Progress Updates

[Procurator]

This thread will contain details of the updates I make, as well as status reports concerning my progress with the new site system.

If you have any questions or comments regarding the things I post in this thread, please create a separate thread about them (unless there's one already).
_________________

[Procurator]

Firstly, an apology for my slow progress on the site.

I've been working on the new system as often as I can, but sadly it's turned out to be a bigger task than expected. There's also the small problem of my current work ethic, which has caused me considerable consternation with regards university work, paid work and work for the faction. I'm having trouble getting anything done in a timely manner, and I can only apologise for this and assure you I'm doing everything I can to get over this... rough spot. (Seriously, this past year has been the worst in my life, for various reasons I won't bore you with.)

Now, as you may know, I've had to push back the deadline for the site's completion several times. So many, in fact, that I decided to give up and say 'it's done when it's done', and not make any more false promises. Nevertheless, I feel it's only right to tell you that the site will not be complete for some considerable time.

As it stands, I have a week left of my 'holidays', after which I go back to university and take my exams. During this coming term, I will have no time to work on the site. My work will resume in the summer holidays, about ten weeks from now.

Until then, however, the site will be in a state where it can be managed by people other than me (d4sh primarily, I assume). Before I go back to uni, I will complete the page management system, and a rudimentary news system, which will allow d4sh and others to keep the pages up-to-date. (I'll also allow crew captains to keep their part of the roster accurate, even though it'll be by changing the pages' HTML and not the automated system I have planned - that comes later.)

Again, I apologise.
_________________

[Procurator]

The pages on the site can now be modified by certain people.

Tax can modify the Algorithm crew page.
Gookin can modify the Aggregator crew page.
Devaude can modify the Assembler crew page.
M4rb can modify the Singularity crew page.
Rocky can modify the Polydectes crew page and roster page.
d4sh and I can modify all pages.

An explanation of the page modification process and how the crew pages should look is available here. The Aggregator page is (at the time of writing) a perfect example of a crew page, updated images an' all.

The user system is working properly now (all sorts of things are working which you can't see yet, like one user being able to control more than one character, members being assigned ranks/positions, and session management). So you can now log in!

To do this, just click the 'Log In' link on the main site and enter your forum username and password.

Play nice! The site logs your every move and keeps back-ups of pages.
_________________

[Procurator]

About time I conveyed my progress!

The reason nothing of significance has been released yet is because a lot of the systems are interdependent, in that one cannot function without the other. However, it dawned on my last night that there is a compromise.

I'm at a junction where if I want the various features to be as good as they can be upon release, I need to first do a lot of work to the background systems. The alternative is that I work on the features to get them available for use at a minimum level, then work on the background systems to improve them over time.

One of the problems is that - again - the background structure of the program needs to change.

• To have articles finished I need the references system;
  
• The reference system needs the image system to work;
  
• The image system needs the content serving system to not only serve pages (as it does now), but files (for the image system), image pages (for viewing images linked to from elsewhere, as opposed to putting images into articles) and plain HTML code (for the so-called AJAX features which will make it easier to use the site).

The last point is a big one. I've been using a similar system for all my Web projects the past few years, and this will finally change that. The benefits are considerable, but it might be tricky.

So I present you with two options:

1. I work on these background systems so that when the major features (articles, stories, journals, etc) are finished and released, they will be fully functional with all the bells and whistles;
   
2. I work on the major features first so you can at least start putting things on the site, then improve them over time. Bearing in mind the major systems will look pretty basic to start with.

Send me a PM if you have thoughts either way!

And, in case anyone's interested, my excuse for slow progress this holiday is not laziness, but overworking. My office job is all programming. Would you get much programming done in the evening if you'd just been programming all day in the office? My only real chances to get anything done have been weekends.
_________________

[Procurator]

Automation of the crew roster is underway big-style. Thus far, the roster overview and crew pages are complete, in the sense that they take all relevant data in the database and display it properly.

However, there's not much data.

Only a few people have accounts on the site, and only two of those have any details, so I'm not activating the automated roster yet. For now, you can see the progress here. (I know it doesn't look any different from the current roster. That just means i did a good job!)

The next step is to program the modification/management pages, which will make it easy for members to keep their own profiles up-to-date and let captains manage their crews. I'll get cracking on those as soon as I've bought a pizza. When they're done, it'll be easier to add people's accounts to the site, so the automated roster can be activated.
_________________

[Procurator]

Christ, this is going slowly. Still... progress!

The crew roster is now completely automated, at least as far as you lot are concerned. Gone are the static pages updated only by captains. Now everyone can keep their own profiles up-to-date themselves!

1. Log into the site: http://www.glitchsociety.com/login/ (Different from logging into the forums, but uses the same username and password.)
   
