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v2.0 Rant | Technical Info | Archives
Site
News
(July
06 04):
Special: The Birth Of V2.0
Having considered
in depth what to do for the architecture and design of the site for an amount
of time totalling 4.6 seconds, I came to the conclusion that I should rush into
production as fast as I could and see what happens. This wasn't exactly as rash
a decision as it sounds however; I've learnt a lot about trying to manage a
quickly expanding website straining under an architecture developed over a weekend
with no foresight whatsoever. The main problem I am referring to is the fact
that every time I want to add new content, I have to struggle to retool the
entire layout of the site as I type in lengths of text and tables of new pictures.
It's horrible work, and results in delays. So, armed with my wish list of what
I wanted to get out of the management of the site, I quickly made use of the
god given iframe. Originally I saw this nifty feature on Ahmed's site (which
was built, coincidentally, off the idea of WCSI v1.0). Not to be a complete
rip though, I must say that I was looking for something like this and was about
to go with some kind of JavaScript to do the same front-end job (though all
the info would be on one html document) if I hadn't come across the iframe first.
Credit, has to go to Ahmed for introducing it to me in the first place (not
Waata as I originally said, he lied). Having set my sights on this basic new
structure of an index and an inline frame, I set about making it. It worked,
and it worked beautifully. You could say though, that I could have used a regular
frame. Well that's true. But I hate it. I don't know why, but I think everybody
should hate frames. In the 1990's everybody did anyway, particularly the Netscape
lot. Mozzila has come a long way now, even though we all thought it was dead
after the AOL takeover. But no, it lives. In the real world, communism seems
to have come to a miserable end, but on the net, open source now thrives. I
never myself was a Netscape fan, and I'd never thought I'd ever say this, but
now I must... my site works better with Mozzilla. Particularly Firebird/Firefox.
For starters, IE doesn’t even cache the site properly. For now I'm blaming
Orcon for this insult, because WCSI v1.0 is afflicted whereas it's mother template,
Brainvacation on Brinkster, is not. Let’s just hope Avidnewmedia sorts
their "control panel" issues out and starts allowing free signups
again, so I can change to it because it seems to work (Ahmed's Merewhether High
site has no problems). By the way, Brinkster isn't being used because, of all
things, it has started to put ads on html documents! I don't know if there's
a way around this... maybe I could store everything in the database folder and
that wouldn't get touched? This is actually very irriating, because one of the
benefits to come from the iframe was that I could link to Jo Blogger's Brinkster
account and have a link to his articles, which he could then update from school
(thanks to Brinkster's filemanager system). I don't know for sure, but the last
ray of hope now could be for me to do the same thing, except link to text files,
and have a CSS style sheet applied to the iframe to make it look good. Anyway,
you're probably wondering what's going to happen now... since nothing really
works yet. Well I plan to finish everything except for the Halls of Fame by
the end of the holidays. And believe you me, even with that concession it's
still a load of work... especially considering how The Source is now going to
work. Yeah, The Source... think of it as Secret Agenda (Waata said it should
be Hidden Agenda, which was good, I thank him telling me that the End User Agreement
should just be called the disclaimer too, lol) and Chaos Theory combined. Let's
face it, there was never a clear distinction between the two anyway. So with
this combination, and far more limited space on display (I like to cater for
800x600 loosers), I have (to coin a phrase), the LDA problem. Yes, you guessed
right (not), the Link Depth Architecture problem *he says grandly*. If you hadn't
noticed, on WCSI v1.0, you could get anywhere on the site from the index page
with no more than two clicks. I don't keep it this way merely for convenience
though; if I were to have links very deep in the site, I would also have to
have breadcrumbs and so on (a sequence of links on the page linking you back
all the steps you came from). It would also potentially make things more obscure
than they need to be. This is why it's reasonably importance, both from a management
and user-interface point of view, to keep things simple. The way I see it, I
should cram links onto the right side periphery panels, and have all links in
a list on the index pages. At least that's what I intend to do. In a few days,
after my trip to Taupo (where I will study school work mainly... yes Kat, I'll
do some real work for once), we shall see. My worst fear would be for this to
get all to complicated. With v1.0, I had a few big, complex pages to keep up
with. With v2.0, I have many simple, easy to handle pages to keep up with. I'm
not entirely sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing for me personally, but
I do know that I've got the file structure smack down right, and can easily
grow this site fatter forever and ever (which I really hope you will do... or
at least let me glean things from the forums). Excellent, a behemoth it can
now become. You will also notice the forum integration is very prominent. This
must mean I intend to keep running the forum. Yep, I will. But the great thing
about the forum now is that its become very stable and self managing, all I
have to do is tell the regular users to look out for morons and use their privileges
against them. Coolness. There is supposed to be, however, a school forum. Will
Mr. Thompson ever get around to do it though? Of course not, he has a salary!
Why would anybody on a salary work more than they need to? lmao. Nah, I think
he'll do it. But I won't be linking to any school forum until it's online and
on the internet, not just the network. The entire point, I feel, is that day-students
should be able to benefit from the forums at home.
Endpoint: What have I done? Left an architecture behind robust enough to be
carried on into the future. No mess, no fuss (after it's sorted out).
Site
News
(June
28 04):
As you may
have heard me say before, perhaps it's now time to follow the example set by
McDonald's Family Restaurant; to find ourselves a fresh, clean new
look, a better way of life, health, wealth and joy... or not. Ok, less philosophy,
more nose grinding sheves... just look forward to less red-yellow strained eyes
folks ;)
Site
News (May
24 04):
If you
are having any problems using the forums or any questions (e.g. how do I change
my password?) mail us wcsi@orcon.net.nz,
or read the FAQ now available on the forums.
Site
Technical Info (March
15 04):
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