I have been thinking, thinking and thinking of any possible improvements of our September Action that was announced in August and successfully tested as well. Improvements that would be fair to everyone.

I didn't come to any conclusion, so let's follow the test week pattern. With a small bonus.

• The discount is individual for every user and makes 10% for every year of normal Rook membership purchased in the past, up to 60%. BrainKing uses the shopping cart system history of orders to calculate your discount, which means that only orders placed since September 2005 are counted.
• Other registered payments can, when added up, qualify for an additional discount if the total amount is equivalent to the current Brain Rook year subscription price. For instance, if you already paid for a year Brain Knight level (24 Euro) and a 6 months Brain Knight membership (14 Euro), it makes 38 Euro in total - greater or equal to 36 Euro - so BrainKing will increase your discount by another 10%.
• The payment must be received in 72 hours after the order is placed.
• The action will be active for a week (7 days), starting from 1st September 2010, 9:00 a.m. GMT+2. The Paid membership page will inform you about it.

Everything will be properly announced tomorrow.

I have just noticed a lost and found draft I made 4 months ago, so I have decided to publish it at last. It is not a big one - in fact, it only informs about BrainKing being prepared for IPv6 protocol, which is something that will be a must-have in a couple of years.

OK, let me make a few notes:

• If you can use IPv6 at your computer, feel free to test BrainKing on this address: http://[2001:1568:b:101::6]


• If you never heard of IPv6, you can find basic information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipv6


• And if you still think this article is nothing but a technical hassle, please don't hate me.

There is one thing I really love about it. BrainKing has been already given a IPv6 range of /64 type, which means that when the old protocol is fully replaced by this one, we will be allowed to use exactly 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 different IP addresses for our projects. I guess it should be enough for even larger companies than BrainKing.

There are people who like to change their BrainKing user name every week, some of them even more often. Well, it is not against the rules and if they feel compelled to do it, it is only their business. The only "problem" emerges when such a name chameleon suddenly forgets what name he changed to for the last time, which leads to "Help, I cannot log in BrainKing, it says invalid user name or password!" screaming and panicking. My mailbox confirms this theory because I receive this kind of message almost every 2 weeks.

The solution is very easy and it might be suitable for people who do not change their user name as well. Since today, it is possible to enter either user name or email address (which is registered with your BrainKing account) to the login form. And if you use your correct password, BrainKing should log you in. No matter how many times you modify your user name - just remember your email and you are safe forever.

The "User Name" label at the login form will be probably renamed to "user name or email address" soon. Until then, it is a hidden (but useful) feature.

Yes, I know that BrainKing game site has its own blog and it would be nice to post some news occasionally. Very well, here we are back again. There is no big bang or breakthrough to announce today, just a couple of upcoming events:

• Easter Action It seems that certain actions are more popular than other ones and although I say to myself every year "OK, this is for the last time, who wants it anymore?", I have already received a really big amount of requests to make a special membership purchase action this year as well. So be it. And why to wait for Easter? You can expect the Easter Egg bonus code system to be activated in a few days. It will be properly described in Server News on time, as usual.


• BrainKing logo Fine, let's face the truth - the current BrainKing logo is a crap. I remember that I had designed it 8 years ago as a result of "let's model something what looks like a brain and like a king" sort of thought but, from my contemporary point of view, the image of a chess king sitting on a chequered human brain is (disgusting and) too complicated to be easily drawn on t-shirts, mugs, flashdisks, or even easy to remember. Furthermore, BrainKing is not focused on Chess only (although it actually had been 8 years ago), ergo the logo itself it kind of confusing, making many people think that BrianKing is nothing but a Chess site. Spooky, eh?
  The point is, we have started to design a new BrainKing logo and our former intention was to release it as a part of upcoming BrainKing 3.0. However, according to many changes of structure, logic and functionality of the new site, the release date is "a bit" postponed, so we will probably change the logo in a few weeks, maybe sooner. If nothing goes wrong, this event would be closely related to a re-release of BrainKing Store (currently inactive), featuring new t-shirts, mugs, mousepads and tens of other goods.

There will be also a few additions to the current BrainKing in a near future, mostly because it is our good concern to reflect demands of the market (phew, what a terrible sentence). More details later.

Although our current home page (BrainKing) is much more detailed than the former one "white background and some short text", it still looks too static to be worth visiting for other than a login purpose. I would like to make it a little different for every single visit. For example:

• Instead of showing static images of sample game boards, we can embed previews of live games, thanks to the new board sizing system, so it won't be a problem to shrink it to fit the tower width. Games can be picked randomly or the most recent ones or games between top players etc.


• It might be interesting to show live previews of all important parts of the site - tournament tables, stairs, team matches, public photo albums, discussion boards.

Any other ideas?

