"The Guide" and a brief explanation of things

Post by **Kisai** » Fri Aug 23, 2002 9:55 pm

Okay people, listen up.

I think the "guide.keenspace.com" domian has stopped blinking out of existance, so I held of doing this till it stopped doing that.

Anyways...

The Guide http://guide.keenspace.com is now operational. You may have seen it before as the KeenDEX on cerror.keenspace.com . Which is exactly what it is.

There are several features of this version that may or not be present in future versions, depending on feedback and what kind of feedback.

1. Images instead of text for the comic title - This feature is available, however you might not be impressed with what happens when it's enabled... you will wind up with one hit everytime your banner shows up, because of the image being loaded straight from your site. It currently will only use a 200x40 medium size banner located in /public_html/images . Future versions may change how this works.

2. Display Criteria, With the exception of the "by %" pages which are calculated from the webalizer, all other pages will only show comics which have at least one page in the YYYYMMDD.html format located in /public_html/d . If you have nothing in there, your site will not show up except under the "by %" pages. Nothing I can do about this, the next version might let you configure where to look for archive pages.

3. Images, alpha blended pngs. Due to some lack of foresight on my part, I used all alpha-blended png's, but it was rather overkill. As a result Internet Explorer 5.5/6.0 take a LONG time to load the larger pages because it has to reload all the pages through a filter with some IE-only excuse. Mozilla, Opera, WebTV, Mac IE will load the pages faster because they actually support alpha blended png's as the SRC. I wasn't aware that the IE hack took so long. I might axe all the images in a future version, as 98% of people use IE. Or I might just make "IE versions" of the pages. Why did I use alpha blended images? Because I wanted to. Sorry Netscape 4 users, get a real browser that isn't 5 years old.

4. Descriptions - The descriptions are entered through the "Edit Entry" (On the left of the menu) , If you previously had a newsbox, the description from it was imported. The next version should have the description searchable.

5. Keywords/categories/styles/content/etc - I like what I originally intended this for, but couldn't get around to it. So I might rework this in the next version.

6. First/Current date calculations - The FIRST date is the filename with the lowest number once all the characters are stripped out. So 4of8 = 48, oneoh1 = 1, 20020821a = 20020821 and so forth. If you did not use the YYYYMMDD format for your filenames, don't expect the first/current date to be correct. If the filename doesn't have 8 numbers in it, it will instead try to guess, based on the date it was created, which is highly inaccurate.

7. Javascripts. You might not have noticed but there is:
a) Javascript sorting (IE/Mozilla only) , click on a column header to sort. DO NOT DO THIS ON LARGE PAGES >300 entries as it will take a LONG time. In fact, if your computer crashes from trying so, don't come crying to me, I warned you. I may dump this feature because it's not particularly useful on large pages, which is what most pages are.
b) Stylesheet change (IE/Mozilla only) , Don't like dark, switch to the light scheme, there is a DARK and LIGHT button at the bottom of the page.
The Light scheme is actually based on the default forum colors.
c) IE behavior for png, again large pages makes it take forever, so if it's driving you nuts, use mozilla or opera, or simply don't load the big pages. (every index has a list of how many comics are on the page.) No image-free version of the pages, sorry.

8. Ratings: These are supplied by the author, I will not rate anyones comic, however I might copy the base rating if it's already on the site.

9 Tables. I hate tables, next version I want to dump them, which will also require that I dump the sorting javascript. The tables generate about 50% more html code than necessary.

10. What does all that junk do?
The Ratings, style/content columns I originally intended to make dropdowns from, but never happened. Why? Same reason the newsbox II never happened, it would trash everyones log files as all 6000 or so sites would generate a hit, but not a visit. I need to get the DB up first and then do some fancy backend things (copy or symlink) to make the banners actually appear to come from the guide, and not choke the server as one guide page tries to access *.keenspace a dozen times.

All will come with time.

I am not taking suggestions on how to improve the current version of the keendex, but I will take suggestions on the "next" version.

What did you like? What didn't you like? What would you like to see added? How do you want to see things laid out?

I'll also take suggestions on additional categories/style/content/rating items, however fair warning. The next version may very well remove tags that are used by >50% of comics. So it would be a good idea to suggest things that are common, but not common to everything.

THECapedCaper · Post by **THECapedCaper** » Sat Aug 24, 2002 10:13 am

yeah, i was checkin' my webtracker account and noticed a hit from that site. so i checked it out and i was way confused. at least now i know what it's all about.

Taiwanimation · Post by **Taiwanimation** » Sun Aug 25, 2002 11:58 am

Where is Taiwan in the "Comic's country/region" drop down field?

Post by **Kisai** » Sun Aug 25, 2002 2:39 pm

Hmm...

I actually got the list of "everything" for countries/locations from the Library of congress list... that's interesting, I'll add it when I get a chance. (Library of congress doesn't acknoledge Taiwan exists?)

I'll make an exception this time and edit the old scripts. This will show up in a few hours.

