Archive for the ‘Site-related’ Category

Busy server

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

The rush of connections is always very large in the first hour of a voting round. If you are unable to connect to the site to vote, or the site is responding too slowly for you, please try coming back later in the day. Polls are open for 24 hours, and voting at the end of the day is exactly the same as voting at the start of the day; we will still count it.

Thanks to everyone for making this postseason successful with a very large voter turnout and new records set with this past semifinal round. The staff would also like to thank Kyouko and thx_to_staff for their donations this week. Our server is paid for the 2012 season, and we have begun early collection for 2013.

Test ballot

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

A test ballot is on our voting page. http://www.internationalsaimoe.com/voting/ After our server move, we have been curious about server performance. Please vote on the ballot to generate some activity in our database. (It’s okay in this instance to vote multiple times.)

First round preview

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

Postseason Day 1 matchup previews are now available. While a single-elimination tournament could be completed in 4 days, we’re stretching it to 7 to include consolation matches and several exhibition matches. Some translations are available but not all just yet.

Regarding the new server, I think we are having some email issues with the forum; I am investigating that. Otherwise, I think the new server should be visible to everybody by this point. I am unsure about slowdowns when the first voting round starts; our settings could still be tweaked depending on the kind of load we get.

D5 graphs available

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

Apologies for the delay in releasing maps and graphs for Diamond 5. They are on the Diamond Statistics page along with all other result data. You can always visit the Statistics Portal for previous round results after they move off the front page.

Checkpoint, OK so far

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

Most errors are memory-related, so I’ve been increasing limits. Votes seem to be coming in at about the usual rate, so I’m glad that most people are able to submit their votes normally. We’ll continue to observe the server status throughout the day; sometimes I won’t know anything until it has been sitting for a few hours.

But please vote as you normally would so we can observe the server behavior under normal conditions and adjust settings accordingly. Thanks for your support, and thanks for voting!

Donation goal reached

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

I’m happy to announce we have met our donation goal for ISML 2012. Thank you so much to all of our contributors and all who have voiced their support for our tournament and spread the word to friends and communities.

Our latest gifts came from MiiNiiPaa, superunature, and adorend_1990. Our current total is now USD $361.48, completing our goal of $350.00 for the year. This means our server and domain registration will last through the end of the ISML 2012 year, which is great news since we are currently not even halfway through 2011. Thank you again.

On the donation page, a new Affiliate Shopping section is open. Some community members have wanted this feature to complement their usual online purchases. By shopping with an affiliate ID, they help ISML earn a small commission — effectively a donation at no additional cost. Currently we only have Play-Asia listed, but if anyone has a suggestion for additional affiliate links, please let us know.

Staff also says welcome to Rizwan, who joined as a translator for Chinese. In the few weeks he has been with us so far, we have had updates to our current list of Chinese character names and series titles. Some featured match descriptions are translated, and we have an ongoing project to update Contestant biographies this year in Chinese. Thanks for your help, Riz!

We all hope Amethyst Period has been exciting for everyone so far. As always, our forum is open to anyone for discussion, questions, or ideas. Thank you for helping to make and keep ISML great.

Where stuff is

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

Site navigation is mostly unchanged from ISML 2010, but if you’re new to us this year:

  • Past match results are found at the Statistics Portal. Aquamarine results are here.
  • Past featured match writeups are here.
  • Previous ISML tournaments are in our archive.
  • The navigation bar at the top of every ISML page typically has all the links you need to traverse the site.
  • A full regular-season schedule will not be released this year, though we plan to release some information once the regular season is over so you can search for specific matchups.

What’s still missing:

  • Space-Opera-themed maps are a little late; we expect them to be ready by the end of the week.
  • In 2010 there was a module on the main Statistics page that lets you scroll through cumulative standings after each round. This will be ready soon, too.

Seitokai:

  • The ISML Seitokai is a new addition to community-related activities. Top Contestants are nominated and then elected by Forum members to serve a single-Period term, in which some roleplaying opportunities are available for the Seitokai to represent the Contestants in ISML-related events and discussions. Seitokai participation and membership does not affect any Contestant’s ranking in the official tournament.

Thanks to all our visitors and regulars for voting and being a part of ISML.

Ad-blocking ‘bug’

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

I just found out that some Firefox users might not have been able to see the Phase I scoreboard. This is if you have the AdBlock Plus extension or something similar that prevents certain HTML elements from appearing. In our case it was because I used a CSS identifier named “leaderboard.” I have changed that to a different name, so that issue should clear up. You may need to refresh your browser cache if you don’t see the fix right away.

On a side note, you may want to disable blocking for internationalsaimoe.com entirely. Our site is funded through donations from the community and staff, so I have no plans at all to place advertisements on the site (especially not the pop-up kind).

Accessing previous results

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Results from previous rounds can be found in the Statistics Portal.

For the results from Day 1, visit
http://www.internationalsaimoe.com/statistics/preliminary/phase1.php

An archive of the featured match descriptions written by our community can be found at
http://www.internationalsaimoe.com/contestants/fm_index.php

Day 2 voting is currently open; thanks for visiting ISML!

Preview is available

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

I was able to adapt last year’s code in time for match previews in the Preliminaries. They will now be shown on the voting page between rounds when they’re available.

Groups are listed vertically. 1-vs-1-vs-1 matches within each group are also listed vertically. Hover your mouse over a group to highlight all the names in a particular match.