Yes, at long last, the BIG UPDATE has arrived. At the stroke of midnight (more or less) you might have noticed a few changes. Besides the winter theme, I mean, which is just reused from last year. =)

Here's a list of the more noteable changes:

1. Support for event stamps. Whether it's a one-use stamp or a traveling event stamp, you can record creating and finding them just like any other letterbox. And, if you're the owner of an event or the owner of an event stamp attending an event, you can even list the event stamp as an attendee of the event. =)

2. Support for an "other" letterbox type. All those weird, wild, and wacko one-of-a-kind boxes you create that just don't seem to fit into any other category, you've now got a catch-all available.

3. NEW support for postal rings! Instead of signing up for individual postal boxes, you now sign up for rings! AQ loosens the "traditional" definition of a postal ring. Here, a ring can include any number of letterboxes and any number of participants. Whether it's a single postal box with a dozen participants or a dozen postal boxes, one from each participant--or even a dozen postal boxes you create for a dozen participants--it doesn't matter--it's still a ring. Additionally, rings can be set up with a variety of status includuing open (anyone is free to sign up on it, providing space is still available), limited (only the owner of the ring can add you to it), closed (no longer open for signups), and retired (the ring is done, finished, dead). Plus it's a heck of a lot easier to track who's already gotten what boxes. You postal people are gonna love rings. =)

4. You can create a series of any type of letterbox. A series of virtual boxes? Not a problem! A series of hitchhikers? Not a problem! A series of traveling event stamps? Not a problem! You get the picture.

5. You can mark a box as having a hand-carved stamp for any type of letterbox--including the non-traditional ones!

6. You can mark a box as being for premium members only for any type of letterbox--including the non-traditional ones!

7. Two new attributes for traditional letterboxes: Horse friendly and eXtreme! Horse friendly boxes are those planted in areas where people can ride their horses to get the box--seems like a lot of you folks are big horse people. =) eXtreme boxes are to show that a box requires special skills or training before acquiring (such as rocking climbing or scuba diving) and could otherwise be much more dangerous than your run-of-the-mill letterbox.

Hmm.... I think that covers the big stuff. =)

A couple of comments about these features. First, I know of some series such as the WDW series of virtual boxes. They'd been entered individually since AQ didn't support series for virtual boxes, and I'll help combine any such series into a single listing. LET ME DO THIS FOR YOU. You could delete some entries, and modify one of them into a series, but it'll mess up everyone's finds. I can do it without messing up people's finds, so leave the combining of boxes into a single series for me to do manually. If you have a series that needs to be dealt with, lemme know. It'll probably take a few days before I can combine them all, so please be patient. =)

Second, AQ no longer supports the ability to sign up for postal letterboxes. You can only sign up for postal rings. Unfortunately, I can't programmatically convert all of your signups into the rings since multiple boxes could make up a single ring. For the time being, I have left a record of your postal box signups available for viewing in your logbook, but eventually, you'll need to re-signup with the appropriate ring. Only the owner of a ring should actually create the ring, and he or she will be able to include you and your postal box in the ring. Eventually, I will delete the old postal box signups, though, so if you need that information for some reason, be sure to write it down somewhere.

*thinking* I think that covers everything. =) This is a pretty substantial update, and there are almost GUARANTEED to be bugs lurking about with such a big update. If you see anything that doesn't seem to be working as expected, please let me know! =)

Happy trails!

-- Ryan

Ach, and to think I was on when it happened. At 9:23 am Germany time. All the extra features are nice, but it was the pretty blue and white that caught my eye. Quite a good and lovely job. :-)

I woke up at 3am and couldnt go back to sleep! I laid there for an hour and finally got up and got online... my inner 'boxer' was telling me to play with the new toys!!

what's that quote about bugs? "There are no such things as bugs at Microsoft, only undocumented "features"....


I tried to play with the add a box, with adding a postal ring. i get so far and i get a blank page.

not sure if i'm entering a new "ring", that already is established. If i have 9 participants and i want to sign them up, do i put that there are 9 boxes in the series? and put their names as the name of the box, or does that blank page have something to do with how to enter that data.

also i know you said postal sign ups wont be supported but you left them there for us to view and write down, but i dont have the option from my drop down menu in my logbook for postal signups.... So I cant write them down :(


everything looks so great GT... you work so hard putting this site together for everyone. It IS THE BOMB!!! And so are you.

cam.

Ryan,

you're amazing!


cam

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I tried to play with the add a box, with adding a postal ring. i get so far and i get a blank page.

Ah, yes, it seems there was a wee little bug in adding a postal box. So far as I can tell, though, adding a ring worked just fine.

I should point out--Atlas Quest does not consider a ring to be a type of letterbox. It's just a method of organizing a group of postal boxes, and AQ actually handles them completely separate from regular letterboxes. As a result, there is a link next to the option to select the box type to "Add Postal Ring".

