SDCFans - The Unofficial Fan Site For Silver Dollar City
Site Stuff => Announcements => Topic started by: shavethewhales on June 30, 2010, 12:19:20 AM
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Well, first off, it looks like I need to apologize again. Another round of "updates" remains half-finished, almost half a year after I began implementing them. The main site continues have tons of issues, and I can hardly keep up with updating it anymore.
Unfortunately my life has been too crazy and full of activity for me to keep up with my non-essential web projects, and it looks like that's not going to change anytime soon. Going forward, we need to do things differently so that the site can stay alive and be respectable enough to represent SDC.
My new plan for the site involves basically turning it into a wiki of SDC/HFEC info. Users will be able to add and edit pretty much any page on the site, contribute news and event info, and once again be able to share photos, reviews, and videos. Moderation and version control will of course be implemented heavily on some content, and some permissions will only be granted based on post count or special allowances.
What do you think, does this sound like a good idea, or should we just cut everything back to the forums?
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I'm sorry you are overwhelmed.
I really think a static home page is great, especially for new visitors. The current one looks fine. I would like to see some history pages though, and maybe certain reliable members could have privileges to edit specific ride profiles, lost concepts, etc. I would hate to let all of that information fade away. News items could simply be relegated to the forums, so you wouldn't need to have links to constantly changing content there.
Obviously, the forum is up and successful, so it's probably more used, but some of us still refer to the main site from time to time.
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I just have one question - we have a wiki in our office but we had to be invited to join so we could access the wiki.
Are they different types of wiki? I am a computer novice in alot of ways.
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Well, this would be more of a custom wiki-like set up, not really like any of the wikipedia-clones you see out there. I'd basically keep the site looking essentially the same, just with options for approved users to edit and submit content. I wouldn't remove the content we have now, but hopefully it would be expanded and improved upon.
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I have been involved with a wiki type site called Wikispaces and you have the ability to add content and create volumes but not sure it would get rid of the static page much.
On the plus side, it would reduce the redundant posts (I've been guilty of this) but on the minus side, If it was more of a static page, it might lose some of the give and take conversation that makes this site very much like the park we all know and love.
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I assume you would keep this forum the same and just add the links to and from the main site which would be the wiki.
And I would definitely contribute more to the wiki than I have to the current main site. It would certainly be an easier format for those of us who don't get too deep into the more technical language of a website, and it would be less demanding on our esteemed host.
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Having just stumbled across this site last weekend, I can say that it looks and works perfectly. I wouldn't change a thing! Great job!
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So I finally have time to start working on the site again, at least for a little while.
I think I might have asked this before, but what are everyone's thoughts on the current design? Does it need any changes? Does it load too slowly?
I've been considering taking this template: http://subdued.net/worn-template/ and modifying it to be centered and use a few SDC-oriented graphics. I feel like right now the site is overly graphic and terribly disorganized in how the graphics are used. Moving to a mute-er theme would make it easier to flip through the site, hold more content more easily, and load quicker.
I've also FINALLY started going through the site's content and fixing it up. I've started with the time line page. Geez, I can't believe how messed up some of it is. It's been ages since I've looked at some of it. :-X
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Nice, I like the parchment look
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Yup, parchment look is fine. Let me know if you want to add any of my Flickr stuff to the "new and improved site," 'cause it's fine with me. Glad to share.
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I'm very happy with the way it looks and have never had issues getting it to load :)
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Making some progress. The new features are really going to be fun, you guys are really going to enjoy it and it will bring a whole new experience to the site.
As far as a new design goes, I banged out this over the weekend, kind of following that other template I refrenced. It's not done yet, but I think it looks a lot better and conveys the content a whole lot better than what we have now. http://sdcfans.com/SDCF10/sdcf10_subpage.jpg
This is only a subpage, by the way. The homepage will use the same header, but with the layout from the current edition of the site.
On each subpage there will also be links to edit the page or article being viewed, and a "tree view" of the wiki that you are viewing. The latest forum posts will fill up the box on the right.
There will be two "wiki" sections, one for all things SDC and another spanning HFEC, especially CC and WW. Maybe we can get some DW info going in there too.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the "Photo Galleries" section. I've thought about just making a page on the wiki where everyone links to their Flikr accounts with SDC photos. Uploading to the site might be more trouble than it's worth.
