The Snarkpit Relaunch

On the left is IE, on the right FF3. I would suggest your image scaling issues are a result of the browser you are using. If this is the case then I would suggest you use a better browser such as Safari, Opera, Firefox, Camino, Konquerer or anything else that isn't IE to resolve the issue. Beta maps would appear to be displaying for me. Is anyone else having this issue? I'm not sure how it could occur and cannot replicate the issue so if a problem exists some additional information would be welcome in resolving the problem.

As for missing features, as stated above I am really bound by what was asked for by members over 10months in the "relaunch" thread and 3 months of the beta site which I created for exactly such reasons.If you had such issues then it is unfortunate that you did not voice them within the past three months so that I could have acted on them while the site was being developed.

I am new to this community and do not know all the features that ppl use/wanted discarded from the older site. I stated this and asked many times for member's input for this reason. For example I did not know 'pits' even existed until Fishy (I think) requested them on the beta site, after which I wrote a file manager+all the admin stuff to enable them. I am therefore confused that you state they are no longer present. Perhaps you could clarify this for me and explain exactly what is missing and I shall try to fix it.

If other things are missing/different then it is because that is what has been asked for by members. However I am already looking at the profiles section and asked a few days ago here for any feedback people might have regarding how we could improve things:

larchy said:
I was thinking of maybe developing user profiles a bit since, as you say, some ppl like to use them as their mapping portfolios.

Something along the lines of adding tabs to the profile page that would show a gallery of a user's maps/downloads etc, sprucing up the current profile page design and maybe adding something like a "featured items" section that a user could choose to display.

A 'favourites' list might be good as well, a system so user's could add a map/article etc as a 'fav' and the resulting list could be added to the profiles. Would also give people another way of sorting through the site content in addition to the current rating system.

I wouldn't want anyone to feel disappointed with the revamp, so while I probably won't have as much time to devote to things as I did when I was still producing the new site a few months back, if I can improve things then I will try to find the time to do it, contingent upon actually getting feedback & ideas for where we can take things.

thanks

Just to further explore the image quality issue:

Old thumb: Old Full: New thumb: New full: The changes are:
New images are bigger
New images are processed using a GD quality setting of 80 rather than the old value of 60 (IIRC)

So I think any pixellation is going to be down to a browser with an old/poor rendering engine which doesn't handle the scaling very well as all the old mishmash of differently sized images from the old site are shoehorned into the new one.

I don't think the issue is all that bad though.

YAY! Nice work!

One of the main thrusts behind getting the site overhauled was to eliminate the problems faced in administration and removing redundant content, and also circumventing PHP errors which were becoming ever more frequent - and impossible to solve. A lot of the things that have been trimmed or recategorised are much better off as there isn't errors with the code, and it's reduced the load on the database.

Just to point out larchy our coder has done a complete rework from scratch for an excellent deal and added hours of his own time for free to address concerns or queries which have arisen.

I do support a change to the profile page, admittedly my input has been minimal to larchy as i'm often caught up with my own business to attend to so haven't pointed the way as much as I could. If we reinstate a profile with a map listing underneath the jabber at the top, that would be useful.

larchy - image resizing, Jinx is correct. If you look though, new maps from Sim and Muhnay are fine. It looks to me like your resample is resampling the already resampled images from the old site, thus the deterioration appears. So there isn't anything wrong with the script or the browser, it's just a consequence of using the old content with the new site.

If there is a sort of consensus as to what the profile page needs & how to organise it then that'd be cool.

I'm not sure about the images tbh. There isn't actually any resampling being done on any old images.

The old thumbnails/images get stretched to fit into the larger spaces on the new layout, but the images themselves don't get modified.

Its not ideal as it relies on the images being resized by the browser, which is why I thought the problem was that.

New images are fine because they are resized tot he correct dimensions when you upload them, but above Jinx said the new images were worse than the new ones. This is what I don't understand

But all the maps added since we launched the new site are fine. Look at Muhnays work, or Sims. They look perfect. Everything else has gone a little 16 bit on us.

Yeah because the thumbnails are being stretched from the old size of 120x90 to 240xwhatever, fullsize 800x600 (usually) to 946xwhatever

But that gets taken care of by the browser. The alternative is maybe to stop forcing the sizes, which might make the layout go a bit odd for the older content... but could try it and see.

I wanted to up the size & quality of everything which is why the new images are much bigger, but it does have the downsize of fitting in the older content unfortunately.

Hmmmmm

If I stop forcing the dimensions the old thumbnails revert to their original dimensions thus: Um, yus.

(Just to clarify, it would otherwise look like this: ...which is like that on FF, more pixelly on IE)

http://www.snarkpit.net/index.php?s=maps&uid=49

My Museum/Art Gallery beta map isn't showing there, although the link on the front page worked... until it was scrolled off by other update news. I can only find it now using the site's global search option:

http://www.snarkpit.net/index.php?s=maps&game=1&mod=4&map=2775

As for browsers, I'm still using Firefox 2. It doesn't scale stuff up as smoothly as FF3 I guess, but using "view image" on the pics I can now see that the scaling is the issue, not the quality of the images. I'll re-upload pics and see how they look.

As for requested features, I was of the impression that making this more of a portfolio site was the main point of the revamp:

Snarkpit Relaunch Thread, page 1, post 1, by Gwil:

This is to replace the Snarkpit Suggestions/Bugs Thread, in light of the proposed changes we will undertake. It seems clear to me now that the site as a reference for tutorials/scripting guides etc is slightly redundant in the face of Wiki style content management and other superior resources. In respect of this, I would prefer to move Snarkpit toward the area in which it really shines, as a portfolio site for all mappers. I hope to conserve the current user stock, although I can't guarantee anything until i've discussed it with coder people.

After that post, why would any of us question that the pits were going anywhere? And I saw that thread as more for requesting new features, not asking that major older features were retained.

I don't see what's wrong still? Pits are still here, if used by only a few people - in the first place there was only a handful of active pits anyway.

Do you mean by Pits, webspace on this site, or do you mean profiles?

Incidentally, Jinx, i've just reenabled webhosting for your account. So you now have a "Pit" - I don't think however, any old stuff will be there. That may have been retained in the oldsite backup folders.

The 'pits' was just left as it was. You might need to re-enable 'pits' on a user's profile for them to be able to use the new file manager, but nothing has otherwise been moved/deleted.

I know the image scaling isn't ideal, but I think its the best compromise in terms of improving the quality of new images and still being able to fit everything into some sort of vaguely coherent/consistent layout. If I could think of a better way then I'd use it... I think it will become less and less of an issue as time goes on and new content gets added though.

The maps not showing is a really odd one tbh - if you sort the selection by updated/date etc then different ones seem to pop up.

Not sure what's up with the sql query and why they're failing to return some results... I shall investigate

Ok the map display should be fixed now, little error in the sort order, sorry!

The stuff in the pits should all still be there. looking via ftp the folder "Jinx" is empty, but if thats the case then it must have been empty before. All the other user folders are ok and have their content still.

Minor site bug

Searching for anything under Forums [posts] sends an error page

I have a tiny request!

Does SnarkPit's BBcode have alignment formatting enabled? For example, normally I would type: ^ And that would align my text on other sites, do we have something similar?

I wanted to do some alignment formatting for the Competition thread, but I managed without it, but thought that it might come in handy for someone else down the road...

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

I'll make a note to add the normal align=left/right/center tags though

Sorry its not all documented (yet!)

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

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Aaron's Stuff

That's in the CSS styling for image links. It would probably be a good idea to get rid of the border for images.

The css isn't really the correct place to control that in this instance.

Larchy can we get a simple color text code thing in the tool bar above? Also can you code the forums to stick code like tags where you hi-lite, And not pop up at the bottom of the page of text? Can that be done?

Also what does [*] do?

Oh it adds points.. cool!

larchy said:
The css isn't really the correct place to control that in this instance.

I just assumed you'd have something like an img.sig class in the style sheets which defined the border size.

Ever since the release of the new Snarkpit, I've noticed that I have become far less interested in new maps. I think this is because its a bit difficult for me to tell when a new map is released.

That "recent updates" on the front page is too confusing, does it show both new comments on maps and totally new maps, how can I tell the difference?

I was thinking that maybe we could replace the spotlight with "latest maps" and save the recent updates for new map comments and clearly label that fact that its a comment, not a new map. I would be far more tempted to check out maps if I can clearly see what new maps there are and see a sweet thumbnail image of the map :).

Maybe we could also label for articles, whether its a new article, a new comment on an article, or an edit of the article in the "Recent Updates" section?

If we want a map spotlight, I think we should have a "sticky" forum post in the maps section by gwil with a list of maps (hyperlinked) and maybe a thumbnail image next to each map or something and people can agree in that thread what maps that want to see in the spotlight and gwil must than edit the post and add it to the list?

What do you guys think?

Edit: I just made a comment on a map, I think we should make all comments shown by default, instead of having to click a tiny icon which some people will not see to view the comment.

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Aaron's Stuff

Just to ask WHERE THE HELL ARE THE SP MAPS???

No need to shout..

I think it's a small error, they will be under Half-Life but as they don't have their own mod they can't be viewed/sorted. Larchy might be able to enlighten us further.

Just click on the name of the game - there was a small error with the link, but its fixed now (The games do get their own mod entry, but they have to be handled differently when building the list of links and the mod id was failing to be appended to the URL).

So for HalfLife SP maps just click on "Halflife" In the mods list.

larchy, the style sheet change dark/light button doesn't work in Google Chrome! You fail!?!

Um, yes it does :P I'm quite pleased that the entire site would appear to render correctly, although it is built on webkit so shouldn't be too surprising I suppose

hehe :P

I know it's been a while.. 4 years.. heh, but who's counting? :P
but I logged in to say the new site looks great.

Another old member stopping by to say the site looks great. I do miss the look of the old pit though.

Hey old members :wavey:.

Ah, gwil, larchy, how is Google's new browser? Any good?

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Aaron's Stuff

You should try it aaron, it's pretty good. Having said that i'm back on Firefox currently so it hasn't managed to convert me.

Howdy guys! Good to see you back, even if only to say hello and see what's new Hows life treating you both?

Sorry if this has been asked before...

While browsing maps, there used to be a link to each map's forum thread if there was one, now you have to click a bunch of times to get there...is that something that got voted out?

Good point. I don't think it was mentioned, might have just been overlooked as the forums were simplified for the sake of easy maintenance and upgrades.

I leave for a bit and return to see..... this.
Looks like a kids site now. All the hard work that went into making the old site unique is gone.

sighs

I just cannot look anymore.

Later gents. Gimme a yell sometime. My cellphone works, most days. I still have no internet so, until later.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Like a kids site? Because of the white colour scheme or what? If so, change it to black.

#1 The old site was unmanageable - PHP errors, un-editable and slow databasing.
#2 A lot of hard work has gone into developing this - we may have lost a few features but it's a small tradeoff for being able to control our own destiny here.

Seriously, criticism is all fine and accepted gratefully but comments which are just bitchy and resentful can stay where they came from, to be perfectly frank.

Did a thread use to get created automatically in the maps forum when you submitted a map? Or did you just create one if you wanted a bit of discussion and link to it?

What happened if a map got deleted - did the thread go with it? Were they linked in any way beyond the thread just being created with the map? (if thats how it worked?)

You could associate the map with a thread or vice-versa (im not sure exactly how it worked) but it wasn't any kind of automatic process, no.

As requested I've added a list of new forum posts since your last visit.

You can see this list by clicking on the "no new updates/new updates" link at the top of the page after the "welcome <username>" message.

This takes you to the watch list page, where I have added the latest forum posts list at the top of the page.

I wasn't sure where to fit this feature in, so hope it makes sense to have it there. I did not, however, make new forum posts trigger the "new updates" message - that will still only trigger when your watched items are updated. There may therefore be new updated threads even though the message states "no new updates".

I thought this made more sense as the 'new topic updates' list isn't really the same as watched items you might be tracking updates to. I'd like to know what people think about this though - would it make more sense to make the message trigger with new forum posts too? Or does it not really matter? Or would you like a separate message? (plenty of space up there!)

Gwil said:
You could associate the map with a thread or vice-versa (im not sure exactly how it worked) but it wasn't any kind of automatic process, no.

How about if I create a checkbox on the map upload page for "add a forum thread for this map" which would allow you to choose whether you wanted a thread to be created or not, and then add a link somewhere on the map's page to the discussion thread? The thread could have a link to the map at the top.

Would that work?

The thread would get orphaned if the map ever got deleted, and vice versa... ie retaining coherency would maybe be something that needs some thought.