2. Click the link at the top left of the page: 'Your Profile'.
   
3. Fill in the details!

But please bear the following important points in mind:

• Use HTML formatting for your biography. Later on, the format will be enforcable and HTML won't be necessary, but until then, stick to paragraphs. Look at the format of other people's bios on the site, check the source code.
  
• The image can only be one that's already in the images directory of the site, i.e. an image I've created for you. Anyone who doesn't yet have a profile pic, please supply me with an unedited picture of your RSI, at least big enough to capture your face. I'll do the rest.
  
• Captains can assign positions/ranks to their crew members. Obviously. These are pre-defined by me, so if there's a position missing, let me know and I'll consider it.

Captains can manage their crews by going to the crew page in the roster (follow the normal links on the site), and clicking 'Manage Crew' in the top left corner. This will take them to a page with the name, designation and biography of the ship, as well as a list of links so they can modify their crew member's details.

If you have more than one character (e.g. if you control a hovercraft's operator, like I control Flare and M4rb controls Hanz), you will get an extra menu on the left of the page. Use this to switch between characters. Bear in mind that different characters have different levels of access: M4rb won't be able to manage his crew if he's currently playing Hanz, for example.

Now that I've done this please make an effort to keep your details up-to-date. We'll be enforcing a new rule with rollcalls starting February: not only do you have to reply to the thread, but you need to update your profile. If there's honestly nothing to update, say so in the thread. Believe me, I can see who's modified their profile.

Oh, and captains: don't worry about the 'Transfer' column on the crew management pages. That's there ready for the transfer system, whereby a captain on one ship can request a crew member from another ship, and vice versa. That's just a neat little feature and isn't really necessary, so I won't bother to develop it yet. If a crew member needs to be moved, tell d4sh or myself.

Anyone who doesn't have a site account yet (you won't be able to log into the site), let me or d4sh know and we'll create an account and a character for you.

Enjoy!
_________________

[Procurator]

I've added a means to simplify the use of correct typography and grammar.

In articles, bios, pages, stories (basically everything that isn't on the forum) I want to see the correct use of special characters, such as opening and closing quotation marks, dashes and ellipses. In order to help you achieve that without having to type in ridiculous codes (like ’ to get a ’), I've got the site to perform a simple search and replace on certain characters:

• The basic pseudo apostrophe on the keyboard (vertical line), ', will be turned into a closing quote (same as a proper apostrophe): ’;
  
• The keyboard backtick, `, will become an opening quote: ‘;
  
• The keyboard dash, -, will become an en-dash unless it's between words, in which case it will remain as a hyphen;
  
• Two keyboard dashes in a row will become an em-dash;
  
• Three full stops (periods) in a row, ..., will become a proper ellipsis: …;
  
• Two pseudo apostrophes or backticks in a row will become the doubled equivalent of their respective quotation marks: “ ”.

I also want to see British English grammar on this site, so anyone caught using an em-dash to break sentences (as opposed to the correct form of an en-dash bordered by a space on either side) will get a slap.

So, for example, typing the following sentence:

`His wishy-washy attitude left much to be desired - or so it seemed... ``A total loser,'' as some would have it.'

will result in the following appearing on the site:

‘His wishy-washy attitude left much to be desired – or so it seemed… “A total loser,” as some would have it.’

Oh, and don't use the keyboard's pseudo quotation mark (two vertical lines): ". That belongs in HTML tags, not real text.

I'll write up a proper guide to this eventually, but for now, consult this page (uh, just the bit about grammar).
_________________

[Procurator]

The main chunk of the formatting system has been implemented, so you're no longer allowed (or even able) to use HTML in your submitted content (i.e. crew and crew member profiles only at the moment). Instead, your text should be submitted in the following way.

Paragraphs
A paragraph is simply defined by adding a blank line after it (unless it's the last one. So if your character profile contains two paragraphs, it will have two blocks of text separate by a blank line.

Lists
Blocks of text (like paragraphs), but where each bullet point is a line beginning with either # (for a numbered list) or - (for a bullet list). The first line of the block of text must contain the relevant character (# or -).
It is not possible to mix lists (i.e. have numbered and bulleted in one). I mean, that'd be just weird.
Currently it's not possible to indent lists to different levels, but this will be added later.

Italics
Italicise words and phrases by surrounding them with double slashes: like //this//.
Remember to always italicise the names of hovercraft!

Bold
Embolden words and phrases by surrounding them with double asterisks: like **this**.

Links
Use these sparingly, if possible. It's in the format [ext:www.site.com]some text[/ext]. ('external' works as well as 'ext'.)
For the moment, don't add the http:// at the front.

Please make sure you don't use any unnecessary line-breaks. That is to say...

Don't type your
text like this or it will
end up looking stupid.

