Improvements for website?, (no boobies!) Options

[MonkeyFiend]

While the website and anti-hack tools have matured nicely, I was wondering if there are any areas for improvements.

So any things that exist already that need improvement or new things that you think could be added?

(website can be slow sometimes, usually because we are under attack most of the time these days (can't really be sorted without a lot of money)

We have:

Main site, News, Downloads etc.,
Player Database (sneakymonkeys.com/lookup) - recording the cd hashes of all players on the server
Namehack Tool (sneakymonkeys.info) - comparing ingame name against gamespy PID to locate namehackers
Forums - reasonably well developed forum system
Battlerecorder - streaming to sneakymonkeys/demos (for main server) and monkeyfiend.com/demos (for vehicles server)
Stats Site - sneakymonkeys.com/stats *Live updated bf2 stats*
Clan stats - similar to above (click leaderboard links) - allows signature generation
Player locator - locate which servers players with =SM= tags are on
Teamspeak - we have a 40 man teamspeak server. Public but secured against hacks
MP3 player - need some work, but I'm lazy (also some potential copyright vioatlions with proper mp3's)

(and since I view this site in work, nothing involving naked people I'm afraid)

[fido77]

i think we got the best forums i've seen so far. just if the damn mp3 player worked!(don't know if i would use it though, since i got plenty music on my pooter)

[Magik5]

i was going to pm you before i saw this, can we have a videos section?

basically i want to upload my 118mb bf2 vid i have, but youtube wont let me as its over 10mins long.... i was just wondering if you could host it for me

understand if bandwidth is as issue though.

im happy with how the site is, but i just wish more people would come on the forums and post abuse about me or take the piss out of fidos ts fetish or something

[MonkeyFiend]

hmmm, interesting idea. From a technical standpoint making something like youtube isn't difficult, however would probably need different hosting (as most webhosts forbid the use of video sharing now(this one too probably)) and also to prevent large videos interfering with the operation of the website.

I'll have a mooch around and see what it would onvolve both from a technical point and from cost perspective.

As for more people I wouldn't mind the size of the clan with 20 people providing those 20 came on the site or participated in some way- although I admit some people tend to contribute a lot without being website fiends (such as dumdum). The only thing I can suggest is to grow the clan to a larger size. Not everyone bums around all day on the website when the should be working

[Magik5]

id be happy to contribute towards hosting...

as for bumming around, my day generally goes: programming, be a bum, programming, be a bum, lunch, programming, be a bum home time

[MonkeyFiend]

I think you've mixed up 'being a bum' with 'getting bummed' or is that more of a hobby

[Magik5]

only when your standing behind me

[MonkeyFiend]

1. I'm not gay
2. if I was, I'd still have standards

[Magik5]

you cant hide from the truth

[=R6= Warduk]

yes you can, its called a closet

[PhantomSpirit]

yes you can, its called a closet

haha touche

best come back iv ever heard. speaking of comming on backs... magic, where are you?

[MonkeyFiend]

speaking of comebacks... resurrecting a thread from over a year ago :s

ahhh actually it's probably taken this long for that 'computer' of yours to open up this webpage

[Magik5]

still think you should change the forum header image

[Snape's On A...]

I think we could have our own radio station with songs on so when we hear cobolt singing the chances are that its to one of those songs.
And the first song should be Always look on the bright side of life
http://radio.setnine.com/

This way we can spend even less time concentrating on playing L4D

[Lawpf2001]

I think we could have our own radio station with songs on so when we hear cobolt singing the chances are that its to one of those songs.
And the first song should be Always look on the bright side of life
http://radio.setnine.com/

This way we can spend even less time concentrating on playing L4D

hmmm really..... bit pointless imo

[K.]

monkey any chance of a rss button (like the one we already have) but it feeds the stuff in the members section too?

i dunno if its even possible or would compromise security :/ that's your forté not mine

TIA either way lol

[K.]

we seem to have a few members across the world now

fido,gummy,quanta

how about some sort of world time clocks image to give us a idea of what time our members are in

maybey 1 clock for uk, another for mid usa time and finally another for europe

[MonkeyFiend]

forgot about this topic.. the RSS button dumps out RSS without any form of login, so it either it retrieves public topics or allows the public too see members sections.. not sure if there's a way around this, such as putting the RSS links in a password protected area or something.

As for world clocks, am sure I can sort this out.. although the forms allow local time for each user anyway e.g. someone in USA can set their forum clocks back 6 hours etc., Will look into clock for US/Europe then

[K.]

maybe think about getting rid of the public servers banners on the main page

seems they are pointing to servers run by other clans

[MonkeyFiend]

yarbuggery, will do that when am next in work

[Magik5]

could c0d0rz the clock idea in flash if you wanted...

[MonkeyFiend]

go 'ead then

[Magik5]

http://www.dancotton.co.uk/timezones/

source, including flash develop project files: http://www.dancotton.co.uk/timezones/Timezones.zip

only need swf and xml folder

[K.]

wow those are awesome!

can they be done without the seconds hands?

[Magik5]

yeh can take them out

vector graphics and what not so can be sized to any resolution without looking shiz - i dont know where these are going to live etc so i just made the size up for now

[Magik6]

AM/PM indicator would be handy

[K.]

is it just me or does the hour hand not moving round the clock as the minutes tick by?

when it appears to say 5:45 its actually 6:45

[K.]

jeez ano double post

[Magik5]

fixed (i think )

may need to clear cache

like said before dont know about styling or where its going to live so will leave as is for now

[fido77]

the clock for texas is off by an hour. but thats ok since some piece of shit decided we should change our time twice a year like a bunch of fucking retards

[Magik5]

hmm i went by wikipedia's UTC timezones

loads the timezones in from an xml file anyway so can easily change/edit add new ones as and when

[MonkeyFiend]

ok, where do people want this clock methingy to go? as in what pages?

[Magik6]

Appendices

[Magik5]

err i guess front page, vertical under say the music section or the shop sections...

[MonkeyFiend]

vertical you say? isn't that one fat horizontal flash object?

[Magik5]

it can be made however you want, i meant id recompile it so the clocks are tiled vertically, but i forgot to mention that

[K.]

hmm could we change the "view recent posts tab" on the forum page to display the last 3-5 threads regardless of age or at least until say a week has passed

i made a post about the l4d1 server late last night and it dissapears from it this morning so unless monkey trawls through the thread again he'll prob not see it >.<

i know it shows up on the mainpage but if everyone else is like me then you prob either go straight to the forum and the spamb....shoutbox or have the forum as your bookmark ^^

another solution would be to have the shoutbox on the mainpage or maybe someone has a better idea?

[Magik5]

If you look at the bottom of the forums there is as a link called "todays active topics" - it displays the threads active in believe or not, the last day your post is in there

[Magik6]

Yeah that's how I find all the active topics

[MonkeyFiend]

i usually keep al the topics marked as read meaning if someone posts something new it highlights it, I get to read anything posted that I haven't already clicked on and read, I don't use the recent topics thing on the front page (that was requested by someone)

[K.]

If you look at the bottom of the forums there is as a link called "todays active topics" - it displays the threads active in believe or not, the last day your post is in there

omg ^^ lolz i've never scolled down that far before

ah anyway can this command be put at the top of the forum next to control panel etc?? so it's a bit more accessible. (my scroll wheel plays havok with my rsi)

oh yeah on another completely unrelated sidenote/issue

i'm finding it very hard to reply to/create new posts, the white text input box is unselectable in firefox 3.6, but works fine in the generic M$ IE, could there be a option i'm missing in my FF settings that is stopping me from using it?

[MonkeyFiend]

hmmm... I wonder if this was the same issue lawpf was having. That being said I'm using 3.6 as I type this

Will start looking at the browser specific code on the website.

[Magik5]

think ill hold on my ff update until this has been confirmed fixed

[MonkeyFiend]

Co-incidentally:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.ph...8&t=1722835

Seems to be a common problem introduced by Firefox 3.6, rather than any of my jiggery-pokery on this board.

A workaround for the moment (apart from using IE, is to go to your forum control panel and set the text editor from "rich text editing" to "basic" or soemthing along those lines.

Meanwhile I'll be dissembling apart the text_editor_func file to see if I can update it. The patch suggested by invision (2.3.6) doesn't work and they're suggestion on upgrading to v3 sent me into a mini tirade

Since I'll update this in the fly, you might see some funny goings on with the replies button today as I'm modifying things

[Magik6]

I'm running 3.6 too and find sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

[MonkeyFiend]

Looks like fast reply or anything using fast reply works whereas new topics and normal replies shouldn't

Either way, I've chucked together a temporary workaround so you shouldn't have problems replying/making posts... will need to properly look into the code when I get a chance.

And a big fuck you to IPB for suppliying a .js file with no formatting (big block of text). Fuckers.

[Magik5]

lol at the js file, i sometimes see these and cry

[MonkeyFiend]

Well if anyone now has any issues posting replies etc., let me know.

Regarding this Forum Version

IPB version 2 (this site) goes out of support in July 2010. The version 3 is more expensive, complex and frankly shit compared to this one in pretty much every way, In v3, none of the old skins or mods e.g. the shoutbox work without heavy recoding and frankly most of the custom skins i've seen are just css colour changey ones. Already seen quite a few flaws in the security (mostly code injections) so can't think of a good reason to update for security concerns.

The site has been tweaked so much over previous years that half their current updates and patches don't work here anyway (such as their patch for the rich text editing above) where the js had already been sanitised to remove some potentially bad html being chucked out (and I note their patches js released recently didn't even address this)

The usual forums alternatives apply: phpbb and vbulletin. At the moment I can't see any reason to change forum when IPB reaches end of life

[Magik5]

me neither - ive always thought they do the same thing anyway but most sites insist on using horribly digusting colour combinations which just looks ghey. This site's forum tends to be the more visually appealing ive seen in a minimalistic kind of way - only thing that should change imo is that forum header image

<insert giant dig at r6's shitty shoutbox here>

[K.]

i also think the forum header needs a refresh, but i do like the groovy monkey so i don't wanna lose that

maybe one of our more artistic members can photoshop up something or if there are a few members maybe a compo??

winner gets to have their banner displayed and gets a special "mute cobolt" button to be used as and when for a month ^^

[Magik6]

Hows that?

[K.]

fail!!! :<

no reference to SM in it

[Magik5]

rofl

[MonkeyFiend]

I like it.. it set's expectations on what this clan's like

[Magik5]

[MonkeyFiend]

ahh go on then... although I should just make a point that the rather BC2 themed logo does not imply any change of direction to BC2 as a main game

like it in general.. apart from the font.... may as well of just used comic sans grumble grumble...

[Magik5]

font me up and ill change it, or you can have the psd

[MonkeyFiend]

I approve of future_rot... good old L4D font for the win

[Magik5]

updated here:



and with an orangey glow on the main text, cant decide between the 2, but im leaning towards the orange:



rounded the edges a little as well so it sits nicer

[K.]

omg dan you absolute faker!!!!!!!

i c what you have done! ):

he's only gone and used the bit he cut off the bottom of his own sig !!!!!!!

so what are we, people who gets dan's cast-offs

[MonkeyFiend]

@K: but dans sig is in turn ripped off the offical BC2 artwork

added the updated one to the site

Now the real question.... given all the potential parts of that soldiers body dan could zoom in on, he pick the groin. Freudian slip perchance??

[Magik5]

more fool you for actually adding it to the site

crotchal close ups FTW

[K.]

i like how on the mainpage clicking peoples mugshots send you to their bf2 stats page

do you think there will be support for BC2 as well?

[K.]

er why are the l4d and bf2/bc2 subsections in different forum catagories?? surely they should both be in one or the other........or am i missing something

[MonkeyFiend]

There was some point to it a long time ago, but the forum since changed use, I'll reshuffle them around in a moment

The Sats system that we have relies on a thing called JSON providing the stats directly from EA's master servers (they allow an update every 2 hours). BC2 doesn't provide any external source for the data yet, but the talk on the streets is its pretty much identical to the BF2 stats system.

Meaning once they provide external data we should be able to set up a full stats website with progress/requirements etc., (although due to the chuffing large number of medal/pings/badges this may take a while to make)

BTW this also happened with BF2 - for those of you that remember the beta and opening few months of that game, there was also no external stats site support

[K.]

ok here's a idea

how about a extra field in everyones profile page that can be filled with a clan tag
the field would only need to be about 8 chars max, i suppose and it would display in front of your name in the shoutbox, forum threads etc

This way viewers of the forum can see who are posting stuff and if they are from other clans etc?

[MonkeyFiend]

ok here's a idea

how about a extra field in everyones profile page that can be filled with a clan tag
the field would only need to be about 8 chars max, i suppose and it would display in front of your name in the shoutbox, forum threads etc

This way viewers of the forum can see who are posting stuff and if they are from other clans etc?

Done, the new clan field is voluntary, is on new registrations and existing members can add it by going into your forum control panels and editing "profile infomation".

Additional to the shoutbox will probably need new db tables/queries, so will do this at a time when I wont throw up mid coding

[K.]

retro games plz

+ scoreboards oh yh, and no ninja editing the scoreboards with unrealistic monkey scores

[MonkeyFiend]

retro games plz

+ scoreboards oh yh, and no ninja editing the scoreboards with unrealistic monkey scores

Done

(see Arcade link in the menu bar at the top right)

[K.]

mainpage needs the now defunct rush server banner removed

and also i suppose the servers button will maybe need a update as i think it has a banner in there too.

gr8 work monkey on updating the mainpage with added content

spesh' love the early morning photo of foxx with incredibly funny bedhead ^^