Difficult - Tons Of Pages

[legionofangels]

Ok so I just wanted to throw this out here and see what anyone's general thoughts or ideas were on our little project.

We have to make 400 external vb pages. We are customizing our own pages with the html and proper CSS for styling and coding we want on them.

Thanks to several members here, that I will end up listing later in a big "thank you" notice, lol. We have locked out usergroups to certain people on these external pages via usergroup no permission code.

Now here is the tricky part. This is the final aspect of our premium membership set up. Meaning everything else is loaded, done, works, usergroups will be figured tonight, etc.

In which this part is a Multi-Tier design, meaning of the 7 member usergroups, at Level 1, Level 4, and Level 7, more and more is unlocked.

To put this in perspective. At level 1 you have access to a certain amount of content, from Style Sheet A, at Level 2 you have access to a certain amount of content from Style Sheet B BUT you also have all the content from Level 1. IN turn at Level 3, you have the exclusive Level 3 content and have both Level 1 and 2. So growing or additional content you are allowed to view.

The question we have is that we are using 3 Style Layouts ok. The style layouts will immediately "visually" alert you that you are on a new level, as we have no way other way aside from an announcement that they'll miss viewing and we'll end up explaining all day long.

So you'll know when you upgrade.

The problem with this whole system is the duplicate content and the styles.

Since we have 3 styles and the styles are not forum styles, but do represent your progress or current level; the difficulty lies in an easy way to not have to make 3 copies of the same page with just simple design changes.

One of the coders thought of "php include" or maybe we can have the video content open within predesigned templates via "CSS".

In essence it's like this in example to sum up:

3 styles, Red, White, Blue

Content Example: Terminator Movie

As a Level 1 - Red, you can view this movie.

When you get to Level 2 White or Level 3 Blue, you can still view the movie but the layout of the page is dependent upon what level you are on, 2 is white, 3 is blue.

How do I have the style of the page "automatically" choose the right layout based upon which level you are on? Without making 1200 or so pages instead of 400???

[Dismounted]

Are you using the vBulletin template system or something you devised?

[Opserty]

Use CSS to style the layout then alter the colour codes depending on the usergroup. (Import/link to an extra CSS file depending on the group).

[legionofangels]

Originally Posted by Dismounted

Are you using the vBulletin template system or something you devised?

Not the template system, because imagine what 400 template pages would be like in there.

Pretty clustered. We could group them, but for some reason the coder wants to do them externally. Also an additional issue is that if they were on the forum, the CSS styling we are doing, are not forum styles, they are unique. Therefore I cannot use the "grab the style id" code as they aren't style id's. It also isn't practical to develop a forum style just for this section solely.

Originally Posted by Opserty

Use CSS to style the layout then alter the colour codes depending on the usergroup. (Import/link to an extra CSS file depending on the group).

Interesting, I'll let the coder know and see if this will help us out a bit.

Thank you both, any other ideas let me know.

This was in reference to my idea here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=175794

Here are some rough First Day Shots of what we're doing:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3..._666/shot1.gif

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3..._666/Shot2.gif

These are individual content pages, meaning in this case one game, or one movie, would go on this page when it's done.

If only there was a way to incorporate an uploading system which could auto generate the pages, that would be perfect, but I have no idea how to do that.

[Opserty]

Are you creating a PHP page for each game/movie? :erm:

[legionofangels]

Originally Posted by Opserty

Are you creating a PHP page for each game/movie? :erm:

That is our unfortunate plan.

We don't know another way to do it where we can get individual content or media on each page, without making separate php pages.

[Opserty]

The whole point of PHP is to avoid situations like this!

PHP is dynamic, you should have a database store of all your games, data on each game/movie would include the name, description and some kind of pointer to the file (like the file name of it or something) then when you load the page you fetch the data associated with that game from the database. Now you know the title and file name of the game, you can then use PHP to output HTML to reflect this. If you are hiring a coder and this is their intended plan of action I seriously recommend you find another coder, this is fairly standard practice and is why people use PHP to solve these problems.

Imagine if vBulletin made a page for each thread, that would be ridiculous! The only difficult bit would be the management on the actual flash & movie files, however I wouldn't consider it impossible.

[Tact7626]

hehe. i wish i knew that type of stuff. legion gives me too much credit calling me a coder. all i know is html and css and couldn't work with php if my life depended on it.

i'm just a friend and i don't get paid. so i do this as a favor or hobby so i can learn more in the process at least so it doesn't bother me.

the type of dynamic pages you describe is definately what i wish i could do though and what i wish i could help him with. i'd love to learn it but not sure if i'm even capable. my experience with databases is very limited. "woop de doo i setup a forum" lol. the most advanced thing i ever did was copying and pasting something directly into phpmyadmin console which i think created some tables. O_o kinda cool. barely did that yesterday as i installed a little star rating.


aanyways. i'd love to learn this stuff if someone could direct me to guides or books? but on the topic of the site itself which should take presedence over my desire to learn more, maybe legion might hire someone? idk.


anyone wanna teach us for free? lol

if not were stuck and we have no choice to do it the insanely ridiculous hard way. lol

[Opserty]

Fair enough, don't worry we all started out this way. Hmm the first thing you need to do is learn PHP, there are thousands of PHP tutorials out there (just google for "PHP Basics") or something like that. Then you need to learn how PHP interacts with MySQL (MySQL is the most popular database software that people couple with PHP, I'm assuming your host does support it), google "PHP and MySQL Basics" and you should get some guides. Then finally you'd need to look at file management in PHP and that.

