CMS: MODx CMS
PHP Load: 0.2812 s
MySQL Load: 0.0109 s (10 Requests)
Total Load: 0.2921 s
|
 |
If you check the Xbox360 page, you'll see under Tales of Vesperia, there is a new box underneath the normal "links" to the Forum/Gallery/etc. This is where users can easily add or remove games from their Collection/Wishlist. There's even the "Action submitted successfully!" text that appears once you've "saved" the data to your profile. As of right now, it still shows the checkboxes for visitors. In the next few days, that will be changed to a "login to your account..." notice. I am planning on getting a nice "Web 2.0" image in place of the somewhat "dull" text (the text is there simply as a placeholder to make sure it worked alright).
This is the first step in merging parts of mySymphonic into the main site, where it's applicable (like we won't have AIM fields inside site content, obviously : P).
EDIT: As said in the most recent news post, the issue of non-logged in members seeing the checkboxes has been fixed. The text link has also been replaced with an image link.
|
|
This is purely a technical post, so if you are a tl;dr person, or don't understand about CSS files / filesizes, ignore the post. ; )
Up to now, we've had all of the site's CSS styles in one main file, and occasionally other scripts like the poll, or the image preview apps (like Highslide JS, the one we are using now to display the boxart for the various Tales games) would use a separate CSS file.
Now, I've reduced the style.css file to 5 KB, by moving the CSS not used on every page to individual files, such as ticker.css (for the "Latest News" image rotator). Since they only are called on specific pages (as an example, the "ticker" is only used on the index), it makes no sense to call them everywhere else on the website. Thanks to MODx CMS, which is what powers Symphonic Heaven, we can allow our staff members to "check" off the CSS files they need to include on any given page. For the end-user, this means faster loading of the website, since they have to load only 5 KB, compared to 10+ KB from the previous file. Combined with using PNGOUT (a command-line compression script for .png image files), which brought down the filesize over 75% in some cases, will lessen the loading for visitors. We are also doing some rearranging of the images, by moving them into the /assets folder, and then inside individual folders, such as /quickbar and /navigation. This reduces the clutter we had with all of the site's assets in the root folder.
Since this is a major overhaul of the structure of the code in the website, the site *may* be down for few days, as we update the CMS with the new code (due to the "checkbox" system also being implemented now). This will be much better for the website in the long run, however, since it will allow the Staff to only load in the assets they need for a given page, lessening the time needed between page refreshes while testing out new content. : )
(The Forum should be unaffected, however, since it doesn't use the images from the website. The rest of the sections do, however.)
|
|
Just got done w/ my Physics II finals. C and Visual Basic finals left to go, then I'll be able to do more for the SH CSS upgrade. : )
On that note, the CSS is basically done now --- I just need free time to convert the CMS's code over to the new format.
|
|
This post is a technical post, so if you're not used to CSS jargon, feel free to skip it. : P
Over the last few days, I've been working on fixing up the style.css file the site uses for it's content. Over the time since the initial launch of the new layout, there's been various additions and tweaks to the CSS styling, and a bunch of unneeded/duplicate CSS styles were added.
The new CSS file, currently about 1-2KB smaller than the current one, uses #id for the DIV-layers. So all of the navigation CSS would be under #navigation, for example. This allows us to have something like #navigation .setup, instead of .navigation_setup. This is more for the site staff, but having the color identifier for each "section" in a file editor like Notepad++ helps us out a lot.
The code will also be "condensed", to make the scrolling through the file smaller. Orphaned CSS styles from previous revisions have also been removed (about two or three of them). We will likely take the site offline for a few hours during the update, since this will take a little while to make all of the fixes in the backend. It'll be worth it in the long run, though. : D
A small note: I am planning on adding RSS functionality to the Blogs during the next mySymphonic update. It's already implemented through the forum, but I need to add a link to it through the site's end.
|
|
It looks like the new MyBB-powered blogging script was a success!
Be sure to check back often, since I will be talking about future site updates here, before word is leaked on areas like the news posts. : )
|
|
