18:00, 5 August 2009 | 170 Comments | [ Add comment]

Howdy
The Nexus sites are currently being moved over to their new servers. If you're reading this then you're ON the new server, welcome! The work doesn't finish here though; there's lots of config files, tweaks, module installs and server restarts to go. So hang in there.

Bugs
The Nexus sites are big sites with lots of specialised code. I'm not a professional coder and I often forget important things, so if the site is breaking then please report it here. Provide the page you're visiting and the error you're getting and I'll get around to it. Your help can speed up the process, thanks.

14:15, 3 August 2009 | 27 Comments | [ Add comment]

The stress of last week is now behind me and the forum server is back up (but how long it will last is anybody's guess). To preempt the final failure of the forum harddrive the proposed server moved scheduled for the middle of August has been pushed forward to, hopefully, as early as this coming Wednesday (5th Aug 09).

First of all why is this server move necessary? It's necessary because the servers are at their peak. They can handle what's being thrown at them right now but I want to squeeze more out of the sites. I'm going to be adding more functionality and more features to the sites over the coming months and the current hardware just won't support these updates. Similarly the sites aren't getting smaller, they're getting bigger. Every file you add, every rating you make, every comment you make and every file you download add to both the space and processing overheads of the site. Add to that an average of 1,500 new members every single day and the hardware simply needs to keep up with the demand.

Where is the site moving to? I'm moving the webservers out of the US and in to the UK, working with some good friends who have been hosting sites for 7 years to make a more tailored solution to the Nexus's unique needs. At the moment the sites make use of 32ghz of processing power and 16GB of RAM across 3 servers. The sites will be moved to two Blade servers, in the same chassis, with a total of 40ghz of processing power and 32GB of RAM. What's more the setups will be run in proper RAID-1 arrays to prevent the recent problems with hard-drive failures from reoccuring; something I can't currently do due to space requirements.

What will the move entail? Both Nexus sites and the forums have a large amount of data that needs moving. To make matters worse the data needs to travel several thousand miles from Texas to London. Work has been under way since last week moving over all the necessary files to the UK, which took several days, but there are other files, such as the site databases that can't be moved until the site is taken down. This takes time and as a result the Nexus sites will be taken down for an entire day, at the moment that day is Wednesday, to complete this move. Similarly as the server IP's will be changing the DNS Zones also need to be updated and it can take time to process depending on your individual ISPs.

I'll release more information as and when I know more.

On a side note there are two other issues I'd like to address. First of all, all current premium members will be getting 3 days of additional time added to their accounts in the near future to offset the time lost over the forum hard-drive failure and the upcoming day of down-time.

Second of all I definately haven't forgotten about the millionth member competition. Obviously things are very busy at the moment so I haven't been able to dedicate much time to playing through the excellent entries on offer, but I want to play through them and judge them personally. As an act of good faith (and because there weren't a large number of entries) all the members who entered will be getting a $10 Amazon voucher at the end of the competition. Obviously winners will be getting the prize money instead ;)

01:52, 1 August 2009 | 3 Comments | [ Add comment]

Buddah for info:

Posting this here so it is easily found. If you uploaded a file in the past 3 or 4 days and ratings and comments are disabled. No one, I repeat NO ONE, not even Dark0ne can enable them. When the forum servers went wonky....there was no file thread created when the file page was initiated so there is nothing that can be done about it.

The only fix, and again I repeat THE ONLY FIX is to delete the old file page and create a new one if you want to have comments and ratings disabled.

If you find you are unable to delete a file page, use the report this file button and I will delete it for you. With the server issues some things have to be done by an admin.

Buddah

10:21, 25 July 2009 | 39 Comments | [ Add comment]

The main hard drive on the forum server is on the brink of failing, much like the Fallout 3 Nexus file server hard drive did. To make matters a little more interesting I have already begun plans to reconsolidate the webservers here in the UK on some much more powerful hardware and given my current provider their notice. This means that a server move will be taking place around the middle of August and my hope was that the forum hard drive would hold out until then.

Sadly I'm not sure it will as it continues to put out at random intervals causing all the non-registration and commenting issues the site is currently experiencing. It's a beggar. I've scheduled a disk check to be run on the forum server around 10am GMT tomorrow, which will bring the forum server down for a couple of hours. This means the forums, as well as registration and commenting will not be possible during this time.

These things happen, and the good news is the new hardware will be more redudant and secure than the current hardware. The file servers themselves will remain in the US.

Please bare with us while we go through this difficult phase.

Update 31st July @ midday GMT: The harddrive is going through a full diagnostic at the data centre which is taking a long time. It's been going for about 12 hours and only completed about 55%, what's worse is it's coming back clean so far. So there's still some time to wait on that front.

For me this comes at a bad time; I'm currently moving out my student house that I've been living in the past 3 years while also running all sorts of errands for my brother's wedding, which is tomorrow, in which I am the best man.

I'm afraid you're all going to have to wait a little bit longer and just hang in there. All the data is backed up so no worries there. I'm going to quickly try and jump in to some of the site code now and disable some of the features on the site that won't be working to avoid confusion, inbetween having a shower and running on back home to do a rehearsal for the wedding tomorrow. Fun times.

16:46, 20 July 2009 | 40 Comments | [ Add comment]

I have added a notification overlay to display once every 7 days (by default) to remind all members to rate as many files as possible that they have downloaded by viewing their download history.

You can tweak how often you get reminded to rate your files in your member preferences section, which also has the option to disable them altogether.

23:37, 10 July 2009 | 46 Comments | [ Add comment]

Our current category structure was getting very over crowded and with a little urging from a certain member who shall remain unnamed, but is known locally as
"Arthmoor".

Here is a new comprehensive list of all catagories:

Default - I forgot to set this. (this one is for me, for those who forget).
Abodes
Animation
Armor/Armour
Audio, Sound and Music
Castles, Palaces, Mansions and Estates
Cheats and God Items
Cities, Towns, Villages and Hamlets
Clothing
Combat
Companion Creatures
Companions (CM Bsed)
Companions Other
Dungeons and Locations
Environmental
Gameplay Effects and Changes
Guilds/Factions
Hair and Face Models
Immersion
Items, Objects and Clothes
Landscape Changes
Magic
Mercantiles (shops, stores, inns, taverns, etc)
Millionth Member Competition
Miscellaneous
Models And Textures
New Lands
New structures (Formerly Buildings)
NPC
Official Plugins
Overhauls
Quests And Adventures
Races, Classes and Birthsigns
Ruins, Forts and abandoned structures
Saved Games
Skills and Leveling
Stealth
User Interfaces
Utilities
Videos and Trailers
Visuals and Graphics
Weapons
Weapons And Armour

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

With the input from the community here, on the ESF and numerous PM's the above are now available for you to use, if you have a file that would be better suited in one of the new categories please feel free to move your file.

That should do for now, but if you have a suggestion I will take it under consideration.

Buddah

20:54, 5 July 2009 | 213 Comments | [ Add comment]

As promised both on the forums and in recent news posts the rating system in the downloads area has been completely reworked and changed to suit the underlying rules and principles that this site revolves around. This update has been long in the coming and I've based my design choices on the feedback of literally hundreds of users on this site who have had their say on how they'd like to see the rating system changed (or in some cases, not changed).

The story so far...

First of all let me address why this update was necessary. Since Oblivion's launch TESNexus has gathered a very strong following of both forum regulars, file database regulars and general users who like to upload and download from the site. These users have grown to understand how this site operates and how to conduct themselves properly within the Elder Scrolls community, which I personally believe is a unique community compared to other modding communities. The Elder Scrolls community is not only productive, but constructive and full of avid modders who are willing to share and extend their knowledge to other users. It has always been important to foster this virtue within the community and as such Nexus sites have always been advocates of the "constructive criticism" policy; that is if you have something to say you word it in such a way that it is constructive to the author of the work.

Unfortunately my views of "constructive criticism" no matter how much I tried to explain it to users often fell on deaf ears, especially to new users who had come from communities that didn't share the same views as myself or were new to modding communities in general and who couldn't be bothered to read the rules of the site. This problem was further compounded by the 1-to-10 rating system that really simply became the 1-or-10 rating system. Any number other than 10 was seen as a negative rating due to the way in which the top 100 was calculated. The underlying problem with the top list system was how you create a top list of downloads on a site that can accommodate the fact that not all files are going to be as popular as each other? The weighted system was the best system irrespective of its many flaws.

So in light of these problems it became apparent that a change was needed. Either the 1-to-10 rating system needed to be better enforced or a complete change was necessary. As far as further enforcement goes I don't care what anybody says; the moderation team at Nexus (Buddah, LHammonds, BBen and Slof) have done a brilliant job over the years and they've gone through various high-profile and not so high-profile banning runs that would take its toll on anyone. Rather than ask them to keep up or step-up their current efforts, as well as take on more moderation crew, I decided to rework the rating system to better fit in to my views of "constructive criticism". Many users of the site wanted a multi-tiered rating 1-to-10 rating system that would see users rate various aspects of a file, unfortunately the problem with this is that some users of the site have a problem with only one thing to rate, so to give them many different things to rate would seem counter productive!

So what's new

A rating system needs to be able to present people interested in downloading a particular file valuable feedback from the community on whether they think that file is actually worth downloading.

