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Post by Freddy on Dec 27, 2010 11:39:01 GMT -5
I can read PHP and understand it, but I'm not good enough to give you performance tips.
Let me test it for a bit.
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Post by SwimFellow on Dec 27, 2010 14:48:14 GMT -5
It looks awesome. Nothing to add.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2010 17:13:40 GMT -5
I'm glad to announce the front page system has reached an usable design! The admins can now grab this and place it on the main server, if they're not afraid of manually editing RSS feeds. How it works is as follows: as you place new news/debates/projects on each feed, you don't remove the old ones, they simply will not be shown. Dates must be in the format shown on the feeds, on the GMT time zone, URLs must be escaped properly (replace & with & etc). And you can edit the navigation items and all of the code on the template and php as you please. I might make an administration interface if you want. Attachments:
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Post by Insane_Zang on Dec 28, 2010 3:32:47 GMT -5
I've actually just written two things that can go on the landing page if people like it To be put as a welcome at the top of the page: You’ve just found your way to The South Pole of the Moon, where seeing things from a different point of view is just part of our day [would like approval from Daniela to use this]. If this is your first time here, welcome! We hope you enjoy your stay. We encourage you to stick around on this page to see announcements and active threads. For those of you who have been here before, you can go ahead and click here [add link to SPOTM homepage] to go straight to the front page. As an "About Us": The South Pole of the Moon officially opened November 19th 2009 by Youtuber Dan Brown [have his name link to his channel]. When he opened this forum, he hopped we could come together as a community and accomplish real world ideas. As of January 2011, we haven’t accomplished much. In fact, some people may tell you that we’ve decreased hope. This shouldn’t stop you from posting project ideas or helping in a project yourself. SPOTM is more than just projects though. If you’re looking for more lighthearted talking, head over to Anything and Everything . Up for some riveting debates? Try looking through the Debate Club and see if anything catches your eye. Up for some gaming? SPOTM has a Forum Games section, where you could even try your hand at some role playing games. This shouldn’t limit you on where you go on the moon, however. Feel free to use any section. We hope you enjoy your stay, and don’t run out of oxygen! Haha.... yeah that was corny. Whatever, just go make some posts.
If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2010 5:32:53 GMT -5
Looks great, I'd just change "For those of you who have been here before, you can go ahead and click here [add link to SPOTM homepage] to go straight to the front page." to "For those of you who have been here before, you can go ahead and click here [add link to SPOTM homepage] to go straight to the forums." (changes in bold).
I also think the About US page should be a wiki page, and that perhaps embedding Dan's first videos about the pogotribe ("We're a tribe", "Kabajillionaires" and "Snowball" if I recall correctly and not necessarily in this order) on the page would be a good idea.
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Post by Insane_Zang on Dec 28, 2010 6:28:38 GMT -5
Yeah, and maybe add to the welcome a thing like "Click here to read a bit more about us". What do you guys think? *speaks to entire forum*
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2010 7:38:38 GMT -5
Zang, the mockups (and working CMS) have that link below the welcome text. (even tough it currently links to nowhere) Although I do think that on the navbar, after the Home link there should be an About Us link, available from the front page, forums and wiki.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2010 8:11:13 GMT -5
Question: is there any thing needing to be done so this is the new front page of the site (in preference on the first day of the new year)?
Do the admins want to implement my system or do you want something different and more refined? Remember you can change anything you want on the php so it works better (although I'd like to know the changes so I can improve my php coding). I also have no problem if you want to use a different system, it'd just be freaking awesome if by January 1st we had launched the new landing page, no matter what system or styling it uses.
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Post by Rob on Dec 31, 2010 15:16:27 GMT -5
Just confirm that whatever the last thing you have up is your final revision and I'll make sure James sees this so we can get it up.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2010 17:36:00 GMT -5
One thing for sure: the database system is certainly decided. It is using RSS feeds as database for most things in the page, and thus, it'll certainly not change unless some critical problem prevents so. So, even if changes need to be done, no content is lost.
There are features which could be useful missing, but they are not essential and I'm certain most people wont notice any differences between the mock-ups and the CMS.
There is some code which is leftover, or not optimized, but it is not harmful in any way, and thus I'm not bothering to remove it (for example, an empty function on lines 55 to 57 which is never called).
There is no back end management system, so all database files must be changed by hand (all files ending in .xml), but I think you're able to change the files manually without many problems, and if you're not, I can eventually make a back end management system which is completely independent from the front-end display code.
