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Topic: New website in the works

Forums and photos :: 2005 :: Camp 4, year 2005 :: Topics

Posted: 30 Sep 2005, 00:55, by spookylukey
I'm currently rewriting this website (for a number of reasons, mainly to make it easier for administrators and moderators to maintain). It's coming along quite nicely (though it's still going to take a while til I'm finished - the problem with having a proper job ;-) ). It also uses a proper database to store all the data, which really opens up the possibilities of what you can do.

So far, I'm mainly creating the same features, but just making them a bit better (it will have all the current message boards, photos, etc, so don't worry that you'll lose anything). I'm also planning some new features, such as:
  • Preview of messages/posts - a chance to check what your post looks like before adding it (but I'll probably be removing the ability to go back and edit things afterwards, as that can make conversations stop making sense)

  • New bookmark system. You will be able to bookmark photos, topics, individual messages, as before, and also other members, categorise your bookmarks (probably with a few fixed categories), and mark them public/private - public bookmarks would be visible on your user page (which will look much nicer than it currently does), and would be great way to let other people know about you or about things on the website you like.

  • Awards - there is now an awards page listing all awards and who has got them and why (already done).

  • Searching - make it easy to search for members, and hopefully to search for topics and even individual posts. I'm also thinking it would be good to search by member - from a member's page you could click on 'last 10 posts' or 'last 10 topics started', to find out what someone has been up to, as well as browse their public bookmarks.

I'll also be giving it a face lift. If you want a sneak preview, here's a screen shot of what I've got at the moment:

http://lukeplant.me.uk/misc/cciw_progress1.png

Of course, none of this is ready yet, and won't be for a while. But since I am rewriting everything, now is the time to get some feedback about the site. In particular:

  • What is good about the site?
  • What needs improvement?
  • What could you happily do without
  • What new features would you like to see?
  • Any opinions about the new features mentioned above?

I can't make promises, but if you have good ideas that aren't too difficult to do, now is the time to let me know.

+ Comments
From Message
icon spookylukey
30 Sep 05, 01:05 		+ BTW, in that screenshot, in case you are wondering about 'localhost:8000' in the location bar - that would be replaced with 'www.cciw.co.uk' in the real thing.

I also meant to say that I'm going to need some testers at some point. If you are interested in testing, please let me know - but it's not just for people who are curious. I'd be asking you to do boring things, like tring to create new accounts, test out the boring old things as well as newer ones, and reporting any problems in a detailed way back to me.

Also if there are any Mac users who could test the pages look right on Mac browsers, that would be especially helpful - Safari should be OK, since I test with Konqueror which is the basis for Safari, but I'd like to make sure.

Thanks
icon spookylukey
30 Sep 05, 01:12 		+ And another thing:

If there are any budding website developers among you with strong skills in CSS, or you know of someone who would like to help, it would be nice to hear from you too, to develop some alternative designs for the site, e.g. a dark on light alternative for a start.
icon VALLEY
05 Oct 05, 13:11 		+ Some better smiley's would be good :-D
icon spookylukey
05 Oct 05, 23:29 		+ got any in mind? I was planning on reducing the number that are visible in the 'clickable smilies' bit, but making the rest still available (if you know the codes...but there will probably be another feature that makes it easier to discover the codes from someone's post). I don't want the normal smilies to be much bigger than the current ones, otherwise it spaces lines of text out too much.
icon spookylukey
13 Feb 06, 23:15 		+ Some more things:
  • I'm thinking of replacing bookmarks with 'tags' -- you'll be able to 'tag' forums, topics, photos, members and camps with any categories you make up. You can then browse other people's tags, see if anyone has tagged you (e.g. as a 'friend', or 'enemy' or whatever).
  • Statistics - it will be easy to get statistics on people, including things that they've recently posted. I'm thinking of adding some statistics only for 'senior' members. You get to be a 'senior' member by a points system, which will include things like how long you've been on the site, and the awards that you've gained.
  • RSS feeds - for those of you who have discovered RSS feeds, just about everything on the site will have its own feed. This means that if you've got an aggregator, you won't have to visit the website to see if something you are interested in has been updated or added to.

    Work on all this is still progressing, just slowly with my other commitments.
icon spookylukey
21 Jun 06, 12:49 		+ OK, I finished it (as you will have noticed), and I skipped the 'testing' phase, as no-one replied. I scrapped the 'senior' member idea. Tags are working though, and Atom feeds, and you can browse a member's recent posts by going to that member's page. Feature requests are still allowed, but I can't promise anything.
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