Apologies to all of you who were getting database configuration errors earlier today (hopefully not for too much longer than just today).

My webhost changed some access policies which invalidated the configuration files on the software...there was no longer a way to make a valid database connection based upon the parameters in the files. 

Apologies for the downtime, all services (including the Bug Tracker and Wiki) should be back in the air at this point.  Please let me know if there are services still missing.

All:

Recently I've had a rash of you all sending e-mails for support assistance with various questions on installation and configuration.  I DO NOT DISCOURAGE YOU FROM DOING SO!  Especially if your question isn't getting enough attention on the boards.

However, I would ask that everyone please try posting to the support forum FIRST before you send me an e-mail.  It's not about responding (I can do so either way) but about efficiency.

First, I'm not the most responsible person at checking personal e-mail...if you asked my wife I think she'd probably use words like "suck" and "never".  Sending me a personal e-mail is likely to get lost for up to several weeks till something happens that reminds me I need to check it.  I can't tell you how bad I usually feel when I open my e-mail box after 3 weeks and see a support request dating back weeks that has been sitting unresponded to.  It's a horrible feeling to know that I've had someone asking for help for weeks and I've not even said "Yea, I'll look at it."

Secondly, it's actually more helpful to me if you post on the support forum.  Generally if you're having a problem with the software, so is someone else, or so will someone else eventually.  Having an already discussed and fixed solution sitting in the support fourm for search is a much better thing for me than having to go over the same ground with multiple people.  Also, getting an issue reported in e-mail can be problematic to me since I may not be able to correlate it with other issues as well as  you all can.  There've been several times that someone's posted something on the forums and someone else has said "yea, I saw that and when that happened I got this message too" and it lead me to understanding the solution better.

Don't hesitate to e-mail me questions if you have them, but if you can, try to use the forums here first.  I try to check them regularly (admittedly I've had to slow down alot recently from where I was a year ago), and posting here is much more helpful to the entire community than a personal conversation we have over e-mail that no one else can see.

Thanks in advance for your help, support and patronage of this product, and for putting up with my slow response times for the last few months.

--Illydth

WoW Raid Manager 4.0.4 has been released on sourceforge.  Check out the Announcements post for more information.

For those of you current on 4.0.3 patches, you will find nothing much changed with the software (there are a few small things, you can check the release notes in the doc directory for more information).  For those of you new to the software, 4.0.4 includes all the 4.0.3 patches and the new instances released with WOW Patch 3.2 and 3.3. 

As always, please let me know if there are any issues you find.

(This message has no affiliation with "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" a computer game by Brøderbund.  Really...it doesn't... :) )

So first things first, HAPPY HOLIDAYS to all of you out there in WRM land.  Hopefully the problems haven't been too nasty and I haven't lost too many of you to "This software isn't supported well" syndrome!

The holidays are always hectic for me with a mother, mother-in-law and two little kids (now 8 and 6) under foot so I don't get alot of time to post and/or check up on you guys while on "vacation".  Between now and xmas, hopefully I'll be able to be more normal and involved here and then, yet again, a small break around Xmas/New Years time. 

Thanks to everyone answering questions, diagnosing problems and helping each other out.  It's a great thing when the community gets involved with each other and saves me a HUGE amount of time that I can further use to develop more and better things for the app. 

I HAVE NOT BEEN IDLE! :)  While I was on vacation I setup a windows (XAMPP) development system and started playing with some of the windows issues i've heard about over the last several months.  Hopefully in short order (I still have issues with the armory stuff) I should have a quick patch out to 4.0.x to resolve many of the windows installation and usage problems I know of.

4.1.0 is coming along grandly, I have only the last of the lua output to worry about and the app is ready for general user base testing.  I hesitate to set dates, but I would expect the next evolution in WRM (the 4.1.x line) to come out before Xmas and be added to regularly.

Thanks as always for your patience and I'll be working over the next couple days to get to all the open service tickets out there.

A quick patch has been developed for the issue regarding character portraits and images not showing up in armory popups beyond the 3.2.2 WoW Patch.

Bliz changed the location of several of it's images and this patch allocates the new area for the images to the code.

Please follow the link below to get the patch.

Thanks to Tseran for the patch.

http://www.wowraidmanager.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?4443

--Illydth

A quick word of caution to everyone regarding the Armory Lookup feature in WRM.

Please see the following thread: - Click Here -

--Illydth

WRM Patch
============
First, a new patch to 4.0.3 has been created to fix an issue with table sorting when using foreign languages.  See the "Current Patch Status" thread for more information.  Basically, if you're using a language other than english on your WRM installation, you and your users are unable to properly sort on any column in any of the data tables in the application for which the foreign language "name" for the column doesn't match the english "name" for the column.  Clicking any sort will simply re-sort the table by the default sorting method.  This has been fixed.

