Site Updates 2-18-11: Blog Tweaks, Improved Search & a New Menu

February 18, 2011 - 1:06pm — John Tarr
Blog Tweaks
  1. Teasers no longer show up on the full view. The teaser field is what will show up on the homepage or Community Blog list. This should result in people repeating themselves less in the introduction paragraphs of their blogs.
  2. The Featured Blog Image is what shows up on the homepage or Community Blog List. The default image is below.
  3. Blog layout has changed dramatically (if you're using the new theme. Click My Account, then edit, and switch the theme). The new layout makes it much easier to quickly scan all new posts.

Default Image

Improved Search

If you're using the new theme, there's a new search box at the top of the page. It's not a search box in the traditional (google) sense, but a "Game Finder". If you start to type the first few letters of a game, it will come up with a list of suggestions, and clicking the name of a suggestion will take you right to that page.

The only problem with it is that dashes and colons can make it hard to find certain games. For example, if you type "half life", nothing will get suggested, because the official title is "half-life". Hopefully I can find a solution to this problem soon.

Drop Down Menu

There's a new drop down menu on the new theme. I haven't decided on what the final links will be, but I will most likely always be featuring pages for new games.

February 18, 2011 - 6:02pm — brodyitis
brodyitis's picture

Awesome, I hope this site takes off.

February 18, 2011 - 6:05pm — Whiplash
Whiplash's picture

I love this!!!! I love how you implemented images for the blogs and not just text.

 

Also, the Podcast image makes me lol everytime I see it :D

February 19, 2011 - 11:12am — rvbfreak
rvbfreak's picture

i dont know much about php, but in vb sense, making the search easier shouldnt be too hard. I'd imagine

if searchfield.text != ""{

dim lines as string = searchfield.lines()

for each x as lines{

if x.contains(searchfield.text){

;something to display the game name}}

next

}

There are probably syntax errors, since I didnt try the code in VS. I'd imagine it to be something similar to what is above. Just check a list of games, and display the results that 'contain' the string typed into search.

February 20, 2011 - 2:34pm — John Tarr
John Tarr's picture

It sounds like your programming knowledge is a lot better than mine; I just install free modules I find on Drupal.org and make small tweaks to the code. I'm going to try this (sometime in the future) http://drupal.org/node/723978

February 20, 2011 - 4:06pm — michaelkirschner
michaelkirschner's picture

Search doesen't work for me when I type anything there is no autocomplete and the results page shows no results.  It also gives me this error

An HTTP error 0 occurred.
http://wikigameguides.com/finder_autocomplete/autocomplete/1/1

February 21, 2011 - 12:14am — rvbfreak
rvbfreak's picture

ah, yes. that ignore punctuation should work fine. the next step, if need be, is misspellings maybe?

and is this your first time with drupal, or was ngw made offof iit aswell?

February 21, 2011 - 12:14pm — John Tarr
John Tarr's picture

NGW used Drupal 5, but I did not build that site from the ground level live I built WGG (Drupal 6).

Also, I made a few tweaks to the search so that error should not show up anymore.

February 23, 2011 - 11:52am — Adamb
Adamb's picture

looking really good..

February 25, 2011 - 12:03pm — michaelkirschner
michaelkirschner's picture

Nope I still get the same error

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