Web Development Project List

[Anubis]

So, I've been doing some really interesting stuff at work over the last few months which has got me inspired to work on some web projects again. I've picked up a hibernating project from last year to build my own blog, but am also thinking of doing some more work around here. I know I inherited Tbird's old role of Lazy Admin so figured I'd best map out everything I have planned long term whilst it's on my mind!

No promises for timescales for any of this (some of it is very long term thinking, and I'll just be working on it as I feel inspired, since none of it is urgent). If anyone has ideas or suggestions (or feedback) for other things they'd like to see too, let me know and I'll add it to the list if I can This isn't prioritised, so urgent stuff can always come in and bump things!

• Rebuild web server
  Move us to a more up to date kernel to allow for easier implementation of some of the items below

• Update phpBB
  Possibly replatform the skin while I'm at it to make this easier?

• Multi-domain handling
  Our means of handling multi-domains is incorrect per best practices. All other domains should be 301 redirected to .com, making that a primary domain to reduce ranking penalties and resolve issues with phpBB

• SSL support
  Investigate and implement if possible

• Investigate Adding Emoji Support to Forums and News
  This should be done as part of the phpBB update and admin replatform respectively. There should hopefully be third party plugins which can handle this

• Replatform main site
  Retain current design (but maybe rebuild from scratch to apply latest standards), but replace psuedo-MVC solution with true MVC

• Replatform group websites
  Make them mobile friendly (rebuild layouts with mobile support), create unified MVC platform to host them

• Update Twitter integration
  Current implementation truncates Tweets and does not handle media or hastags well. New integration should solve for this

• Fix Latent Errors
  Parse our error logs and automated markup validation and resolve obvious recurring issues after new codebase has bedded in a little

• Replatform admin area
  Code is very old and less than useful. Total replatform, also look to implement rich text support for news etc and backdate

• Friendly error page
  For 404s

• Port Image Library to WebP
  WebP format is more modern and efficient, we should look to use this wherever possible.

• Investigate Discord integration
  It would be nice to find a way to get some of our discussions from Discord integrated into the website (as read only). Investigate whether this is possible via the API

• Add Twitter/Steam/Etc Embed Support to the Forums
  Long requested, though dependent on the phpBB update first

• Integrate Forum Into Discord Webhook
  This must be done after the phpBB update, due to the need for a specific addon installing which is not compatible with our version

• Through The Ages Feature
  Need to replatform everything first so that we have a clean system to reskin.

• Restore SSC templates and content
  Pull what content we can (blogs etc) from the Internet Archive and restore these as best as possible as part of History section.

• STR Timeline
  If we can gather the data?

• Reskin forum
  The current skin was quickly patched together when the server had to be upgraded, and has issues as a result. Once the rest of the site is fully replatformed, this should be rewritten to bring it in line.

[M.Steiner]

Looks like a good list! (the bits I understand haha)

Do have two suggestions for the forums;

• 1# - As an extension of making some of our pages more mobile friendly would it be possible to enable emoji support on the forums? (main site news too perhaps?) Giving access to the same set of emoji characters that everyone is familiar with using with iMessage/SMS on our phones and across Discord, Twitter etc? If you try to post with one atm (even though you can see them on the preview screen) you're greeted with a "Your message contains the following unsupported characters:" message and it won't allow you to submit the post until you remove it. Be nice to be able to use them

• #2 - Further embed support for the forums. I've suggested Twitter before but it might be a good idea to add a few more to the list to bring us up to date a bit. Using the ResetEra board as an example - with the new forum update they rolled out this week they now support embeds for Bandcamp, Dailymotion, GfyCat, Giphy, Imgur, Instagram, Indiegogo, Kickstarter, Libsyn, Mixcloud, Podbean, Scribd, Soundcloud, Spotify, Steam Store, Stitcher, Strawpoll, Streamable, Twitch, Twitter, Vimeo, XboxClips, Xbox DVR & YouTube.
  
  Not suggesting we add all of those (bit overkill for here lol) & they use Xenforo 2.0 rather than phpBB so it may work differently (or not even be possible for some of them I guess?) but Twitter, Steam & Twitch might be a good start for us if possible and be the most beneficial?
  
  Twitter embed:

  

  Twitter.jpg (520.38 KiB) Viewed 33668 times

  So the top tweet is https://twitter.com/A_i/status/1071189652680269824 and you'd embed it with

  Code: Select all

  [MEDIA=twitter]1071189652680269824[/MEDIA]

  Steam embed (It's just the bottom bit to be clear, the game description & feature list is in a quote box):

  

  Steam.jpg (762.06 KiB) Viewed 33668 times

  Steam page is https://store.steampowered.com/app/5786 ... er_Worlds/ and you'd embed it with

  Code: Select all

  [MEDIA=steamstore]578650[/MEDIA][/QUOTE]

Just some ideas!
Let me know if there is any PS stuff you need doing mate

[Anubis]

Interesting requests there!