Finally, this edition of the site may include a couple of ads. I'm not going to fill the site up with annoying banners or anything, but I'm thinking a couple of small ads on the subpages under the forum box and one on the home page would help the site pay for itself somewhat. I'm not exactly hurting by keeping the site up at this point, but it is one more expense on my quickly draining pocketbook and this would take away one more problem for me in that area.
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That looks good. I do not know how this new site will be set up but please make sure it will run on an I-Phone..
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Just noticed that the front page has been updated with the new "autumn" picture! I have been waiting all year long for this season. I can’t wait! ;D
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Yup, I finally got around to updating it. I completely missed the Gospel festival because I was so busy.
I haven't done much on the new version of the site yet either. After going through all the work of setting up the new template, I ended up deciding that I didn't like it and want to keep the current look of the site with a few changes.
Hopefully I'll be back to work on the site by the end of this week and can knock some of it out.
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Just a head's up, I'm working on the site again and will have some updates implemented by next week.
I should have posted back in September that I was once again having to put off work on the site because work/college was getting too hectic. I had a pretty wild semester and I got a bit overwhelmed at some points, so for a long while I kind of just forgot about the site and some of the things I was going to do got lost in the shuffle. It seems like this site is cursed in that any time I start working on it life starts pulling me elsewhere.
However, it's a new year, I'm not working currently and I'll need something else to do besides schoolwork, so hopefully you can look forward to a much improved SDCFans experience this year.
I'm currently doing a kind of soft re-write of the site's code so that everything is easier to maintain and update. Plus, I'm finally implementing a better URL system so that links will be formatted such as www.sdcfans.com/news/115
I'll also be implementing that wiki system that I was talking about before. The Celebration City section will be moved into a new HFEC wiki area that will include info on WW, DW, WA and other HFEC properties. The old photo galleries will be moved into the wiki area as well, so that on each ride's wiki page, there's an attached gallery of photos both official and user submitted. The trip reports section (that was never really usable before) will also be updated to allow small galleries to be attached to trip reports as well. Many other changes and upgrades are coming as well, but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew again.
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Feel free to pull anything from my Flickr site you want to. A credit would be nice, though. Good luck with the upgrades.
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Everything sounds great! I know that we all greatly appreciate the hard work that you do.
I completely understand about life having a tendency to get in the way. I just got back from a two month hiatus for similar reasons. I am completely supportive of the changes that you have proposed. We all love pictures, so having a trip review area that makes it easier to post pictures will definitely be a plus. This website is well on its way to being the absolute best unofficial resource for anything Silver Dollar City. :)
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yes keep up the good work. I find it humorous that even though this is the "unofficail" site for SDC fans.. The website is listed on the SDC facebook page as "one" of there contact sites.. Steve has to be proud of that. Thanks Steve for your work and everybody else that helps you maintain,modify this site..
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Still working, albeit much more slowly since I didn't get things more finished before college started again.
I do plan to have things more wrapped up by the end of this week though, for the new wiki at least. The rest of the new features may have to fall in line after that. I might need some help with testing this weekend if anyone wants to help, so be on the lookout for that.
Another thing: I've given some thought to finally caving in and adding a facebook page to compliment the site. Would anyone be interested?
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I say the Facebook needs to be done.
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Yeah, a Facebook page is definitely something that should happen.
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Steve, what ever you decide to do, You know we will appreciate it, and help any way we can.
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The Facebook thing sounds good to me...anything to draw more people to this site!
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I'm finally about ready to push the first part of the new upgrades live. I'll probably end up waiting until tomorrow night though, at this point.
This is going to result in a lot of content being inaccessible for a while as I have to copy everything into a new system. It will also do away with the old review system that was rarely used and apparently broken anyway. I'll try to figure out a new way to implement a personal review system later.
You'll also have to bear with me on some of the formatting. Because of the new way pages are going to be handled, there are a lot more pages with nothing but clunky lists of links that go to sub-pages in that category. I'll have to work on these pages later and add a quick search box so that things are easier to find.
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Feel your pain. I just recently relaunched MiG with a new layout and template design.
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^Looks great!
