I announced just over a month ago that I was planning to overhaul the site. This blog post will detail some of the progress I’ve made on the site overhaul, as well as the rationale behind the planned overhaul.
So far, I’ve only done a bit of the site overhaul. I have a working user account system, including e-mail verification (which I’ve tested using the innocenceseekers.net SMTP server). So far, I have yet to implement password length restrictions, but I plan to restrict passwords to between eight and 72 characters (the rationale of the upper limit being that passwords longer than this are cut off by the default algorithm used by password_hash().
I’ve also worked on the wiki system, which will allow users to create and modify their own pages using BBCode. So far, I’ve only implemented this on the main page, but I plan to extend this to personal user pages (under /users/(id)/pages/), group pages (under /groups/(id)/pages/), and site pages (under /pages/). The site pages will only be able to be modified by an administrator or official creator, and user pages by the owner or a mod/admin. Group pages will have their protection levels set manually by the group administrators.
This is an example screenshot of the edit page interface. I’ve demonstrated the multiple nested spoiler tags in this screenshot.
Right now, I’m working on the private messaging (PM) system. I’ve actually found this to be a lot of work; I have to consider whether messages are drafts, or whether either the sender or recipient (or both) placed the message in the trash, or deleted it entirely. I use separate flags to denote these situations, as well as to denote flagged messages. By nature, PMs will only be viewer by the sender and intended recipient, unless flagged, in which case a mod or admin will be able to view it as well. Like wiki pages and forum posts, PMs use BBCode.
So far, I’ve planned the following “directory” structure for the site (not exhaustive):
- / – The main page.
- /admin/ – Administration pages. Only accessible to administrators.
- /forum/ – The forum.
- /forum/boards/(id) – Pages for individual boards.
- /forum/posts/(id) – Pages for individual posts.
- /forum/threads/(id) – Pages for individual threads.
- /groups/ – The base directory for group-related pages.
- /groups/(id) – The group profile.
- /groups/(id)/pages/ – Group pages.
- /login – Log in here.
- /logout – Log out here.
- /mail/ – The PM interface. This will be an automatic 301 redirect to /mail/inbox.
- /mail/(id) – View individual messages here.
- /mail/drafts – The drafts.
- /mail/inbox – The user inbox.
- /mail/new – Compose new messages here.
- /mail/sent – The messages the user sent.
- /mail/trash – The trash.
- /mod/ – The moderator interface. Only accessible to moderators and admininstrators.
- /pages/ – Site pages.
- /privacy – The site’s privacy policy.
- /register – Register here.
- /terms – The Terms of Service for the site.
- /users/ – The base directory for user-related pages.
- /users/(id) – The user profile.
- /users/(id)/pages/ – User pages.
- /verify_account – Verify your account here.
I’ve embarked on this overhaul because the site lacks a proper landing page or “unique” interface, and the blog and wiki are rather disjointed and do not mesh with each other. The plan is to write a new CMS from scratch in PHP, which will use MariaDB to store data. And with this site overhaul I plan to create a proper forum for the Innocence Seekers project, and potentially recruit creators, developers and artists.
That is all I’ll write for now.
P.S. Happy birthday to Tamaki Honda of Magic of Stella. Oh, and there are a bunch of others who have birthdays on this day as well:
- Kaori Mizuhashi (voice actress, now 43)
- Yūko Gotō (voice actress, now 42)
- Sora Amamiya (voice actress, now 24)
- Nero Yuzurisaki (from Tantei Opera Milky Holmes)
I never knew that the voices of Miyako and Hiro (of Hidamari Sketch) were born exactly a year apart.
P.P.S. Yes, that is a preview of the new Innocence Seekers logo. And no, don’t ask about the Kanamemo theme in my Firefox installation.