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[Selroth]

I'm at it again!!  Maybe something will be accomplished, maybe not...

A month or so ago I purchased a personal server for my own uses, primarily using FTP and simple webspace for file sharing and such.  But, since I didn't exactly intend to make a website on it, I've lately figured to try to use it to help stage an upgrade for Draconity.org.

The last 2 days I've been working with my server and been looking at different software technologies.  I've considered what features we use and what I think should be changed, and looked for software to meet our needs.  I've looked through and been trying different content management software and forum software.  

I've just about settled on the software we're going to use, but it's not fully implemented yet.  And there is still a large selection of features and such to use.  So, at this point, I'd like to make a few requests:

1) Let us know what's been a problem for you on this site - now is a great time to address anything.  Let us know of anything you feel needs improvement or is "weak."  Any kind of suggestion whether it be very general or very specific is welcome.

2) Consider what kind of website you'd like Draconity.org to be.  Probably essentially the same, but are there any differences?  Or maybe, what features do you enjoy on other websites that Draconity.org doesn't have?  

3) I'd like a team of testers.  Just to explore around and try to break things.  Or, some features don't become apparent until there's some activity, so maybe that activity could be generated - even if it's just a bunch of bogus posts.  Since there'd be nothing to hide or preserve, every person on the team can have several accounts, some even being admins or mods until we test migrating the Draconity.org database.  

4) I'll be learning how to play with php more in depth, and make our own mods/hacks to the forum.  This will also help us repair any problems we may have down the road.  This is also a great opportunity for any developers to step up - even beginners.  So, if you'd like to learn about creating websites or administration of such, then feel free to join in.  If you'd like to give back to the Draconity.org community, we could certainly use wanna-be website programmers and website artists!

http://www.thewestgate.net is the webpage.  So far I've only decided on SMF forum technology ( http://www.simplemachines.org/ )I don't recommend making any serious posts or such yet, as I'm sure there will be a few more times we need to reinstall or flush the database (in which all data would be lost).  Just post here if you have any advice or are interested in helping!

[TheSniper]

Woohoo!!! I know a little about website programming, (I took a computer applications class in high school) although I'm kinda new at it so I might not be a lot of help... The site is nice right now, but it will probably be better in the future, good job all who programmed it!!:)

Oh wait, also my computer is a little slow so it probably couldn't handle anything complicated...
Also I don't know if this has been brought up before but when I look at the "users browsing this forum" sometimes it will say my name or it will say "none". Does it matter?

[Rogwell]

Well, I'm not sure what I could contribute. I have had a couple courses in visual basic & Access so I'm sure I could learn other things on the fly, even though I do not know a thing about web programing (yet). I suppose when the time comes I could see what I could do. I don't really have any suggestions for the site right now since I have only been here for little over a month. Ah well, tomorrow is another day.

[aaarhus]

I took Comp Sci and then took it again, except it was with Java instead of C++, and it was like... I can't remember, advanced or something.
I also managed to make a website for a project in school that used entirely html in notepad instead of using the "simple" tools that everyone else did. Made it so that there was a menu on the side, a title bar, and then the requested content in the middle. Much more simple that way. :3

As for what I would like... I very strongly like the feature of having topics that haven't been looked at yet still highlighted so that I know I haven't read them. I'm annoyed on some other forum because it only keeps the highlights up as long as that window is open. There have been some times like when I log in that it doesn't show anything new... because it's been cleared or something along those lines.

Maybe a feature to state that you want to mark something read or to forever ignore any new postings on a thread that you don't really have comment for?

[Celtore]

I don't really know anything about webpage design or the like, but I am interested in learning, if you wouldn't mind a leech watching you work. I'm a pretty fast learner, so once I catch on I'll help as much as I can.

[Airy]

The search function seems a little hard to use.  That is, it is a little hard when searching for a string to find where that string is in topic in question.  After playing with it for a while, I think I can narrow it down a bit by selecting the right buttons, but is there a way to make it a little easier?

That is: when doing a search, a list of posts with the first few words appears, but is there a way to insert a simple link to the text in question in its context on the forum page?

[booklover492001]

I am interested. I have been messing around with HTML this last month, but don't have anything interesting to make into a website. My dad has a business website and has granted me the right to make an add on to it, so if we just need a place to place things or something... Summer will be coming up soon so i will have more time then, but if you have anything specific i could learn it.

Oh and i really like the quick reply but wish there was a  :drag_blush: oops just realized the smilies have been there all along, i just haven't noticed. For me the Forum is THE most important part of the website, but the gallery, etc., is really good for a boring day, and just to highlight our local talent.

[Celtore]

The forum is the most important part of the site, as it's the part I most often visit. The IRC chat is good, too, but hardly anyone is on when I am. As for the gallery and journals, they are good places to showcase talent or ,in the case of journals, to just write down personal thoughts or short writings. Honestly, I have no complaints about the forum, other than possibly making the layout a bit more...appealing to the eye than just a simple woodgrain. I don't mean making everything flashy or colorful, because that would just be tacky. As for the lesser used functions of the site, you might consider linking to the old site for that in order to save space. (Not sure if it would really save space, since web design is not my area of expertise, but it makes sense to me that it would.)

[Selroth]

These comments are wonderful!  Later today (or tonight for most people) I'll see if we can get a little group going or such.

[atomicdragon]

Some of these features are pretty intensive to implement depending on how the new system works.  So may already be there, but others may require extensive changes to add.
 
While it is nice to hear people are interested in helping... what can actually help may depend on a lot of things.  The software for the new system is written in PHP (which sort of resembles the Java/C syntax family).  Simple small things would not require much to do, but extensive changes can be a mess if done wrong.  PHP is kind of easy to make some really stupid security problems in if you are not familiar with the language and a large project can be really hard to maintain without clean/organized coding.  Also, writing html is a lot different than actually web-programming, so those that only know html probably can't contribute directly to programming without learning some whole new sets of skills.  However, if the software is written well, then the job of designing what stuff looks like can be separate from the actual programming, allowing people to use html design aspects without knowing any programming.
 
I don't mean to be a downer about it, but just want to be upfront with what things along those lines usually involve.  And sorry for not responding individually to ideas, as I think some are around this site as is... but that doesn't mean much if we are moving to new software that I haven't looked over much yet.

[Selroth]

I don't expect anyone (but possibly myself after a few months of familiarity) to do anything as intense as you may be thinking.  Making custom themes would pretty much be the full extent of the "programming" we would do.  It looks like we may have to manually install some mods writen by other people on our own.  Also some things may be easy to isolate during trouble-shooting with just a novice understanding of programming.  

While what's learned may not be enough to apply to further the software, learning needs to start somewhere.  So what's learned may not necessarily go back to Draconity.org, but they can go and do what they will with it.

[W_Dragon]

Would it even be possible to have a full or at least partial WYSIWYG editing for posts, like if you insert an image you'll see the image in your post instead of BBcode surrounding the link. Blenderartists has this and it can be useful.

Also, Silver Dragon Breath hotlinks YouTube videos when you post a link to one. A good number of blog services have this now.

[Selroth]

Unfortunately, SMF doesn't yet have WYSIWYG.  Not many forums do, and the ones that do don't really meet our needs in other ways.  I was looking for it though :)  And maybe with some time SMF will have something like that.

As for hotlinks, I'm actually not sure if SMF does that.  We'll have to see :)

[Ravtrag]

I cant code for anything, failing that part of the class in comp. aps proves it. But I have problems at getting the IRC to work, it starts up, but it just stops loading it. (Just a side note, Im using opera)
And by testing, do you mean just finding the bugs and mentioning were you found them and how you found them, or by telling you were in the code it failed?

[atomicdragon]

I cant code for anything, failing that part of the class in comp. aps proves it. But I have problems at getting the IRC to work, it starts up, but it just stops loading it. (Just a side note, Im using opera)

What version of Java do you have and is it installed properly for Opera?  You can check that here: http://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp.

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