Archive for November, 2005

I will talk more about this on a news post on xmeltrut.com news but the network-wide updates roll out has pretty much been completed. On the down site though I already have a new functions list and database class to go out with the next rollout :P. I mentioned the database class before and when I reached Branch Planet I found some new functions too.

I’m rolling out the network wide update for xmeltut.com and have the majority of sites done but I was doing the new, and therefore easier, onces first. I still have another 10 to do and I can see some of them being rather tricky. I know some of them already have needed sizable re-writes or adapatations to the code.

So far I have made the changes I wanted to bring everything up to spec but when I came to Palmetto Pointe Fans I found an updated database class I had been looking for earlier and concluded didn’t exist. So I’ve been rolling out a version of the database class that is missing one of the functions of the latest one. Not one ever used by any of the sites I don’t think but that has already been lined up for the next network wide update.

That could happen pretty soon though if I go ahead and impement TrackBacks which I decided to leave out of this update as I want to get everything more in line and up to date first.

Things are rumbling. Carmen Electra Planet and Hilary Duff Planet are the choosen test subjects for the updates happening to xmeltrut.com.

First off, Carmen Electra Planet has been set up as the demo site with a proper database class, full list of functions (some new ones were added) and an updated RSS feed to show the entire first paragraph (though CEP is new and was doing this already) and if there is more to the story there is a link saying [+] More at the end too so users know there is more to be read.

Also, Hilary Duff Planet, being one of the sites with video news updates has a new RSS feed for the VNUs which includes Yahoo’s Media RSS standards and it has been submitted to Yahoo video search so hopefully that will get crawled. It’s linking to the asx playlist at the moment though so I’m hoping that is ok.

As for the TrackBacks, they remain in question. I am tempted to implement this set of updates before I proceed any further, just to get everything into line.

I’m thinking about implementing some chances network wide to xmeltrut.com. It’s never actually been done before, the systematic updating of every xmeltrut.com website so it will be interesting to see how it goes and more importantly, I want to get all of the changes I want to make done at once.

The reason behind it is that I got thinking about adding TrackBacks to the news stories, as it’s a lot easier and cooler than comments ;). I also thought of a neat way to add related stories which I have pondered (not quite considered but pondered at least) for a while now. It’s just things getting cluttered which I am worried about. The news story pages are pretty empty though and I can add them to the xmeltrut.com news posting pages by hiding the functions then having a “more” button next to the post news button which dynamically reveals more options.

The only problem I would have would be that I would need to put like “Related (2) TrackBacks (0)” below every news story which would take up a lot of space, especially on the news archives page as many of the stories are only a paragraph long which is why so many are on each page.

The other problem is protection against spam which is very hard but in order to try and counter it I would have to build some kind of time delay, ie, you can only TrackBack from the same IP once every minute or five minutes or something and also have a system to email me of every TrackBack which is manageable considering there will be every few, probably none at first other than maybe be pinging from site to site which would be useful when I have stories relating between celebs.

While I am there though I also want to bring everything else into line – update the functions library and database class and also the most recent RSS feed file that includes showing the entire first paragraph of the story rather than the first 100 characters. I initially didn’t do this as that is often all the story which eliminates people’s need to come to the site which I don’t want as there is no ads in the RSS (yet anyway) but I feel it is worth it as there may be more to the story and as I build up RSS readers I can start introducing adverts there too.

I’m also toying with the idea of putting a second RSS feed in there for the video news updates (at least the sites that have them) that include the Media RSS specification so that I can get it syndicated in Yahoo Video search. All the changes should be drag and drop for the new sites though, it’s only the first half a dozen old sites that I should have problems with as the code is really old in there. The last dozen sites or so work off almost identical code bases and the RSS files now take all the site information from the database so they are actually identical files that only differ because of the Site ID variable supplied in another file. Rapid deployment is what it is all about these days :).

I hate Windows Media Audio. DRM sucks. Not because I don’t want to pay for music, but because it limits what you can do with it. I’m happy to pay for my music but once I do, don’t tell me what I can and can’t do with it! Just to stupidly small files though I am using WMA on my MP3 player as it gets them significantly smaller than MP3.

I still need to convert some of my albums from MP3 to WMA though. Offspring’s Greatest Hits, Pumpkins – Rotten Apples, Staind – Chapter V and my Nirvana stuff are still in MP3. As with many posts, this is more a reference for myself than you ;).

While this figure is an estimate and liable to be far different from what we actually think it is, the best estimation that we can do at the moment suggests that Worfolk Online is currently serving 97,000 uniques a month. We’re so close to hitting the 100,000 mark!

The recent surges have come from rapidly going performances in xmeltrut.com daily news celeb fansites. I’m hoping that Blair Space will eventually begin to pick up as well. Some kind of mix-up resulted in it being renewed until 2007 rather than 2006 so if search engines do count the years that will be a plus. Also, it will be celebrating it’s 1st birthday on December 9th.

I don’t know how I went from one movie project to countless numbers but somehow I did so I’m going to try and get it sorted in my own head.

Sleepless: the horror movie, waiting for writers group to help on the script

Dark Streets: saving until next year, need to write up script

Keeping Up With the Buses: need to write to First and ask them for permission

Tungsten Puppy: shooting video next Saturday, need to sort equipment

The Road to World Domination: documentary behind my bid to set up World Domination Soc, on-going project, need to record more on Monday

Midnight Heat: no real time contrainsts, just need to put a script together for it

Buffy.com.au (also known as BCA) has announced that it will be closing Christmas Day. It will be sad to see it go. Its forum is currently the second biggest Buffy forum on the internet sitting between Buffy World in first and my own Buffy Talk in third.

I don’t know if you saw the story about the RAC Route Finder that told people to go by Ireland and France to get from Manchester to Cornwall or something like that. Well an RAQ spokesperson said this about it:

“There was a glitch with the route finder.”

And the line I really like…

“People should not go that way.”

I placed an order with CD-RMedia.co.uk on Sunday and it said dispatched by Monday via next day deliver – and never showed up. It still not having showed up by today (I asked at the office, they had nothing), I phoned them up and was told that they had a problem with 200-300 orders over the weekend that basically never went through their dispatch system.

That was annoying enough but they seemed to be like “yeah, well, it happened, we’re dealing with it, just sit tight.” Not “opps, how could this happen, we’re so sorry.” Next day delivery and it’s going to come 8 days after I ordered it? What’s that about?