Staredit Network

Alrighty, when Ibp 2.1 comes out and we start over from scratch, are we just going semi-redo the layout while we're at it? Not necessarily the top part, but the rest of the site. Like, I got some ideas... I'll try to make a test skin with some rough sketches.
How exactly would we be doing this? Is it possible to move the entire public_html directory into like a sub directory /public_html/old/ and install the board in the main directory with a fresh database and just import the db as we go along? or what.

With this fresh start, assuming I have the time, I want to see every line of code that goes into the board. I'm not sure if that sounds bad or not . I just want to keep the php, css, queries as light and efficent as possible. I also want to finish one section at a time before moving on to the next. I think we just add crap and move on too fast to other areas before making sure the code is complete. So, we could start with the general layout and portal page... and then move on from there. I know when I first started out, I put some crappy code into the site. That's why you get like 52 queries in the topic listing... And I know there's lots of redunant code laying around that serves no purpose...

With this general idea of clean code, I want to keep extra mods from altering the main code as much as possible. I'm mostly thinking about how index.php declares a function class from mujii pets for seemingly no reason.

Also, the member table is ugly as hell. There's no reason for non-global data to be in such a global table. Armies, mydir, arcade, some of the shoutbox data possibly could all be in another table. I don't know about the rest, but that table especially is crapified.

Instead of doing the whole exporting added code idea (which is a nice idea and could possibly used to some extent), we could each keep a change log that contains the old code. Example...
// SEN : <name> : <log line numbers that contain the old code> : <reason for change>
or something? I don't know. But besides that, backing up all the files one would change before applying whatever code. So like, before applying the favorite smilies mod, all files that would be changed would go in a backup folder on the ftp in root like /Backup/Favorite Smilies - Yoshi - 2.6.5 or something similiar before the code changes the files. That way, if we ever need to reverse something, we could easily compare the files with a version before or after that directory.

I also want to get away from installing crappy mods like custom pages and custom profiles. Custom profiles especially looks like the tiest code ever, next to the raffle system of course . Most mods are built to be flexible and that makes a lot of unnecessary code and sh it such as.

Alrighty, I generally like to keep things secretive until I realease it, but I have a couple of nice ideas in mind that I probably won't do until we get this version started.

• New PM notifications: You'll see more of the message and have easier options, such as, instant reply from the box itself.
• Alternative PM system for game challenges, mod alerts, etc... concepts for this aren't thought out yet.
• New FAQ script for all the forum faq's as well as the default invision board help topics. When making a new FAQ, there would be an option to notify members on a session create that they haven't read a particular FAQ yet. You could close this pm notification, but it'll pop up again each time you log in / start a new session. This would only be used for important guidelines and such.
• Ability to customize the non-javascript menu.

I guess I have high hopes .

I am very in favor of this clean code. Sometimes I feel sorry for 56k users and the server, so much wasted resources. I don't see why most of the bulleted list can't be done now.

But..

I consider this most important one of all. Do you know how it is to forge money sent/recieved PMs? I remember one time a different username sent them out, but its from the user making the transaction. You could easily fill out a bogus form.

We should also consider the advantages/disadvantages of this "fresh start".

I don't think 5.0 would be a necessity. The skin is quite attractive in most ways anyway.

You are correct though. There is much code that needs to be restructured because it isn't used. There are many unused tables/rows in our downloads database. We should clean most of it up, add a few features, do whichever.

But I'm telling you, I'm not too hot with making a new layout again. I've done like 5 already for this site, and I doubt a new layout would be much better than this one.

Maybe I could make the top header as flash as an option, and I am also going to be increasing my 3D max skills. This site has so many features over other sites, we just need to perfect them.

Disadvantages:
Redoing all the options.
Rescripting everything.
Messing with the databases would certainly be the most annoying.

Advantages:
Clean code .
-- Faster page generation times (not faster loads necessarily)
-- Lower rapage of mysql

Another thing I'm concerned about is the acp. There is just way too much crap in there as well, or it's just not organized nicely. Scrolling through all the boxxes sometimes takes me like 2 minutes to find what I'm looking for. That's sad.
I also want to make the acp more function with new abilities that it SHOULD have but doesn't. There's also a lot of things I need to script in like forums -> an option to designate a forum as a clan, mods -> an option to designate a mod clan leader, and there's a bunch of crap missing from the edit member's page.

Ah, and another thing I want to do that kinda fits in with the whole acp thing, making a mod or hack or whatever to manage the links in the global header. Right now, each link has like 3 different locations where it's listed. Perhaps, it's not like we add links all that often though.

Unless you think another color would look ultimately better, you won't have to do much with a "new" skin. There's just so much major tweaking that can be done... like what I did with the forum index but better.

Yeah I got some major plans coming for other parts of the site... So at march break I'll get the board system, and we'll put it in a seperate folder to edit, running under the same database?

Oh wait, I forgot its 2.1 there may be changes...

Alright, at the moment, I really don't like mods at all. The customization of mods adds crap everywhere. Is it really necessary for our armies / pets / etc to throw a bunch of crap all over the place? With the new start, I'm suggesting:
. earse all mineral counts
. don't add any mods until they are completely rescripted

I like the sound of that.

Whoa... where did you come from .

Is it possible to reconfigure the current board to load a different directory automatically? Like have it pretend base root is in /old/ and have the new board run under a different db prefix like ib2_ instead of ibf_?

I tried changing the directory of board software once... nothing good came of it.

However, you can change the table prefix on installation.

You would think all you would have to change is:
define( 'ROOT_PATH' , "./" );

Oooo plans? Tell me... I told you mine O.o

And, do you have any idea when this board will come out? I don't know if they keep their little road map up to date, but last time I checked, they didn't label anything as "completed". I don't know, I've been quite lazy with the whole coding scene because of all this. They announced it 1/22 via email, so...

"We have no firm release date set, but we estimate that it will be available for beta testing during the first quarter of this year. As always, we'll keep you updated." I guess that anwsers my question.


Just out of random curosity, whay phpmyadmin skin do you use?


Edit ~ OMFG... I was working on the statistics crap, trying to make it more advanced. Mostly, I was stripping out all dean's code to actually make it more of my own instead of just a simple rearrangement with caching...
Apparently, for the monthly items, dean's script just counts it literal months. This means, every post in january 2003, 2004, and 2005 are lumped into one catagory. You know how shi tty that is?
Check out this sexy query:
SELECT count(FROM_UNIXTIME(start_date, '%M %Y')) as mycount, FROM_UNIXTIME(start_date, '%M %Y') as thisdate from ibf_topics where tid>1 group by thisdate order by FROM_UNIXTIME(start_date, '%Y%m') desc

lololololol. I'm just happy my script will totally pwn his. I'm like remotivated now.

You gotta change like 3 or 4 things to be able to change the directory the board runs off or at least that was the case with phpBB boards.

I use the default phpmyadmin skin