Hey peoples! As you may (or may not) know, we are trying to redesign the website in time for the release of the March issue (well, I am anyway sweatdrop ). I'll be using this thread to post my progress and thoughts on it, and I'd like everyone to read it and post what they think - if you guys want some extra functionality, now is the time to say so, because it will be harder to implement it after I've finished coding everything.
The site that I have planned in my head is a bit complex and database heavy under the surface, so don't worry if some of this stuff goes over your head sometimes xd Its possible that I find some of these things beyond my ability, so some of the planned things might not work.
First, something simple though: I think the zine needs a name. 'The Gaian Graphic Designers Guild Website' is much too long, and not very catchy xp We need something short that sounds cool... like 'Graphice' or something... I dunno. Suggestions? Or do you think we should stick with the long name?
Planned features
Instead of this long process of sending me a text version of an article, me sending it to someone to html-ify, them sending it back and me posting it, I'm hoping to create a form where the author can fill in the content, a script will html-ify it and store it in the database, and I can come and 'approve' it, which will publish it in the site. Articles will be sorted by Issue and Area, which will make looking searching for articles much easier. If I have time, maybe a keyword search too. As with the article submission form, we'll have a profile submission form, to reduce the amount of data entry I have to do xd You will be able to fill in details about yourself, as well as a few samples of your work, and it will be published to the site after I've approved the application. Members will (hopefully) also be able to choose from the list of Areas to show what areas they specialise in. Members will be able to be searched for by keyword or Area of interest I want to be able to allow members to log in and edit their profile info, but thats a little out of my league at the mo. I'll be preparing for it in case I can do it later though. The author's name on an article will link to their member page, and show their picture next to it. Site will be skinnable, and members will be able to choose which skin to view the site in, as well as being able to submit a skin to put on the site, which again needs to be approved before going on the site.
Current Stage: Planning database
Design issues will be figured out after all this backend stuff is done, but feel free to post suggestions for the layout anyway
Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:41 am
Care to tell me the nitty-gritty code stuff you're going to do? I want to help (I know you don't need it)! XML??? PHP? ASP? Nerdular nerdulence?
Hizzahn
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Tekno-Crystal
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Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:07 pm
If you need any help with the database construction I could give you a hand. I'm handy with database stuff wink.
Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 4:42 pm
I'm alright at forum stuff...but thats easy 'cos its all PhpBB2 now-a-days.
I can do Shoutboxes though aswell.
Hinaru
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Chisa Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 4:45 pm
Yay! Fellow developers crying ! This is a pretty big job, thanks for the offers of help! I'll post some diagrams and stuff here pretty soon.
Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 4:48 pm
Chisa
Yay! Fellow developers crying ! This is a pretty big job, thanks for the offers of help! I'll post some diagrams and stuff here pretty soon.
I could try a layout too, but I've only just started with css layouts. I've already done two, and they were for a Php based game, so they're pretty basic.
Hinaru
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GhoSt-X
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Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 4:44 am
the databasing should be pretty ok now ... Skinning may prove a difficult task.. just out of curiosity .. does anyone know how to generate a resized version of a image file using the PHP GX libraries ?
Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 5:17 am
Just a quick update.
GhoSt has given me access to the database, so I've started creating tables. So far I can add, edit and delete Areas and Issues, which isn't a huge deal because all they have is their title, but still, its progress sweatdrop The two big tables I need to do now are for members and articles. I'm currently working on parsing values from a membership form, which is bringing me to a few new things that I haven't done before.
GhoSt is working on a login system with cookies, so hopefully all members will be able to log in and change details in their profile page, and submit articles through that.
I've decided to not allow members to include samples, due to the fact that it will take up too much space in the long run. I'll post what the member page will look like when I get that part working, hopefully in the next few days.
The form to submit articles will be a hard part, so if anyone has some idea about converting plain text to html with a script, that would be really helpful. Article content will also be too big to store in a database as is, so it will have to be stored in a separate txt file or something, which I'm not sure how to do with a script right now stressed Guess I'll solve that one when I come to it. eek
I'm not sure how to do skinning yet, but we'll work on that more after we've got the basic backend up and running. For now I think Silver is working on some concept psds, and I have a few ideas for it too, and we can work out the coding for it a bit later.