To add a ring, you need to follow the link to a different page. To add a postal box, you fill out the information on that page.

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i know you said postal sign ups wont be supported but you left them there for us to view and write down, but i dont have the option from my drop down menu in my logbook for postal signups....

My bad. Should be fixed now. =)

-- Ryan

Ummm... found a glitch. I just signed up for the premium membership this morning and my page is telling me my subscription ends today. Wouldn't it end December 1st, 2006? I had signed up for the membership and calendar deal. Just wanted to get that figured out real quick.

oh great and powerful Green Tortuga,

I am so excited I am beside myself! but I need some help! I'm trying to add a ring-in-progress, and I can add the participants just fine, but I can't seem to add any boxes - not even my own. I type in the box name and AQ tells me the box is not found. help???

btw, did I mention how totally COOL these updates are???? thankyouthankyou!

MoonBunny

Thanks for all the new 'gifts'! I just added a Event traveller...was this supposed to be added to my personal logbook at AQ?

phynstar

Terrific updated features! I love it here!

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This is a pretty substantial update, and there are almost GUARANTEED to be bugs lurking about with such a big update. If you see anything that doesn't seem to be working as expected, please let me know! =)

I am having a problem taking advatage of update #7:

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7. Two new attributes for traditional letterboxes: Horse friendly and eXtreme!

I tried to edit some of my boxes to include the horse or eXtreme attributes but only the top 2 attributes (hand carved & premium member) appeared on the edit page. I viewed it on my Safari, IE, then Firefox browsers and it was the same on each.

Thanks for the energy you put into AQ!
t

Wow!!! The Ho Ho fairies have been very busy! Love it! Thanks Ryan!
Koyote

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I tried to edit some of my boxes to include the horse or eXtreme attributes but only the top 2 attributes (hand carved & premium member) appeared on the edit page. I viewed it on my Safari, IE, then Firefox browsers and it was the same on each.

I believe if you click "next" at the bottom of the page (on the page with hand carned stamp option in edit mode) then I think it will take you to the options to click "kid friendly" urban location, "extreme", etc. etc.

hope that's right...

dixiekin

dixiekin,

I see them now, thanks! :) I just thought the attributes would have all been together.

Thanks! Now back to adding those horseys!
t

wow wow wow. great job again!!!!
-CCL

If I have this correct (and somehow I think I don't):

- Rings not PLBs -- We should no longer create regular postal letterboxes but only postal letterbox rings. A regular PLB is just a ring with only one box. Is that right? (This sounds confusing to new users.)
- Recreate and reenter PLBs -- Meanwhile we need to reenter any of our active PLBs with a new listing and people will have to sign up for them again? Should we Retire the old one?
- Find your old signups in your Logbook - Look in your Logbook for Postal Signups to see what you had signed up for.

I am trying figure this out so no one should act on my list yet. Listen to Ryan.

Scarab of the Doubtful Lists

Oh, SUUUWWEEEEEEEEEEETTTTT!

We love you, Ryan!

Warrior Woman

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- Find your old signups in your Logbook - Look in your Logbook for Postal Signups to see what you had signed up for.

still doesn't show what postals you have created and those people who signed up for them.

I do like the support for postal rings though.

I have to say I could not agree more with many of these posts! Ryan I thank you for all your hard work! It has already been said but I never knew we needed anymore, AQ is SO GREAT and works so well for us, I didn't think there was anything left to add. You just keep making it better.
Thanks you for all you do!

Dee

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Rings not PLBs -- We should no longer create regular postal letterboxes but only postal letterbox rings. A regular PLB is just a ring with only one box. Is that right?

no, i think what Ryan meant when he said all postals are rings was that in code, AQ does't list just a'postal box'. It will list a ring, instead, which may only have one box.
Or, a ring may have twelve boxes.

you don't have to do anything different when listing a PLB, you still list it as a PLB unless it's part of a ring. Then, you specifiy that it's a ring (or part of a ring...i'm still fuzzy on that one).

AS for recreating and reentering PLB's...I dunno. I like to keep my own list in Excel of my postal recipients, so I wasn't really using AQ's signup feature. Whenver somebody signed up via AQ, i AQ mail'd them, and got their info for my own list.

-Celtic Quinn

Holy Mackerel! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

Mumma & Bunny Boy =D

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Ummm... found a glitch. I just signed up for the premium membership this morning and my page is telling me my subscription ends today.

Oh, yes, that's a known bug that I've been too scared to work on with all of the other changes I've been making. It's hard to test PayPal code on my development site! So I generally do that on the live site and I couldn't until this update was in place.

But I do know about it and make sure to update the premium membership before things go awry. =)

All is good now!

Still have to fix the bug, but you're set for the year. *nodding*

-- Ryan

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I just added a Event traveller...was this supposed to be added to my personal logbook at AQ?

