#development updates

Hello, Tracker users! I’m coming to you today with a feature update that’s been requested for a while and I’m glad to finally bring it to you -- bulk tag management! The “Tools” section of the site now has an option labeled “Manage Tags” and by clicking on it, you will be taken to a screen where you can select any tag currently on your tracked threads and update or delete it across all threads at once:

As always, feel free to send me a message if you encounter any issues with the feature or have any questions on how to use it effectively. Thanks so much to everyone who requested this update. (There will also be another update very soon for bulk managing your tracked partners’ screen names if they update their blog URL.)

Happy writing!

Oh my God, you guys.

A number of you have reported, over the past few months, an issue with created threads duplicating themselves mysteriously for no immediately obvious reason. I don’t mind telling you that this bug was baffling; it has been driving me crazy ever since it was first reported because there did not seem to be any logical reason for it to be happening.

However! The nice thing about computers is that they never actually do anything without a reason, and I have finally tracked down the cause of this issue and, I believe, resolved it. (I’m happy to explain the technical details to anyone interested, but suffice to say, it was a super subtle little bug that required very specific circumstances to reproduce, which explains why it was so utterly confusing.)

The fix has gone out to the site this morning, and after reloading your browser, you should no longer see instances of threads duplicating.

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed information about their experience with this bug, particularly @buchananbarnes1991 and @sheriffofthesecretpolice who both put in a great deal of time to provide me with data that helped me narrow down the bug’s ultimate cause. 

As always, feel free to get in touch with me, either by Tumblr ask or at [email protected], if you encounter this or any other bug in the future, or have any suggestions on things that would improve your experience with the app. Thanks for your patience while this got resolved, and happy writing!

Hello, RPThreadTracker users!

I’ve been somewhat quiet on the development front in the last few months, so I wanted to give a general update on the state of RPThreadTracker and what’s going on going forward. 

Blank Screen Bug Fixed

A number of people have approached me to report a recent bug wherein after deleting or archiving a thread, the tracker screen would go blank and have to be reloaded. I have pushed a fix for this and you should no longer see the bug manifesting.

Duplicate Threads Bug

This issue continues to elude me. I’ve spoken to a number of people who have experienced this issue -- recently created threads being duplicated when refreshing the tracker -- but I have not been able to determine any consistency behind when it occurs, nor have I been able to reproduce the issue myself. I have a standing request for anyone who can cause the issue to occur with a consistent set of steps to please get in touch with me as soon as possible. In the meantime, I am continuing to troubleshoot this and hope to have some sort of more concrete update at some point soon.

Performance Issues

The biggest performance issue with the site post-redesign resulted from the servers that I was using getting completely overloaded and causing intermittent five-to-ten-minute outages. I resolved this several months ago and have had no further reports of the issue, thankfully.

However, I do still receive reports of the site being slow or sticky on occasion or for particular users. This is one of my top investigation priorities at the moment and I hope to be releasing further performance improvements over the next few months. Thank you for your patience on this subject, and if you are encountering particular performance issues and would like to help me isolate the issues in question, please feel free to reach out to me.

Future Features

The current main feature updates I have as next steps for the site are:

Bulk tag and partner editing and deletion

Widgets for displaying your tracker information on your blog

Removing the need to reload all threads when a particular thread is updated/deleted/added.

Customizing which columns appear in thread tables for each user

Allowing users to change the email address on their account

These are large features and most of them are easier said than done, but I am still actively developing the site and hope to have a few of these updates in the coming year.

General Development Status

Unfortunately, with Tumblr’s recent policy changes, usage of the tracker has diminished somewhat. My task prioritization (and motivation, to some extent) has been proportionally slower as a result. Nevertheless, I am posting the above partially to hold myself accountable to stay focused on the above tasks and make sure to keep moving forward to improve the site.

I also have another project in the works intended to support the roleplay community in general; it is, frankly, going very slowly but is nevertheless in progress. I hope to have further updates on this soon.

Thanks as usual to everyone who has reached out with information about bugs or desired features; your messages are always a huge help. :) Happy writing!