New features!

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No doubt you all would have noticed the new features on WEBoggle - with the major one being the ability to upload your photo or avatar - and it's great to see so many of you using the new features.

In light of the popularity of the new features, we will continue working to expand them even more. Some of the upcoming additions may include:

- Private Messaging
- Photo Galleries
- A discussion forum
- Plus many others!

Stay tuned!

To chat, or not to chat, that is the question

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Due to an overwhelming response from the community, the chat system has once again been overhauled.

By default, no chat area is shown upon joining the game. For those who wish to chat, a simple click on the "Turn chat on" link will reinstate the chat box.

Those who have personalized accounts (i.e. passwords set on their username) will be able to change their preferences so that the chat area is always shown.

This should reduce bandwidth used (thus reducing lag). Players who don't want to see chat (or are distracted/offended/annoyed by it) can now play in peace. And those who want to chat can continue to do so.

Thank you all for your feedback.

Chat Improved

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In response to feedback by players, the chat facility has been improved.

It now has the option to show only chat from other registered players, or to show chat from only casual players. This should let the registered players chat amongst themselves only, rather than getting intertwined with the chat of casual players (which can sometimes be vulgar or offputting). Likewise, casual players can exclude chat from registered players. Later on, it may be upgraded again so that players in the 5x5 room can exclude chat from players on the 4x4 board.

Please note that you may need to perform a forced refresh and/or clear your browser cache before the new feature will work properly.

Server Upgraded

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The Weboggle servers were upgraded about a week ago. Performance testing showed there was a improvement, and lag has been significantly reduced. A big thank you to all our players for helping out with the testing (if you played in the past week, you helped test it!)

Nonetheless, there are still a few bugs that need fixing, e.g. sometimes the scores for the last game are not displayed. But with the performance issues mostly resolved, more time can now be devoted to making improvements and adding additional features.

Minor updates and server more stable

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There is now a 'Rotate' button. It was implemented as a result of numerous requests, and something that I felt was necessary for effective gameplay - after all, when playing real Boggle, you get to rotate the board and see words from a different angle.

The server also seems to have stabilised over the past week. I was able to locate some spare memory to install, which has helped significantly. I'd still like to increase the memory size more (to 1 GB or more) but other priorities mean it will happen later rather than sooner. I've also done a few tweaks to the database, and the DB server also seems to be coping better. Still, keeping the past two months' worth of historical game data results in about two million database records! The real test will be when 30 players are on...