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FurBuy Refactor Complete (almost)
14 years ago
So, I just finished working on the refactors for the live site, then ran the conversion script to move usernames to the new format, then copied all of the new scripts into place, and voila - the site is now using the new remote site linking system. Hoorah, right? Well, not quite... First of all this was a fairly major refactor of a lot of small segments of code across the whole site, practically. So I need folks to be extra vigilant about finding and reporting bugs, the odds that I nipped every bud and shaved the system without nicks is not super high (even programmers make mistakes, sheesh).
The other issue is that InkBunny has some strange behavior going on when I try to validate users, such that I can't actually verify users on IB. =P So rather than taking people's word for it, the InkBunny fields are there but they will never validate successfully right now - so if you try to link to your IB username and it doesn't "take", you know why. I need to get in touch with Starling and work out a way to do this, which might involve a nifty bi-directional security code system if he's got time to work with me on it. =)
Twitter and Facebook fields are there, but not setup for validation yet, I will try to get those done... Hmmm, prolly tomorrow. In the meantime, like InkBunny, you can try to add usernames to those fields and they simply will never validate.
I would like to add a bunch of IM connections too, but I don't know if they all offer a web API or user page system for verifying that an account exists. I guess ideally it'd be nice to add AIM, YIM, MSN, Xbox Live, Skype... Does anyone even still use ICQ these days? ;D If anyone knows about web validation with any of those IM systems, please feel free to let me know!
So, what other sites would you guys like to see FurBuy link accounts to? =)
The other issue is that InkBunny has some strange behavior going on when I try to validate users, such that I can't actually verify users on IB. =P So rather than taking people's word for it, the InkBunny fields are there but they will never validate successfully right now - so if you try to link to your IB username and it doesn't "take", you know why. I need to get in touch with Starling and work out a way to do this, which might involve a nifty bi-directional security code system if he's got time to work with me on it. =)
Twitter and Facebook fields are there, but not setup for validation yet, I will try to get those done... Hmmm, prolly tomorrow. In the meantime, like InkBunny, you can try to add usernames to those fields and they simply will never validate.
I would like to add a bunch of IM connections too, but I don't know if they all offer a web API or user page system for verifying that an account exists. I guess ideally it'd be nice to add AIM, YIM, MSN, Xbox Live, Skype... Does anyone even still use ICQ these days? ;D If anyone knows about web validation with any of those IM systems, please feel free to let me know!
So, what other sites would you guys like to see FurBuy link accounts to? =)
As for suggestions: WikiFur, so that people can learn more about the artist before they buy? (Of course, I'm kinda biased, but I use it for that purpose. )
As for WikiFur... It's not really a um... Go-to site for social networking and probably not really something most of our users are part of. =/ WikiFur really feels like a "hands-off, someone else writes about me" kind of place. I don't know anyone who is actually proud of their WikiFur page. =/ Let alone would send someone to it to "learn about them". Does that make sense?
I wasn't suggesting as a social networking site, more as "would the target audience of the page - the bidders, not the sellers - find it useful?" They're the people who are going to be reading it, after all.
I did a quick check of the latest ten auction posters, looking for WikiFur articles. Four out of the ten had them appeared to have them - Catwolf - Ravenscroft - Tiera Foxglove - Isil Bastet. Of those, two had accounts; the history of the other two had substantial anonymous edits with IPs in the region of the subjects. Three of the four started the articles themselves.
Now, would users would choose to link to them? I don't know. You could ask those four! I'd wager it'd be more popular than ICQ, though.
As for us choosing a name that didn't specifically indicate AUCTIONS (bid), those features will be rolling out soon. =) We're adding storefronts, catalogs and shopping carts with 3rd party order fulfillment soon, and also still investigating the whole commission system thing. We wanted FurBUY to cover the purchase or trade of all sorts of types, not just auctions. But one thing at a time, ya know, getting the auction process down solidly before moving on to other things is a good idea. We've just been candy-coating parts of the site with either more new useful features or filling in holes that have been in the system for a long time now. Once we feel that FurBuy is really the best auction system it can realistically be, we'll finish up the storefronts then make sure that's solid and then carry on to the commission system. At the same time, we're doing whatever we can to cross-integrate with other furry websites and social networks.
The non-auction stuff sounds neat! I know you've been talking about that with others and I can see that working out. It's certainly an area ripe for expansion (I assume you heard about Outfoxed).
As for Outfoxed, nope I hadn't heard of them! Looks like they have a similar concept but it's missing many of the features and bells and whistles that we had in mind, including all of our social networking support and such. Perhaps we can discuss integration with them if they're interested.
This of course means that any user on FurBuy can link to ANY valid page on WikiFur and we can't ensure that it's theirs, but that's no worse than any other site we link to at present besides FA. Ideally we would like to be doing a security key exchange system which allows a user to request a remote link key from their account on either system, then present it to the other system which will do a handshake and share user account names/ids with the other server. This not only establishes the links bidirectionally, but securely because it requires a user to login on both sides in order to validate that they own both accounts.
I believe you can add "&redirects" to the query URL in order to get automatic resolution, if it helps.
[It would be possible to ensure account ownership by requiring an edit containing a key in the edit summary in the user's list of recent contributions, but that wouldn't be much use because people aren't likely to want to link to their user page - which often doesn't contain anything - but the article about them. That also requires that they have an account, which isn't always the case, and that the article about them has the same name, which it might not.]
I'm GreenReaper on dA, FA, Inkbunny, SoFurry and greenreaper on LiveJournal and all but Inkbunny were previously set. I know FA worked yesterday, because I repeatedly tried to add WikiFur and I got four notes (on that topic, it might make sense to cache a positive verification response for a particular name so you don't get these if you come back and add or change another site later).
So you can't set ANY of your remote site usernames on FurBuy now? o.O InkBunny and Facebook should be the only two which cannot validate right now (mainly due to issues on those sites respectively which I'm working on alleviating or finding workarounds for). I just tested my accounts on all of the other sites and they are successfully validating and linking, even WikiFur... =/