Lemme just clarify things and say I'm not really in it for the money. I just have a really hard time doing something I don't find interesting. (Even at work they know this XD) Immediately after break started, I got things to a slightly more stable state but well... have slacked off during the break; beating Kirby Return to Dreamland / playing mario party with the gf has taken priority.
The issues of caching page data / statistics is one I will get around to. In fact, at work right now I've got a project which has a lot of caching code I've been glancing at --- but it's not something I can directly copy (asp vs php, mysql vs sqlserver).
As I have already noted, the stats system is about 80% improved right now. All stats are now updated/stored to a forum profile field (much like post count) and I've got a working page that can update every user's vault stat with a single click, taking about 10 seconds; the exception being collabs, which... are quite a bit more resource intensive. I've got a working collab stat updater but it works one user at a time, meaning this will likely be a batch process run every so often during low activity hours.
As far as stats are concerned, the next fix has to be the stats page itself. While the profile based stats have improved its performance a little, a lot of the stats still require a fully table query to compute (anything that isn't simply user with X downloadsor hack with X downloads). The fix is simple, cache the result data every so often / display a pre-calculated page.
The next hurdle isn't quite as simple though... fixing up actual brawl vault usage (searching through character or stage). I'm not really sure how to improve that yet, as the results should update whenever a new hack needs to be displayed for the given search --- which is quite often.
Anyway, back to the topic of money. For anyone that is wary about what I'll be doing with the offtopic ad funds...
Prior to Dec 1, 2011 (Estimated) Unpaid earnings KCMM: $42.15 picanogfx: $18.41 UNOTaku: $1.07 Total: $62.45 (I... really don't know why the numbers they give me don't add up)
(Estimated) Earnings for December 2011 KCMM: $37.65 Combined Total: ~$100.01
Now for anyone who hasn't messed with Google Adsense, you need a minimum $100 for your first payout. There is also an unspecified period of time where they will verify the authenticity of your ad revenue, make adjustments as they see fit (also taxes), and then the payment itself is made by check sometime around the following month.
I will be taking the cut only from my 2 sites. (~$19, less thanks to tax) The rest I plan to either hand over to Dantarion directly or hold on to in case of emergency. (Dantarion has yet to tell me the actual costs of this current server and has been quite generous, going as far as rejecting unnecessary donations. As such, I currently don't have any plans to add any more ads to the site; frankly, I've been hoping since long before BV started that Brawl hacking would die down already XD)
And, I don't care how irritated anyone gets right now; it's not going to get anything done faster. I've gotten a couple offers to help out now but I'm not yet sure what changes need to be made / if anyone can pull them off just yet.
I have been noticing that my music contributions as of late have not been showing up to be approved. Any body else experiencing this? I spent 20 to 30 minutes getting those together.
For the rest of the fixes... you're all gonna have to wait until I actually have free time. Without sacrificing overall site usability, the Vault just can't go back to the way it was without a good day or two of solid recoding.
BrawlVault's coding doesn't like Ascii it seams and when it errors up, it make some funky symbles. But goto edit again, it'll screw up again by trying to make the ascii again but yah... it's a never ending cycle.
This should be fixed now. Luckily, I ran into the issue on my Japanese study site.
EDIT: Just a quick tidbit of info for anyone interested in how the site runs....
Once midterms / major projects are out of the way, I plan to implement...
With this, Brawl Vault will operate more like the forum itself. As in... instead of doing a count(*) query to retrieve a user's statistics, the statistics will be drawn from that person's profile data (of course, I have to modify the DB code to update the appropriate fields, which is the reason for the delay). This will make stat / sig queries substantially less intensive.
Btw Picano, I know Javascript and HTML. I'd be willing to help you!
Woo
I'll get back to you on this once midterms are over. Some things will seem a bit intimidating (you don't even have to attempt them if you don't want), but the basic needs for html / js are...
(This bit should be relatively easy, as you don't really need to know what goes on behind the scenes) Redesign the 'hackEntry' div class. ---This is each hack's personal rectangle of information ---The current design was created solely with character hacks in mind. It would probably be best to design different templates for each type of hack / the data it primarily shows off (pictures, video / music previews, text explanations) ---If you can at least understand simply conditional structures, I can give you a copy of the current formatting PHP function (it's... a bit of a mess right now, but it should make sense if you look at a few real examples of each) -Just need something that looks good (since I'll have to go through and fill the stuff via PHP / SQL anyway)
(This is another one where you don't need to know too much behind-the-scenes stuff) Redesign menus -Not a high priority (to me at least) -Possibly make it more accessible to access stuff such as PSAs directly instead of lumping them in with texture hacks -If you can understand the current search / navigation parameters, you can actually set up the links... but otherwise I'll probably just have to go through and fix up the links -*Right now each link has an onclick function set up to make the standard link into an ajax call, this is one part where jQuery would cut down on a LOT of hardcoded html
(This bit would probably a more intricate knowledge of what is going on. I probably can speed through this once I have time) Make use of jQuery for all AJAX functionality -Approve / Delete / Download / Report as well as each bit of page navigation post to a DB page (only the page nav returns actual data, the visible html) -Currently, it's all pretty sloppily written custom code (most reused functions in hacks.js but some embedded into BrawlView.php)
HEY! What happend to the Advanced Search? It is saying "Nothing to Display" Below a bunch of weird links to somplace no matter what I search for. Does it have something to do with the Error that appeared the other day?