New TLS Front Page

[Shademp]

cut it up, shrunk it, rotated it, and ended up with this. The drop shadow looks better in context, which you can see here. What do you think?

I approve of this arrow. I'll see that this arrow is added for the three categories where it belongs (FFVII Compendium, Fan Works and Non-FFVII Translations).

 

[Cthulhu]

What kind of icons do you have in mind?

Good question, . Either small images added to the articles by the editors, or, easier/more reusable, an icon per category.

As for the link things, we did exclude viewing of 'general chat' threads to unregistered users; maybe we should just remove the general section's IDs from the query? Seeing that it'd be kinda lame if unregistered / unlogged-in people would click links only to be confronted with a 'HAH NO' error, .

 

[Fangu]

^ Doesn't it say "you must be logged in to..." etc? If not and it just says "haha gtfo" then yes definitely. The query is still in the functions file, I'll be afk for a few hours.

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah it says that, I just abbreviate error messages in poasts for teh lulz and because I don't have photographic memory for error messages (thank fuck), .

 

[Kai Schulen]

Not sure if it was mentioned, but I think my only real complaint about the new front page is that whenever I click on the forum button while in the forums, I end up on the front page

But other than that, I'm loving the new page.

 

[Fangu]

Not sure if it was mentioned, but I think my only real complaint about the new front page is that whenever I click on the forum button while in the forums, I end up on the front page

Does the banner still say "Home", "Forums", [x] and "Shop" to you? If so, you're not seeing the new banner; the old one is probably cached in your browser. The new one just says "the lifestream".

Oh wait - did you check all forum templates when replacing the banner, Yop?

 

[Flintlock]

Not sure if it was mentioned, but I think my only real complaint about the new front page is that whenever I click on the forum button while in the forums, I end up on the front page

I'm not sure which forum button you're talking about, but you can still get to the front page of the forum with this button

 

[Kai Schulen]

Does the banner still say "Home", "Forums", [x] and "Shop" to you? If so, you're not seeing the new banner; the old one is probably cached in your browser. The new one just says "the lifestream".

Oh wait - did you check all forum templates when replacing the banner, Yop?

I just cleared my cache and it's still there. :<

 

[Lex]

^That's because you're using something other than "The Lifestream" or "The Lifestream Green" when looking at the forums. The rest (i.e. "The Lifestream Purple") still have the old banner.

Was this an oversight or just something that'll be done in the future? Unless we're getting rid of the custom forum colours altogether. I'm partial to purple myself.

 

[Kai Schulen]

Ooooooh, gotcha.

Now I'm torn between switching over to the original LS theme for the new theme to take over or sticking to the Blue theme.

 

[Cthulhu]

Oh wait - did you check all forum templates when replacing the banner, Yop?

I edited the 'Header' template to update the links, and a variable one can use for the header image, so, yes. Although maybe there are some substyles that have their own header customizations, I never checked - what style are you using?

Faux edit: Oh wait, I see what you mean. The templates are okay for that (there was a rant about fuuu substyles here earlier, but I'm an idiot), but the image is just off, . We'll need someone to take the new header image and re-apply the color filter to it for the colored substyles.

But, imho, original style ftw.

 

[Fangu]

what style are you using?

^That's because you're using something other than "The Lifestream" or "The Lifestream Green" when looking at the forums. The rest (i.e. "The Lifestream Purple") still have the old banner.

K so I removed General Discussion and its 5 children categories, and Introductions, Departures etc from the forum listing on the Front page. Now people aren't sent to a log in screen - but it does look like we're all about VII and nothing else, and the forum looks less visited

I guess I can change it so links only are output for certain threads - the others are still shown, but without being linked. Yeah that sounds nice. Edit: No wait, create a Page which explains that you have to join the forums to see the threads, and explain how to sign up, and link all General etc threads to this page?

Thoughts?

