[Vilx-]

Hi, folks! This will be my programming thread where I will report things related to the upcoming updates and other stuff. Also, since we don't have a bugtracker (should really get one, but too lazy), this will double as a bugreport thread. So if you come across anything you think should work better, post here! That, or tell Kern, but he'll most likely just forward it to me anyway. General talk and bugging me to do work are also welcome.

Here's my current TODO list (which I'll try to keep up to date):

• Ladydream
• Manual login cookie fixer page
• Should roll out the new loginbar across all remaining sites (PtP, RH2 and side stories) once it's proven stable
• RH2 remove limitation that all squad members have to be from same clan;
• Link in subscriptions/registration/settings back to the main site.
• blackjack217's list of erroneous PTP pages.
• Finn MacCool's list of erroneous Daydream pages.
• Remove RH2 archive 3 (?)

And here's the long-term TODO list. Items here may or may not ever be completed, and it's up to Kern what gets priority.

• SEO;
• Unified login for forums and rest of drowtales;
• Unified framework for all drowtales websites (currently lots of code has been copy-pasted and modified to each place);
• Get all side stories in a single archive. Or maybe two archives - one for side stories, other for contest entries. Otherwise the whole side story section is a mess right now, and adding a new side-story requires Kern to copy-and-modify PHP code (gasp!) Not particularly easy to maintain.
• A new, proper shoutbox. This one is based on YShout, incorrectly adapted to use a DB instead of files, copy-paste-modified all over the place, modified to use ExtJS (while everything else uses jQuery), etc. I've got quite a few ideas about how to build a much improved version, but that would take a while.
• A new, proper, unified adminpanel for all of drowtales. Currently there are useable adminpanels only for Daydream and Rh2, and those are copy-pasted from each other too. Mainsite has only a crude comic upload script, and PTP is administered solely through phpMyAdmin and another copy of that crude upload script. Not to mention side stories, which don't have even that.

[Finn MacCool]

Here's my current TODO list (which I'll try to keep up to date):

• Main site themes have wrong background colors;
• Main site archiver has lost the Daydream advertisement;
• Page uploading buggy at Daydream;
• Should roll out the new loginbar across all remaining sites (PtP, RH2 and side stories) once it's proven stable
• RH2 remove limitation that all squad members have to be from same clan;
• Link in subscriptions/registration/settings back to the main site.

what about the other things i mentioned in the comments to your news post?
or are they part of the point about the login bar?

[Vilx-]

Thanks for reminding me!

As for other issues you've reported, here's what I think:

The slowness of login/logout in Daydream is purely imaginary or coincidental, since they all use the same underlying code. The double-sign-out is awkward though, I agree. But neither me nor Kern could come up with a better text for "open the upper menu". Which is what it really does. Hmm... maybe there's no point in opening the upper menu there. There's nothing there except for the "Options" and "Logout" buttons. I'll ask Kern about this. The PTP loginbar vibration will be removed with the new loginbar (it's one of the things fixed in it).

[blackjack217]

Okay, then *takes a deep breath*
PTP Archives:
Chapter 2 Epilogue 17's LA is wrong, somehow its proper LA was at some point replaced by Chapter 2 Colony 11's
Chapter 2 Moon 2 Day 20 is erroneously split in two.
Chapter 2 Epilogue 12 is split in two
Chapter 2 Epilogue 13 is misnamed as Chapter 2 Epilogue 12, error cause every subsequent page of the Epilogue to be miss numbered .
The Holiday 09 page is misnamed.

...
I think that's it.

[Vilx-]

Ooh, yeah... PTP... that one's a bit tough, since I haven't touched that code. Ever. Will take a bit of digging to get it done. On the other hand, I think that PTP is the next big thing Kern wants to tackle, so I might get there pretty soon. I'll add it to the TODO list.

[blackjack217]

Oh, forgot to mention you might want to rename all the pages after the chapter 2 epilogue to chapter 3, as it feels kind of weird to have additional pages in chapter two after an epilogue.

[Vilx-]

'Kay... sounds like all this might need to wait a while until I get that adminpanel in place. Doing all that from phpMyAdmin is pretty annoying.

Hmm... Come to think of it, some of the pages in Daydream have their names messed up. Don't know what kind of historical accident caused that, it was before my time. If there was anyone out there who would be willing to go through them all and fix them, that'd be great!

And... actually, that brings me to the idea of crowdsourcing. There are a few jobs around that could be done with the help of the community! If anyone's interested, of course.

[Finn MacCool]

just say what you need to be done.

[Vilx-]

Hmm... well, off of the top of my head:

• The pages in some of Daydream archives have mangled names. I could provide an Excel file with all the page data, people could edit that, and then I'd update the DB from the excel file.
• Most (all?) pages in Daydream need tagging. And it would be great if there were some guidelines so that all pages would be tagged the same way. Obviously you'll need a Daydream subscription to do this, but the interface to do it is already there.
• Very many pages in all archives have missing thumbnails or wrongly sized thumbnails. That messes up the archive browser. I've yet to figure out how to organize work on this one. I suppose I'll give a ZIP archive of pages that need to be thumbnail'd and expect another archive in return.

I've also got this weird idea of transcribing the dialogue in comic pages so that you can search it for quotes and maybe even use it for speech synthesis (first webcomic accessible to blind people!) - but that would require quite a bit of programming work too, and I'm sure I won't have the time for that anytime soon.

[Finn MacCool]

Hmm... well, off of the top of my head:

• The pages in some of Daydream archives have mangled names. I could provide an Excel file with all the page data, people could edit that, and then I'd update the DB from the excel file.
• Most (all?) pages in Daydream need tagging. And it would be great if there were some guidelines so that all pages would be tagged the same way. Obviously you'll need a Daydream subscription to do this, but the interface to do it is already there.
• Very many pages in all archives have missing thumbnails or wrongly sized thumbnails. That messes up the archive browser. I've yet to figure out how to organize work on this one. I suppose I'll give a ZIP archive of pages that need to be thumbnail'd and expect another archive in return.

well, put up the files and more detailed instructions, then.

[Vilx-]

Will do as soon as I fix that Daydream problem.

[AthenAltena]

You might wanna make this a sticky just so it doesn't get lost.

And if you need to crowdsource something I'm more than happy to help if it's within my ability. A while ago when Kite had us transcribing the podcasts I actually thought it was really fun.

[Vilx-]

I thought about sticking this topic, but then - I won't really lose it, and for all of you it will be easier to see when something new has been posted if it keeps floating up/down. I'm glad to hear that there are actually people willing to help with the crowdsourcing.

[Celice]

Daydream homepage isn't loading, but if you click on the thumbnail on the mainsite, you still go to the ladydream page. Just didn't know if I'm the only one with that issue or is it another weird bug


I'm a techy noob despite my family being godly ad their computer skillz most I can do is frankenstein some code together and be all amazed with it when it works and have no idea why

[Vilx-]

My fault, I'm debugging some stuff right now and brought it down. All fixed now. Though might be a few more downtimes until I track down the problems. I'll keep them as short as possible.