EastBayRag Website Forum, Design Sub-Category, Responsive Pages Thread
The highly neglected forums, so I figured I'd add one to track the progress of the page updates to make them responsive (mobile friendly). It's going to be a slow old journey as I don't have as much time as I'd like to devote to this and it's taking a while to get each page right. So far I've:
- added a hero page (main home page)
- updated the main page which now sits behind the hero page
- updated all the comms pages which includes:
- Registration
- Registration changes including password reset
- Sign In (old pages still redirect to old sign on)
- Logout
- Contact - web form and file upload
- Twitch stream music and player
- Terms of Service
- Lynx
- Site Map
It'll be a work in progress for a while. If you notice any errors, please let me know - there will be many!
- added a hero page (main home page)
- updated the main page which now sits behind the hero page
- updated all the comms pages which includes:
- Registration
- Registration changes including password reset
- Sign In (old pages still redirect to old sign on)
- Logout
- Contact - web form and file upload
- Twitch stream music and player
- Terms of Service
- Lynx
- Site Map
It'll be a work in progress for a while. If you notice any errors, please let me know - there will be many!
Progress has been made and we've updated the following pages:
- Games (all including:)
- Apex
- Clash of Clans (all clans)
- Clash Royale
- Halo
- Pokemon
- Blogs (all including:)
- Main blogs
- Archives
- Forms to enter comments
- Forms to enter open blogs
The blog section was the most painful as a lot of the content is stored in the database and I had to update it manually. I could potentially have written as script to do it, but I was worried I would inadvertently change something I didn't want to.
Forums, Fun Stuff, Photos, Vote and Videos are the remaining major areas. I'll probably hit the forums next.
- Games (all including:)
- Apex
- Clash of Clans (all clans)
- Clash Royale
- Halo
- Pokemon
- Blogs (all including:)
- Main blogs
- Archives
- Forms to enter comments
- Forms to enter open blogs
The blog section was the most painful as a lot of the content is stored in the database and I had to update it manually. I could potentially have written as script to do it, but I was worried I would inadvertently change something I didn't want to.
Forums, Fun Stuff, Photos, Vote and Videos are the remaining major areas. I'll probably hit the forums next.
One step forward and two steps back. Probably not, but it feels like that sometimes. So I did do the forums and the vote, but I also tackled the videos, which should be the easiest section as there was pretty much bugger all in there, however, I decided to redo everything. The videos weren't catalogued, they were just hard coded on a page. I've been meaning to catalog the videos for a while, but haven't been bothered until now. The problem is that in doing, I decided to add most of the game videos in which is fine, but that meant I had to redo all the games pages that I've done before. Essentially I've actually deleted all the stuff I've done before and replaced it with a single page that magically brings up the videos for a specific topic. There are still some videos floating about that aren't in the catalog, notably the Spartans and Warriors clash of clans videos, but I can live with that. They are a legacy of times past and are in their own little war log. One of which is hard coded, the other is in a table, so it is catalogued sorta, but it's its own table and not the videos table.
Anyway, the stuff we got done this week is:
- Forums
- display of forums, sub-categories, threads and thread details
- forms to add into the forums, sub-categories, threads and thread details
- linkage to the new logon page
- Vote
- main vote page
- vote archives, titles, 10 per page and full list
- add discussion
- add comment
- process vote including email (which actually is now all on one page, so we got rid of some redundancy)
- Videos
- just the one page, but it's a beast
- added track videos
- converted game videos except Spartans and Warrriors
Anyway, the stuff we got done this week is:
- Forums
- display of forums, sub-categories, threads and thread details
- forms to add into the forums, sub-categories, threads and thread details
- linkage to the new logon page
- Vote
- main vote page
- vote archives, titles, 10 per page and full list
- add discussion
- add comment
- process vote including email (which actually is now all on one page, so we got rid of some redundancy)
- Videos
- just the one page, but it's a beast
- added track videos
- converted game videos except Spartans and Warrriors
I'll add a note that what remains on the user side of things is the photos and the fun stuff. I'm not sure how much of this I'm going to get done this week as I'm pretty busy and it's the start of the Formula 1 season next weekend, so I'm probably going to be watching all of that. What remains is the photos and the fun stuff. Both of these have some challenging components, notably the photo database and some of the weird screen display stuff around the experrymental (not a typo) pages.