I can give no warranties as I am not an expert, I can only talk about what I did and know and so I'm not sure if there are any security breaches. But I doubt there are, as there is no user input whatsoever (I only have to serve one page, messages sent aren't processed by the server). This security is further enhanced by the lack of any administration page which can be exploited. So unless the person already has access to the RSS files on the server, there is no simple way to hack the page.
I have no advanced error control, so changes to the RSS files need to be done carefully so as not to show any error strings in the page, but having in account all editing will be done by you, the admins, I doubt that is a problem.
Regarding server strain, if the server is too strained by the script, the cache lifetime can easily be made longer, so the cached page is sent instead of re-processing everything again (current cached page lifetime is of 5 minutes). (to change it there is a variable in the index.php file, easily identifiable very near the top)
Even if any changes need to be done later, they can easily be made as there are only two files which do server management, and all other are either databases, the cache, or for styling purposes.
I'd like to have had other people checking my back-end php code, but unfortunately that didn't happen. So, although I give you no warranties that this is the last revision, I tell you I am pretty sure that, even if I do make changes, you don't need to apply them (unless there is a security risk) as they will be more for me to improve my programming capabilities than to improve anything specific on the landing page.
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Post by Insane_Zang on Dec 31, 2010 20:55:37 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2011 13:20:26 GMT -5
Ok, made some last minor changes. The only thing changed were an optimization in how the Announcements block on the top was retrieved from the server (and thus, the format used on the file announcements.xml has changed), I made some optimizations so not many unnecessary variables are made. And I made the date string on the news look nice and agree with the HTML5 spec. Any changes from now on I guarantee will only be to make security fixes and, in case you want and need, a back-end system completely independent from the current code. Attachments:
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Post by Rob on Feb 1, 2011 23:32:04 GMT -5
BOOM, implemented.
Now, some beast(s) need(s) to figure out how to get this bitch to automatically update or something. Yeah.
For now, it rocks. And I'm proud of myself for figuring out how to get it to work. Yay!
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Post by Freddy on Feb 1, 2011 23:51:29 GMT -5
Awesome sauce.
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Post by SwimFellow on Feb 1, 2011 23:55:51 GMT -5
Wait, where is it?
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Post by Insane_Zang on Feb 1, 2011 23:57:49 GMT -5
And everything was beautiful and nothing hurt
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Post by Insane_Zang on Feb 1, 2011 23:58:09 GMT -5
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Post by Ferrrrrre on Feb 2, 2011 8:18:45 GMT -5
I like it =)
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Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2011 10:20:05 GMT -5
I'm glad to see the page working Rob, the Youtube and Twitter links update automatically, as they use the feed. To update the rest of the data, you'll notice there are many .xml files on the system. These files hold the data you need to provide the content. If you want to update the content provided on the page, you just need to open the file you need to update (feed.xml for the main page stuff, project.xml for the featured projects sidebar and debates.xml for the debates footer column) and you copy one of the previous entries to the top of these and change what is relevant. It is important that the previous entries remain intact below the new ones, so who uses these as a feed (orange button on the Firefox URL bar or Google Reader, for example) can still see the previous ones. The system is set to automatically not to show more than the 3 latest announcements, 4 projects and 2 debates. It is very important that you replace all & signs with & (including on urls) and that any html tag (like <b> or <a>) is removed (so <a href="#">hi!</a> becomes hi!).The page should update every hour with all of the new stuff, but if you want it to update quicker, just delete the cache.html file from the server, and it will be regenerated from scratch with the new info from all of the sources. The best option to make all of these updating system automatic would be to talk with Proboards, so they could power the projects and debates feed themselves (the .xml file address is changeable from style/template.php). I should have set the announcements to merge the feeds from Dan's Revision 3 page and pogotok's youtube page, but I didn't know how to do that, never imagined I could do that, and it isn't such a problem not to do that at the moment (although I can do it if you want me to). After this, having Proboards also make a feed for the announcements forum would then mean each and every piece of information could be updated automatically.
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vichilux
Star
Hatsune Miku LALALALALA :D
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Post by vichilux on Feb 2, 2011 21:34:17 GMT -5
Awesome story, bro!!! =D srsly, I love eet!!! Also: yay! I'm quoted there n_n hehe, jk... ;D Also, note to self: check the suggestions board more often... xD
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