Topic: How to make this happen (Page 1 of 1)

Hey all,
I have a few idea's here that I think would help making the site become a reality

First someone needs to own it.

Working as a community is great but we need to select one person to take project management responisbilties for this.

We are looking at creating a very full featured site and unfortunately the way we have been trying to do this with a huge mass of idea's is not going to work. We need one person to take charge and draw up a project plan, assign tasks etc. We've tried the whole "community effort" thing and it's gotten us only here (namely nowhere)

Any volunteers?

I think from there, a few committees could be formed of a few people to implement the tasks.


Second we're going around this a bit wrong.
The "look and feel" of the site is not where we should be right now. What we need is an is a PRD. (basically project requirements) What is this site going to do? What are the rules, how is it going to work?

Once we have that we can skin it with a voted on look and feel but we need the structure and how things are going to work before we can really build this.

Generally the way implementation works is this
1. PRD stage -
This is where the Project is defined, what is the project, how is it going to work?

2. Information Archetecture (IA) -
What is the structure of the site and what information is going to be on each type of page. Usually this is where page wireframes are created saying what content is going to be on each page.

3. Design Phase.
Here is where the look and feels come in. Take the wire frames and decide what the components are going to look like.

4. Engineering.
Build it.

So anyway if we want to get this thing off the ground I think it's time for a core group to be assembled, one project manager picked and then let's figure out what this site is going to do.

my .02


I have samples of each of these kinds of doc's that I'd be willing to share to the correct people as well.



.:[ The Tao of Steve ]:.
Be Desireless
Be Excellent
Be Gone
...................................

[This message has been edited by bitdamaged (edited 04-07-2002).]

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

Weadah was in charge of the project. Uhh yah. You'd love my new shirt dood, it's goatskin mmm furry =D

I had 2-3 weeks for this like months ago. The back bone got pulled project stopped. Waaaaa. It's taken till now for snippets of thumb making code, which were asked for at the time to appear. Double waaa. To the best of my knowledge (which is next to fuck all) TP has a working psPong in need of said thumb making snippetry but that's about all it requires. You need someone to cut up DarkGardens layout, grab some logos (use Minkies they were good) and you can call it a website. It cannot be that hard folks. And to be clear, I'm not even close to 'in charge' ok?... never was.

Weadz (ciao)

yes, my code was so far, that I was playing games with myself on my own apache...
but without a method of creating thumbs and checking jpegs for validity, there was no way, it was gonna fly on the pspong server.

If InI get's the phpJPEG thing to fly, I can implement it into the code and draw a diagram for the front end coders.
But now, there's my final finals (which are terrible here in germany) coming up in exactly (*calculating*) 186 hours, or just about a week, and they'll be over on thursday. By monday in two weeks I just might be sober enough again to take charge of the server-side once again.
I'll be free for more than a month then to do whatever I wish, so if you want me to take charge, I could. But I don't really want to :-)

so long,
TP,
who will now go back to studying.

I Have some free time so if anyone needs a hand with anything give me a holler, i'm no mad scientist or genius but have the time to contribute, there's plenty of examples of my stuff round the assylum so if ya think ya could use me holler,

tom

I'm in (as I keep saying ) so anything to do with imaging and graphics that need doing, just shout me!!

*Wonders of down the hall*


Chris C

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

bitdamaged is correct that we need leadership (if you read my old posts here you'll see that is what I and a lot of other people were calling for) but I'm not sure a lack of leadership got us nowhere its just that progress hasn't been very visible to most people here and has been stalled in the last few months due to a lack of available time from Weadah, TP and myself. To clarify a few things:

TP was in charge of coding and has most of the code in place to get this thing working.

Weadah was in charge of the graphic design aspects - we had an awful lot of contributions from inmates and (as Weadah mentioned above) he has decided on a some of the layouts, logos and titles which will make up the final sites look.

I did little more than throw a few ideas around and I did a bit of 'cheerleading' (what with my legs?) to try to keep things moving. I have knocked up a stripped down page to use for drawing together TP's scripts into more of a working site.

I like bitdamaged's design phases and perhaps if we were to start again with leadership we would do it that way but as things are quite advanced it might not be worth doing. Here is what I propose:

1. We solve the thumbnailing problem. It looks like quite a few people are now throwing ideas in to solve this problem (just play nice OK!!) and I'm confident that it should be fixed soon.

2. We use the HTML skeleton I drew up to get TP's script running.

3. Once we've tested the script and had a few test games we can then start looking at the sites look and design and how it fits in with the practical demands of the site and the users needs (DG's design is flexible enough to accomodate the changes we'll make at this stage).

=============

So leadership. I would volunteer but I'm co-ordinating efforts on the GN redesign and I don't feel I can give it the time it requires but I would be willing to be part of a small steering committee to make sure various aspects are getting done. Whether or not my offer is accepted I'd like to say that I think bitdamaged would be ideal for such a committee (no pressure though). I'd also like the Doc's input so how about 'honourary chairman of the steering committee'?