Gwil said:
Seriously, criticism is all fine and accepted gratefully but comments which are just bitchy and resentful can stay where they came from, to be perfectly frank.

All my critisism is meant serious. How it is handled afterward is up to the individual reading it. That is not my problem, for good or ill.
As to hard work, I don't doubt it, but a lot of hard work went into the Edsel too, but no one will argue with the end result. I am not comparing this site to the Edsel, but the premise of "Working hard= Goodness" isn't justifiable reason enough to tell me to shove my advice into a dark hole.

Now that we have bitch slapped each other can we discuss things seriously?

Just how would you think that I would take things? I,who put so much into the "Looks, feel and atmosphere" of the other site? A site that had 90% of my ideas and/or ideas that I liked incorperated into it? You truly didn't expect me to jump up and down and yell that this is how I envisioned a website to look?

Seriously though, if the site fills your needs then of course I support you AND if not grugingly the sites looks/feel.

Simply put, last night was my first experience with this newness and quite frankly it caught me off guard. I knew that something would change, AND needed to be so because of the defects that had continually arisen with the old code, BUT I fully expected the visuals to remain EXACTLY the same... After all, even my basic, VERY BASIC skills could have made a site that looked the same as the old site. Admittedly I could not have fixed the bugs, AND I assume that the bugs were the result of the layout/looks of the old site.

As for it looking like a kids site, I still believe it does. I seems a clone of any other gaming site. If that bothers you, so be it. Any negativity can stay where it came from. ;p

If however it bothers you in any positive way, I venture making it more unique and original will satisfy you.

I am on the road at a truckstop and truly have no time to get used to the site now so my callouses will just have to wait till another day to form on my eyes.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

sighs
I updated my profile and the codes borked out. I truly do not have time to fix this so I appologise for the ugliness of it.

Perhaps someone could lok into how and/or why this happened?

Take care.
XXXOOOXXX

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The best things in life, aren't things.

I would like to know hwo is on line,the Skype of the members and I would like to see the faces of the members.
P.S.Most I want to know hwo is on line.

At the bottom of the Forum index page here, you will see a list in orange of any logged-in people browsing the forums and number of guests. Then when you visit each forum, at the bottom you will see a similar lists that shows who is viewing threads in that forum.

-Still not as elaborate as the old site's way of doing it, and not as detailed, but it's there.

-FYI larchy, The old site had a link on the main nav bar (I don't remember what it said, something like: '# users currently browsing') to a javascript window that listed any signed members and the title of the current page they were viewing whether it was a thread, a map's profile, an article, or just the front page. And the title of the page they were viewing was also a direct link to that page and anchor to the last post in the thread (if it was a thread).

-As for the member's pictures, I don't think that got crossed over.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Sorry, double post, but I've found a few more errors.

-When going to edit a map, it's description gets outfitted with HTML even though it wasn't showing before. So you have to fix it before submitting, otherwise it will keep the HTML tags in the description after updating.

-Right now, it is required that you must have a download link or mirror for your map profile. Is it possible to leave it blank if people set their map to 'beta'? -And only show the error: 'Map must be in Beta to not require a mirror or download link' if they try to post or update their map when set to 'not beta'?

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

looking fresh guys, gg

RIVEN:At the bottom of the Forum index page here, you will see a list in orange of any logged-in people browsing the forums and number of guests. Then when you visit each forum, at the bottom you will see a similar lists that shows who is viewing threads in that forum.

Didn't noticed that.

Riven said:
-When going to edit a map, it's description gets outfitted with HTML even though it wasn't showing before. So you have to fix it before submitting, otherwise it will keep the HTML tags in the description after updating.

-Right now, it is required that you must have a download link or mirror for your map profile. Is it possible to leave it blank if people set their map to 'beta'? -And only show the error: 'Map must be in Beta to not require a mirror or download link' if they try to post or update their map when set to 'not beta'?

What you're seeing with html appearing in older maps is an issue with the old site placing raw html into the database. This is a fundamental security issue and such code will get filtered if you try to modify the entries now, which is why the characters start showing up. You have to remove them and replace any links etc with bbcode. Sorry, not really any quick fix for that.

Yeah, sure, nps with the no download thing... will work on it.

[Edit: ok changes made. You can now upload maps without a file or mirror provided you have selected the "beta" tag]