Friday, 17 December 2010

Best pictures page added.


So the highest voted page took a little longer than expected as I decided to delve into PHP's graphics engine. When you go to pictures/statistics you are greeted with the 3 pictures with the most positive votes. You can see what there karma rating is, and have a nice pie chart that compares the total number of positive votes against the quantity of positive votes that picture has. I really need to implement some code encase the total kama rating falls below zero, which would brake this system in a second (its hard to graphically represent +5 if the overall average is -32). Not really sure what to work on next. Maybe the beat machine. Maybe have a look at some projects on-line.

Tuesday, 14 December 2010

Vote Machine Added!


So I've implemented a fairly simple vote mechanism, you select if you want to upvote or downvote a picture, and then an entry is either added or amended in the MySQL database depending on if it already exists or not. If you vote it upwards, it gains a point, if you vote it downwards, it looses a point. Simple. I've already created a page that displays the top voted pictures. But I'm going to do a bit more work on it. I want to get PHP's GD system to create a simple pie-chart of how much of the vote each picture has gained. I guess I could display each pictures comment next to it as well.

The rickety mish-mash construction of this site is really starting to show through. There is no way to neatly display the vote system on the gallery view, so you have to click through to individual photo pages to vote. Also I'm not sure about this layout any more, it might be worth raising the site and starting again rather than attempting to edit what I've already got.

Sunday, 5 December 2010

Orrery added, PHP cleaned up, IE compatible.

There has been a massive overhall of the site over the last week. The changes might not be that obvious because  have changed on the basic structure of the site. The basic layout of the site is now stored in a php file, so if I want to change the menu's or something, I now just have to change one file and not the 60 or so files that make up the site. 

I've also improved comparability with IE, now everything works with all browsers. Previous problems included the Ajax not being able to send, the drop down menu in the the photo gallery not working, and the page layout being not quite right. These problems have all now been fixed. 

Perhaps the biggest addition to the site is the inclusion of The Orrery. This page shows the planets size and speed to scale. I would have liked to do the distances between the planets accurately mapped as well, but the webpage would have been roughly the 1km long, which isn't very ergonomic. 
      You can highlight the planets to get additional information on them, and at the bottom is a button to slow the inner planets down so you can hover over them as well, they're a bit nippy otherwise. 

The next project will be a bit ajaxy again. I'm going to add a voting system, so that you can vote a page 'up' or 'down' and then have a page for the most popular items. Which will hopefully be pictures. If possible I want to implement this into the galleries. I'm also considering creating an on-line drum machine as a longer term project, but honestly not sure if I can be bothered yet, I'm also considering playing with google maps some more.