[OLD] Updates.

[Grim]

I've decided to keep a running log of all the changes the site has undergone from its inception. Just to see how far we've gone.

So far:

August 13, 2006, 2:37 PM: The Raven Republic was founded.

August 15: Implemented the forum skin. Added banners and whatnot.

August 16: Portal fixed. Width was becoming a bother so I decided to make it uniform with the rest of the forums.

August 17: Did some minor revising here and there, cleaning up the place a bit and revising the rules some. This thing's become like my favorite pet, LOL.

August 21: Put up the chat system. It's free, so it had to have advertisements.
Ah well, can't have everything I suppose.

August 25: Put up the Animation section.

August 27: Put up the Paintshop.

August 30: Wow! Implemented a ton of changes. You guys will only see the end product though.
Went back to the original skin and widened the forums (it's much simpler and cleaner this way IMO), added a border to the banner, and some other minute stuff here and there.

Also, I made all smilies clickable.
This is a test: ) -_- <_< >
LOLZ

September 2: You see that little icon at the top? The one next to the web url? Yeah, I made it into our flag instead of Oracle's head. For better representation, and all that. I also added the Formula Front design section for those who have the game. Finally, I added an (invisible) stat counter to keep track of the hits this forum is getting. Wala lang, haha. Nag-kick in lang yung pagka-OC ko.

September 7: Consolidated everything in the Community section into one forum, since everything there is about the community, LOL. Also put it in first, so that it's within easy reach of anyone. Just to get you guys to jump-start things. Finally, I added the FAQs and Help Archives section in anticipation of an FAQ coming up by Serene. Good going, dude. Hope this section gets more contributions in the future.

September 13: Added the ability to expand and collapse forum categories, they're the little + and - signs on the right side of the forum titles. Yay! Also, I added the ability to see what other people are doing, under the field 'Current Activity' in their profiles. I also removed those ugly underlines in every link. Finally, I put in code to identify whether a member is currently online or not. Everyone, check them out!

September 15: Removed the link to the Portal, as it really serves no purpose other than distracting us from posting.
If you've set it as the page for your bookmarks, update them so that the forums are now the ones that pop up.

[Grim]

September 16: Because I'm a fickle kind of guy (haha), pinalitan ko na naman yung menu natin. It looks better this time, IMHO. May drop down menu pa! Everything's still there, though. Nadagdagan pa nga eh. On that note, malapit nang malagay yung builders. Kasi hihiramin ko lang yung ginawa ni Brian(xfighter) na html files eh... I'm still waiting for his permission. I've loaded them onto a host already, yun nalang ang hinihintay. I'm kinda proud of myself right now.

Oh and uh, I noticed that the Search function doesn't work... fixed that now though, by adding a custom search engine.

September 18: Whoa, success nga ang site... nasa Google na tayo! WOOT! (Try searching for 'raven republic') I realize that that's a highly specific search though. I'm hoping that in a few weeks, keywords like 'armored core' and 'philippines' or 'pinoy ac players' will bring us up as a result.

September 22: Added quick links in the Design and Paintshop forums to the subforums inside them. Also, with the help of Fallen from ACO, added an affiliate box, complete with links to the site that he runs, Gamer's Generation, as well as ACO. Branching out, people.

September 23: We're now in the Communities section of ACO as a redirect link. This should gather here all those who didn't see the long Filipino AC players thread in that place. Seems like everything's going smoothly now.

September 26: The Silent Line builder, coded by Cyberstorm, is now up.

September 30: The rest of the builders made by Brian (NX and NB) are now up.

October 4: EJ, the admin of ACO, was kind enough to place a link to our forums on the main news page of that site, which can be seen <a href='http://www.armoredcoreonline.com/news' target='_blank'>here</a>. Our flag's flying high, guys! Pinoy pride all the way! )

October 8: Separated the Announcements and Concerns into their own forums, in anticipation of news that should be visible for all to see (yup, I'm talking about the upcoming mascot choice).

October 10: Began the Encyclop

[Grim]

December 7: Added a ton of new, fun smilies. Everyone, start choosing your favorite! I know I already have some. Hehe.

Here they are, in all their random glory:
- Bang bang!
- Bye... *sniff sniff*
- Our equivalent of the WWE steel chair lolz
- For people who 'deserve' it. XD
- For people who can't stop looking at all those anime girls. *cough cough*
- This is either fear, or someone crapping in their pants, haha.
- Fear the flamethrower! The flamethrower is the l33test gun in the game.
- Essentially reserved for people who go crazy in their posts.
- My favorite. Cold blooded chainsaw murder. Tasty.
- The smiley speaks for itself.
- Just an animated version of )
- This one is specially for Necron.
- Another animated version, this time of B)
- A greater degree of , I guess.
- For people who have tears of joy from all this randomness.
- Hahaha this just pwns.
- Arg!

The ones you can do by simply typing out the general look of the smiley are not clickable. The ones that are have specific keywords in them, bound on either end by a colon. Don't worry, if you forget what character combination makes which smiley come out, you can always just click the 'Show All' option at the bottom of the Clickable Smilies section when you post.