John D Moore · Post by **John D Moore** » Tue Aug 27, 2002 1:08 am

Just wanted to say that this is quite awesome. A very useful resource and well-done.

Ashess · Post by **Ashess** » Tue Aug 27, 2002 1:29 am

Kisai wrote:Hmm...

(Library of congress doesn't acknoledge Taiwan exists?)

lol. "settle down gentlemen. settle down. we all know this Tai-wan is just fiction. no matter how many products claim to hail from there. it's a hokes, I tell you!"

but Kisai. how do I get a discription for my comic?

...oh, wait. I found it,.. hmm.. multiculturalism. actually, my comic is quite discriminating against aliens.. or at least my main character is.. now what?

ZOMBIE USER 9264 · Post by **ZOMBIE USER 9264** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 12:34 pm

The only hoax I know of is Iowa.

ZOMBIE USER 7782 · Post by **ZOMBIE USER 7782** » Sat Aug 31, 2002 2:17 pm

Wyoming, you mean.

Think about it. Have you ever met anyone from Wyoming?

Taiwanimation · Post by **Taiwanimation** » Tue Sep 03, 2002 7:34 pm

The one I heard about was North Dakota. This from a teacher of social sciences too.

Post by **Kisai** » Sat Sep 14, 2002 10:58 am

Well due to the logs being messed with, now the %page numbers are all wrong. It should iron itself out (at least for the heavily visited sites) in a few days, but it looks like only the heavily used sites were even affected by the log file damage.

Taiwanimation · Post by **Taiwanimation** » Fri Sep 20, 2002 10:19 pm

My comic name is "Stupid Melon Dumb Egg" not Taiwanimation Online. How did it get changed, as it was originally listed correctly?

Post by **Kisai** » Sat Sep 21, 2002 9:10 am

Check your user data in your member pages, something zapped the main db, and it was restored from a backup, and the older page generation mode (plain http://guide.keenspace.com not http://guide.keenspace.com/beta ) uses the main DB to derive data, where as the beta guide uses a shadow copy which resyncs when I tell it.

ZOMBIE USER 11784 · Post by **ZOMBIE USER 11784** » Thu Nov 14, 2002 1:01 pm

Razi Oak wrote:The only hoax I know of is Iowa.

Yeah, a hoax

*stabs Razi, see webrating skyrocket to WEB-Senior*

I should probably stop now.

Netrek · Post by **Netrek** » Thu Nov 14, 2002 1:06 pm

The freaky thing is, I've BEEN through Iowa and Wyoming. As far as I can tell, you could lump them into Nebraska and no one would notice.

I think the true hoax is Svaalbard. I've only heard about it from looking in an atlas once; therefore it does not exist.

--Jack

CaptainSpam · Post by **CaptainSpam** » Tue Dec 03, 2002 4:47 pm

Back on topic a bit, as I probably missed this... what's the URL to edit Guide info? Neither http://cerror.keenspace.com/cgi-bin/mem ... xchange.pl (the "Edit Guide Info" link on guide.keenspace.com's page) nor http://guide.keenspace.com/cgi-bin/members/dexchange.pl (same thing, but at guide.) seem to exist as per present...

CaptainSpam · Post by **CaptainSpam** » Tue Dec 03, 2002 4:52 pm

Back on topic a bit, as I probably missed this... what's the URL to edit Guide info? Neither http://cerror.keenspace.com/cgi-bin/mem ... xchange.pl (the "Edit Guide Info" link on guide.keenspace.com's page) nor http://guide.keenspace.com/cgi-bin/members/dexchange.pl (same thing, but at guide.) seem to exist as per present...

McDuffies · Post by **McDuffies** » Wed Jan 08, 2003 3:39 pm

"Edit guide info" option isn't working yet. Or is it just me?
I'm an idiot. I messed with entering banner url and noticed it only when that option was disabled.

Post by **Kisai** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 8:40 am

Make sure you are using the "edit guide info" that points to siteadmintest.keenspace.com and not the "dexchange" ones.

The reason being that the dexchange scripts can no longer work in the new configuration since data files that they require no longer exist.

The new editor is a bit screwed up looking on account of it being designed to run from guide.keenspace.com and not siteadmintest.keenspace.com so it's pointing to the wrong place for css/images. It works though.

ZOMBIE USER 13217 · Post by **ZOMBIE USER 13217** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 8:57 am

Also, whats the deal with the banners? I just went there and tryed to upload a banner and got the messsage 'Doesn't exist on keenspace_schlock ' Sooo... I'm just going to sit here and act confused.

*sits down*

*confused*

Post by **Kisai** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 9:07 am

Attention people, please direct all guide questions to this thread only. The forums aren't working properly for me and only threads that I have marked "notify me" (which is this one) I seem to be able to get to.

Anyways, there are some bugs in the banner check routine.

banners should be entered like this:

/public_html/images/someimage.jpg

NOT

http://www.keenspace.com whatever and not your local drive path.

However untill I fix a few bugs in the script, it won't show you a preview.