Charas 3.0 Dev Journal

[Osmose]

I've been swamped by work... again. But finally got some time to work on the site tonight. So far groups can be created and must be approved by an admin (Although I have yet to create the part where the admin approves it ). Groups can be viewed and show a list of members with useful links to stuff like profiles, PM, and email.

I've been wondering something: Should I drop things that are nifty but not integral (Like Awards but that's already finished, at least mostly finished) in favor of moving to the new server earlier, or should I take my time and make sure things are working and there's a lot of new stuff for the move?

The thing is, as cool as it is, there's always the chance Awards will just become a gimmick and not spark a surge in contests for awards like we hope it will. I can accept that, but it's a matter of if we should drop stuff like that and save it for later after we have all the highly useful stuff, like security fixes, quick reply, the games section, etc. etc.

I'm planning on leaving a few things for after anyway, mainly the Complete Resources revamp and the new site designs, as they are huge things that will take awhile to do, and aren't at the top of the list of stuff to get done (Only reason awards was even done first was because it seemed to be the most simple of the larger goals and I needed to get familiar with the site first). But how do you guys feel?

[Razor]

Personally, I'd like to see the new server come after everything is ready, but that's just me.
It'd be like opening a giant present.

[A Forgotten Legend]

A very large (charas-filled with goodies) present.

[WarxePB]

Suggestion! Add a code thing to format text into RPGMaker code.

[Osmose]

Originally posted by Warxe_PhoenixBlade
Suggestion! Add a code thing to format text into RPGMaker code.

Perhaps. After the initial release. Most of the big stuff should be done for 3.0, but a lot of other stuff that I will take my time on (And take more time since I'll be working out the kinks in 3.0 anyway since even a beta won't find every bug) will be for what is unofficially referred to as Charas 3.1. I should give amusing release names for these things like Charas 3.0 Revolution and Charas 3.1 Ascent or something.

Anywho, most of the work the last couple of days has been not in creating new stuff, but improving. Mainly changing some classes so that, instead of searching the database every time it wanted a piece of info, it only searches it once and saves all the info for reference later. And that was only one some stuff I made, I'll eventually have to do that for the already-existing classes, meaning more fun running through the entire site changing stuff to work with the new change.

I am, however, almost done with group and group member management, and will possibly get started on the approval process for groups so they can, y'know, exist.

[Osmose]

All initial group management tools are done. You can create a group, edit the settings, approve or deny applicants (Or allow anyone to join, or deny anyone membership), set various member ranks, appoint admins to help manage the group, etc.

Too bad groups don't actually do anything right now. I'll be changing that soon enough, as my next goal is to allow entire groups to be set as moderators or have some forums only viewable to certain groups. While I'm at it I'll probably fix stuff like Unmod, and make it add to Forum posts (Which will be renamed, like Forum Gaming/Unmod posts or something) and be viewable by every member without showing up on the front page.

After that, I'll go back to groups themselves and add in preferences and other related changes, like allowing group admins to send PMs or emails to every member at once.

Also, yesterday was my last day at work! At least until next summer. I leave for college in the middle of August, but I have a lot more free time now that can go towards working on 3.0 (Because heaven forbid I enjoy some free time before I start college, y'know )

At the very least I hope these Dev Journal notes keep you guys confident that I'm plugging away at this.

[Fortet]

Hooray! :D
Now get back to work :O


j/k
Enjoy your time 'til college :)

[A Forgotten Legend]

Not kidding.  Get to work. lol.

Groups sounds neat.  This made me for get about 3.0 ... Hm...

[Osmose]

I took all of Monday and most of Tuesday off to celebrate not having to work anymore (At the golf course). Yesterday I worked on groups, and as a result:

-Forums and Categories can now be set to be "Hidden", where they cannot be seen by anyone except administrators and groups assigned to them. So if Team Storyline (Assuming they are large enough to warrant a group) want a forum where they can discuss ideas for stories to develop or share their projects for input from other members, we can create one for them and set it to hidden so only team members can read it.
-Groups can now be set as moderators of a forum. If Team Storyline needs mod powers over their forum for whatever reason, we can simply set the group as mod and they can mod that one forum without having access to the real staff forum and all associated access.

I'm going to spend today working on a few small things, mainly being able to send group-wide PMs, and fixing it so that if you send a PM to someone with a full PM box it goes to their email instead. And probably the ability to hide your email from the public.

[aboutasoandthis]

This sounds like more work than anything I've ever done in my life... Thank you for taking the time to do this.

[A Forgotten Legend]

Originally posted by Osmose
So if Team Storyline (Assuming they are large enough to warrant a group) want a forum where they can discuss ideas for stories to develop or share their projects for input from other members, we can create one for them and set it to hidden so only team members can read it.
-Groups can now be set as moderators of a forum. If Team Storyline needs mod powers over their forum for whatever reason, we can simply set the group as mod and they can mod that one forum without having access to the real staff forum and all associated access.

Team Storyline feels special.
I take back what I said about:

Not kidding.  Get to work.

[Moosetroop11]

Wow, I almost forgot about 3.0 XD

Good job. Glad to see you still working on it. Sounds fantastic.

[Osmose]

Well yesterday was spent(Read: Wasted) going to the orthodontist, getting a haircut, going shopping, and catching up on the sleep I've been missing, waking up at 7 in the morning after going to bed at 3 in the morning.

Regardless, I did at least get the things done that I said I would do in the above post. I am running out of features for usergroups to implement at the time, so I'm going to work on a few tweaks and then get started on the next big feature, which will be... *checks notes to see what else needs to be done*

-Games Section
-For Hire Option
-Revamped CR (Mainly better categories but I'm sure I could find some more things to do with it, suggestions welcome)
-RMXP Compatible Generators
-Forum Header
-Various Fixes including Forum Posting interface and News System

Razor says the last one, so that's what I'm doing, at least tomorrow (As the aforementioned waking up at 7 thing requires me go to bed a little earlier). Requests on what to do next MAY be considered, depending on my mood.

[Osmose]

Ugh, really bad couple of days, and tomorrow has the potential to be just as bad, but I promise as soon as I can I'll post up a picture of the new posting interface. It's nothing TOO amazing but I think it's a nice change myself. If enough people complain I'll leave the old one, though.

[Osmose]

I'm not even going to try and say that I'm doing as well as I want to, but to appease my own shame, here's what the new post screen will look like.