I've just started pushing a few changes live. As soon as everything gets transferred and error messages stop showing up, you guys will be able to take advantage of the first rendition of our new wiki system. I'd hold off on it for now though, I don't have time to totally debug everything right now, and I want to get some formats established that will make reading our content pages easier and more informative. Plus, there's a bit of a learning curve since the pages use a little HTML, so I'll need to write out some more detailed rules and instructions for editing. Also, the interface is still a bit clunky and is missing a few things.
Right now only the SDC content is live, except for the food section (a lot of the food places I had listed don't even exist anymore). The CC content will be put back up under the new HFEC section, which will also have some content about WW, DW, WA, and the rest of the company.
I'll try to start on the new gallery system as soon as the new content system is running at least somewhat smoothly.
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Today I made some changes to the home page that I think will make things easier to scan. The empty box on the right is supposed to be an ad space, but I'm having trouble with the ad network I signed up for.
I haven't got much done on the wiki side of things yet, but I hope to get the rest of that straightened out tomorrow. Here's an example of a reworked page for Wildfire: http://sdcfans.com/page/16
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I like the new wiki :D
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steve, looks good so far...
Question: on the home page, you have a paragraph about HDH.. then the words (see more). When i clicked on that i come up with a blank page, that has a place to leave comments... No additional info on HDH.
Do I need to change something on my puter, or is that a "glich"?
Dan
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Looking at the Wiki, I notice the Lost Ride Concepts and the Lost Attractions link to each other instead of to themselves.
I tried my hand at adding some things at the bottom of the Lost (Former) Attractions page, but had some trouble with formatting the fonts. The items did not show up on the page, so I'm not sure how it would look. Maybe that's because all the features are not yet working.
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^^Thanks for the catch sanddunerider, that was just from a little remaining glitch in the news system.
^History Buff, all changes to content have to be reviewed before they are actually pushed live on the site. Your changes are now live with a few tweaks by me to help with formatting. I'm still doing a quit a bit of work to make both the wiki system and formatting easier and more streamlined. I'll put up a little tutorial/help section soon that will make everything more clear as well. Thanks for the contributions!
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Nice. Thank you. I was just looking at the wiki and those things came to mind. I figured someone could add to that outline and write something for the WB. I realize I may be a little premature for edits.
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looks good....
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For those still following - this last week has been insane, so I haven't gotten much done in awhile. This weekend I plan to make another push though, hopefully getting the photo galleries fixed up and getting more content re-worked. I don't know if I'll get all the old user features turned back on yet or not, but I'll at least try to get the wiki system working better so we can start adding pages for other HFEC attractions.
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Status Update -
The last few weeks have been crazy again, as usual. I had hoped to get a ton of stuff done on the site this week, but life managed to tear that possibility away. Now I just have tomorrow to cram in anything that I want to get done on the site :P I'm going to post a run down of what I want to accomplish tomorrow so I have a little motivation to actually get some of it done:
I hope to take a flying leap at it and finally finish revamping our photo galleries and photo sharing feature, which is part of the way done already, once this is done I can turn the main site profile section back on as well and you guys will be able to add trip reports and youtube videos to the main site again as well.
The next big thing is to figure out the double log-in issue with the forums.
Finally, if I have any time left, I hope to work on some designs for our new online store.
If I can get that much done, I'll be pretty happy for now. There are several other things I want to do as well, including content revisions, adding a point system for content edits and news submissions so that I can someday potentially award top contributors with things like free t-shirts, and revamping the news submission feature so people feel more free to submit news - even if it's just a link to a story.
Unfortunately, I probably won't have time to do major work on the site until the summer, as my classes are really getting the best of me at this point... but we'll see.
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Thanks for continuing to use the wiki system guys, I've just approved another round of your edits that stacked up over the couple of weeks.
Since the last status update my life has taken a turn for crazy and I feel like I've been running around putting out the fires in my life for the last couple of weeks. As usual, that means I didn't get much of anything done that I wanted to.
Now that things have settled down though, I'm going to start doing something a little different so that we can finally make some headway with this site: I'm going to devote at least 20mins to an hour a day to working on the site over the next few weeks. Whether it's fixing/adding features or just editing content, I'll try to get at least a little something done each day. At this point it's getting a little pathetic ::)
Feel free to keep making edits to the wiki, every bit helps. I'll get the HFEC portion up soon.