Guys, let's not turn into smiley-whores, shall we? Easy lang sa mga click, hehe.

[Grim]

December 11:

Guys, let's not turn into smiley-whores, shall we? Easy lang sa mga click, hehe.

And yet... here I am, adding yet more smilies. NiX, I'm afraid you may have opened a floodgate here somewhere... XD

- For bright ideas, like adding new smilies.
- Sir! Yes, sir!
- Beating a dead horse, like me saying LR's balance sucks. Hehe.

[NiX]

Hahah you can never have too many smilies!

[Grim]

December 11:

And so on it goes... XDDD

:gangsta: - Al Capone's here again.
- Bring it on!
- For zapping those annoying members.
- For no nos.
- A smaller version of
- For uhh... wierd people? Lolz
- For people who hate all these new smilies.
- WTF indeed.

If ya'll got some specific smilies in mind, just PM them to me.

December 13: Welcome our three new mods into their new responsibilities.

Fox - Armored Kodakan and Writer's Corner
wanzerfreak - Theory and Concept
jonevangelist - AC Stuff and Art

Take note, these people were chosen first and foremost on how active they were (as of the time of the choosing). How long they've been here was a close second, but the primary reason was really how often they could get and stay online.

[AEA1]

congrats to the new mods...

more power to the republic!

[wanzerfreak]

FOR THE REPUBLIC!

[Fox]

FOR THE REPUBLIC!

Ditto!

[Grim]

December 15: Alright, this is probably going to be the last batch of smiley updates that will come from me. Ayoko na pagkatapos nito, masyado nang marami eh, haha. Of course, you guys are still welcome to suggest some others to me through PM.

- Blah blah blah blah...
- I see what you did thar.
- Contrary to tears of joy (), this one is just of plain tears.
- Hmm, I wonder who's going to use this first? XD
:$ - Do I spy blushing?
- Literally rolling on the floor, not necessarily laughing.
- Excited? Maybe.
- Ermm...
- Ngek.
- I think this happens just before
- You did something bad, didn't you?

Also, please take note. I've changed some of the emoticon scripts (not that they're used that much anyway, so it's not a real big problem), and put only a few that I think are going to be used most up front in the clickable area. As for the rest, if you're really bent on using them... you'll have to learn the language.

December 23: 2 days 'til Christmas! Anyway, under suggestion from the members, new forums were created under the Writer's Corner to separate the literary works from their discussions. Also, renamed the Art section to the Gallery, kasi mas astig pakinggan. Hehe.

January 1, 2007: Happy New Year everyone! I put back the old built-in search engine as it seems to work fine now. It seems that all it needed was some time to index the forums. This should help members a lot more when creating topics.

January 4: Allowed guests to see the whole package: avatars and signatures. Also set the topic display cut-off date for inactive topics in the LR Design section to one month.

January 5: Put back the 'Edited by:' legend, since it facilitated things like verifying when posts were really finished, as well as when submitting designs. Don't worry people, I'll abide by this rule too.

January 7: Limited what guests and validating members can see. Only The Rules, The Help Desk, Theory and Concept and LR Designs are visible now.

January 17: Put up a front page, finally! It's a blog structure similar to other sites, which can double as a content management system I guess. Created a new link up in the menu which leads to that. Moved the forums to <a href='http://ravenrepublic-forums.cjb.net' target='_blank'>http://ravenrepublic-forums.cjb.net</a>.

January 18: Put up the Jukebox. AC4 OST up.

January 19: AC:LR OST now up. Also, put in a new category viewable only by guests to register with us.

January 23: Fixed and consolidated the menu a little. Some links have been moved.

January 24: Put up links to the Gallery and the Writer's Corner in the menu, since those two are getting more and more attention these days.

January 27: Just added in some new links to good non-AC sites.

January 31: Finally finalized that damn jukebox. Whew!

February 15: Blacktech skin nearly finalized. Added AC4 to the designs section, as well as reshuffled the whole section itself.

February 18: Put up the Aphotic skin.

February 22: Started on the skin changer project.

February 23: Finished the implementation of the skin changer. Invision Blue and Aphotic skins now work, although not yet perfectly.

February 25: Finished both Invision Blue and Aphotic skin compatibility for the skin changer.

February 27: Added some more images for the Aphotic skin. Also put up <a href='http://ravenrepublic.net/gallery/index.php' target='_blank'>the photo gallery</a>.

February 28: Renamed the Gallery into the Sketchbook to lessen confusion.

March 2: Allowed guests and validating members to see the Writings section.

March 11: Finally put the forums back up. RR is now on IPB 1.3.1.

March 18: Moved everything to new servers. Got new skins.

March 19: Added a better calendar, and better search.

March 25: Put the Gallery back up.

March 26: Put the menu back up. Restoration is almost complete.

March 29: Turned pruning off in the LR designs section.

April 4: Fixed the header in the portal. Implemented the banner version for the IPB v2 skin.

April 8: Put up the Arcade! Also added automatic subtraction of member post count upon post deletion, the current activity field in user profiles, the online/offline status markers, and a 'who was online today' mod.

