After a couple of years of the same design it was time for a refresh; sorta like fall decorating. And just for grins, while I was at it I worked on a few site upgrades and changes. For those interested…here’s whats new and improved. A full changelog, as always, is found here.
Homepage and color palette refresh
Sticking to the original “S” logo color base, it was time for a little refresh on the colors and site-wide application. Font has been changed from Open Sans to Montserrat sitewide.
Schleicher Social CSS styling is a little more complex…but its coming soon.
We’ve replaced the homepage with some fun new slides and a feature block.
Schleicher Social Upgrades
While not immediately noticeable, a lot of change has occurred on the Mastodon side. Starting way back at version 3 something…we’re now up to 4.4.4. While that may not mean much…it’s brought:
- Improved login and registration logic
- Much improved streaming of content
- Better image handling (alt text is a thing)
- Upgraded backend builds for Ruby (translates to more secure servers)
- Added push notifications to the mobile app (the native app, not some of the other builds)
- Plus many other unseen improvements that add to stability of the server
From an appearance and functional standpoint, over the last year we now have a fully functional public RSS feed that populates on the frontpage. More fun…thanks to Claude AI and ChatGPT the feed is now populated with a 100% homegrown plugin versus relying on a third-party source to land.
The advantage here is that I can freely customize the CSS (appearance) and content while not having to rely on another site and the limitations associated with that site. Plus…the view limit was ~200 a month, which meant after that limit was reached…it stopped populating. Buh-bye.
How about them photos…
While we’re on the Schleicher Social bit…how about those photos. The posting and reminder flows got a bit of a workup over the year. Initially, email reminders were hard-coded to a list I had to put in and generate for each reminder. That’s a thing of the past. Zapier tables now keeps track of who is on what list and gets which reminders. More on that later.
Flows have been consolidated and moved from IFTTT to Zapier and, again thanks to some AI help, now autopost a nice photo to Mastodon so all posts have some media to go with them. Next project: rotate that media so a random picture gets selected.
The Spreadsheet
So the spreadsheet has been an evolving thing for what, 20 years? More? Yeah, it’s still evolving, but hopefully for the better. From email chains with multiple versions of one sheet, to a Google Sheet, to one hosted here on my NAS, and now to an actual database, trying to keep track of 100+ people in any accurate manner while making the data accessible, editable, and user-friendly is a royal pain in the a**. Just throwing it out there. But, after many iterations…we’ve got a one-stop-shop for updates.
The new version of the sheet, in a nutshell, is fully mobile responsive and editable from the site, rather than having to remember a sheet password for the NAS. A full explanation of changes is here.
Key note: you’ll need a site account to access and edit. While the old sheet will be maintained, it will eventually be removed from site access in favor of this version.
Previously the sheet password was kept deliberately “simple” so it was easy to remember. Unfortunately, having one password for the sheet shared (and possibly stored) among many different people and browsers increases the risk of password exposure, especially since the password itself was not considered a “strong” password. The site user management system enforces strong password requirements, and each user has a different password, reducing the risk of password exposure. While that may seem overboard…the problem with having a sheet like that accessible to the world is that most people will create passwords based on something familiar (like birthdays, anniversaries, etc.), despite suggestions not to do so. In an ideal world everyone would use a password keeper with randomized strings as passwords…but since that is not always the case…we’re moving to this method of data access which reduces the risk somewhat.
The Tree
The family tree has also gotten some refinements, mainly with standardization of photo placeholders as well as adding in member images. Images included in Boar Reports are archived and tagged as I get timed and will show up under the member’s tree card.
Staying in the know…
A few more changes have been made on the backend for communications.
Zapier handles all email updates through the update form (either accessed from the footer or through your profile tabs). Once submitted, you should be immediately added or removed from selected emails/notifications. Note that this does not update your site account email (that’s on purpose). Note that an SMS option is included; this is TBA for now and may be implemented sometime in the future, but only if the user has SMS notifications checked in the table.
Additionally, if somebody is active on the site (green circle by the user image), you can message them directly through the site using the message function. Note that the message toolbar is only visible from account pages by default, but can be made accessible on all pages from your account menu. If the member is not active…the site will send an email after a little bit letting them know you’re trying to reach them.
Lastly, another backend change is how the emails are sent. I use a relay service for transactional emails (e.g., MailChimp, SendGrid, etc.), and typically for free tiers (yes, I prefer free) they use a shared pool of IP addresses. SendGrid IP addresses are blacklisted by some email servers (Comcast being one of them), so I’ve switched those emails over to Brevo; as far as I can see the IP pool they use does not hit any blacklists so bye to having to avoid certain email domains.
For right now…that’s it. I’m sure more changes will pop up down the road…but since everything seems to work right now, I’m taking a break. Of course, if something doesn’t work…let me know.
Author: Zack
Pharmacist, tech guy, gamer, fixer. Good at a little bit of everything.
