CHANGELOG – Myrick Multimedia 2.0.9

Myrick Multimedia’s latest changes and additions get you and I another step closer toward finished product in a long-awaited update to the site infrastructure that has been ongoing for a while now.

The 2.0.9 update includes a number of areas of improvement overall on the site infrastructure, plus additional new features heading into the final round before we hit the 2.1 stable update, and I stop futzing with the site so much.

Myrick Multimedia Games

Well, finally got a project that started in the fall completed with the launch of the new portal specifically for the various Games I’ve been developing for the site for news readers to enjoy. The number of games is also increasing from Cryptogram, SevenUp, Sudoku, Sports Trivia and Word Search, plus two new additions that you can read about below. (One is free-to-play, the other requires subscription.)

Expect new games to be released as I have the time to finish work on them (well, getting back on AI and forcing it to do my will.)

Let’s take a look at two of the new games available:

NEW! Arcade Basketball

Out of all the sports to cover, basketball might be my favorite. Indoors, I can sit down for most of the game, and most importantly: it is fast-paced and full of randomness. The bounce of a ball can determine whether a shot knocks off the rim or lands for nothing but net.

Hence why my first sports-based game is for basketball fans of all ages: Basketball Arcade.

Just like the classic game you find in old arcades and Pizza Huts built in the 20th century, Arcade Basketball is all about luck and speed. You get 40 shots over a 30 second period to make 20 baskets in the first round, with each round getting more difficult as you have to score more to make it further.

In testing, I’ve only gotten up to Round 2 so far (I’ve not made it easy for sure…) but give it a go and you might find you’ll be spending half your day trying to beat it. Fortunately for readers, I only wasted about 30 minutes or so in testing playing, so maybe y’all might have better luck than I did advancing in the game.

If it is too hard, drop me a line and I’ll work on it: bugs and feature requests alike can always be shared with me at info@myrickmultimedia.com.

Arcade Basketball in beta mode is free for Monthly+ subscribers to enjoy.

NEW! Chess

This free-to-play version of Chess comes courtesy of open source software development on Github, but has been incorporated into the Games platform with some minor modifications to get it to work. You can play against each other on the same device whenever you’re bored, or try your hand at beating the computer.

MM Store

This is one that has been on my list for a good, good long while.

Technically, Myrick Multimedia’s store has been active for years at this point, but I’ve done what I consider a BAD job of promoting it to the public. I know what you’re thinking as I write this: a news guy who doesn’t promote his own products? How dumb is that?!

Extremely dumb. 🙂

However I’m taking steps to rectify the situation and have put together a page with a variety of designs here on the Myrick Multimedia side of things, and updated the store on the TeePublic side of things.

Myrick Multimedia partners with TeePublic to run our storefront and dropship products that are printed with our designs. A small cut of the sales go to myself for creating the designs.

I’ll be updating this page every quarter at the least to include new products themed around seasons, or for whatever fun idea I come up with while I should be working on other projects. (That happens more than you’d think.)

Check out the new store page here, and look into TeePublic regularly for sales.

Chat with Kevin

There have always been ways to reach me when you need to: phone, text, email, social media messenger systems. Communication isn’t exactly the problem – just the speed of the response.

In an effort to change that problem, I grabbed some off-the-shelf software, got the AI to write a simple snippet to inject it, and voila! Instant chat from within the website. To my annoyance, it is one of those pops up on the bottom right of the screen when you’re trying to do things solutions.

Chat is only available on Myrick Multimedia’s main site for contact queries generally, or on membership profile pages as an instant support connection.

You don’t have to worry about an email getting stuck in spam, or that I might have missed the message because it was sent via Facebook messenger or another platform I don’t always check daily.

The new chat feature tells me when new messages are coming in wherever I am, meaning that if you have a problem with your account, a request for news coverage or just have a question, I’m able to get to you faster than ever before.

So if you need help from me, I’m able to get to you faster than ever before. Just don’t abuse the system.

Note: While I’m am self-hosting this chat system, I am requiring that individuals include their name and email address to participate as an effort to ensure that bots aren’t sending useless and time-consuming messages to me. Be sure to include the reason you’re reaching out to get a faster response.

Other update notes

Added a plugin to provide activity logs, which required an update to the Terms and Conditions of the site and privacy policy for 2025. Additional updates will be provided on that front in the future, but mainly it is a security and activity tracking measure on my end to help me keep track of items I need to fix potentially (as bugs) and also when I make fixes as well (that I can later add to the list of changelog items.)

Added a custom plugin to help ban IP addresses that are attempting to login into accounts illicitly.

Updated to WordPress 6.9 during this latest round.

Design updates and fixes

Myrick Multimedia Advertising’s front page got a major redesign, along with the overall theme structure to comply with the Today Networks 1.5 theme changes. A major price decrease for the cost of advertising by the day, week and month was also completed and announced on October 30, but then increased back to regular pricing at the start of January.

Login page had a color issue that I had to fix. Seems to be fine now across the board? Sure. I’ll go with that for now.

Removed: Legacy SevenUp, Sudoku and Word Search pages from Polk, Paulding and Haralson Today sites.

Updated: All the logos to increase their scaling size overall, and provide new designs to output for updated t-shirts on TeePublic. Those logos were updated on social media first, and then changed out on the sites.

Bug Fixes

Ad Impression and Click Tracking – This one has been a headache! I’m not sure why, but when I switched over to the new software, ad tracking through the use of the server system I’ve implemented stopped tracking individual ads as they are placed on pages. Instead, it only seems to be tracking when one ad is placed on one page, and that’s it. Kind of a pain. Especially when you have to manually update 66 different ad placement patterns (give or take) across multiple site instances, and the code that injects the ads into posts.

Let me tell you, it is indeed a *pain*.

Fired up Claude again for this one, and came up with a solution that would avoid some of the tracking issues I’ve been having with the way they are done, so that should be (finally) fixed now but I’ll say for now as a “priority” update, it needs more data for a few days before I can call it completely repaired. We’ll see after a round of testing is completed.

(Editor’s note: after several days of the new update implemented for ad tracking, I noticed that clicks are still not being included. That will require some additional work which I hope to have completed by the next update for 2.0.9.1. It isn’t that clicks aren’t happening, they just are being recorded.)

Roadmap

I haven’t updated this in a bit, but the direction one goes in when working on something this big and complicated can sometimes take unexpected forks and turns on the road to updates. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say in the moment.

Here’s some areas of improvement/addons I would like to finish in the coming weeks:

MM GAMES: Arcade Field Goal Kicker – field goal kicking game for football fans. Hit as many as you can in a minute, points required to make it to next round increase each round.

MM GAMES: Arcade Homerun Derby – Knock balls as far as possible with an Arcade Homerun hitting simulator.

MM GAMES: Texas Hold’em Poker – You won’t ACTUALLY be required to purchase any chips, but this single player vs. computer or multiplayer game will provide as chance to enjoy playing without any stakes and have fun with other subscribers.

There’s also plans for Cornhole, Checkers and the long-awaited Crossword puzzle additions as well.

Additional updates to the tracking system for ads, design updates here and there, and more are in the works for the coming weeks ahead as we finally get toward the 2.1 version of the site.