Yep. =) I just looked at your logbook and sure enough, there's an event stamp there:

http://www.atlasquest.com/people/logbook.html?gMemberId=222&gType=eventp

Happy trails!

-- Ryan

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I just thought the attributes would have all been together.

They aren't together anymore since the hand-carved and premium members only attributes can now be applied to any type of letterbox--not just traditional ones. That first page tries to gathering information about boxes that's applicable to all boxes, while that second page tries to gather information specific to just traditional letterboxes.

-- Ryan

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They aren't together anymore since the hand-carved and premium members only attributes can now be applied to any type of letterbox--not just traditional ones

Now it makes perfect sense to me! :) Thanks for all of your hard work, I love this place!
t

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Rings not PLBs -- We should no longer create regular postal letterboxes but only postal letterbox rings. A regular PLB is just a ring with only one box. Is that right?

Not correct. Postal boxes are just a listing that a postal box exists. A ring is a method of organizing how they should be passed from person to person. Postal boxes can live without rings, but rings cannot live without postal boxes. Sounds spooky when I put it like that, eh? =)

If you have a postal box that you want to be part of a ring, first you'll need to list the box as a regular postal letterbox. (Because it is!) Then add it to the ring it should be a part of.

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Recreate and reenter PLBs -- Meanwhile we need to reenter any of our active PLBs with a new listing and people will have to sign up for them again? Should we Retire the old one?

No, no, no! All pevious postal boxes still exist and work just fine. None should be marked as retired, none should be deleted, and none need to be reentered. It's the ring information that is confusing you. =) I've pulled out the signup functionality that used to be a part of postal boxes and moved it into the ring.

However, since AQ never supported rings in the past, that information needs to be entered. For each ring you own, create a ring, then add all of the people and postal boxes that are a part of it.

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Find your old signups in your Logbook - Look in your Logbook for Postal Signups to see what you had signed up for.

For those people who don't keep paper records of which postal boxes they're a part of, yes. That way, they can still have something to refer to which shows what boxes they signed up for.

Though it just occurred to me--if the owner of a ring didn't keep records of who signed up for the ring, they won't have an easy way to look up that information. Lemme tweak the code so the postal box itself will show old signups that the owner of a ring can refer to. =) Give it about five or ten minutes before looking up postal boxes for signup information....

Happy trails!

-- Ryan

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I've pulled out the signup functionality that used to be a part of postal boxes and moved it into the ring.

So if we wish to use AQ to do singups for, and track, a single PLB we need to enter it twice? Once as a regular PLB and once as a Postal Ring?

I think I understand but I can't get it to work.

I have created two Postal Ring listings, "Cracker Jacks tracker" and "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride". It will not let me add an existing Postal to it. When I try it says "postal letterbox not found". Is it because I am trying to add my own PLB?

I don't have a ring going at the moment so I do not have something to experiment with other than my own single PLBs that I want to track.

Scarab

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It will not let me add an existing Postal to it. When I try it says "postal letterbox not found". Is it because I am trying to add my own PLB?

Don't worry, it's not just you. And it's not just when you try to add your PLB's to it, either.
I added my Sweet Treats ring earlier today, and put in all the members, but couldn't get it to enter any of the boxes.

I'm guessing that's a bug that Ryan still needs to cleanse, is all.


I can't wait to get them on there, though! This feature looks like it'll be pretty cool.

-Celtic Quinn

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I have created two Postal Ring listings, "Cracker Jacks tracker" and "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride". It will not let me add an existing Postal to it. When I try it says "postal letterbox not found". Is it because I am trying to add my own PLB?

No, that shouldn't be a problem.

Just to experiement, I tried logging in as you, went the "Cracker Jacks tracker" postal ring. In the "Add Postal Box" field, I searched for "cracker", which turned up two postal boxes including "Cracker Jacks". Assuming that's what you wanted, checked it and submitted, and it all worked fine.

If you want to try it yourself, you can drop the Cracker Jacks postal from the ring then try to re-add it. I did, however, use FireFox. Maybe it's a browser problem? =) What browser are you using?

I'm also wondering what search term you used to search for the postal box. I just used 'cracker', but perhaps another search term didn't work out so well.

-- Ryan

PHEW! Thanks, I just signed in after a few hours and that notice about my membership expiring is gone. Whatever you did, you did it right. Thanks again. :-)

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Just to experiement, I tried logging in as you, went the "Cracker Jacks tracker" postal ring. In the "Add Postal Box" field, I searched for "cracker", which turned up two postal boxes including "Cracker Jacks". Assuming that's what you wanted, checked it and submitted, and it all worked fine.

I tried it again. Several times. When I search for just one word, it works. I get a list of possible boxes. Great. But my experiments showed if I search for two words, something with a space, I get, "Postal box not found". I get this if I type it exactly, with initial caps, or not exactly, whether without caps, or with a partial second word.

Many thanks,
Scarab