SC2Mapster

Greetings Authors! This is CurseForge Comms for April 26th, 2017.

First up - sorry for being late! Between illness, a summit that we shipped our devs off to, and my own workload we missed our last Friday deadline for this post.

Our devs were out for the majority the week after our last post at an internal summit to discuss changes and features revolving around our core platform. There is a lot of good that came from those discussions, and plans are in place that should allow us a faster turn around on features and fixes due to less development overhead dedicated to maintenance, and more dedicated to productive development.

Obviously, we can’t divulge too much about that process, but as any of those plans come to fruition, we will be sure to put that information right here in these posts.

Okay, so down to business. We may be late but we are still committed to making sure we keep you guys up-to-date on the week to week over here, so let’s get  to it.

Fixed and Released

• Fixed bug in permissions for image uploads on projects (All)
• Backend tweaks to Project Role Management (doesn’t affect front end) (All)
• Improved security on Project submission forms (All)
• Improved security on Private Messages forms (All)
• Improved security on Attachments (All)
• Additional fixes and improvements to project slugs (All)
• Added *.wotmod file processing (WoT)
• We've removed the download button on modpacks due to user confusion (Minecraft)*

A couple of those security related changes are vague due to their sensitive nature, but we want you to know that we work to secure aspects of our platform (preferably) long before an issue arises. That’s the case here.

From last Comms, now released

• File uploads to WoWAce blocked correctly (WoW)
• If your file does not need Localizations the original file will be served to the users (WoW)
• Action Logs for the Packager! Now with more info! (If it fails, we’ll try to provide info on why) (WoW)
• You can now change your project name and slug independently (All)
• File Details page now shows upload date (All)
• Hashtags no longer break the everything (handled correctly in download links) (All)
• Tag deletion now removes the tag from associated issues (All)
• File uploads to Abandoned or Inactive projects will now re-activate those projects (All)
• Changing slugs temporarily preserves old slug as a redirect to new slug (All)

Future Roadmap (Current & Ongoing Development)

• Server Pack Integration (Minecraft)

Wait, why was the download button removed on Modpacks?

There has been a recent uprise in questions (i.e. tons of support tickets) regarding how to use modpacks from users who have stumbled onto CurseForge, downloaded the modpack manifest, and have no knowledge of how to import and launch it. This of course has led to questions from authors due to download counts appearing “high” for modpacks while the mods in them maintain much lower download counts than expected. Removing the download button from forward facing locations is an attempt to help reconcile this issue.

As an example, 25% of Darkosto’s new Invasion pack downloads during its first month were generated from users incorrectly downloading the pack from the site and not knowing how to use it. The download button can still be accessed on the file information page, but that is now the only location to download modpacks on the site if needed.

Additional files (server packs, etc) will continue to have their normal download buttons as well as being better surfaced in a soon to be released update. The download button will refer to our Knowledge Base articles for downloading and importing modpacks (see those here).

Alright, that’s the fix and feature round-up since the last communications, but before we go we have a few more things we would like to discuss about the coming weeks.

Many of you will be happy to hear that we have officially moved from the discussion stage to the planning/action stage regarding community features for CurseForge!

While we don’t want to risk over promising and under delivering, we have taken a very serious look at a few key features we feel would be integral in community interaction and community building. As soon as we have the approval on specifics, we will be sure to post right here as they are added to the roadmap. These are features that we feel are essential to our current communities, but would also enrich other future communities as well.

Lastly, please know that if any issues you are concerned about have yet to be addressed, you can rest assured that we are willing to listen.

Thanks for reading!

Your friendly neighborhood MrFlamegoat