Hello and enchanté! A lot of you know me as ROFISH on the boards. While Reid is in charge of user interfaces, website designs and Photoshop gobbledygook, I’m the technical head of Fangamer. My job is to take Reid’s design and implement it, but I need your help! There’s a lot of small things that must be taken care of. If you’re interesting in coding for us, read after the jump!
It’s hard to explain the technical mess that Starmen.Net is. We have two really, really big problems:
- All HTML code is actually hardcoded on top of PHP code, and a lot of in-between. Multiple times during original development Reid would overwrite critical PHP code with new HTML without realizing.
- FUDForum was excellent way back when we had to choose the fastest forum. Great strides have been made, but a community of our size usually codes their own or mega-hacks vBulletin. I’m choosing the former because if FUDForum taught me anything, we have special needs that normal forums do not provide.
Here’s an example:
<div class=”row”>
<span id=”name”><label>Login:</label></span>
<?php if ($LoggedIn) echo “<a style=\”color: black;\”>” . htmlspecialchars($UserName) . “</a>”; else echo “<input type=\”text\” name=\”login\” />”; ?>
</div>
<div class=”row”>
<?php if ($LoggedIn) echo “<br /><a href=\”http://starmen.net/forum/?t=login&SQ=$tehuser->SQ&logout=1\” />Logout</a>”;
else echo ”
<span id=\”pass\”><label>Pass:</label></span>
<input type=\”password\” name=\”password\” /> <input id=\”button\” type=\”image\” src=\”/include/new/images/universal/header-login-button.png\” onclick=\”document.formname.submit();\” />”; ?>
</div>
It’s like that everywhere. Pure ugly.
Both of these really prevents us from extending Starmen.Net farther than what we can allow. Additionally, we really want to be able to use the Starmen.Net engine for other websites too.
I’ve been looking at development processes, and I love the idea of Ruby on Rails. Everything’s nice and neat without too much clutter. The problem is that Ruby, to me, is like traditional Chinese. Not only is it foreign and weird, it’s inconsistent and doesn’t provide even simple functions like PHP.
We’re going to be using CakePHP as the basis of the new engine. I really love Cake for two reasons: It’s like Ruby on Rails, and it isn’t Ruby. In fact, you can probably call it PHP on Rails. Everything is split into three major pieces: the model, the view, and the controller.
If you are interested in helping me develop Fangamer, send me a PM. The only requirement right now is sufficient knowledge in PHP or similar languages. (C, Java) Knowing ActiveRecord like Ruby on Rails is a plus.
I have the tools to help out but not the expertise. I suppose I could do grunt code work, but it would mostly be, “Type out this, this, and this.” I don’t think I could contribute many ideas or work very independently on code, although I am willing to help out any way I can.
I learned that Ruby on Rails wasn’t for me when I first read that too much enthusiastic tutorial on the O’Reilly site, with the writer simulating a conversation between an employee and his boss. It was along the lines of:
“You see boss, you just have to type 正體字 正体字 异体字 to sort this stuff out”
“Why didn’t I think of it first?! It’s a lot of code, but I understand most of it! Also, you’ve been promoted.”
I’ll check CakePHP and see if I can be of some help.
Perhaps a php-html template engine language like Smarty (http://smarty.php.net/) would be useful? I’m not at all familiar with Ruby, so I don’t know if this helps.
You are looking at a total re-write to get it running in Cake. I’m not saying it wont be better in cake, I’m saying you will be throwing away a lot of already debugged code and will have to re-think how everything works.
Sounds like you need an analyst not a programmer. The programmer will come after when the analyst has done his job.
Cake is a fantastic tool for the right job. Don’t jump into cake until you understand what the problem is you are trying to fix is though.
You can build a working MVC framework in 3 classes in PHP without the (large) learning curve with Cake. Analyse first, before you hire a coder ;-)
Richard: We need a ground-up fresh rewrite anyway. The ‘already debugged code’ is bad. I mean Plan Nine from Outer Space bad. ;)
Yeah, we sorely need a rewrite, especially because the code that we’re going to be writing will need to operate *any* gaming site, not just Starmen.Net. It’s gonna have to be super-flexible; kinda like how Wordpress can run any kind of blog, Fangamer’s code is going to need to be able to run any kind of fan-based gaming site.
None of us had ever even heard of the concept of MVC until probably 2005, and since most of the site’s code is from circa 2003-2004 and was built by a team of about 9 people, it’s sloppier than a KFC bowl. All the corn is in the gravy, and there’s mashed potatoes all over our mysql statements. Terrifying!
Mmmm…. Mashers and MySQL…
I am currently programming in c# just the basics that is. I could help but I would need some code. I would love to though.
ooh, ooh, I’m (almost) the best ever at php+mysql (employment=student web design team)! Pick me! Pick me!
I used to be really good at PHP and HTML (and of course, CSS). It’s been 2 years since I’ve done any major project. I do not have much experience with MySQL though except for PHPMyAdmin based editing. I’m okay with Photoshop (I have a copy that could be considered historical since it’s sooo old) but I’m more suited too coding. Oh, I am fairly proficient in Java.
One more thing, is this just a recode (cleaning and reorganizing) or is this a rewrite (new material and cleaning)?
-MS (This CakePHP looks interesting, I must look into it.)
If you guys decide to go with RoR let me know.
I’ve been working with it for almost 2 years now. Here are three web apps that I coded from the ground up.
1. http://www.webmixup.com
– Waste time on the internet. Brand new. Not even officially launched yet. 30 hours.
2. http://www.anythingbutipod.com/compare/
– Just launched late last month. Users can search, view and compare MP3 players. 150 hours.
3. http://oncurrent.com
– My first RoR app. I coded it in less than 3 weeks. I forfeited spring break my senior year to learn Rails. This project won best in class and for my senior design course and won us the Burton D. Morgan Entrepreneurial Competition (http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/bdmcompetition/)
I can’t contributed massive amounts of time, because of other obligations, but I would love to help. I’ve been wanting to create a RoR message board system for a long time now.
As far as my work load goes, I could pick up a specific task like programming a specific controller, designing the database and models, or Rubifying the markup.
If you need a reference, talk to Reid Young.
Eric
My boyfriend who is a Orchardist showed me your notes about All Developers! at Fangamer ! We hunted for more knowledge that gave us more knowledge , Thanks