Young Writers Society

I noticed they'd disappeared again. I thought I was imagining things. I will be very happy when they are back to stay, because I wrote a review using them while they were here. haha.

Just finished putting together a search engine for literary works.

The cool thing about the search engine is that it's now much easier to find all works by a user without having to go to their profile. For example, if I wanted to find all works by Snoink, then I search for:
by Snoink

Note that in order to just get works by a specific user, the "by" is necessary. Otherwise, if I simply search "Snoink," then I'll get anything with "Snoink" in the title.

You can also narrow it further by area. I could get my short stories by searching for "by Nate in short story" or all poetry by freakforchrist by searching for "by freakforchrist in poetry."

Or, I could simply do a search like:
teddy ruxpin

Have fun with it!

Last night, I fixed the summaries for literary works such that the short description rather than an excerpt from the work is displayed. But now that it's fixed, I think I may go back to what was there before. As it turns out, most short descriptions are rather... unhelpful. Showing the excerpt instead was much more useful.

But what about works that have not-family-friendly stuff within the first few lines? With the excerpt, they show up in the description whether the writer intended for it to show or not, and there's no way to hide such.

Update on clubs: Made big headway on finishing them today, but still significant work to do. Won't be able to do anything tomorrow though.

In the meantime, they've been removed from the navtabs until they're finished.

Clubs are getting there.

If you go to the Settings tab, you'll see a new tab for Clubs. From there, you can see your clubs and edit any clubs that you administrate.

Almost done with clubs. The club index is now fully functional:
club_index.php

You can also join clubs now as well.

With those two completed, the clubs area could be made live, but I don't want to do that until it's 100% complete. This is what's left:
- Admins of clubs need a way to approve subscription requests for request only & hidden clubs
- Editing / deleting of topics in club forums is not working.
- Need to redo members section of each club.
- Can't yet create new clubs
- Club admins need a way to ban members from their club
- Breadcrumbs
- Completion of sidebar area
- Announcements
-Comments section isn't sortable
- Update last post time when a comment or post is made in a club.

Of the above, some is easy, some isn't. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to get done tomorrow, but the above will be finished before Saturday.

Did a server reset to apply some changes. Nothing major, except that the site will now run slightly slower during slow periods and slightly faster during peak periods. I had a lot of the server memory dedicated to the database, which didn't leave very much for the web server. Reallocated it by shifting .5GB from the database to the web server.

Mr. Caldwell, you're a marvel. I hope you know that.

Stori wrote:Mr. Caldwell, you're a marvel. I hope you know that.

Haha, thanks Stori, but the true marvels are those who vanquished the Green Room and the moderators who work hard to make this site a better place!

Clubs will be completed tomorrow. Here's the stuff that remains:

- Admins of clubs need a way to approve subscription requests for request only & hidden clubs
- Editing / deleting of topics in club forums is not working.
- Breadcrumbs
- Completion of sidebar area

The only major item is that forums part as I need to do a total rewrite of that area. The club forums look ugly, and the code is even uglier. But, it should only take a couple hours to finish that up.

The really big thing is the testing. I need to make sure everything is working correctly, which means I'll be in chat periodically tomorrow looking for guinea pigs!

Edit

By the way, notice how "Create a new club" has been removed from the to-do list! To create a new club, just head on over to the Clubs tab under the Settings area.


Edit 2

Breadcrumbs have been completed, and readable urls along with them. So instead of something like "clubs.php?id=1&p=wall", it's now "clubs/1/wall".

Also added the ability for club admins to upload banners, and club announcements now show up in the People tab for those subscribed to that club.

Just the sidebar is all that's left for clubs.

Clubs are done.

Also, just made it such that you can now login using your email address, and added a quick link to "Forgot your password?".

Edit

Additionally changed avatars a little bit. I decreased the drop-shadow around avatars, and rounded the corners a tiny bit.

The Literary tab is also now in bold. With the addition of Clubs, I was worried it'd get lost in the tabs. With the bold, it now stands out.

I must say, the bolding of the Literary tab is really drawing my eyes, and involuntarily my mouse to it.

Greatly simplified the registration process, and the registration form looks much nicer now.

Also added a new member's tutorial of sorts. When a new member joins, they'll see three links on the home page: get an avatar, set a birthday or gender, and write a review.

It'll be interesting to see whether or not this boosts new member engagement.