I’ve started work on the tsn.7 style and theme for the new forums, and I must say, it’s lookin’ pretty sweet. Once I get a working set going, I’ll redo the splash page to give a bit of a preview and then load it up to the forum index. Continue reading
Welcome to the next version of the-spot.net: tsn.7
There are a few things you should note before getting started – like, the fact that I put this up within 3 hours, and can only test the logins that I have…which worked.
Now, if you find something that doesn’t work properly, let me know – post a message on the site, and if you can’t post it on the site, then send me an IM or something.
Yes, you heard it right, there is a new version of the-spot.net being put up as you read this.
The folks over at www.phpbb.com have released version 3.0.0 of their forum software, and it has all the functions and features that we used in tsnX built-in to it, and everything works right out of the box. So I have gone through and done the conversion of the database, and am in the processing of setting up the permissions and fixing up the forum structure to make get most of it back to the way it was, and some of it optimized and combined for fewer forums.
I’ll have another follow-up post about what’s different that I changed during the conversion, and there will be a forum for things that changed because of the upgrade for everyone to post in.
The only drawback for now is that there is no My Spot page until I get it written again.
I’ve come to the point where I have nothing else to do with my time, but sit here and work on long-standing projects. So with that time, I have done a little bit of tweaking on the-spot.net. I’ve fixed a couple things on the MySpot page, for one…
- It no longer redirects you to the forum index if there are no new posts since you last visit…instead it lets you stay on the MySpot page, so you can go about you business checking the other features of the site.
- At the top of the window, where it says “the-spot.net :: MySpot” it now says “MySpot (35)” or some other number in parenthesis to denote how many new topics have been posted to since you last checked the MySpot page. I tried to incorporate it into the header, but it did not work because I was not willing to have every page load run a search for new posts. That feature will come later with some ajax that I am going to integrate into the site…so that it loads stuff in the background, not affecting your ability to load the page.
- I put the Jumpbox (which you can select your forum, and click go, from a drop down menu) and put it inside the New Posts table, to consolidate that part of the site. It didn’t deserve its own box.
- I fixed the mini-calendar on the MySpot page to show the correct date, once the time reaches past 6pm. It was running the regular GMT – 0 intead of the GMT-6 like we’re in, for the most part. I haven’t figured out how to fix the big calendar though…still looking into that.
Also, a couple days ago, I made some other changes…
- I brought back the Photobook stream at the bottom of the MySpot page. I’m debating whether or not to just go with the flickr setup or run both, or just do the Photobook. flickr is easier to use, but Photobook is ours.
- I moved the tsn Network table to the other side, in preparation for the return of the User Pic on the MySpot page on the left column.
- I’m also looking into a personalized page for people to use…where they would see their private messages, draft-posts, watched topics, their online buddies, new posts, photostream, and other things.
the future plans are all contingent on what I can think of and figure out the code for. These improvements that have already happened were simply because I’ve either already had the code, and just plugged it in, or I had a burst of thought and figured out the cause of the problem so I could fix it.
Sorry I don’t update this thing much…there hasn’t been a whole lot of stuff going on behind the scenes of tsn – I’ve been looking into other services and websites and technologies for the past 7 months.
Ok, so while coding the tsnX forums for the-spot.net, there were several instances in which the mods didn’t work because everyone’s mods assume (usually) that they are going to be the only mod installed in the forums. And while this is the ideology that saves time when writing a modification, it is not a “best practice” in programming. So to help with some of that frustration as to why your mod won’t work, I’m going to do my best to post some of the code changes that will need to be made in order to make some of these things interact with each other. Continue reading