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Class : ID Admin
Posts : 1048
Registered on : 12/11/2007
Age : 25
Sex : Female
Offline Mail Www
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Bonjour à tous.
After several weeks of work, the new version of Ishimaru Design is finally online. But first of all, I want to apologize for the maintenance's duration that has been much longer than expected. Normally, it should have finished in early morning, before I go to bed, but I didn't know that Baie-Comeau City had planned some repairs in the power network from 3:00 AM, but we haven't seen the announcement in our mailbox before this morning on breakfast time. As a result, the power went out while I was working on the website's update, so that's why this duration of more than 16 hours instead of the 4-5 hours duration that I planned in the first place.
Now, let's go for the new stuff !
- [*] New "news" module on the website : The old news module that was used up to now and that was made from the PHP tutorial on Newbies Paradise, has become obsolete. So, I replaced it by the news module that was provided in Connectix Boards' documentation (French only), that allows to display news ont the website from one of the forum's sections. This way, I have a fully functional BBCode for the news' presentation.
- [*] URL Rewriting is now functioning : In order to improve page indexing, the URL Rewriting has been enabled, so that's why the changes you might have noticed in the forum's URLs. For this, I thank Martin, the Connectix Boards's main developer, for taking his time to help me in solving the error 500 issue that was the reason why it wasn't enabled earlier. For now, there are still a few links to modify in the important topics, and a few blocks (on the website) to make compatible with the URL Rewriting.
- [*] New MODs and fixes for the forum : A few MODs and fixes that were developed (most of them by me) have been installed on the forum. Here's a non-exhaustive list of these modifications. :
- [*] Colored usernames extension in all pages on the forum.
- [*] Fix for the topic moving tool, so moderators can move a topic from a forum to its subforum.
- [*] Display of the newest registered member on the index
- [*] The timezone is now customizable in the admin panel, for guests and members who didn't set their own timezone in their profile. Unfortunately, the "Yesterday/Today" issue couldn't be solved for this version, but it will be solved in the beta release of Connectix Boards 1.0, for which I'm watching for its release.
- [*] Reorganization of the forum sections : In order to make the section more clear for users, I reorganized the "Tutorials and Tips" sections, and merged the forum styles sections with it, so that both in the French and English categories, a clear separation is made according to the main subject (graphics sofwares, Forumotion, phpBB2, phpBB3, XHTML), so the members can choose the section according to the subject for which they want support, and to avoid having several topics about different forums system scrambled in the same section. The self-serve gallery is now only for any ressource that isn't a forum style.
- [*] No more "Choose your language" page : Up to now, the index.php page that was located on the website's root directory was a simple page that asked you to choose whichever you want to go to the French pages or to the English pages. This page has now been replaced by a simple script that redirects you according to your browser's language preferences.
- [*] A completely new design for the new version : The design, as much on the graphical side than on the structural and ergonomics side, has been completely remade. The old design was there for more than one year (with a minor change meanwhile) and began to get a little old, and I was looking for something more topical according to the website's orientation, while combining my graphics style, the slightly Asian touch (with the kanji symbol meaning "art"), and opensource (the penguin in the header).
- [*] A newly remade administration interface : On the structure side, the menus have been finally added in the administration pages, in order to improve navigation through pages, and a link towards the administration panel is now present in the horizontal menu, for those who have access permissions. The links towards administration pages have been grouped inside an index page for each language, in order to avoid having the administration page access links scattered throughout the website's pages.
- [*] The self-serve forum styles are now managed with a database : Up to now, each time I had to add a new forum style, whatever it's Forumotion, ConnectixBoards or phpBB, I had to edit the file manually to add the infos about the newly added style, so this makes the management not so easy. Now, everything is managed through an online form in the administration section, and an upload and thumbnail generation system has been set up for the demo screenshots, so this will make me avoid having to resize them manually. Only styles archives are still sent manually by FTP.
- [*] New "GIMP Tutorials" section on the website : In order to give more visibility to GIMP tutorials, a new page has been added on the website, and like in the styles management, everything is managed though an online form. So, when a new GIMP tutorial is added on the forum, what is left is to enter the infos (icon, GIMP version, type, description) and the toipic's ID number to display it on the website.
- [*] Modifications in reviews and battles results pages : The modifications are more minor in these pages, compared to others, but they aren't pointless either to be not mentioned. On the reviews side the username colorization has been set up, so that the reviewer or reviewed website's admin's username will be colored according to his/her group, and become a link towards his/her profile. On the battles results side, the structure has been modified and an upload system has been set up as well for winners' pics, in order to prevent broken links.
These are the main new features that have been brought to the website. Take note that for the reason that I had to reinstall Ubuntu recently after a system crash, I didn't have time yet to install IE6 through PlayOnLinux, so as a result, the pages have been tested only under Firefox and IE7 and so, IE6 users might have rendering issues (but anyway, I encourage any IE6 user to upgrade their browser or to choose Firefox or Opera as much as possible).
For now
By the fact that I couldn't finish some details that remains, but weren't annoying, I plan to first concentrate on these details to correct :
- [*] Design testing under IE6
- [*] Working on the website blocs which aren't compatible with URL Rewriting yet
- [*] Filling up the GIMP tutorials and forum styles pages, and transferring review results data to the new table that was created for the new version.
And in the future
For the 5.1 version that might come at the end of the year, I want to bring new modifications, in order to improve the management even more :
- [*]Making the styles archives uploadable by form, so this will allow the GFX team and moderators team who don't have FTP access to send their styles.
- [*]Making a page numbering system for tutorials and styles, in order to avoid having 3 km long pages as I add new entries.
- [*]Making a "Connectix Boards MODs" page on the French side of the website, in order to make the MODs more visible.
- [*]And following the release date of the Connectix Boards 1.0 beta, and the bug corrections, there are possibilities that I upgrade the forum to this new version, if the version gets stable enough to be used in a production environment.
Now, here's what ends this endless news that I just wrote.
Have a nice navigation !
Ishimaru |