I know you've requested Twitter integration on the forums before, but the reason I haven't done that yet is because it's reliant on a phpBB update first - which I keep putting off as it's a headache. I'll add that (and Steam etc integration) onto the list, but I won't be able to move on it soon as such - it'll need to be after I find time for the upgrade.

To be honest, I've been pondering for a while whether or not we should look to replace phpBB with a more modern forum solution - Xenforo is one of the options there. I believe upgrading would be easier with some other solutions, but I've yet to find one that has totally convinced me it's the right option. So for now, I'll look at that once the upgrade gets done.

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As for emoji support, that's actually a really interesting idea I hadn't considered. There probably is a way to do that, though I'd have to research it, and I'd definitely like to do it. However, it's again dependent on other items:

1) For the forums, it'd likely again need the phpBB upgrade to be done first. I'll explore though to confirm.

2) For the main site, our administration implementation is so poor that it's pretty much impossible to do anything nice with it as it stands. However, as part of the proposed replatform of the admin area I'm planning to integrate Parsedown, which is basically a more powerful Rich Text Editor than we use on the forums there. Should make life a LOT easier, and I'll try to take emoji support into account as I integrate that

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So I'll add both of those items to the list, just keep in mind the above

[M.Steiner]

Sounds good!

As for potentially replacing phpBB, I think you'd probably know best with that one as for what all the available options are but XenForo 2.0 on ResetEra seems extremely robust, customizable & modern. I haven't really lurked on there since the move to Era but I believe GAF moved from vBulletin to XenForo this year as well.

Incidentally, I don't know about phpBB but emojis's are definitely possible with XF as you can use them on Era now (their update last week included full Unicode support)

[Anubis]

Having just checked, the reason I ruled out Xenforo when pondering was because it requires a license, and there is no free version available

[M.Steiner]

Ah bummer

Is the license for using that a one time fee, mate? Or a subscription type thing you have to keep up with? If we're not talking silly money for the former (and it was decided that we did want to replace phpBB), we could maybe have a whip round to cover it if possible? I'm not made of money but I'd be happy to chip in what I can when the time comes if we decided to go down that route

[Anubis]

It's a $140 one time fee, but also $40 a year to have access to support and updates (which we would want), so not at all cheap.

I don't think it'd be worth it given the money we'd be talking

[M.Steiner]

Damn, that is a shame :/

[Anubis]

I have now applied some prioritisation to the top part of this list.

Expect further announcements pertaining to the first three items in the near future.

[M.Steiner]

Discord Webhook which will tie in to the forum & pull new post/thread info which will then be automatically fed into a new STR Forum Discord channel we'll set up just for that purpose

[Anubis]

Discord Webhook which will tie in to the forum & pull new post/thread info which will then be automatically fed into a new STR Forum Discord channel we'll set up just for that purpose

Added into the list, thanks bud

I'll do some further prioritisation once the items I have planned for this weekend are complete.

[Anubis]

List updated (3 items completed) following anniversary work release.

I'll re-prioritise and update the list again some time soon. Taking a break for a little while first before I pick up any more projects!

[Anubis]

It's been a long while since I updated this. I had planned to work through more of these last year, but with Covid and everything I didn't have a lot of motivation.

However, got back to it this year and have crossed a few more off as of tonight (thanks to MS for helping me test). We now have:

• Replaced the admin area with a newly built one, which is both significantly better code (and less of a security risk), but also offers a lot of modern quality of life features - the days of needing to learn HTML to write a news post are over
• Fixed a bunch of general background errors that have been plaguing the site for years
• Updated the rest of the website to modernise the way we communicate with our databases, for security reasons
• New rotating carousel images for the homepage, to bring us some new variety

We're getting there - still a bunch to do, but for now progress again!

Just a note to say that if you're a user of the admin area you'll need to have your password reset before you can use it again. Hit me up on Discord and I can do this for you.

And needless to say, if anyone spots any bugs floating around give me a slap and I'll get right on it

[M.Steiner]

Awesome job mate, really!

Always loved our gallery in particular but it was admittedly frustrating at times when having to manually create thumbnails everytime we wanted to add something to it which could be especially off-putting when you were dealing with a batch of them heh. Likewise with news posts, unless you were familiar with HTML you'd either have to consult google or a previous news post if you wanted to do any sort of styling in there & know wtf you were doing lol. They both did their job but they're much more user friendly now & actually a pleasure to use. Thanks for all the work you've done!

[Anubis]

The Eve Killboard has now been taken offline, and replaced with a static version of the content - making sure that all our pilots and their records are fully represented as they were.

Since the corp hasn't been active for several years now, and the (aging) killboard was causing server slowdown issues, I decided to take this step to preserve the content.

Should the corp revive in future, I'll of course look to setup a new killboard to serve it at that time

[Anubis]

As discussed on Discord, due to Twitter's shortsighted introduction of $100 a month fees for access to their API I have now removed our Twitter feed integration from the main site.

Sorry guys

[M.Steiner]

I don't know how this would scale for different resolutions or whether we'd able to customize the colours of it to match the rest of our colour scheme somehow (?), but maybe we could put the Discord widget in its place?