We've been using Cloudflare for a couple years now and what it does is route all traffic through Cloudflare's servers, stopping many malicious bot programs from reaching the site in addition to greatly improving site speed. Since it reduces bandwidth, it also reduces the load on the server. The service has definitely had its hiccups, but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.
With the Pro plan, YWS should now load faster than ever. I've done some quick tests, and have found that the site is loading about 25% to 50% faster than before for first-time visitors. Better yet, the Pro plan has advanced security protection against threats such as SQL injection attacks, which can happen when a programmer forgets to sanitize user input. Click here for an XKCD comic illustrating this. I think I've done a pretty good job at sanitizing input, but in this case, it doesn't hurt to be paranoid. Having an extra layer of protection will help a lot.
So far, I'm very happy with it.
Edit
This may or may not have been due to Cloudflare Pro, but the server has had a lot more free memory in the last 24 hours than it normally does. Since having a lot of free memory is kind of a bad thing (you want a server to be using all available memory, and not a bit more or a bit less), I moved .5 GB of ram back over from the web server to the database.
Bug fixes: - Blank notifications are no more - Blank avatars are fixed - Some portfolio bugs have been fixed
Added more and better club notifications: - You only get notifications for new wall comments, meaning you won't get notifications for every reply to a comment - But you will get notifications to a comment you made - Your will also get notifications of replies to a comment if you yourself replied to that comment - Last but not least, if you're the author or admin of a club, you'll get notifications when you need to approve/deny a request to join
Facebook & Twitter buttons: - Adding social sharing buttons to literary works - Also added them when you submit a work
Review / comment without registering: This is finally working right. From now on, anyone can reply to a literary work without having to create an account. So if you share your work on Facebook or Twitter, your friends or followers can comment away.
Changed the review toggle switch: Not as fun to click anymore, but more helpful.
Stylesheet changes: The fancy buttons are all done using the CSS from Twitter's Bootstrap stylesheet. However, our fancy buttons were out of date, so I updated everything to the latest version. Also added the Bootstrap stylesheet data for icons in the fancy buttons.
Eventually, I'll completely merge the YWS stylesheets with Bootstrap, but that's a very tall task.
Just some slight changes to the user bar. I made it a little taller to make it a little easier to access on a tablet, and also changed the icons to take advantage of the new stylesheets (see above post). Additionally, you can now close the "Me" menu by clicking anywhere on the page.
Clicking away to close the Me menu is fantastic, and the updated fancy buttons are good. The new icons on the user bar aren't showing for me, though - getting the broken-Unicode-style squares with alphanumeric codes in, even after a bunch of playing around with my encoding and language settings. ><
EDIT: Either you changed something, or Firefox decided it liked them after all. Thanks!
"The fact is, I don't know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn't collapse when you beat your head against it." --Douglas Adams
I've run into that too, Cadi. I have an idea of what's causing it, so it's not your browser. Something to do with odd caching issues on the server end. It'll be fixed soon.
Nate, sir! I really love the new changes and you have my gratitude eternally. Unfortunately, when I open YWS on the tablet, the main screen is a bit too small for my eyes to enjoy. Maybe the userbar above is too big?
Edit Oh, there are also times when the Information notification after posts doesn't appear to have a white background color. A bug maybe?
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"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach
