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[Dark0ne]

For those interested in who I am/what I'm doing. Full link.

 

Ok, so my course has been pretty crap recently; for those who haven’t bothered to read up on me I’m taking a Computer Science degree at the University of Exeter and I’ve just hit the trigonometry side of things. Maths has never really been my forte; I can do it if I apply myself but I have no real impetus to make that application. In an effort to make myself feel justified in not paying attention to my course at the moment I’ve been working hard on the Source CMS. Oh, and playing Dystopia and DotA.

 

To be honest the whole CMS needs to be completely remade using the current code as a foundation. The code looks terrible and is more than likely extremely inefficient. If any professional coder were to take a peek they’d keel over and die like a young kid who just smelt gran’s underwear. It’s a joke, but it’s a joke that does the job (like the England football team). I feel this will be a summer job; the summer in which I tackle that “hard” task of using classes in PHP. I’ve avoided the bastard for 2 years now but, alas, I think it’s time I properly learnt how to use them and then convert the Source CMS to using classes. Ughs0r.

 

Current focus is on the software Source sites use instead of creating more Source sites. If you look at most gaming networks (especially new ones) you’ll notice the focus tends to point towards quantity over quality — many sites with very little content. Not to point the finger but I think FileFront are a testament to that current philosophy; a game gets announced and you know there will be a FileFront site for the game some time in the near future, most of the time with no real content — at all. This is, of course, a generalisation. Some sites are very good! (Contact me to issue lawsuits kkthx). Don’t get me wrong, FileFront themselves offer a great service and it’s great they have avid members of their community willing to start up new sites. Personally I wouldn’t let any old Jimmy startup a site using the Gaming Source name unless I knew they had it in them to make a stand-out, stand-up site; both content-wise and design-wise. “What makes a good gaming fansite webmaster?” — a possible title for my next blog entry.

 

I’ve got a big to-do list of features I’m adding or upgrading in the CMS. Simon lent me his mini-white board to draw up plans and design notes for current projects and it’s sat in a prominent position next to my monitor with a list of things I want to complete or investigate within the next week. Changes of note include:

 

* Multiple file uploads within a single mod or file entry in the file database. Handy for people who like providing a back-track of versions before the current one, or who don’t want to package certain files with their main file

* Implementation of the chat room in a more prominent position of Source sites/the forum, and actively pumping it’s usage

* Image uploads and special “quote” and “code” tags for the news and tutorials section.

* Picture of the day/week/month functionality

* A harder look at the file transfer system

 

Fun fun.

 

All sorts of edits have been made to the network over the past couple of weeks. Probably biggest of note is the new Member Portal which has a much clearer design and interface and works much, much better. Supporter payments, for instance, directly interface with the PayPal API so the site instantly knows when you have paid and gives you the necessary Supporter time instantly. Problem emails from people having issues with Supporter registration, since the change, has dropped 100%! I still get 3 or 4 emails a day from people who have not received the registration email from the server. 99% of the time this happens because they have over-zealous SPAM systems in place that instantly delete or send the mail to the spam folder. Can’t really do much about that and there’s plently of warning on the site.

 

I added a new section to the Member Portal to provide a global profile for all members (check out mine!). The idea is to allow members to provide more information about themselves so others can know file authors and forum posters a little better. From my point of view it had the added advantage of centralising members in one place. At the moment Gaming Source has 2 and a half sites; TESSource and SupCom Source, and Spore Source which is run by forum moderator Switch but in desperate need of some code updates. When Gaming Source has 5 or more sites there’ll be members signing up for XX Source who have no idea about YY Source, or that XX Source is a part of Gaming Source. By centralising information on the Member Portal hopefully people will get the picture. Of course there’s the obvious advantages of centralising data as well, such as members who have a profile on one site have a profile on them all, for example.

 

With the new player profiles came the added functionality of the kudos system. The general premise of the kudos system is that each member can give a kudos point to any other member on the network to show appreciation. The more kudos a member has the more respected they are in the community. Members can give one kudos point per member, and also take their kudos point away, but they cannot give negative kudos to other members. I had visions of idiot children going through every member and giving negative kudos for the hell of it (foresight being one of my many talents).

 

The caching system on TESSource has had a complete rework to avoid the constant slowdowns experienced between 12AM and 2AM GMT when the cache was reset and pages were recached. The system now (more logically) checks when the page was cached and, if it was more than 12 hours before the current time, the page is recreated and refreshed. Spiffing.

 

There’s plenty to be doing; this is one of these jobs which is never completed. Tasks get completed, sure, but the overall job “Make Source CMS Better” will never end. It’s good to know there’s always work to do. I think.