MeetFighters News

Hello Fighters,

This is the last call for comments and bug reports on the new chat! The old browser chat is going away, it will not be kept as an option, so please take a minute or two to try the new chat and make sure that it is functioning correctly on your device. I want your comments now, and not after it is deployed and you go "Oh, but it's not working for me, you ruined my internets forever!!11"'.

So what has changed?

• The avatar pictures on the user list are back. (This was the most requested feature in the previous round.)
• Some profile info (stats, location and introduction) are shown when you click on a user from the list.
• Photo sharing is completed. To share a photo with another chatter, start a conversation with them, then find the photo icon near the top right, and then either click on one of your existing photos, or upload a new one to share it instantly.
• Experimental webcam support. The web-based technologies (that is, those that work without the miasma that is Flash) for video are here, but support for them is spotty. Most notably, the technology will not work with Internet Explorer, and is only available with the newest version of Safari.
• Choose between modern and classic look. If you want the message list without the avatar pictures, click on the cogwheel icon near the top left of the screen and then check "Traditional IRC layout".
• Worked around an issue in iOS Safari that would prevent the message sound from playing properly. I would like to make a note here that developing for any Apple product is hell on Earth.

– Admin

Hello Fighters,

I hope everyone has survived New Year's, and made resolutions to meet a new member every week!

Work on the new Chat page is ongoing. Thanks to everyone for the feedback, except for that one guy who started to complain about blocking. (Sigh...)

So what's new there? Photo sharing is now embedded into the chat. When you are in a private chat, there's a photo icon near the top right of the page. Clicking it will allow you to send one of your photos to the other person, or upload a new one to share with them. I think this is pretty cool and bound to make the chat experience more streamlined.

I am also working on experimental support for webcams. Unfortunately support for this very new web technology is still spotty. I have added a "Webcam" button to profile pages that lets you test drive it, but don't expect it to work very spectacularly. Browsers like Internet Explorer and Safari do not support the necessary technology and there seems to be a bug affecting Firefox, so for now, Opera and Chrome are the only working alternatives. I'm working on improving that.

I am also investigating the possibility of toggling a more compact view for the message list – some do not seem to like the pictures there. Maybe a darker theme too, as some mentioned that the white is too white.

– Admin

Dear Fighters,

I am working on a improving the Browser Chat, based on the latest Kiwi IRC release. If you have some time, give it a try and give me feedback in a comment below.

Click here to try the new browser chat.

I'm also making some new things to replace/enhance the existing Statistics page. Here's a preview screenshot that shows the change in the number of members over the past week:

Happy New Year!

Regards,
Admin

Salutations!

As mentioned in the previous news post, I've been working on the design update. I thank everyone who responded to that news post, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.

I am proud to announce that the job is finished, and the new, fully mobile ready and responsive design is here. The structure imitates the look and feel of the previous iteration closely, but under the hood much is modernized.

In case you are missing some of your favorite links:

• Look at the profile menu near the top right.
• Some menu items are on the left now, if you have a narrow screen, tablet or mobile phone, you need to click the burger icon near the top left to access them.
• The rest of the links are on the main page and in the footer at the bottom of the page.

Please add your comments and questions regarding the changes below.

In the likely case that I don't post anything else this year, I wish you all great and fighting-filled holidays and a Happy New Year!

Regards,
Admin

Hello everyone,

This blog post is to announce that MeetFighters has passed 15,000 active members! This is the "raw", uninflated number of members who have logged in at least once in the past month. We never inflated our numbers, not when we were the smallest, and not now that MeetFighters is the largest wrestling personals site.

Let's celebrate, and what better way to do that than to show you the upcoming new site design for mobile devices. Please note that these designs are just "wireframes", which means that they represent structure and layout, but not style such as fonts, colors or sizes. I'm happy with the existing two color schemes of the site and not planning on changing them.

So without further ado, here's what the mobile site will look like on a handheld device (smart phone):

For tablet users and small laptop screens, we also show the member ticker (horizontal scrollable list of random profiles), and a search field in the navigation bar.

For yet wider screens (normally desktop computers with decent sized screens), the burger button is hidden and the sidebar is automatically expanded:

Some other changes to expect:

• The "What's new?" page will be renamed to "Content" or something similar, and will directly link to the latest stuff such as photos, videos and blog posts.
• Continued work on improving layout for smaller screens.
• Don't forget to vote for member-submitted ideas!

This is the plan so far! Feedback is, as always, appreciated. Thank you all for making this the most popular and fun site.

– Admin