I may end up doing these in parallel and migrating page by page. Some of the Fun Stuff is easy and I may knock those out. I also don't want to touch the Race Game until we've got going with the new fantasy F1 season, so that means, doing the easy Fun Stuff pages, then switching to photos, then coming back to finish off the Fun Stuff. I guess we'll see as the week progresses, but we're going to take it a bit easier I think.
I may end up doing these in parallel and migrating page by page. Some of the Fun Stuff is easy and I may knock those out. I also don't want to touch the Race Game until we've got going with the new fantasy F1 season, so that means, doing the easy Fun Stuff pages, then switching to photos, then coming back to finish off the Fun Stuff. I guess we'll see as the week progresses, but we're going to take it a bit easier I think.
As I noted in the posts above, this was always going to be a quiet week, but it wasn't as quiet as I had originally intended. On the website front, what's done an in production is the following:
- Fun Stuff home
- Random section (number, crypto and chart)
- Bumpkin quiz
- Caption competition
- Photos quick tag page
It doesn't look like much and to be honest, not as much as I'd liked, but work is really busy and I'm only spending about an hour on this a day. The big snag, however, was the start of the Formula 1 season and the start of the fantasy race game for it on the site. I came up with a new idea for an enhancement (don't get excited, it's not that amazing), however, I ran into a significant number of obstacles when trying to set it up. It's actually done and in the new format (I'm not going to do something and then convert it, even I'm not that stupid), but I'm not pushing it out until closer to next weekend as I'm expecting issues. Essentially, I've completely changed the indexing of the site so I want to do a bit more testing and move it closer to the weekend so I can fix any significant errors that I spot.
The plan for this next week is just to focus on getting the new functionality in and chipping away at the rest of the race game. I'll consider it a win if I can get the race game over to the new style.
- Fun Stuff home
- Random section (number, crypto and chart)
- Bumpkin quiz
- Caption competition
- Photos quick tag page
It doesn't look like much and to be honest, not as much as I'd liked, but work is really busy and I'm only spending about an hour on this a day. The big snag, however, was the start of the Formula 1 season and the start of the fantasy race game for it on the site. I came up with a new idea for an enhancement (don't get excited, it's not that amazing), however, I ran into a significant number of obstacles when trying to set it up. It's actually done and in the new format (I'm not going to do something and then convert it, even I'm not that stupid), but I'm not pushing it out until closer to next weekend as I'm expecting issues. Essentially, I've completely changed the indexing of the site so I want to do a bit more testing and move it closer to the weekend so I can fix any significant errors that I spot.
The plan for this next week is just to focus on getting the new functionality in and chipping away at the rest of the race game. I'll consider it a win if I can get the race game over to the new style.
Mission accomplished. We did indeed finish off the race game and we managed a little bit more, completing:
- Race Game
- Registration, registration change
- Driver selections
- Leaderboard
- Stats including car, team, driver
- All time stats
- Smack talk - the new addition
- ASCII fun
- main page
- ASCII representation
- key to ascii
- unicode by block - new
- unicode full - new
- unicode common - new
- Photos main page
- The photo category page
So, everything's now done except for the ExPerryMental part of fun stuff and most of the photos. The photos section is the task for next week. This is a fiddly section, particularly when you get into some of the map display for the geotagged images, so we're just going to take it page by page and see how far we get. Not sure it will all get done in a week. The XPM stuff is also fiddly - I'm on the fence as to whether to keep it. It was great stuff 15 or so years ago when it was created, but it's pretty bland now. I like it as a record, but it really doesn't have a lot of use anymore. We'll see.
