CHANGELOG: Myrick Multimedia 2.0.8.8

Every day there seems to be a new improvement made during the evening hours, something else for me to add to the list of design or bug fixes. Still ain’t perfect yet – and unless I live in heaven above all the sudden will never be absolutely perfect. I’m feeling a lot better about the past few rounds of tackling some of the problems here and there on the sites with the hopes of providing a much better experience overall on the Myrick Multimedia network of sites.

Plenty of things still left to do though, along with new items I want to work on in the future. And here we are, already getting deep into October and there’s still so much to do…

Below are the latest items I’ve knocked off a list of things I know need some form of either repair or improvement, and previewing a couple of new features.

NEW – Cryptogram (Beta)

Subscribers will now be able to enjoy another new game I’m testing in Beta mode: Cryptogram!

Solve the mystery of each famous saying – right now with a limited supply – within 5 minutes to advance to the next round with points on the board. A hint is available with 100 points deducted, with 10000 points available to start. (If you can solve it within a second, then you can make that total…)

Since this is a Beta version of the game, it is only available to Monthly+ subscribers for the time being. Getting tops scores on the leaderboard is also a subscriber-only feature for Monthly+ users of the site.

Those who want to share their comments about the game are welcome to send them to info@myrickmultimedia.com, especially if they run into a bug.

Design fixes

I took a few minutes the other night back to make some spacing improvements on the front page of Myrick Multimedia’s main site with the boxes used to showcase the logins, about me, TeePublic store, and some other functions that are overall useful.

Some other minor improvements as well on the front concerning the spacing of content previews for Subscriber Video, and linking to other items around the Today Network and Kevin the Editor.

The next major design changes for the front pages of all the sites will be to disable Google AdSense auto placement for banner ads, and place them manually to fix box positioning. Expect that in mid-October sometime after getting past some upcoming events that’ll keep me busy for the next week or so.

One design fix I’m implementing in the upcoming design round: When I made the standard sunshine for this logo set, I for some reason lost the file where the new sunshine was saved. So guess who gets to design that again? This guy.

So it goes, I guess. But it only took a little time to redo the file, so back to fixing more of the branding with the next changelog updates.

A major redesign was completed on the Signup Page for potential new subscribers, and an option was added back for those who only want short term access to read: a 7-Day Pass priced at $1.99.

OTHER Design fixes:

Featured boxes – featured photo wasn’t getting the full black border around it from the top down on Haralson Today, Kevin the Editor, Paulding Today, Polk Today, Today News Wire & Today Sports Wire. Those were updated to include some padding.

Bug fixes

The bug that was causing a problem with the scoreboards displaying the correct upcoming/current games was finally fixed when I switched from ChatGPT to Claude AI’s coding mode for the sections of the shortcode powering the scoreboards that needed repair. Had it done within a couple of iterations and voila! Perfecto.

That will allow for the scoreboards to be dynamically displayed and to move forward with team pages that I want to utilize starting with the winter sports season for additional access to content directly for fans of specific high school teams covered on Today Sports Wire. (This will be part of the 2.0.9-2.1.2 series of updates more than likely. I had been working on this particular fix to get to the next steps on team pages.)

Major debugging work was finally completed for the Pick’ems plugin, which makes it a little late in the season for subscribers to take part – but I’ve thought ahead to that fact.

I’ll be setting up games each week for the playoffs to include not just teams we cover, but also will be working on some features for next season.

Football this year? Well… it’s been a struggle. I can blame technical issues and other struggles behind the scenes, but honestly? Burnout is real. I’ve just watched a lot of football over the past 20 years on Friday nights. Maybe it was good for me to take a break. What do they say? Punt and let the defense take over for a bit. Then get back on offense fast. Sometimes you go four and out. Sometimes you score.

Thankfully this round, Claude AI’s multiple rounds of trial and error got Pick’ems working again, and the upcoming set of downs will be available for the start of the playoffs, and I’ll be getting into picks for bowl season with college and the playoffs this year too.

Other Bug Fixes:

Notifications for Haralson Today, Today News Wire and Today Sports Wire were inactive, and are now working like they should be. Apparently this was a settings issue that was user error (ahem, KtE’s fault…) but now are activated and can be utilized by any users of the site – subscription not required.

Roadmap

The 2.0.9 update will be the next update likely available in November, starting with the addition of the games.myrickmultimedia.com section of the site, which will move games over to its own independent install with its own consolidated infrastructure. Some future games will require a subscription to play, or some features of free games (having your top scores on the community scoreboard, for instance) will also require an Monthly+ subscription to participate in and record leaderboard scores for the community.

I’m guessing the 2.1 updates will begin sometime in January as the holidays will likely keep my schedule busy for a while. But don’t worry – the few days around Christmas is usually a good time for me to get to work on various issues going on that I’ll get to fix during the Changelog rounds.