News

This page lists recent changes that may be or interest to logged in users who can edit or contribute information to the MDDB.

Tunes and media links included in team variations for a dance

22 August 2020

The team-specific variations for a dance often include the use of different tunes. The database now handles this properly, also has a place for team-specific documentation and media references, which is an ideal place to put a YouTube link. The navigation between team dance editor, dance details and tunes has been improved, and the dance details page is the home page for showing and adding team-based variations.

If you search for a dance or team and your search comes up with exactly one match, the display of a "list" containing one item is skipped and you go straight to the dance or team details page.

This news page was previously only visible to logged in users: now anyone can read it.

Better Facilities for Describing Variations on a Dance

19 July 2020

It often happens (especially in the Cotswold traditions) that a team has its own variations to a dance from another tradition. Until now, the only way to document that is in the dance notes or team notes. Now, any team editor can edit the description of a dance to add details of variations as performed specifically their team. We have extra 'held in hands' and 'set size' fields, a 'source' field for where or how their team learned the dance, and a new 'notes' field for anything else.

When a team's details are listed, the dance list repertoire will indicate where such variations exist. Clicking on the dance name will show the dance details with notes about team varations. If you are a team editor, showing the details for any dance will, by default, show your own teams's variations.

Over the next few weeks we will be manually transferring the contents of existing dance notes, where relevant, to team variation info in the new format.

Please Contact Colin Andrews if not clear about how this works.

Security and Style Updates

25 May 2020

Further security hardening (for the technically minded, "Content Security Policy") has added further protection from damage or abuse.

There have been some style changes (mostly background colors) in forms and buttons, and the layout of some pages has been improved.

Team Photos and Other Changes

15 May, 2020

Teams may now have up to three photos incuded in their details.

An archive links page has been introduced. Unlike the other links page, certain users will be allowed to log in to edit the archive links.

"Hamburger" menu icon for small screens, because the number of navigation buttons has increased.

The contact page is easier to use, with clearer options and four contact forms tailored for purpose.

A security vulnerability has been fixed, and styling (including layout and typeface choice) has been changed.

Errors when adding dances

17 Jan 2020

A software upgrade introduced an incompatibility which made adding new dances fail silently. This problem has been identified and fixed.

Tunes for Dances

25 Nov 2019

A new page, Tunes has appeared, and the database can now store much more information about the tunes for each dance.

To see or edit the tunes information for a dance, go to the Dances pages, search for the dance and click on the dance name in the table to show the Dance details. If you are an authorised team editor, you'll be able to edit the tune details associated with dances performed by your team.

Team editors can also reach the dance details page and (and hence tunes for a dance) from the team's list of dance repertoire.

Notable feaures:

We think the tunes facility is functional, but there is doubtless room for improvement - please contact us if you have questions, requests or suggestions.

Second Site Move

25 Nov 2019

A second migration to a new server happened in November this year, because of problems with the site management software, combined with an opportunity to revert to a newer (and under active development) version of the system I had used previously.

Web Site Migrated to New Server

30 May 2019

The MDDB web site is now hosted on a new server. I am moving all my web sites: for reasons see 2019 Migration on my own web site.

Downtime and Web Hosting

10 May 2019

Apologies for unscheduled "Error 500" downtime on afternoon of May 9th and morning of May 10th: this was an error in the move to new hosting. The problem was quickly fixed once Colin had notified me of it.

Dance Notes

10 May 2019

The separate notes fields attached to dance information have now been included in the dance record itself as three free-text fields: Dance team editors can edit these notes for any dance which is performed by their team, even if they can't edit other dance details.

The old -style notes are being phased out, and copied to the new system as time permits.

Links in Dance Notes (again)

19 December 2018

URLs in dance notes will again render correctly as links (see 10 October below) as long as they include "http://" or "https://" at the start. Additionally, email addresses will render correctly as mailto: links.

This release of the site software also included several improvements to dance listings, including a 'source' column, and a 'Notes' columns which show how many dance notes entries are attached to the dance record.

Team representatives can now add dance notes for any dance performed by their team. Anyone entitled to add dance notes can also edit or remove any notes field that they created or last edited.

New handling for dance traditions

23 October 2018

When entering or editing dance information, instead of needing a three-letter code for dance tradition, you now have a drop-down list of tradition names. It's quite a long list, but (on most browsers) if you type the first letter of the tradition name you can skip to those that begin with that letter, and they are presented in alphabetical order.

If you are entering new dances invented by your own team, you will still have to contact Colin Andrews to get a new "tradition" added to the system if it's not there yet.

There will be further changes in the future to reflect better the way in which dances are devised based on existing traditions. We are working on the details now.

Links in dance notes

10 October 2018

The facility for converting URLs to live links in dance notes has been suspended. It was getting confused by email addresses. If I can get it to work better, I'll re-instate it. You can still include URLs, but they won't be clickable links.

Anahata (webmaster)

New "notes" fields for dances

10 September 2018

Each dance entry may now have several associated 'notes' fields. These can be added by any team representative if their team does that dance, and is intended to document local variations, e.g. if they have a different set size, tune or figures from the 'standard' one.

Where several notes are added about a dance, the MDDB administrators (who have greater editing power) may later amalgamate them for tidiness.