April 9: Put up profile fields for PSN IDs, XBL Gamertags and Wii Numbers.

April 11: Added quite a lot of new modifications:

BB Code mod
Emoticon mod
Enhanced Topics mod
Member IPs mod
Spider Management mod

Boy is this going to hurt if I ever have to move the forums again. XD

April 14: Did some optimization tasks on the the CSS files, as well as resynchronization of all the skins.

April 16: Fixed some minor skin issues and added a new forum: Tech.

April 30: Allowed AC Media to be viewable to outsiders.

May 18: Opened up the forums to the public once again. Just being a good netizen and giving free information to those who have the time to look.

June 22: Couldn't resist. So here are two more smilies.

- Domo-kun cannot close mouth!
- Arr!

July 9: A LOOONG time of not updating stuff on the site. Pretty much because I'm always busy. But anyway, I shut off some of the forums in an effort to lessen some of the spambots we're getting.

[Grim]

July 12: I'd like everyone to know that I've appointed Serene as one of the new forum polices I'm testing out. Hope you do a good job on those spambots man.

August 20: Finally, after a long long time of disregarding the skins, I put in the menus for all of them. Finally.

September 21: Redid layout of forums in Miscellaneous.

September 25: I knew all this journalizing would pay off sooner or later. v3!

October 2: Put up ravenTwilight.

October 9: On the day I shouldn't be tweaking RR around, I did. Fixed the skin up some and added the "Users viewing thread" plugin.

October 17: Just did some tooling around with the Shoutbox module, as well as some minor changes to the portal's CSS.

October 23: Just tooled around with a lot of the stuff on the portal. Fixed positions of the blocks, added search.

October 27: Activated the new error pages featuring cute chibi Sophie.

October 29: WE'RE ON MOONLIGHT SWORD!

October 31: Happy Halloween everyone! Put the menu back up, as well as adding Master of Arena, AC2 and Another Age builders.

November 5: Added the Forum Games subforum.

November 13: Put up the oekaki.

November 18: Put up the Game Help subforum.

December 2: Upgraded boards. Added news forum and quick theme plugin. Borked the arcade. :/

December 3: Put the arcade back up. Fixed forum icons. Right-aligned ravenTwilight's post details.

December 5: Put back old ravenTwilight skin as version 2. Found less bright buttons for forum functions.

December 6: Added automatic image resizer.

December 12: I finally updated the rules. Finally.

December 17: Moved Gaming out of Media and into the Miscellaneous light.

January 14: Made Lord_Leperman Super Mod.

January 21: Removed the forum moderator lines.

March 3: Domain change! Finally did it, after almost a year of good activity.

March 6: Redid some of the skin menus. Also added gamertags to postbits.

March 10: Added the Mugnanimous group, in honor of that humongous mug of beer. Might add a group graphic later.

March 21: Added a link to the Arcade on the Portal.

March 24: Finally finished that big media upload I had planned. Also, fixed the portal skin.

July 20: After a long drought of updates, upgraded the forums. Also, finally put up ER.

August 21: Upgraded site software.

September 20: Upgraded boards to latest version. Introduced ravenTwilight v3, created new forums for the Encyclopedia Republika and for Answer designs. Redid some smiley code.

September 23: Finished porting all old skins to the newest version of the boards.

September 28: Added the gentleman smiley.

October 13: Reverted the online status postbit back to textual form.

October 21: Added back the welcome message for guests.

[Grim]

Added three new smilies. Haha

- the facepalm
- rock on
- let's fight like a gentlemans!

February 17: Updated the boards once again.

April 29: Big update! Updated the site software, reactivated the Arcade, and finally got that "Who's in Chat" block session down.

[Serene]

Hey Grim, I like the way the number of people in the chat room is displayed on the lower part of the front page...
Asteeg...

[Grim]

Hey Grim, I like the way the number of people in the chat room is displayed on the lower part of the front page...
Asteeg...

Yeah I finally found working code for that one. Hehe.

[Grim]

Hi RR, please join me in welcome some of our members to their new posts.

Nix has been moved up to Super Mod. He's been really active over the past two-plus years, and he remains a hardcore old-school AC fan. Also, he's a really good source of info on cellphones! Yes.

Jake has also been promoted to Super Mod. He's been more than generous with us since he joined, sharing his home and other resources for the majority of our meets. It also greatly helps that he's had extensive mod experience over on Minegarde.

Taking over Nix's post on the Designs forum is Bert. Bert, as most of you probably know, has been with RR since the beginning, helping keep this place alive. He's here almost every goddamn day, which is great.

Rick didn't get to receive this type of welcoming when I made him Super Mod, so I'll take this chance now to do so. Rick may be the biggest reason as to why we're all still active. He's the one who pursues and pushes many of our meets to fruition, with all those detailed posts on the what, when and where.

I know the position of Moderator might not mean much for us here since we've never really had a heavy need for it, but like I told these folks, I consider it a badge of status, and more importantly, a form of thanks, for all that they've done for the community. So congrats, and thanks.