 

[AvecAloes]

K so I removed General Discussion and its 5 children categories, and Introductions, Departures etc from the forum listing on the Front page. Now people aren't sent to a log in screen - but it does look like we're all about VII and nothing else, and the forum looks less visited

I guess I can change it so links only are output for certain threads - the others are still shown, but without being linked. Yeah that sounds nice. Edit: No wait, create a Page which explains that you have to join the forums to see the threads, and explain how to sign up, and link all General etc threads to this page?

Thoughts?

"Want to join in on the discussions taking place on TheLifestream.net? Feel free to sign up 'here', then post to your heart's content!"

Yes, I think that linking to a page explaining briefly what the forums are about (FF discussion + a place to talk/get to know each other etc) and how to sign up is a good idea. Then maybe specify that once they sign up, the links on the front page will take them directly to the thread advertised, if it will, in fact, do that, which I think would be neat. Is there a way to do that? I know nothing about programming. What if the person chose to always be signed in to the forums? Would that make a difference in linking them to the actual thread rather than the sign-up welcome page?

 

[Fangu]

Then maybe specify that once they sign up, the links on the front page will take them directly to the thread advertised, if it will, in fact, do that, which I think would be neat. Is there a way to do that? I know nothing about programming. What if the person chose to always be signed in to the forums? Would that make a difference in linking them to the actual thread rather than the sign-up welcome page?

Well that's part of the problem - bridging WordPress with vB (the forums) is kind of a bitch. I've looked into it, but, like Yop, concluded that it's way too much work. In fact, there is only one known bridge out there (that I've found anyway) and the creator has abandoned it and doesn't provide updates any more - which kind of illustrates how little anyone wants to get their hands into that mess.

What that means is that, when on the Front Page, we have no way of identifying if this person is logged in on the forum or not - because the front page does not (and can not) hold forum sessions.

So our solution is to manually set which threads that are to be taken out of the forum. Meaning that if we lead the links to a custom Page, you will get there even if you are logged into the forum, which I see now can be kinda confusing.

Hmm.

Edit: Suggestion: Thread marked with "not directly linked" (implying they are in the General or Introduction section) could be linked to this custom page we talked about, which says "you need to be logged into the forums to read this thread. If you are already logged in, please proceed to the thread. Otherwise, please register!" I can write up some crap that outputs this and remembers the thread link in question, and sends the user straight to the thread when clicking "please proceed to the thread".

Spoiler: Tech rant

Set up a template which lets Admins edit the look, and then make a function to output the proper link.

Some nerdy talk:
I've already rewritten the code so frontpage-template.php (on Fhtagn, not live) now looks something

Spoiler: like this

<?php $forumCats = array(3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 46, 37, 36, 38, 47, 39, 41, 55, 43, 44, 48, 51, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 60, 65, 68); ?>
<?php $catsNotLinked = array(6); // Categories that should not be linked directly to the forums ?>
<?php $excludedThreads = array(9651, 10241, 10238, 11166, 5005, 6648, 5880, 649); ?>
<?php $noOfPosts = 8; // Wanted no of posts output ?>
<?php forum_get_latest_posts($forumCats, $catsNotLinked, $excludedThreads, $noOfPosts); ?>

I know it's bad to take in 4 parameters into a function, but meh, Minor Fault and can be fixed later when it's all nice and working.

, I'm gonna move all of that into a separate functions file btw (functions-forum.php or something) but I'm scared to do it live on the server bc of reading rights and stuff, so right now it's all still in functions.php.

The idea is to write a plug-in of some sorts to let anyone with Admin/ Editor access (or whatever we decide) mark which threads/ categories are to be included/ excluded in the forum pull. Like with the "Happening Now" bar, it's something more people should have access to edit.

 

[Cthulhu]

Who said it was bad to have functions with 4 parameters? Anything to do with numbers in code is purely guidelines written by statisticians, not actual developers, .

 

[Fangu]

Who said it was bad to have functions with 4 parameters? Anything to do with numbers in code is purely guidelines written by statisticians, not actual developers, .

