Brian's progress on Specialty Gamer

I came across an issue a couple days ago where I was locked out of my own domains due to some kind of posting error on the Talk Boards.  Member Sn0wX mentioned a similar error, which may or may not have been related to the one that affected me.

SMF, the forum software I'm using has a newer software version than the one I'm using - SMF2.0 Beta4.  You may note that I'm using a beta, so it not fully stable - but it has features the stable retail version doesn't offer, which is why I'm using it. 

Months back, I tried to upgrade the SMF software before but was having issues with the upgrade not converting everytihng fully, so I ended up having to delete the upgrade and reinstall the old version using a backup.  It ended up being a ton of hassle just to ultimately get nothing done.  Hopefully I can get this upgrade complete without issue.

Also, I converted the language and HTML files to UTF8.  The language files in SMF have to be upgraded too.

Reminder to myself - remember to copy the /Themes/default/images folder before upgrading, and then recopying over the default upgrade images with my customised ones for Specialty Gamer.  I made a new theme called SpecialtyGamerTheme, but strangely I get permission errors when I try to rename or even delete files in that folder.  Both thru FTP and using the Cpanel backend thru a browser. 

Spent some time today to spread word around the site about the 2009 Calendars.  I spent a lot of time to think up and create the design so I hope people sign up to get em. 

Last year, I thought of the idea to make the calendar a surprise, so I didn't say what it was or even post a picture of how it looked.  I really do like the design, so I thought it was a better idea to show people what I'd be giving them.  Maybe people wouldn't think they'd be interested unless they saw it - and maybe when they see it, they'll think its cool.  I liked the design so much, that I even have a special item I made with the design just for myself and one other friend.

I put up some temporary banners to help promote the 2009 calendars for now.  I found a neat JS code that makes a smaller pic grow to bigger size when the mouse rolls over it.  Only thing about it, is that whe the image gets bigger, it moves all other elements out of the way with it - rather than dropping down over it.  The JS code is by John Scheuer and I found it on Dynamic Drive.  I have to say, I have some hesitation that it might make the page load slower for users with dialup and slow connections.  I really can't know for sure though, because I have Comcastic High Speed Internet - so everything is fast for me.  I think the web pages may be building up a lot of bloat.  If its too much, I hope that doesn't turn people away.

Elsewhere, I added some new smilies to the Talk Boards - including creating one of the Specialty Gamer logo.  Making a smilie of the SpGa logo is something I've put off for a long time.

Here is the new smilies added:

And I removed three stupid smilies that I don't think anyone uses.

I spent some time today doing some webpage load speed tests to see how fast certain pages load.

As I've added more and more, I kind of had the concern that there was so much on there it would take a long time for users with dialup and slow connections.  Some graphic files I added recently I forgot to compress, which I did using Ignite.  I noticed from the results of the test, it was mentioning I could save notable file size by compressing various CSS and JS files.  So I did a search for JavaScript compression and I found JavaScript Compressor website.  With that, I copied the code in my JS files, entered it into the online form on JavaScript Compressor, and some results came out in a second form on the bottom - which I cut and pasted into my JS files.  Many of them had their file size cut in half!  As far as I can see, the file compression is by removing all the carriage returns and comment tags.

Later on today, however, I noticed that some of the functions on pages that required those JS files were not working...  So I ended up having to refresh all those JS files to their original formatted code.  The file sizes are back to being big again, but everything seem to work again now.

Oh yeah, and I also deleted the SEGA category in Features.  Now that the Talk Boards have been open for a while, the SEGA category isn't necessary and also its a subject that overlaps and could have articles placed in other categories anyways.  Besides that, there was only one article under there from February - nearly a year ago.

Been meaning to change this a while, changed the standard buttons to designate a user's online status from and to and .  Also, I changed the wording from "Online" and "Offline" to "Alert, Humanoid Online" and "Humanoid is Offline".

To make the change of the online icon, I simply replaced the useron.gif and useroff.gif files in the /default/images folder.  To change the wording, I edited the index.english.php in the /default/languages folder and replaced the words where the code reads

$txt['online']  = 'Online'; 

and 

$txt['offline'] = 'Offline';

changing the part in single quotes on the right side.

Also changed the website favicon back to the black and blue SG that I originally had.  Also edited the meta keywords, noticing that by default they are all related to SMF.

"PHP, MySQL, bulletin, board, free, open, source, smf, simple, machines, forum" 

No... I don't need to promote SMF any more.  Changed keywords to promote Specialty Gamer.

"Specialty Gamer, Talk Boards, video game, games, classic, retro, Brian Moy, NWCGE, Portland, Northwest, Oregon, collector"

All I can say is Sham...Wooowww!  I found that Vince did a commercial in Spanish as well and it is as brilliante as his English one!!  "Brilliante" by the way is Spanish for "brilliant" if you are not a Mexican which I admit to not being.