Empire of the Iguanadons

Alright, as promised, a changelog of all of the changes up to this point:

Sandbox Software Changes: February 2010

* Added UI controls to the main pages to edit/delete blog entries.
* Added UI controls to the main pages to edit/delete/report comments.
* Adapted the QSFP BBCode parser. All BBCode should now be processed properly.
* Changed the Youtube tag to parse the URL to the video and then embed the proper code. Now XHTML 1.1 compliant. Also raised the view window size to 640x400 to match their widescreen format.
* Quotes now have a nifty set of yellow quotation marks for style purposes.
* Fixed comments to report accurate usernames for registered members rather than the old manually input names from before this site had accounts.
* Akismet filter corrected to use HTTP/1.0 requests due to changes on the Akismet backend that were throwing invalid responses.
* Fixed comments so that if a user has no icon specified the default Anonymous icon will always be displayed.
* Random quotes list has been transferred to the database and can be entered via the AdminCP.
* Fatal error output has been masked with a user presentable page that does not reveal potentially sensitive information.
* HTML markup corrections to bring the code back to valid XHTML 1.1 standards.
* Comment posting and editing forms have been made immune to double posting errors.
* Added some more TLD's to the email contact form validation.
* A whole lot of template shuffling and style nitpicking.
* New settings can be manually entered into the settings table from the AdminCP.
* Number of recent comments and recent images is now configurable from the AdminCP.
* Preview added for blog posts and comments (when editing them too).
* Query errors should now properly trigger the error handler instead of being dumb and spitting the SQL query to the user screen.
* Full emoticon support, with skins able to have completely independent sets.
* Blog posting form now has prompts to include an image for the top left of the posts. Either upload a new one or pick an existing image that's already been uploaded.
* Archives section merged into the calendar box. It was getting too large and unwieldy.

There's still quite a bit left on the agenda before there can be a new release though:

General

Overhaul the skin on the AdminCP.
Make sure all AdminCP controls are in sync with the new front page UI updates.
PUBLIC installer needs updating something fierce now.
Option to fix comment count values that might get out of sync.

Downloads Module

Primary image support.
Multiple secondary images. (aka, like Nexus)
Better presentation of the file boxes.
No longer need hackish protected folders. Use real user account access now. > PRIVILEDGED at least to see them.
Add comment support now that there's a global mechanism that works for them.

Image Gallery

Change folder navigation to a tree along the top the way QSFP currently does. Or mimic the files module layout for categories.
Put a border around each thumbnail on a page.
Investigate the use of Lightbox type scripts to expand thumbs to larger sizes.
No longer need hackish protected folders. Use real user account access now. > PRIVILEDGED at least to see them.

Provided I don't end up bored from lack of motivation on this, it shouldn't take too long. None of it requires leaving the test posts in place any longer so those have been removed now.
.........................
"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

Ah, I think I understand what you're saying then.

No, I vaguely recall that you'd switched to the QSFP bbcode parser from the simple regex based one Kiasyn had included for a number of reasons, but I believe that nesting was one of the main reasons.

Yes, but I just nested like crazy on the test install using 1.7 code and it nested fine. So I don't think that's it. I've also verified MercuryBoard and old QSF code before the library update nested just fine too. So there must be something more to it. If it's just the code tags, I can find that out soon enough. As much as I like the QSFP parser, if it's this slow then it has to go. Most of the tags used here don't need fancy tree style parsing anyway.

That makes sense, it's pretty rare that you'd need really extensive bbcode parsing anyway on a blog site, I'd expect, and usually the ones using it the most heavily are you (the blog author who, with Sandbox, has the option of using real html instead if they want to get really fancy) and me (since I tend to bring a lot of images, emoticons, links, and nested quoting to the table) much more than anyone else here. As far as I know, on most blogs the comments section only lets the person adding their remarks use a very limited amount of bbcode, if any at all. In fact, most of them seem to incorporate one of the more standard editors and just support it's feature set, at least from what I've seen. But that's actually one of the things that makes Sandbox stand head and shoulders above the rest of the blog softwares available.

So. Keep an eye on the BBCode. I just switched in a slightly modified copy of the previous Sandbox parser in. The big test thread processes in half the time now: Page generated in 0.356 seconds. 15 queries made in 0.01054 seconds.

There's obviously overhead from the template processor too. Probably the best I can do with what I know at this point. It's certainly far more competitive this way though and it doesn't appear as though any functionality was lost.

Sounds good. This page shows "Page generated in 0.1495 seconds. 14 queries made in 0.00771 seconds." at the moment in its footer and I'll watch for bbcode parsing errors over the next little bit. Maybe we need a post that utilizes all the various bbcode that's supposed to be supported as a test somewhere?

At long last, another milestone has been reached. The AdminCP overhaul is finally complete. Some finishing touches to do, then the only thing left before a public release of 2.0 can happen is to update the installer and produce some documentation, since there's absolutely none to be had right now.

So far I haven't noticed any bbcode issues, so that part's still looking like a success. Gratz on getting so far so quickly!
Can't wait to see what you come up with as documentation.

Well barring some hidden sneak circuit somewhere, the test install I did passed with flying colors after I fixed a slew of bugs that only cropped up after it was running in a subdomain with a path. Docs are done now, they're probably skimpy but that's better than non-existent Going to make one more solid check on the DB install queries to make sure I haven't forgotten a field and then 2.0 will be loosed upon the internet to begin its rise to domination.

Right then. It's up in the downloads area now for anyone who wants to give it a run. I'm off to go update the promo spots for it at Freshmeat and Hotscripts

Woo, congrats !! *wild standing ovation applause here*

Now back to ABR

Awesome! I'll go see if I can manage to get the first copy of it then.
Great work, Samson!

Quick note - had to issue a hotfix version 2.0.1 because of two issues:

* HTML slipped by in comments. Oops.
* Emoticons were not loading properly for gallery or downloads when friendly URLs were turned on.

Not worth updating on the promo sites but in case you already grabbed it, those were pretty important.

I did, and I'll go grab the new revision too, I hadn't gotten to installing it as a test bed yet though, so no danger from exposure here.