This will be seriously cool if we can pull it off whee
Chisa Vice Captain
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Hizzahn
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Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:49 am
Chisa
The form to submit articles will be a hard part, so if anyone has some idea about converting plain text to html with a script, that would be really helpful. Article content will also be too big to store in a database as is, so it will have to be stored in a separate txt file or something, which I'm not sure how to do with a script right now stressed Guess I'll solve that one when I come to it. eek
Oh oh oh! XML to store the articles?
How to dismantle an atomic bomb Should I get that album? U2 eh
Just load all those tag values into variables and output a single generated html file.
Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:50 am
paresing text files shouldnt be too bad .. a better idea is to just accept fully done documents done in HTML .. however .. i guess we could implement something that parses it ...
finally time for me to get back into PHP again ..
GhoSt-X
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GhoSt-X
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Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:04 am
Hizzahn
Chisa
The form to submit articles will be a hard part, so if anyone has some idea about converting plain text to html with a script, that would be really helpful. Article content will also be too big to store in a database as is, so it will have to be stored in a separate txt file or something, which I'm not sure how to do with a script right now stressed Guess I'll solve that one when I come to it. eek
Oh oh oh! XML to store the articles?
How to dismantle an atomic bomb Should I get that album? U2 eh
Just load all those tag values into variables and output a single generated html file.
no real need to use XML since we are already utilising a Database... i might make an XML generator later so we can have an RSS feed .. that would be cool ..
Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 11:21 am
I guess I'm not quite sure what Chisa is talking about when she says that the content text would be too big to store in a database. Is the form going to save the articles on the web or is it going to send them to Chisa as an attachment on a gmail?
If we are talking about filesize, I have unlimited web space and I'll have access to it over my summer as well. I have also done ASP that pulls info from a html form, formats it, and sends it as the body text of an email.
Hizzahn
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Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 12:44 pm
Chisa
GhoSt is working on a login system with cookies, so hopefully all members will be able to log in and change details in their profile page, and submit articles through that.
I could give you my cookies/sessions login script, works great.
Chisa
The form to submit articles will be a hard part, so if anyone has some idea about converting plain text to html with a script, that would be really helpful. Article content will also be too big to store in a database as is, so it will have to be stored in a separate txt file or something, which I'm not sure how to do with a script right now stressed Guess I'll solve that one when I come to it. eek
I don't quite see how an article could be too big to store in a database, if you set it to 'text' instead of 'varchar' the text is limitless in size. Oh, and as for converting to HTML, what do you need converted? You could just use the PHP function str_replace or if you're worried about thing like '<' and '>' etc. you could use the htmlspecialchars function. And don't forget, with all things make sure you add and strip slashes, something I almost always forget to do and it bugs me later razz.
Chisa
I'm not sure how to do skinning yet, but we'll work on that more after we've got the basic backend up and running. For now I think Silver is working on some concept psds, and I have a few ideas for it too, and we can work out the coding for it a bit later.
This will be seriously cool if we can pull it off whee
Skinning isn't that hard if you set up the files properly. If you're using PHP (which is mainly what I work with razz) you could have all the PHP functions and variables on the main page (lets call it index.php) and than you could just call a skin template from another directory depending on the users choice, for example, you could include a different styles sheet like this:
and you could also do that for images and, well, just about anything.
Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 5:44 pm
I had this idea for the title of our ezine... its something Hizzahn told me about awhile ago and I just thought of it today, and was like, wow, that might be just right. How about "ctrl-alt-create"? Its a little silly, but I think its so cool. biggrin
SilverVixen Vice Captain
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Hizzahn
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Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 5:57 pm
SilverVixen
I had this idea for the title of our ezine... its something Hizzahn told me about awhile ago and I just thought of it today, and was like, wow, that might be just right. How about "ctrl-alt-create"? Its a little silly, but I think its so cool. biggrin
Uhhh... pretty sure I told you that is one of our member's ideas. sweatdrop
