In case you have been living under a rock (or in the middle of nowhere with no decent internet access, I'm looking at you Missouri >:O), we have been down for about two weeks. After an attack on the site and some contact issues, we were unable to bring the site back online until today. We are extremely sorry for the lapse in service, and we do not expect it to happen again. Thanks for being patient!

In future situations, always remember the BlockCommunity Twitter, Reddit, and IRC!

I've now opened testing for the mobile device styles I've been working on lately. It officially supports up to 480px-wide devices, but it will stretch up to 990px before things start looking incredibly weird. It doesn't save on bandwidth or anything (it's designed for smartphones, really) and it's just a layout of the site that makes it a little easier to read on mobile devices (no zooming required!).

You can test it by grabbing the Mobile Ticket. Whenever you are wearing it, you will be set to the mobile styles, regardless of what device you're viewing from, since it's really for testing.

Talk about how it's worked for you (or not) in the comments. Please remember to tell me what device/browser you're using if something does go horribly wrong!

After over a year of development, BlockCommunity Iris has finally been deployed as our live site, and will remain so for the time being. As I've said before, BlockCommunity's original site is over 2 years old, it's slow, inefficient and poorly coded. Iris changes that; it seems like the server load has actually gone down since porting to Iris, and most pages load faster (each page runs 5 queries as a minimum, not 12 like in the previous site). 

There are a couple of missing features that somehow didn't get developed after over a year, such as some obscure BBCode tags, and much of the administration panel. These will be finished soon, especially features on the user end of the site. There also seem to be a few bugs that I didn't pick up in our extremely long testing phase. 

So, let's look at a brief timeline of the site:

July 15, 2009: BCy concept created on Roblox forums by 3DElement et al.
July 22, 2009: Our first site launches, with MyBB forums. 
August 15, 2009: Development on the site starts. 
September 2009: Site is open to the public. 
September 5, 2010: The mysterious Iris ticket appears in the Shop. 
September 11, 2010: "Iris" site concept drawn up by myself. 
October 27, 2010: The Iris concept is revealed to the rest of the staff. 
December 2010: Work on the views layer of Iris starts.
March 5, 2011: Staff are treated to a beta of Iris.  
April 2, 2011: Users with the Iris ticket can use Iris.
August 20, 2011: Iris is publicized on the testing site. 
December 23, 2011: Iris is deployed on the main site.
December 26, 2011: Moole found the edit button on news posts.

After a myriad of server failures, we've decided to distract you from the endless wait for the game start giving and try and make the community a bit more active/communal - as we all know, communities are generally communal.

Of course, the first option we always try - an asset contest - wouldn't work for Christmas, which is why I've haphazardly disguised an asset contest as an advent calendar. Behold, the BlockCommunity Advent Calendar! (Or if you want a more neutral name, "BlockCommunity Countdown-to-25th-December Calendar")

Unfortunately, with this advent calendar, you can't just smash it open and eat all the chocolate. You'll have to work for it - and by "work", I mean post on the forums. You don't even have to post every day. You get extra "calendar points" for posting more. Points given go up every day, up to a maximum of 24 points per post on the 24th of December. If you complete the whole calendar with at least a post per day, you'll get a nice points bonus, or bonus asset (to be decided).

And where does the asset contest come in? Well, as you should know, I'm a terrible artist and I couldn't get anyone more skilled to create anything in time, so I'm leaving the gifts to you. You can create any Christmas-themed asset - even staff-only assets like hats (though we'll have to upload them for you later). Simply post your entry to the forum thread in Rules and Announcements by the 10th of December, and winners will be announced by the 17th, based on a user vote. Make sure you don't make your entry available by any other means (i.e. you must make it off-sale).

After that, based on how many points people have and are projected to get, we'll make the prizes purchasable with your calendar points from the 25th of December to the 31st - entries voted higher will be worth more!

Get posting and get creating!

Today marks two long years It's been a little over 2 years since I began writing the code for BlockCommunity's website. It's my longest ever serving production code, but I'm strangely not proud of it. Funnily enough, BlockCommunity was one of my last projects to use an old project organization and coding style of mine. After that, I began expanding my PHP and MySQL knowledge: how to make things secure, maintainable and efficient.

