copies of the podcast (great news for podcast fans, I guess!). Our techs currently report that all of our RSS feeds should be functioning now, but they note that many RSS readers do not well tolerate the kind of switcheroo we had to do. If you're still having problems, unsubscribe again from all of your Massively feeds and try resubbing one more time. I can tell you that I am using Google Reader and stopped having problems a few days ago. If you need to resub to specific feeds, this will help: for the writers, visit the individual pages on our team portal; for columns and features, hop over to our columns list; and for specific games, click on your chosen game in the games list for a category with a feed button.
There's more behind the cut... follow along!
Registration -- Our web team also tells us that registration is also functioning correctly and that any ongoing problems are likely due to a few issues you yourselves can control. If you're still showing up as unverified and unable to claim your old name, it's either because you're not using the same email address you linked with your original name, or it's because you had registered to post on Joystiq or one of our other sister sites in the past. In other words, you can't claim a name you owned unless you know the email and password you used for it. I can offer some other anecdotal advice too: When you're trying to get your account working, avoid Chrome. I know, I know, I use it too (I'm using it to post this!), but I have better success when I temporarily switch to Firefox for tasks like uploading my avatar and changing my password. I assume it's funky on mobile devices too. It's a quirk in the system, and I don't know when it will be fixed. We also had reports that readers using older versions of Internet Explorer were unable to comment at all -- upgrade to the newest and you should be fine.
Joystiq is not an evil overlord -- Lastly, we wanted to address concerns some of you have about Joystiq. Let us be clear: We have always been a part of the Joystiq network. We're friends. We play bridge together on Sundays. Our URL change and the tiny dribble of rebranding reflect a relationship that's been in effect for our entire existence (three years), and it continues to benefit us. But Joystiq is not influencing our tolerance for bad behavior in the comment threads here. We made our once-tacit code of conduct official way back in May, long before we knew about the site overhaul. If we delete your comment, it's because your comment has been reported by another reader and we determined you've broken our code of conduct. We want to keep this a friendly atmosphere for all, without fear of anyone being personally attacked for your (or our) views. So... play nice!
Thank you -- To all the posters who've offered constructive feedback and posted bug reports in our comments and team mail and Twitter, thank you. You rock! You are the reason the web team is fixing stuff and making Massively even better going forward. The posters who vote down staff comments when we're trying to help you... not so much. So constructive people, keep it up! We know we have many bugs still to be worked out, so let us know here in the comments or drop us a note via the red "tip us" button if you encounter additional issues so we can pass them along to the techs.