Actually, BrainKing's home page will be the only page that would keep the current castle design (with towers, flying dragon etc.), so it might be really nice to make it a little more attractive. And I like to collect original ideas.

Emails are not reliable. There is too many spam these days, some sources claim that it is about 96% of all sent emails.

To address this problem, we prepared the following improvements for BrainKing 3.0:

• All interaction and communication between BrainKing users and administrators will be done through BrainKing pages.


• Regarding the previous point, the mailbox info@brainking.com will be no longer monitored and probably replaced by something like noreply@brainking.com to indicate that nobody would read a reply to a system generated email (account creation confirm, etc.). Such emails would contain instructions how to contact us properly.


• Contact Us page will use a ticket reporting system instead of sending emails, mostly because there are still many people who do not read the description "we speak English and Czech only". A ticket system (similar to Bug Tracker) should ensure that your request would not be filtered out by an anti-spam email filter and if you use a language we do not speak, it should be easy to assign a volunteer translator who can provide us a translation.


• Additionally, a secret question/answer function could be added to the password recovery feature, in order to eliminate the need to send password recovery emails that could be actually sent from a phishing site. Furthermore, it is not a rare situation when such an email, even properly sent by BrainKing, never reaches the user's mailbox because of anti-spam filtering.

As a result, the only emails generated by BrainKing should be the ones confirming that you created your BrainKing account successfully. When people know that any other emails are probably scam, there is a good chance to increase security of their BrainKing accounts.

As Facebook users have probably noticed, Facebook uses a fixed width layout - no matter how big your web browser window is or what screen resolution you use, the Facebook "active" area always has the same width and is displayed at the center of the window.

BrainKing, on the other hand, uses a flexible width viewport for its inner space. The "towers" (left and right column) are always positioned at the very left and right edge of the browser window, and the main area (inner space) width is automatically adjusted to fill the remaining space.

Fixed layout:
1) Advantages - the page width is always the same, so it is very easy to find the right position and size for any elements you want to place. It is not necessary to optimize the content of "boxes" to fit all possible settings of user web browsers.
2) Disadvantages - if your web browser window width is too small, it won't be capable of displaying the whole page and you would be forced to use the horizontal scrollbar to see the right part of the page. If it is too wide, the page will occupy just the central part and there would be bad looking (and unused) margins. People might be frustrated that they cannot enlarge the active area to put more information there.

Flexible layout:
1) Advantages - the browser window space is always fully used and if you want to show more text without scrolling down the page, it is easy to enlarge the window and get more space.
2) Disadvantages - it requires a more complex system to size and position elements that should be customizable (resize, move, collapse etc.). It might be more difficult for programmers who want to contribute their own applications, regarding their visual design.

Any opinions?

In fact, I always preferred a flexible layout because a narrow content looked terrible on my 30'' monitor when the browser window is maximized, but I agree that I am probably not a typical user of the web. In my opinion, a good compromise - horizontally extendable inner space with fixed width columns - would be the best solution.

First of all, I would like to explain that this article was formerly posted to BrainKing page on Facebook. However, since Facebook does not provide any working protection against abuse and spam, the page was closed and I decided to repost my ideas here. At least, BrainKing.info is under my control.

The article follows:

This is one of the most important planned features for BrainKing 3.0.

As you know, the only current way to make a group of BrainKing users is to create a fellowship and invite paying members to join. However, there are some drawbacks:

• The original purpose of fellowships was to create game teams for team matches and tournaments. It is not a good approach to form a new fellowship only for discussions and pollute the fellowship list with gameless creations.


• It is not possible to invite non-paying members.


• Fellowships are limited to 4 discussion boards only. I have been already asked to increase this number but since the main purpose of fellowships is to play games, such solution would not be preferred.


• Many people join all fellowships they are invited to because they just want to be connected with other people who join all possible fellowships. When everyone is a member of everything, the very purpose of a fellowship membership is pointless.

Our goal is to create a Facebook-like system of user developed pages and groups, featuring discussion boards, photo albums, a smart notification system etc. It would also solve the problem of asking me for new public discussion boards - if there is a topic you would like to discuss with friends or anyone else, just create a page and invite them. Simple and effective.

Our long term goal is to change BrainKing's former business plan (to be a game server and nothing else) and make it closer to the social network idea. I know that there are some hard core players who do not like this idea but I am sure that they would profit on it as well - the more registered users we have, the better is a chance that new game opponents appear for everyone, even for those who just want to play games and nothing else.

Just a side note, I am glad to confirm that BrainKing's December action was successfully and automatically started by BrainKing itself and many people have already caught their bonuses (most of them are lucky enough to get the 100% (red) one).