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^ Thanks for all your hard work; this website is always the highlight of my day.
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All of the SDC coaster pages have been updated now (http://sdcfans.com/page/11)
Man, that was some pretty sad writing in there - it's been 4 years now since I wrote these pages originally and I was in high school at the time :P It's still not perfect, but much better than before.
I hope to have the main site user-features back online this weekend.
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I had to put on the breaks again for the past few weeks, but I'm now at a point again where I can work on the site everyday.
I'm working as hard as I can to get the old user features back up and running again. The new version of the photo sharing feature is a pretty complex piece of work, but it's going to be really smooth and easy to use when all done. I really want to have at least that done by this weekend, but I know if I set a deadline I'll jinx myself yet again ::)
When those are finally done, I'll go back to sorting out the Wiki pages and getting areas set up for Dollywood, White Water, DSC, WA, etc.
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You are awesome Shave! Thank you for all of your hard work!
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everythings looking good! thanks! :)
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I've spent hours today wrangling with part of the upload script, so I probably won't get that done this weekend, but it will be done soon. Once I can get this part finished, I can move on to a whole lot of other things...
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If anyone wants to help out a bit, I'll probably need some help testing the new version of the galleries feature tomorrow. I finally have everything working now, it just needs a few cosmetic touches and it should be good to go. I just want a few different people to try it out in case there are any bugs that I'm missing or if it needs to be made easier to use in any way.
I'll be posting more information tomorrow evening.
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Bring it!
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Let me know what you want tested.. If i can do it anybody can!!!!!!!! :o :o
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I'd be happy to do it Steve!
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Coaster, sanddunerider, & rube - you should all be able to access the feature now by going to http://sdcfans.com/profile/
Trip reports and videos aren't active yet, just the photo stuff.
If you want to just try adding a gallery or two, try deleting some photos, try deleting entire galleries, etc. that'd be great. Let me know if any bugs pop up or if anything needs to be changed to make it easier.
I will be adding a few notes somewhere on these forms to provide more instruction to the user, but I think it should be somewhat self-explanatory.
You do have to have javascript turned on to use it, and I haven't tried it out in any version of Internet Explorer yet, just Chrome and Firefox.
Thanks
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Alright, so I'm finding that after all that work, the tool that I'm using for file uploads simply doesn't work very well at all in any version of Internet Explorer, and it requires the latest version of flash that many won't have and will be too lazy to download and install. I'm going to have to write a new method for file uploads... :(
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Sometimes you have to take one step back before you can take two steps forward. I know I speak for most when I say we appreciate the hard work you do, and are very excited about the potential this site has. :)
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Ugh, apparently there isn't a good jQuery file uploader any where that will serve our purposes easily. I've spent far too much time trying to get a number of ajax file uploaders to work to no avail. I'm going to have to call it quits for about a week due to other things I have going on, and when I come back I'll probably forget about using ajax and go back to a simpler way that requires individual form submissions. Not as fun, but at this point I'm ready to do anything to get these features working again and move on.
Thanks for all the help and support guys.
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no shave.. the thanks goes to you.
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Sounds like a solid plan for now shave! ;D
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So today I got out one of my older computers, pulled up the site on IE7, and to my surprise it actually worked! I don't know why it works on my computer with IE7 and not on another with IE8, but I expect it has to do with not having the latest version of flash on the latter.
I've actually gone ahead and pushed the features live for the time being. You can try them out here: www.sdcfans.com/profile/ (you have to be logged in first). There are still a number of things to sort out and polish up, but for those of you using Firefox, Chrome or IE7 with the latest version of flash installed, all of the features should be working fine.
I'll be adding a work around for those who don't meet the browser requirements for the photo uploader. I'll also be adding a little tutorial and more instructions on the page itself. Finally, I plan to finally sort out the login issues on the main site so you aren't redirected back to the forums, and I'll put a login box on the home page.
One last thing, the display page for photos has changed as well. We used to have a pop-up gallery that expanded when you clicked on a photo, but I found that to cumbersome because you had to wait until all the photos were loaded for it to work. The new set up doesn't depend on javascript, though I'll be adding some so it will be possible to flip through photos without reloading the entire page: http://sdcfans.com/photos/feat/17/168