The BlockCommunity website is none of those. Well, maybe secure. But it's a great example of how not to write a web application. There's no separation of presentation and logic, security best practices are figuratively defecated on, and so on. Iris remedies all of that. For the most part, it's fast: useless or slow queries have been obliterated. It's secure: pretty much every best practice in the book is followed to the letter. It's also maintainable. One of the reasons I never let anyone else develop anything on BCy's site was because the code was so horrid. In comparison, Iris has clean, standard code. Every line of code is written with future expansions in mind.

As well as that, it looks a whole lot nicer. Our current design was often cited in negative discussions on other sites. Sure, you might like it, but it's probably just because you're used to it. Thanks to me and SomeoneWhoCares, Iris looks a lot better and the common little user experience problems have been solved. Except Firefox not remembering posts when you (accidentally?) hit Back. Iris has been developed since last October, most diligently from November to April. I originally projected for a February grand opening, but our trademark tardiness took care of that.

So with that pointless nostalgia over, I humbly present to you: BlockCommunity Iris. Currently, the only themes available are Iris (the default) and Plasma Blue. I'm sure you can enjoy at least one of those two, though. You can't sign up for an account on the site, but it uses a database from about half an hour before this post was published. The database is also independent from the current site's.

Yep! It's that time of the year again where we're absolutely desperate for new users! So, instead of actually releasing anything to invite them in naturally, we're going to bribe you, our (hopefully) loyal members to bring them in from other places.

The GREAT REWARD POINTS CHALLENGE will run from the 9th of July (now) to the 15th. During that time, you will receive an amazing 3 reward points for each referral you make. We're also logging how much you're getting, and what you're spending them on, so don't try and abuse our generosity.

As well as probably breaking our economy, we're going to have a public referral leaderboard too. That's right - we're introducing harsh competition! Don't worry! It's good for you!

The winner will be given the tasty Delicious Noob Invitational badge its gold and black surface adorned with a rather delicious-looking newbie, much like the ones they invited. We may or may not eat your new friends, by the way. Actually, scratch that. We won't take a single bite. We'll take five.

We and our shades are waiting hungrily!

These values were judged using a total post count of 107,496. All dates are given in British format (DD/MM/YY) The queries were run at around 20:30 09/06/11 BST.
Average characters unfortunately includes quotes (excluding them would make the queries take far too long and use too much power)

1. nitt with 6,290 posts - 6.44% of total - Joined 03/12/09 - 553 days - Average 11.37 posts per day - 497.61 average characters per post
2. Moole with 5,920 posts - 5.51% of total - Joined 27/09/09 - 620 days - Average 9.55 posts per day - 520.07 average characters per post
3. Cloakedyoshi with 5,563 posts - 5.18% of total - Joined 12/07/10 - 332 days - Average 16.76 posts per day - 238.75 average characters per post
4. drummerp with 4,644 posts - 4.32% of total - Joined 06/02/10 - 488 days - Average 9.52 posts per day - 566.71 average characters per post
5. Four with 3,681 posts - 3.42% of total - Joined 20/08/09 - 658 days - Average 5.59 posts per day - 566.7 average characters per post
6. chc4 with 3,339 posts - 3.11% of total - Joined 23/08/09 - 655 days - Average 5.1 posts per day - 157.93 average characters per post
7. Jchung with 3,265 posts - 3.04% of total - Joined 11/04/10 - 424 days - Average 7.7 posts per day - 271.20 average characters per post
8. ds with 3,251 posts - 3.02% of total - Joined 15/08/09 - 673 days - Average 4.83 posts per day - 264.88 average characters per post
9. OcarinaOT with 2,836 posts - 2.64% of total - Joined 23/01/11 - 137 days - Average 20.7 posts per day - 515.04 average characters per post
10. Lag with 2,632 posts - 2.45% of total - Joined 12/04/10 - 423 days - Average 6.22 posts per day - 374.27 average characters per post

Rearranging by an "average worth" (average characters per post multiplied by the post count), we get:

1. nitt - 3,129,966.9 score (originally 1, +- 0)
2. Moole - 3,078,814.4 score (originally 2, +- 0)
3. drummerp - 2,631,801.24 score (originally 4, + 1)
4. Four - 2,086,022.7 score (originally 5, + 1)
5. OcarinaOT - 1,460,653.44 score (originally 9, + 4)
6. Cloakedyoshi - 1,328,166.25 score (originally 3, - 3)
7. Lag - 985,078.64 score (originally 10, + 3)
8. ds - 861,124.88 score (originally 8, +- 0)
9. Jchung - 885,468 score (originally 7, - 2)
10. chc4 - 527,328.27 score (originally 6, - 4)

Also of note is MillenniumBuilder; though #21 on post count, Millennium would be #5 on the "post worth" list had I included non-top-10-posters.