That format is only supposed to be for things like poems. There's no reason to add line-breaks otherwise: the text will wrap in the editing boxes anyway.

An Example:
The following text in the editing box...

[Procurator]

Woo! They're finished!

All faction members now have a personal journal on the Web site. You can all make posts IC or OOC, and they can be viewed either by everyone or by faction members only.

The main journal page:
http://www.glitchsociety.com/journals/

From there, you can view everyone's journals (mine's the only one there at the time of writing), and can access your own journals to modify them by clicking 'Journal Management' in the 'Repository Functions' menu on the left. That will take you here:
http://www.glitchsociety.com/journals/action.manage/

You can then create a new entry by clicking the 'Write an Entry' link:
http://www.glitchsociety.com/journals/action.new/

The form is simple to fill in (or at least, it is for me ). The things you need are a subject and an actual entry. The summary should be a short, well, summary of the entry, but you can leave it blank and the first paragraph of the main entry will be used instead.

In that form you can also select whether the post should be IC or OOC. (Automated adding of OOC comments into an IC entry is a feature that will be added to the site at a later date. Until then, just use the usual (( double bracket )) convention, or your favourite one.)

Make sure you also specify whether the entry should be viewable by the public or only the faction. By default, entries can only be viewed by other faction members; if you want the public to see them (which I'd seriously advise, seeing as it's RP), you must tick the other box.

The text fields at the bottom are a little more complex. 'Virtual time' is a concept I'm working into the site to make RP elements sync up with MxO, using Mega City Time (MCT). Generally, you don't need to mess with that box, but if you want to specify a specific date and time that the journal entries are to be written (like I had to do when I imported my old entries, which I wrote over a year ago), fill in that box.

The 'Publishing time' box is the time you want the entry to appear on the site. This is useful if, say, you're going away on holiday, but you want an entry to appear at some point while you're away: just type the entry in advance and specify the date and time you'd like it to appear.

Incidentally, the journals are all written using the formatting style described in the post before this one. At the moment, if you want to include images, use the standard <img> tag, but I'll soon have a fixed format in place for that to make it easier.

Edit: Oh, and I almost forgot: the storyline element of the Web site is still a while off, so you can use the journal system to post stories and chat logs too. For the time being. When the site's finished, I'll move that stuff into the storyline area, so only actual journal entries will be in the journal system.
_________________

[Procurator]

Bwuah-hah! Well, it took a week longer than I thought, but the events calendar is finished! (My excuses include Vogt's programming puzzle, my hospital trip, and the fact that I HATE PROGRAMMING CALENDARS! I despise timezones, tabulation, and the intricacies of time periods that cross midnight.)

http://www.glitchsociety.com/calendar/

You can't see it in all its splendour yet because, at the time of writing, there's only one event there: my birthday.

Navigation is easy enough to figure out: you can view the calendar month by month, and can view individual days by clicking on the day numbers. To add an event you need to click a 'Create Event' link, which you can find either through the link 'Event Management' in the 'Repository Functions' menu or by clicking a day. (The latter will automatically fill in the date field for you.)

The event creation/modification form has instructions at the bottom. Be careful which timezone you're entering the details in.

The great thing about this calendar is that you can change the timezone at any time. For example, I can add the details of the next meeting with Vogt in my timezone, but you all can then see the corresponding times by selecting your timezone in the drop-down box you'll find on every page of the calendar system.

Formatting of the event descriptions works the same way as journals, so see the above post for details on that.

So, from now on, if you know of an event please add it to the calendar (and tell us in te forum that you've done so). Ensure you set the correct settings (IC/OOC and whether only the faction can see the event or everyone can).

Oh, and I do know that having a mini-calendar for filling in the date and time fields in the form would be useful, but I'm going to add that later.
_________________

[Procurator]

I've improved the logging in form so that it appears if you are logged out and not allowed to access a page.

This is useful if you aren't logged in permanently, and are taking a long time to, say, submit a journal entry: if you take too long to create it, when you finally submit it your session will have expired and you'll be logged out. Before today you will have had to log in, go back and submit the entry again (and depending in which browser you're using, your submission could have been lost). But now the site will temporarily store what you're submitting, ask you to log in, and if you successfully log in when asked it will restore the data and continue where you left off.

It'll also display the logging in form again if you're got your username or password wrong. Before today, it would just show you an error message and you'd have to go back to the form yourself.
_________________

[Procurator]

In case it wasn't obvious, development has stopped for a bit. I wanted to get the... next big feature ready before my exams, but it hasn't happened.

Now I've got my coursework to finish (culmination of a year's work) and exams to revise for and then take. Besides little moments of spare time to do a little writing, I won't have any free time until my exams are over.

Development will therefore pick up again on June the 1st, where this Web site will - finally - be my only concern.
_________________