As mentioned the 1-to-10 system was always really the 1-or-10 system and as such the ratings were always very black or white, 1 or 0, you either liked it or you didn't like it. The new system follows but expands on the image share thumbs-up rating system that had a successful integration last year. But simply having a "I endorse this" feature on the site only presents one side of the picture, and a popular file might still have its issues. In the past the problem was that people didn't know how to be tactful in how they down-rated files; instead of providing that all important "constructive criticism" they simply lambasted the author of the file in question, never really addressing what the problem was and instead expressing themselves in such a way that it made the author feel like crap and then the ban-hammer swiftly came out. That's exactly what I didn't want.

In response to this the new system is a thumbs up, thumbs down system with a twist. The thumbs down system doesn't negatively rate a file; it doesn't affect the new top lists of the site and instead is used to explain to an author why exactly you haven't decided to endorse the file in question. What's more you can't leave a comment with your negative rating and instead you choose from a set list of reasons why you haven't endorsed the file. Why have I done this? Well, to address the issue of people not being able to play nice and to save the Nexus moderation team from sifting through countless people who haven't read the rules. It's the new "let me hold your hand through this process" system for those people who don't like to read before they rate.

With the new rating system comes a new top list system. To offset the popularity contest that is "whoever has the most endorsements wins" more features have been added to the list, along with a top 25 that shows the most rated files in the past two weeks, which provides a surprise; it might not be the files you think! Probably most asked for is the ability to generate lists based on adult and non-adult file preferences along with lists for files within individual categories. These features are now all available.

Now with added protection

Added to this are new security checks built in to the rating system. You can no longer rate a file without downloading it, and similarly you cannot rate a file within 3 hours of downloading it. This insures that users have at least taken the time to try files out before they rate.

New members have a 24 hour cooldown period that means they cannot rate files positively or negatively for the first 24 hours of their account life. This should help to reduce those "special" individuals who create multiple accounts in order to down-rate other user's files.

These features go hand-in-hand with the updated download history page (accessible from the right hand navigation) that will now show you which files you have rated, and how you have rated them.

But this isn't the end....

These changes are in the forefront of further changes to the download section of the site that should both improve the functionality of the site and increase usefulness and interactivity.

Following on from this rating system rehaul work has begun on a new commenting system for all files that will change the current mono-thread commenting system into a multi-threaded system that will be moderated not only by the moderation staff here but also by the file authors themselves. Thus file pages will become self-contained "mini-forums" where users can create multiple threads to post in, rather than all posts being placed in a single thread, with everything fully controlled by the file owner who can set whether they want other users to be able to create new threads or just themselves, as well as being able to remove posts and threads made by other users. And of course the file owners will be able to pin selected threads to the top of the list as well.

But for now

Take a look at the new system and see what you think and maybe hold back judgement until you see the affect it has on the site. Of course all the old ratings have been converted over to this new system and ratings of 7 or more on files have been changed in to endorsements for the file in question. Ratings of less than 7 have not been changed in to endorsement feedback because a PHP script cannot ascertain the reasons why someone has rated low.

Feedback, as ever, is appreciated. Just remember; constructive criticism.

11:14, 16 June 2009 | 7 Comments | [ Add comment]

The server is now back up with the necessary upgrades in place. Initial indications are good and the situation is being monitored over the course of the next week to assess whether a further upgrade will be necessary or not.

00:24, 16 June 2009 | 4 Comments | [ Add comment]

TESNexus will be offline today for scheduled down-time starting at 11am GMT (5am CDT) for a memory upgrade. This upgrade, along with recent tweaks in the server security, should help to stop the IPS Driver Errors and site slowdowns experienced over the past month.

Down-time is penned in for 4 hours, but these things normally take less than 2 hours.

16:51, 14 June 2009 | 8 Comments | [ Add comment]

The file database became corrupted today due to a user error at 5PM GMT today at which point the site was taken offline pending a backup restore. Unfortunately recent backups had also been affected by the glitch that meant a 13 day old backup had to be used to restore the lost file data.

The only data affected by this issue was the actual uploaded file data, that is information on files uploaded to the database. Not file descriptions/images/comments/ratings/etc.. As such any files uploaded to the site within the past fortnight will now be lost, unfortunately, and will need to be reuploaded. Similarly individual file download statistics will be lost but the total download counter will remain unaffected.

All other information has been unaffected and mod authors who have uploaded new files, or made edits to their current uploaded files in the past fortnight are recommended to ensure their files are present and up to date. If they aren't then I'm afraid the only solution is to reupload the file in question.

I apologise for this inconvenience; naturally steps are being taken to insure this situation doesn't happen again.