RIM (Raid Invite Manger)
==========================
Secondly, and more importnatly, many of you are experiencing or have experienced a problem with RIM after upgrading to WRM 4.0.3.  There are two issues with how 4.0.3 and RIM are handling things that are causing these problems.

First and foremost, a code change to the LUA output (required) caused a header change in the LUA file.  In the section of players signed up to the raid, you used to have "warriors", "death knights", and "shaman".  Unfortunately, due to how the system is working that "shaman" header has changed to "shamans" (Ok, it's crappy english, I can't work around it), thus causing a problem within RIM reading that data.  There is a posted fix to update a particular line of code in the LUA file to cause RIM to accept "shamans" instead of "shaman".

A second, and more insidious, issue has cropped up with the introduction of true UTF-8 Support in WRM 4.0.3.  We do not know a root cause nor have we figured out under what conditions this is happening.  What we do know is that many users are experiencing erorrs during syncing of data to other guild members with RIM, to the point where data sync is causing RIM to no longer work.  The issue seems to be caused by bad data in the RIM data cache that World of Warcraft automatically stores.  THIS IS NOT A BUG IN RIM, nor is there anything we can do within RIM to "fix" this problem.  We suspect that for those of you with characters or guild names that have multi-byte characters within them, the fact that WRM is now outputting a GOOD UTF-8 style file is causing the data cache to choke. 

There is an easy update to fix this problem.  Simply put, you need to clear your RIM data cache through the use of the following /script command:

/script wipe(phpRaidSave); ReloadUI();

http://www.wowraidmanager.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?4085#post_4122

Some users have reported having to do this multiple times before the data properly syncs.

If you are running into issues using RIM and WRM (4.0.3) PLEASE see the linked thread above, have some patience, try out the fix and post back any / all errors or issues you are having.  Elayne and I put in alot of time and effort into this software and this mod, we are interested in seeing all of you properly using the software and having it work for you and we're commited to quality development and tools for you and your raiders.  That said, particularly in the 4.x development phases, there may be problems like this that crop up from time to time.  Your FIRST turn when you have a problem with RIM or WRM should be these forums.  Post the issues, give us as much data as you can and give us some time to sort through the problem and come up with a fix.

Thanks all for your continued patience and support.

- Click Here -

In working through the above thread I may just have come up with the solution to the multi-byte character problems WRM has been experiencing for YEARS.  There will likely still be DISPLAY problems througout the app, but if I'm right, I've just fixed any major problems regarding failures due to multi-byte issues.

This is a huge step toward a true UTF8 aware application.

I'll keep everyone posted.

--Illydth

- Click Here -

As stated in the above thread, WRM Support for 3.1 WoW is limited in the 3.6 and 4.0 Beta 1 versions.  I have full support built into the soon to be released (edit: Now Released) 4.0 version of WRM.

--Illydth

So as most of you know by now, we're on a new host.  I'm sure most of you are seeing a significant speed increase.

The host is nice, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space usage, pretty much "do anything you want with few restrictions."  However, that doesn't mean "no" restrictions. 

There is one major limitation: CPU.  There is a per minute CPU limit that is configured for every account on the new host.  This is how they manage to keep cheap costs while managing to provide a fast service.  I have actually seen this CPU bound hit once when doing some WIKI edits. 

If you get a screen pop up that says we've reached our CPU boundry limitations, don't worry, within the next minute the limits are reset and all will be well.

HOWEVER this doesn't mean keep hitting the refresh button till the page comes up, this only exacerbates the problem.  Please go get a cup of coffee, take a quick break and try again a couple minutes later...this will help make sure we don't CONSTANTLY run into issues. 

If you are CONSISTANTLY running into the CPU problem please post in the support forum, send me a PM or, worst case scenario, send an e-mail.  At the moment I have 2 fair traffic websites running on this same host (my guild website and this website, both sites have several hundred users on them and are active).  I will also be adding 2 - 3 more minor sites to the host as well (consolidating my wife's 2 low traffic business sites and our low traffic family website to the same host).

If this starts to become a problem with 5 sites off the same host (I don't expect it to since the other 3 sites use static webpages and should take literally 0 CPU time to render, especially with cache) I will start looking at other solutions...however I will warn everyone right now I DO NOT have the cash to manage 2 - 3 hosting accounts simultaneously.

While I have only seen this issue once, please keep in mind it CAN happen and please do what you can keep your "CPU" presence on the web host to a minimum, and if you do run into this, please "don't panic" and just give it a minute or two and try again.

Thanks in advance.

--Illydth