While I'm Thinking About It

While I'm Thinking About It

Things look a bit different around here, don't they?

Here's the scoop, gang. For some time now, I've been hacking away at the old ComicGallery code, tweaking it, making it do what I'd like it to do (random strip link! Woo-hoo!), and learning a small bit of PHP in the process. It's not quite 100% where I'd like it to be, but they're getting there. Think of this as a 0.1 beta release while I wrap some things up.

So, what's different, you ask?

• The strip you see here is identical to the one in the archives. No more trulife.png in the root directory alongside a yyyymmdd.png strip in the archives. That's one less file I have to upload each day.
• Dates are generated automagically by the page. Even here, on the main page. So there's no more mild embarrassment if I've forgotten to change everything.
• Additionally, all strip navigation is handled by the system. No more "back" or "permalink" buttons taking you to a mostly-blank page when I've done something wrong.
• Newsposts are tied to the date. Which means that tomorrow this one will have vanished, but will pop up as appropriate in the archives. Part of what I'm still trying to hack out is showing the latest post on the first page. On the plus side, the shoddy hackwork of #include-ing a blog is a thing of the past.
• The "Transcribe This Strip" links for the OhNoRobot.com search engine have gone bye-bye for the moment. No big loss, as no one was really using it.
• The message board has finally been replaced with good old, reliable phpBB. There's a different story behind that, though. This should be the last time you have to register for an account on a message board around these parts.

So what's left to do? Well, like I said, I need to get the newest post to stay static on the main page until such time as a newer one replaces it. Those words below the navigation links, that show you what year you're in, are due to be replaced by something fairly standard on webcomic sites. I need to figure out a convenient way to make RssPect cooperate with what I'm trying to do. Then I need to clean everything up a bit so I can make it available to others as the GPL requires.

I've not had quite this much fun working on a website since before I tried making a living at it.