- Race Game
- Registration, registration change
- Driver selections
- Leaderboard
- Stats including car, team, driver
- All time stats
- Smack talk - the new addition
- ASCII fun
- main page
- ASCII representation
- key to ascii
- unicode by block - new
- unicode full - new
- unicode common - new
- Photos main page
- The photo category page
So, everything's now done except for the ExPerryMental part of fun stuff and most of the photos. The photos section is the task for next week. This is a fiddly section, particularly when you get into some of the map display for the geotagged images, so we're just going to take it page by page and see how far we get. Not sure it will all get done in a week. The XPM stuff is also fiddly - I'm on the fence as to whether to keep it. It was great stuff 15 or so years ago when it was created, but it's pretty bland now. I like it as a record, but it really doesn't have a lot of use anymore. We'll see.
Well, the tunnel is now firmly at the end of the light. We completed all the photos pages and all the original experrymental pages. As far as I know, there's only one page left being the draggables page that doesn't actually work on a mobile anyway, so I either need to fix it or scrap it. I'll probably fix it as I want to know how to do a couple of things that are in it, but that will be the mission for this week. Completed:
- Photos:
- photo comments
- photo categories and display
- photo database including changing the restrictions to make it file specific versus general
- photo thumbnails
- geo track mapping of photos onto Google maps
- photo statistics for animals and places and the gazillion files that support it
- ExPerryMental:
- Bounce
- Chequers
- Text Play
- XPM
We have also fixed the error that was caused in the big emoji conversion whereby the production machine assigned different id's to the development machine which, in almost all cases, doesn't matter. It does, however, matter for the race game and that the computer's random picks were assigned to Owen instead of itself. Oopsie.
- Photos:
- photo comments
- photo categories and display
- photo database including changing the restrictions to make it file specific versus general
- photo thumbnails
- geo track mapping of photos onto Google maps
- photo statistics for animals and places and the gazillion files that support it
- ExPerryMental:
- Bounce
- Chequers
- Text Play
- XPM
We have also fixed the error that was caused in the big emoji conversion whereby the production machine assigned different id's to the development machine which, in almost all cases, doesn't matter. It does, however, matter for the race game and that the computer's random picks were assigned to Owen instead of itself. Oopsie.
I did finish the last few pages off, so the site should be fully mobile friendly now. Woot, woot! I’m sure there’s the odd error here or there, but google seems pretty happy with it so far and is now indexing more pages than ever before. No idea what it’s actually doing with them, but that’s it’s problem, not mine.
In addition to the front end, I’ve started working on the back end tools too. The main achievement this week was getting the ragbox back up and fully operational. The reason this was a biggy is because the music files, or more specifically the playlist files had been destroyed in the update that converted member identifiers from email to an id. But, we seem to have it working fine now.
In addition, I also did the blog tools. These are relatively easy as I’m the only one using them, so I’m not as bothered as to what they look like compared to the front end. I’m also not pushing to get these done and will just pick at them when I have free time.
In addition to the front end, I’ve started working on the back end tools too. The main achievement this week was getting the ragbox back up and fully operational. The reason this was a biggy is because the music files, or more specifically the playlist files had been destroyed in the update that converted member identifiers from email to an id. But, we seem to have it working fine now.
In addition, I also did the blog tools. These are relatively easy as I’m the only one using them, so I’m not as bothered as to what they look like compared to the front end. I’m also not pushing to get these done and will just pick at them when I have free time.
Right, we've done pretty much all of the back-end tools. As I mentioned, they're pretty easy as they're only for me, so less to worry about, but it's nice to have them fully adjustable on a mobile should I choose to administer things on a different device. The only remaining tasks are some of the iRag music player and some stuff for William. They should get knocked out this coming week with a bit of luck.
Nothing done this week due to the surgery, so I can't officially declare that this project is over yet. I'm within touching distance of the goal, but it's going to need at least another week.
We managed to have just enough time to complete this exercise. There's some tidy up of back end stuff and for some reason Google is trying to read text on images and declaring it too small, so some fiddly bits to sort out, but the transition is done and the website should have mobile friendly responsive pages 😀
12th February 2023