I could sit here and teach you everything but a) I don't have the time or the willpower and b) everything (and I mean everything) is already out there on the web. You just need to search for a bit and learn the basics slowly build up. Don't expect to learn it in a few days it will take a few weeks of coding the basics to start to memorise things such as syntax e.t.c.

I would recommend you start of with the aim of just getting some kind of database interaction and manipulation. Leave the file management and upload until you are sure you can understand the database stuff.

[legionofangels]

Just to clarify a few things here for the sake of honesty.

Tact is a great friend that I've known for I think 5 years now online only, on the phone, video chat, text, never met. Just a good friend that has helped with this project since day 1. In the beginning I just had an idea 4 years ago, and was like, I need a graphic person to help me with this. He made cool graphics and seemed like a polite person on the forums so I asked him to help. This was a different forum than our own now. He made all the original artwork for the group "LoA" and was a member of it as well. So in short, while I had an idea, this would never have been made if not for him, or I guess a diff designer. When it came to make the website I knew he had went to schooling for some coding, didn't know what, and thought I could ask him to help out in this. He liked the idea and has helped over the past year and a half.

I don't necessarily feel like I'm using someone, as he could quit at any time as could I, I guess on designing stuff. Nor do I know of any unique coding he's done or made from scratch programs for our site that would require commission, but yes...a payout just out of gratitude alone at some time is most likely in the near future.

As far as his ability I knew he was competent with CSS and HTML, but didn't know about all the other forms of coding. We also aren't arrogant and have hired someone in the past to do some Flash coding for us. It's mainly a case where we know the limits of expertise and we make the decision onsite to either hire someone if its too difficult or figure it out ourselves if it doesn't present itself to be mind bending difficult.

In the case of this project, as I stated in the other thread in modifications unpaid, the concept of an "anymedia" system is possible and with dynamic page creation through PHP which I was aware of, it can be done. My thought was to show a layout, and say, wouldn't it be nice and anyone with the knowledge to handle the database mysql side as well as the php integration of the two, then they could release the mod for pay or for free here at .org. As I said there, and say here, MANY people could use a good organized video/media management system for there site. It's like having your own youtube in a sense, but can post any type of object, OR video, movie, game on your site. Almost like having a three in one, Vid gallery, Picture, and Game, Movie, etc.

By asking a bunch of questions in threads and taking what we already knew, we have gathered enough code for the design end of this, where indifference to our site, you could grab the style ID of whatever style someone is on and the page would display in that format, which in fact would be easier for us but is not an option. As well as all the standard aspects of the layout, the cat's, the boxes, the bg's, the text, etc. So the media goes there, the rating goes below, and then comments shown below.

I did notice Nix making something like this in a screenshot he posted, but unfortunately cannot wait for the release of that to get this project done as once we're done with this, we're done with our forum for quite some time we believe. He used the WYSIWYG editor in place of a simple comment script, but I don't want avatars out there jumbling things up either. However the system in theory would be fantastic, would like it to be free, and it's hugely flexible. You haven't seen the main pages yet either, that completely organize your sections of content, and your media list within those categories. Because we know how we want it to look but the idea was to get a single game page ready, so I can start the monotonous work of copying and changing the appropriate sections by hand. So the Main Pages for each area are not ready, just finishing up the template for one, then change imagery and colors for the others, then I'll do all the content and php pages, while he designs and codes the main pages.

In closing here, sometimes Tact pushes the truth as he has done work in other types of coding before, and I've even messed around with php. But messing with it and "building code" out of it, are not the same thing. I am not against paying for help on this and will consider it maybe for the sake of getting it done so that all other vb owners out there can have an option like this for there boards.

In the interim, I'll do it the hard way, as after posting 3000 or so videos on my site over 1 months time, I can handle monotonous tasks fairly well, and I'm usually pretty quick about it.

Finally, as we talked on msn tonight making our checklist of things to change or fix on our template so far; we both believe we know bits and pieces of how this works or parts of it but not the whole enchilada. Because of that we cannot do it, and suspect the part that we cannot figure out if we started putting it together is again, the mysql integration with php. I personally think it has a lot to do with parts of code that says "get title of xxxx", I don't know the name or if they are called "get" codes, but yeah, that seems like it would make sense as it's making a call for information based upon what you hit. Due to the difficulty will probably just stick with games then, as movies and video could go on forever.

Anyways, sorry this is long, and thanks for your help. If we ever figure it out, or if we hire someone for it, we'll release it as an add on here for everyone, I promise.

Here are Day 2 Screenshots if anyone is curious:

Level 1 90% Complete Top

Level 1 90% Complete Bottom

Level 2 Draft

Level 3 Draft