What would your answer be if there was yet another contest?
And the prize was not B$B or RP or a badge or something that is awarded by other contests?
Yes, this contest is different.

In this contest, which will be named "Dragonic", you must draw, whether it be on paper or PC, a dragon. It must be by you, no online images for taking. You may use them as templates for your work, but not to take freely and submit.
The drawing must be colored as well, and must have your BCy name on the lower left hand corner of the drawing.
The prize of this contest is your dragon becoming a hat.
That's right, a dragon buddy hat.
You will get the hat for free, and it will be placed at 250 B$B for the price.
You will also get the honor of having your name as the drawer in the description, though I might crop it to make it fit as a hat.
This contest ends June 25th, and all submissions must be submitted by that date.
The drawings will be judged based on their neatness, uniqueness, coloring skill, and precision.
Even if you are not a good drawer, you can produce neatness.
You can produce uniqueness and color nice.
You can also bring precision into your drawing by making it realistic and not some sewer monster.
So you don't need to be a fantastic drawer for this task.
But try to make it nice.

Judging should be done by the 30th of June, but most likely will be done before that date.
Please, have fun with this assignment.
The prize is one of a kind.

Post links to your uploaded works in the comments section.
And I promise you, this contest will actually follow through with its promises. :)

The staff of BlockCommunity have perhaps failed you a few times. No, wait. A few hundred times. How many release dates have we missed? Five? Four? Three? Two? One? Kaboom? Iris isn't out, either, after what seems like many decades of development, and we're not so nice to you in the staff forums either. If any of you have a memory of more than a few weeks, you may remember that time we forgot to judge that contest. And you remember all those "wonderful" suggestions that you give us? We figure that we'll probably remember to implement all of them, so we don't keep a list. We also screwed up the economy with our mighty B$B spawning power (hopefully, we can correct that by giving out more money). I mean, we're even too lazy to assemble a full list of how we've failed you!

You've whined at us for it, so we tried to find a solution. Unfortunately, ds refuses to make a button that bans everyone (he muttered something about "unfair" and "too much work"). So, what would you say if we were to announce a contest, then, a contest where you could effectively place our heads in stocks and throw tomatoes to splatter at our veritable trollfaces? "He's off his rocker", you'd say, "totally mad." You are quite wrong there.

Now what is this contest, you ask? Wouldn't it be rather silly if we announced a contest and you didn't know what to do? The aim is for you to create a demotivational poster that makes fun of us staff. The winner will be judged by our most impartial staff member - no, not Waffle, Moole, you fool.

They will be judged on their hilariousness, and if not containing hilariousness, how much of a bribe they contain. Actually, wait, I'm not supposed to tell you all that part. So if your entry contains not a single trace of whimsy or jocularity, such as all our avatars captioned with "You suck", you won't win. Our normal rules apply - no profanity, pornographic, overtly violent etc. content.

The rewards will be as follows:

1st place: 5,000 B$B, 2 reward points and a mystery badge. Maybe even a few laughs.
2nd place: 2,500 B$B and a single reward point (plus half a mystery badge if we're just dividing the first in half).
3rd place: 1,000 B$B

Did you enter? Did you not win? Did you follow the rules? Well, according to Moole we are legally obligated to reimburse you with 500 B$B for all that effort you put into your 5 second photoshop.

The contest will run until the end of May start of June.

So, we've been faced with a problem lately: lots of short, contentless posts! (insert gasps). Many of these could be replaced with simple uses of the rep system (those magic plus/minus signs!)

The rep system is good for three reasons: firstly, positive reinforcement for the poster and a way to ascertain a post's popularity; secondly, less spam on the forums; thirdly, people get the much-loved reputation. 

So let's have an example. When Silentfood makes an absolutely hilarious post such as:

Silentfood wrote:
Unfortunately, I won't be able to finish the launcher as my hard drive died and I lost three months worth of data. 

Don't say:

A rather idiotic chap wrote:
Lol xD dat's so funny m8

Or:

Quote:
:(

Or even:

Quote:
Sir, your comment was so utterly hilarious, I guffawed so hard I dropped my monocle in my tea and Jeeves asked me what in God's name I was doing. Needless to say, he was pretty shocked when I fired the silly fellow. What ho!

Use the reputation system instead! Well, maybe not for the last one.