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MushroomObserver / mushroom-observer

A website for sharing observations of mushrooms.
https://mushroomobserver.org
MIT License
80 stars 26 forks source link

Banner concerns #2209

Open mo-nathan opened 4 months ago

mo-nathan commented 4 months ago

The management of the site banner at the moment is somewhat awkward. Specifically changing it causes the config/locales/en.txt file to get rewritten on the server which makes the code on the production server slightly different from the code on the main branch. It also seems to require a server restart to really pick up on the change as page loads after the change seem to switch between the old and the new banner with no clear rhyme or reason. I assume it's due to some caching behavior or semi-independent server threads that don't see the change. I've also noticed that POST when saving a new banner seems to take quite a while. Finally, in looking through the code, I noticed that there is a kind of odd timeout on the banner dismissal of "10000" which I think means a bit less than 3 hours.

In my view, it would be better if the banner did not result in change in a file that is managed by git, changes were immediately included on all pages, was faster, and I don't see a clear reason for a dismissed banner to not remain dismissed until the content is actually changed.

JoeCohen commented 4 months ago

I agree. Perhaps also allow a user to un-dismiss the banner (in case it was dismissed by accident, or the user just wants to see it again.)

mo-nathan commented 4 months ago

I like that idea, but don't know exactly what would make sense. Seems like another icon i the upper right. Maybe @nimmolo has a thought on what the "reveal the banner" icon might be - green trumpet?

nimmolo commented 1 month ago

I like the green trumpet... will be updating the icon library next, so the selections will be different and some may shift.

My hope is to move the banner announcements to an in-app notification system, that might eventually also handle tracking notifications etc. Unread banners would be pinned to the top of the inbox.

It's still a question though, how to handle translations for these notifications.

Our emails get translated, but banners are "brand new", by definition, and translators can't be expected to translate them immediately. One thing the notifications could include maybe is a link to Google Translate with their locale preselected.