I that, with the application of a little bit of effort in some quarters (which is currently being done), that people will be suprised how quickly the aspects of this project can be pulled together.

[InI: I have server access if you want to send me any scripts and tell me where you want them I can do that no problem. I presume you have a copy of TP's code so that you can get things 'joined' up - if not I know he has a zipped version - I have a number of versions!!]

Just my opinion,

Emps

[This message has been edited by Emperor (edited 04-07-2002).]

I guess this means I'm out until we get to step 3&4. don't forget about my logos though
http://wind.prohosting.com/~thedorm/pong/pong.html

SB: We won't forget - you did some really nice work there!!

Emps

Well I have read some of this topic but I read this, after reading this I think us "designers" should make a mock up of the page first (or as Weadah said cut up DGs idea for a test stage) so you developers can add you code to that page and get a working model up and running with some design with it.

I still think we should still throw more layout ideas for this, just like Schitzoboy logos and the rest of the logo topic. I just feel that there was some nice designs for the layout, but there was well more logo ideas than layout ideas. I'm saying that we need more ideas from differnt people than just four of us, as designs start to take after each other and look the same or end up like what we don't need.

I might be jumping in the deep end here, but we will have to wait for basically project requirements first, so we need what you need and want for the visual side of this PSpong site.

[I just want this to get a move on and get rolling agian ]

*Wonders off with ideas*

Chris C

DS: I think it would be best if we kept the graphic design part on hold for the moment. What we need is a non-GD thumbnailing solution (InI, butcher, etc. has anyone tested a solution yet?) until we get things on the code side up and running the look of the site will be up for tweaking and change so you'd only be having to redo your work. However, your offer will be kept in mind!!

So the current hurdle is the thumbnailing - ideas?

Emps

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

InI: Well OK its your call.

Anyone else? As far as I understood netpbm didn't need to be 'installed' we just need to upload the binaries and point the script to them - or have I misunderstood this?

Emps

Your correct Emps

The netPBM binaries just need to be uploaded and the paths in the script pointed at them. The script I posted in this thread doesn't even need the whole netpbm package (which is up around 200 or so programs), it just needs the 6 listed at the top of the code.

That said, Pugzly may have had other good reasons not to put netPBM on his servers. I've not looked into them at all from an admin standpoint. There may be issues from that side that I have no idea about.

-Butcher-

[This message has been edited by butcher (edited 04-10-2002).]

[This message has been edited by butcher (edited 04-11-2002).]

butcher: Thanks for clarifying matters. I can't see why there should be a problem but Pugzly knows best!! Have you used this script a lot?

Pugzly: Would it be OK to upload those 6 programs or is there a problem with it?

Emps

Emperor

I have just worked it out recently, but it has had a decent amount of testing in a few different configurations. I used it in conjunction with an upload script so it makes the thumbnail on upload and puts it in whatever directory you want. I've also written a script that searches the directory it's in and makes thumbnails of any image (.gif .jpeg) files that it finds when the page is called.

I don't know exactly how you plan on using it, but I haven't had any problems in testing.

-Butcher-

[This message has been edited by butcher (edited 04-11-2002).]

Emp/Buther/Ini -

uploading those files is fine. We just can't change the apache/PHP/MySQL configurations.

Hope this makes sense.

I appologize for not getting to these issue faster. Since 9/11, I've been extremely busy training staff, 2 police academies, and in-service at other agencies. I see some time after Memorial day.....

butcher: Thanks for that - it sounds very promising - any downsides? It might be helpful if you dropped in the upload/thumbnail script as they clearly work well together.

Pugzly: Cheers - I thought it best to check first.

TP: As it is all your script do you want to slot this in? I whichever version of the code you sent me last but it would stand less chance of ebing broken if you did it!! However, I also believe you are pretty busy so its your call.

Thanks for that - things are slowly moving again!!!

Emps

well, Emp, I could do it, but not starting before second next week.
Next week is *the* week till thursday, followed by a happy weekend of being drunk.
so nothing till second next monday... :-)

TP: We've waited this long and I have no problem wiating for your exams and subsequent hangover to be out of the way - good luck. If anyone is really champing (sp?) at the bit then it should be possible to get them the code and they can work at integrating the netpbm script otherwise I'll do a little housework moving the relevant bits of netpbm into place and putting up the HTML skeleton (TP I'll email you when that is done). Things should then be in a position to start moving forward quickly!!

Emps

Just to touch base,(I heard my name) I sort of stopped stopping by a while back. I posted some layout sugestions, and they didn`t get posted with the others, so I assumed I was * out of the running*. I`m still around, if/when you need me for something.

db: Cheers - everything is noted down for when we may need to call on people's help.

Emps

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.