I think you did at some point, explaining how you preferred thisobject.doStuff(), however that's probably not doable in PHP anyway.

So yeah the safety thing I was talking about:

functions.php:

	// Returns the n threads with the latest posts from the forums
	function forum_get_latest_posts($forumcats, $catsNotLinked, $excludedThreads, $noOfPosts) {
		if (!$forumcats || $noOfPosts < 1) break; // Only continue if $categories has content
		$result = forum_get_latest_posts_string($forumcats, $excludedThreads, $noOfPosts);
		$numberofrows = mysql_num_rows($result);

		echo '<ul class="forum-posts">';
		for ($i = 0; $i < $numberofrows; $i++) {
			$row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
			
			$threadUrl = "http://thelifestream.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t={$row[0]}";
			$title = $row[1];
			$timestamp = $row[4];
			$categoryUrl = "http://thelifestream.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f={$row[2]}";
			$categoryName = $row[3];
			
			if (in_array($row[2], $catsNotLinked)) {
				$threadUrl = "http://fhtagn.thelifestream.net/welcome-to-our-forums/?forumthread=" . $row[0]; // Overwrite
			}
			output_highlight_row($title, $threadUrl, $timestamp, $categoryUrl, $categoryName);
		}
		echo '</ul>';
	}

As you can see, the thread ID for the clicked thread on the FP is now sent to the Page http://fhtagn.thelifestream.net/welcome-to-our-forums/, which is based on a Template and can (to a certain extent) be edited. This template uses the following code:

		<?php $threadID = mysql_real_escape_string($_GET["forumthread"]); ?>
		<?php $wholeurl = "http://thelifestream.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=" . $threadID; ?>
		<?php $threadTitle = forum_get_thread_title($threadID); ?>
		
		(snip)

			<?php echo "<p>"; ?>
			<?php echo "You've shown interest in the thread "; ?>
			<?php echo '<a href="' . $wholeurl . '">' . $threadTitle . "</a>"; ?>
			<?php echo "</p>"; ?>

Guess there are more procautions to be taken? The first thing that comes to mind is to check if $_GET["forumthread"] are only numbers. But then that should be it, I can't possible see any other danger here?

 

[Cthulhu]

On safety, seeing that the $_GET['forumthread'] is the only thing coming in, an intval() (or whatever the function was, I can't recall) should actually be enough security-wise, since it'd baleet every non-number from the parameter.

Also, I think you can access the forums cookies from the front page; if there's a bbuserid cookie in there, you should be able to say 'okay this fellow is logged in'. But you should probably double-check that assumption by doing a var_dump($_COOKIE); (iirc)

 

[Fangu]

Added a few tweaks:
- functions.php: if (!is_numeric($threadid)) return null; in the function that looks up the thread title. If it returns null, template-gotoforum.php:
- if ($threadTitle == null) echo "<p>The threadID is invalid. Please try again.</p>";

Think we're good to go on that one.

Regarding cookies, I can't really say I know that much about it, but it's definitely something I should learn. I'll put it on the 'later' list

K I'll upload the fixxes in a minute.
Edit: Uploaded!
Next thing I should do is the "exclude threads already mentioned in Related Articles" and test adding some thumbnails to the "more news" thingy. Plus look into making it easy for WordPress Admins/ Editors/ Authors to exclude threads from the forum pull. I have to start working on my Algorithm assignment now though. UUGGGHH. This is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING.

Edit 2: Fixxing access for moar people for the Happening Now bar is next.
Edit 3: Twitter for the Happening Now bar is seriously like trying to get the most prudent bitch to bed. They choke and limit everything so hard by using js, and even if you manage to hack it enough to get the 1 latest Tweet you need, they shove all sorts of rules down your throat like you must have the twitter bird on your page next to the text with a minimum of 150 pixels free space around it blah blah

So, Twitter is out, WP is in. And, guess what, giving Editors access to the Widgets (where the Featured bar is) is two lines of code. Oh WP how I love thee <3 Though, you can't separate access to Widget editing from also being able to edit the Theme, Header, Background and Menus as well. (There is a demand for this, read this thread in WP support.) But until then, I'd say we give Editors the access to edit the Widgets. Given they won't start fiddling with the Theme settings of course

Authors will have the same rights as before, by the way. What separates Authors from Editors is that Editors have the access to edit other people's posts and some other stuff; they have a little bit more rights.

y/y?

