The admin team has a couple of announcements.
First, there is now a government registry spreadsheet.
This is linked to the pre-existing citizen registry: Once the forum profile ID of an official is specified, all other information (forum name, nation, etc.) is automatically pulled from the citizen registry. Likewise, if that information changes in the citizen registry, then it will also change in the government registry.
The government registry is intended as the single, central location for getting information about the current government makeup. It will be maintained by the admin team, in at least the same frequency as we used to maintain the forum header (i.e., very frequently).
If you are building some application that needs up-to-date information about government officials in Europeia, we strongly encourage you to use the government registry as your source, rather than use some alternative source or try to manually enter the information. Similarly, if you need to link to a location that lists government officials, we strongly encourage you to link to the government registry.
Second, and related to the above, there have been a few changes to the forum header.
Specifically, in the past admins needed to manually edit the header code to update the officials listed in the "Region" and "Government" drop-down menus. This has changed, and now both drop-down menus automatically pull information from the government registry, without the need for manual edits from the admins.
This has two advantages. The first, and the one most relevant to non-admins is that, given that the nation and forum profile information is already available "for free" in the government registry, this information is now also included in the drop-down menus. This has been requested many times in the past, and we always had to say no due to how tedious manually updating the header would become. This is no longer an issue, now that the links can be created automatically. See here for some related discussion.
The second advantage is that, with these changes, we have completely eliminated the need for frequent manual edits to the header. This editing process is very error-prone, and mistakes can be quite dangerous - miss one "/" in the code and there goes the entire forum page. With the new system, everything is safer.
One downside of this change is that now you need to have JavaScript enabled to view the "Government" drop-down menu. However, given that JavaScript is already needed to view the "News" (EBC Wire) and "Info" drop-down menus, and that JavaScript is anyway necessary for properly displaying many other non-custom parts of the forum, this should not be too big of an issue.
Finally, note that the "Government" link on the header has also been changed, to link to the new government registry.
All comments and suggestions are welcome.
First, there is now a government registry spreadsheet.
This is linked to the pre-existing citizen registry: Once the forum profile ID of an official is specified, all other information (forum name, nation, etc.) is automatically pulled from the citizen registry. Likewise, if that information changes in the citizen registry, then it will also change in the government registry.
The government registry is intended as the single, central location for getting information about the current government makeup. It will be maintained by the admin team, in at least the same frequency as we used to maintain the forum header (i.e., very frequently).
If you are building some application that needs up-to-date information about government officials in Europeia, we strongly encourage you to use the government registry as your source, rather than use some alternative source or try to manually enter the information. Similarly, if you need to link to a location that lists government officials, we strongly encourage you to link to the government registry.
Second, and related to the above, there have been a few changes to the forum header.
Specifically, in the past admins needed to manually edit the header code to update the officials listed in the "Region" and "Government" drop-down menus. This has changed, and now both drop-down menus automatically pull information from the government registry, without the need for manual edits from the admins.
This has two advantages. The first, and the one most relevant to non-admins is that, given that the nation and forum profile information is already available "for free" in the government registry, this information is now also included in the drop-down menus. This has been requested many times in the past, and we always had to say no due to how tedious manually updating the header would become. This is no longer an issue, now that the links can be created automatically. See here for some related discussion.
The second advantage is that, with these changes, we have completely eliminated the need for frequent manual edits to the header. This editing process is very error-prone, and mistakes can be quite dangerous - miss one "/" in the code and there goes the entire forum page. With the new system, everything is safer.
One downside of this change is that now you need to have JavaScript enabled to view the "Government" drop-down menu. However, given that JavaScript is already needed to view the "News" (EBC Wire) and "Info" drop-down menus, and that JavaScript is anyway necessary for properly displaying many other non-custom parts of the forum, this should not be too big of an issue.
Finally, note that the "Government" link on the header has also been changed, to link to the new government registry.
All comments and suggestions are welcome.