• Vacation
  • Problem: The vacation system is too complicated. It utilizes weekend days that can be changed occasionally and it allows people to set or clear vacation days in their calendar. We observed that these features produce too many different situations which usually lead to a confusion and sudden loss of games by timeout.
  • Solution: In order to make the days off as simple as possible, it will be no longer possible to change weekend days - they will be fixed to Saturday and Sunday for everyone. Furthermore, the calendar will be removed completely (or reserved for another purpose) and BrainKing will use vacation days only if it is necessary - i.e. if the particular user's games should timeout. In other words, the automatic vacation will be the only way to spend vacation days and it would be enabled for all players of all membership levels.

When the new version of BrainKing is ready, the vacation system will be properly introduced with a good description and examples of typical situations. I am sure that people will get used to it because it is really simple, transparent and, what is the most important, does not allow any kind of cheating.

In fact, the announced December (or Christmas) Action will be started in 3 and half hours, so if I write "it starts tomorrow", it should be true for the most of BrainKing users. And since I already received some questions and even speculations about a background or very meaning of the action, let me post a short clarification (although I am sure that the majority of BrainKing community does not need it at all ):

• As I described, the action allows every BrainKing user to get a nice bonus (up to 100%) to the subscribed period of Brain Rook membership level. The bonus value is determined by the particular color code and the code must be active at the time of order placement, otherwise it is not used. Each color code image (at the Main Page) contains a tooltip (when a mouse cursor is hovered over it) with the exact time range of the code validity.


• In order to activate the bonus, your order must be completed (i.e. payment received by us) by the end of this year - 2009, according to GMT+01:00 time zone. The particular order page (accessible through your Profile page) always shows the time left value.


• The action was created because people wanted us to and we like to do something good for them. All speculations about raking up as much money as possible (and at all costs) are ridiculous because BrainKing does not live on membership fees at all - in fact, we have several ways of income that allow us to run the site without any problems, no matter how many users upgrade to a paid membership level. This is our official statement.


• If nothing goes wrong, the action should be automatically started by BrainKing shortly after midnight (GMT+01:00). If it does not, please do not panic. In such case, it will be started manually and any possible bugs should be fixed as soon as possible.

And if you have any ideas how to improve the action or make a better one in the future, please do not hesitate to add your comment.

This is a follow-up of the first part.

• Links
  • Problem: Too many menu items (left column) and too many links to favorite boards or fellowships (right column) significantly increase total size of all BrainKing pages.
  • Solution: 1) All left column menu items will be removed. 2) All right column links will be removed as well. 3) A new pull-down menu system will be placed at the page top and made always visible, even when the page content is scrolled down. Likewise, a new pull-up link system will be placed at the page bottom, containing favorite boards, fellowships and similar elements that do not have to be always displayed but only on a user's demand (click).


• Friends
  • Problem: Clicking a friend's name only leads to their profile pages and more clicks must be done to invoke a particular action (game invitation, personal message, tournament invitation, ...). Furthermore, a plain textual list does not look nice.
  • Solution: Instead of showing a list of friends at a fixed position, a box containing a two column table with friend names and icons will be displayed at the left column, by default. Like all column boxes of this type, it will be possible to drag and drop it to another place (at the same or the opposite side column), turn it off completely or change settings - max number of displayed friends, list of actions to pop up when a friend's icon is clicked, etc.


• Messages and notification
  • Problem: All types of messages are sent to the user's inbox, no matter if they come from another person or are system generated. As a consequence, it creates a big mess at the user's message box page, especially when they do not log in BrainKing for a couple of weeks.
  • Solution: Only personal messages will be sent to message boxes, just like it works now. All other notifications (game finished, tournament won, tournament started, opinion poll closed, ...) will be stored at a specific part of the bottom pull-up system and separated by their types. A similar functionality can be found on Facebook and I think that it is a very good and convenient approach.

To be continued, if I think up more details.

I thought that PayPal could not surprise me anymore and I was wrong. As I described at the PayPal policy - you are guilty until proven innocent - is not acceptable by BrainKing any longer article, that hypocritical company (or should I say bunch of bureaucrats?) blocked by account for a couple of ridiculous reasons and put me to an unpleasant situation to find a new way to accept membership payments quickly, without a chance to do anything about it. Fortunately, the solution had been found and we do not need PayPal anymore. However, their email robots keep us amused even 6 months later.

This is what I received yesterday:

Your account has been limited for more than 180 days. It will continue to be limited but you now have the ability to withdraw funds.

Ha ha. That's cute, isn't it? In other words, if your account is "limited" (and it is PayPal and only PayPal who decides about it, so it can happen anytime to anybody), you will not get access to your funds for 6 months and after that, PayPal kindly allows you to withdraw them (after they collect the interest from a bank). Well, even thieves and cheaters must live on something, huh? Luckily, I had cleared by PayPal account a long time ago, so now my balance is just 2.55 Euro, but the web is full of complaints from people who could not get to amounts of ten thousands or even more. Right, what else could one expect from a company which is not a bank, thus not regulated by any authority?