 

[Flintlock]

A few things from working on the roundup:

Firstly, if our top story is put into a previously empty category, the "related posts" text still shows up but the list below it will be empty. That's a bug; the text should disappear altogether in those situations, I think. For now I recategorised the roundup to hide the problem.

Secondly, after chopping and changing my headline to get it to fit onto one page in the article, I was frustrated to see it take up three lines on the front page. I know short headlines are good, but I'm not sure how I could have made it much shorter. Could the font please be made a little smaller so it fits onto two lines? That would reduce the overhang of the related posts list and make the layout feel tighter, in my opinion.

Thirdly, after posting the article I noticed there still aren't any social media buttons to be found for sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or wherever. Are they likely to be implemented soon?

 

[Shademp]

Thirdly, after posting the article I noticed there still aren't any social media buttons to be found for sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or wherever. Are they likely to be implemented soon?

I think it hinges on us pretty much reminding Yop or Fangu to implement Facebook buttons. So it could happen at any time. I'll try and remember this when on the irc.

 

[Fangu]

Firstly, if our top story is put into a previously empty category, the "related posts" text still shows up but the list below it will be empty. That's a bug; the text should disappear altogether in those situations, I think. For now I recategorised the roundup to hide the problem.

Yeah this is definitely a bug! I'll fix it tonight. The alternative is to print out three articles from the default category btw, but I think your solution is better. Edit: Fixxed and changed category to "Weekly Roundups".

Regarding the header size - I could make it a little bit smaller? Because I don't think we have enough space to push it more to the right, and if the image is to stay 2:1 it can't be any smaller.

 

[Cthulhu]

An alternative for the header would be to move it up; i.e, have the main article's title span the width of the page, then two columns underneath, one with image, one with intro text and related articles.

 

[Flintlock]

Yeah this is definitely a bug! I'll fix it tonight. The alternative is to print out three articles from the default category btw, but I think your solution is better. Edit: Fixxed and changed category to "Weekly Roundups".

Thanks for the fixx!

Regarding the header size - I could make it a little bit smaller? Because I don't think we have enough space to push it more to the right, and if the image is to stay 2:1 it can't be any smaller.

I tried it with 90% of the current size, and it looked good to me! Did we decide to stick with 2:1 though? It is, at least, an easy ratio to work with. I noticed that when I was editing the images for the roundup article. I know I suggested 16:9 as an alternative, but that could be a bit fussy. It's not too easy to work out 16*250/9 in your head

An alternative for the header would be to move it up; i.e, have the main article's title span the width of the page, then two columns underneath, one with image, one with intro text and related articles.

Not sure about that. I think the layout we have now is better, it just needs a couple of small tweaks

 

[Fangu]

I tried it with 90% of the current size, and it looked good to me!

I'll try reducing it from 32px to 28px then=

Did we decide to stick with 2:1 though? It is, at least, an easy ratio to work with. I noticed that when I was editing the images for the roundup article. I know I suggested 16:9 as an alternative, but that could be a bit fussy. It's not too easy to work out 16*250/9 in your head

Yeah exactly. No nothing is decided yet - and you don't have to do the math as you can put in the ratio you want in the cropping tool for images. I need to write that guide soon... have you tried using 16:9 in a prototype layout? Does it look decent?

Not sure about that. I think the layout we have now is better, it just needs a couple of small tweaks

I agree

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Just for clarity's sake -- and so I don't fuck anything up -- when I compose my new article in the next couple of weeks, what formatting guidelines do I need to follow?