I would like to add that even now, after 6 months, they still do not allow me to close my account or at least delete my credit card numbers. Their slogan says "The safer, easier way to get paid" and it is nothing but an enormous lie.

From time to time, people ask me why BrainKing's Bug Tracker contains so many reports that are never marked "resolved", "not a bug", "duplicate" or any other status which sends a message "yes, we are doing something about it".

Well, the answer is simple. Bug reports are not addressed because, according to the brand new structure of BrainKing 3.0, their sources will simply disappear when the new version of BrainKing is released, therefore it would be kind of waste of time to solve them for the current version, especially when none of them can be called "a deadly critical issue". In fact, it is one of the positive aspects of a complete site rewrite - when it is finished, the whole Bug Tracker can be cleaned and ready for fresh reports only.

I know that it can look like a cheesy avoidance of problem solving but, from a long term perspective, it is the most effective solution for everyone. Why? In order to fix some reported issues, the very core of BrainKing would have to be modified and such operation is always risky - partial improvement of the site fundamentals usually creates more problems than it solves. Nobody wants to compromise the site stability, right?

It does not mean that bug reports would be useless, of course. The more issues are filed, the better the new BrainKing can be, because they highlight the problematic parts of the code and it is easier to make them error proof from the scratch now. Please, do not hesitate to post bug reports. Just don't be insulted if you don't get any response. There is always a good reason for it.

One of the key aspects of BrainKing 3.0 (not released yet) is make its pages as simple as possible, which is a direct opposite to our former approach - to concentrate as many information on a single page as it can keep. There is a couple of very good reasons for this decision:

• Speed
  • Problem: The more elements (text, images, tables, ...) a page contains, the longer the total load time is. It is usually not a big problem for people with a fast connection to our site but everybody knows that the internet is not, uh, a homogeneous entity and it can easily happen that a page, which was displayed in a wink of an eye yesterday, can take 10 seconds to render today.
  • Solution: Extremely long tables with 5000 started games will not be used anymore. All elements of this kind will be, by default, limited to, say, max 20 rows and providing a "show more" link to display a longer list only on a user demand.


• Settings
  • Problem: Users require improvements and new features, we implement them and since not everyone is happy with new functionality that suddenly appears at BrainKing pages, we create options to turn them on/off or change some parameters. Then another feature requests emerge, we implement them, etc. etc. The outcome is a long and complicated Settings page with tens of switches which an average user might never modify and if so, he can be easily confused and change something wrong.
  • Solution: Only the most fundamental options will be displayed at the Settings page and their count should not exceed 10. There will be an Expert Options tab to enable access to all possible switches if someone wants to experiment with them, of course.


• Sorting
  • Problem: BrainKing contains a couple of tables that can be sorted by any column if a user click at the particular column header. Although it may look like an useful feature, it is, in fact, a source of several issues. Many users clicks the headers incidentally and then do not know how to reset the original sorting. It is very difficult (on even impossible in some cases) to optimize database tables to return requested rows sorted by all possible columns and it usually leads to a slowdown of the whole database server, which negatively impacts all BrainKing users. Last but not least, our statistics say that only a minority of users actually changes sorting rules for the mentioned tables.
  • Solution: Customizable sorting will be removed at all, except short lists (like country names) where the performance is not the issue. Instead, a system of customizable filters will be applied. For instance, in a list of user's started games, click "Chess" to show only Chess games, click "Fencer" to show only games with this person, etc. It will be simpler, more effective and much faster for everyone.

To be continued (it is a good practice to split long texts to more short entries, otherwise nobody would read them ).

Although it is not December yet, many people already asked me if BrainKing plans to make a membership action (usually called Christmas Special) this year too. The answer is YES and, regarding the fact that many new users registered on BrainKing since the last action of this kind taken place, I would like repost its full description:

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When you see a small flashing light bulb on the Main Page, you know a bonus is active and can be used. But don't hesitate for a long time - some bonuses (especially the one which adds 100% to the subscribed period) can be active only for several minutes. The bonuses can be used only if a purchased membership is for 1 year or longer period and it is not a Brains payment.

This action will be started on 1st December 2009 and should be active to the end of this year. Furthermore, we have added a nice improvement - you don't have to send a payment in 72 hours to validate the bonus (like before), it must be received to the end of this year - 31st December 2009, 23:59:59 GMT+01:00. The reason is that we would like to make this opportunity available to all users, including those who use a wire transfer or other slower methods to pay.

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Right, it's still the same. But why to change something what simply works and is popular?