Introducing the main site

[Iggy]

I was doubting for a while whether or not I should be talking about this. Since I already posted 2 screenshots elsewhere on this board I might as well post it as a new thread for feedback. Webdesigning and since a shorter term PHP programming is a big hobby of my, the former I've been doing for years. Since my collections (especially Duke Nukem related items) cover many different and very interesting items I came up with the idea of designing a website that could show these items to the world in proper fashion.  The collections it will cover are;

1. Anime movies and series
2. Figures and statues
3. Games
4. Movies and series
5. Music records
6. All the misc stuff (I dubbed it "Obscure objects")

At the moment there's a "coming soon" page up, current development takes places in a secure test and develop environment. The site is fully written in PHP/XHTML and CSS with MySQL as database. Many hours have I spend designing the site and even more have I so far spend in building it. The site is not done by far but what is already there is, to my standards, quite impressive. I keep learning more about PHP and SQL and by trail and error I expand and enhance the site to the point where it actually meets my wishes.

I have currently these sections planned for the site;

1. My collections (as mentioned above)
2. Blog (where I rant, I mean talk about stuff related to my collections.)
3. News (speaks for itself)
4. For sale (shows the things I have for sale)
5. Wanted (shows the items I'm after).

The frontside part of the Blog and News section are done, my current focus is the collections part (the biggest job). When the public part of the site is done I will commence work on the custom admin panel I will create from where the site will be managed. For logical reasons I won't be posting anything about that.

Example screenshots of the current build;


Screenshots show current status and may (read: will) change in the future.

Feedback and/or questions is very much welcome!

[Nacho]

So far it looks like it will be well organized with some detailed content for each item. Really, it looks great. I've been waiting for you to get this thing up for some time now!

[Iggy]

Thanks, it will take a while before the site itself is done. Then the job of filling it with content will take just as long. For example, I have almost 400 music records, of each I want to show the track list as well as 2 to 3 photos showing the cd case with the cd and booklet. For my 415 games I currently have I have detailed photos of the most interesting ones but in the end all of them will have photos. This just to demonstrate why it takes a while. Besides having to deal with technical difficulties and experimenting with PHP/MySQL.

Green text you see are internal links and open another page of the site in the same window/tab. Purple links are external links and will open in a new window/tab.

Oh, one comic element = At the top of each page is a random quote shown that came from a movie, game or anything else that's related to my collections. There are about 60 quotes in it so far but there can never be enough of them!

The "Testbar menu" is clearly for development purposes of course.

[Remmke]

Looks awesome, also looks like it is a lot of work to put up your entire collection on there :p.

[Iggy]

Status update = 5 out 6 collections have been completed for the public part. The music record collection was difficult to get right because of the complicated SQL queries required to retrieve the proper data. Now onto collection 6, which contains miscellaneous items that are more or less connected to other collections, such as the DNF Steroid bottle from PAX or Shadow Warrior t-shirts and my Duke Nukem posters. Stuff like that will be shown there.

After collection 6 comes the search filters for each collection, you can use them to find stuff easier. It's basically a pre-mature version of a search function. I might put the "Wanted" and "For sale" sections on hold until after the site's launch so I can focus on the admin panel part quicker. After that's done I need to insert all of the data for all collections. Which will take me a bloody while.

[Iggy]

*le bumpe*

Designed a new home page and I think it's done;



Looks better.

[Remmke]

Absolutely marvelous.   

LOL @ Behold the damnation of Iggy's money.. so true.

[macwiczech]

It looks interesting and quite looking forward to it! I've long had a plan to create a Czech site about "buildgames", but programming has never been my forte...  but I'll see over time...

[Tseki]

I'm eager to see the final product =) Keep up the good work.

[Iggy]

After I wrote that review about Painkiller Resurrection (which is an awful game, btw) I thought it would be cool to have a review section added to the site where I can post my reviews. However, in order to correctly implement this into the site there is only one way to do it and that's scrapping the entire database lay-out and design a new one. That sounds a bit drastic, and therefore a job I hate, but it's necessary in order to get it implemented in the best way. To explain what I mean it's best that I use examples;

- You view a page with a collection item and scroll down that page to see what news-, blogmessage or reviews are mentioning that title.
- You read a newspost about a game and at the bottom of that post are links to items in my collections that match the game being discussed so you can immediately check what items I have about that game.

This is an example of parts of websites that are more linked to each other instead of being sections on their own without any interlinking. This does require a great change of how the tables are.

I think I'll go back to the drawing table to get this implemented the right way but it's surely gonna be the last time.

edit;
Just thought of something else, damn, I really gotta redesign the entire database. I'm gonna do it much more simple. I don't really have to do this but I have a natural urge to make everything as perfect as I can. The slogan of car maker Lexus "The pursuit of perfection" could have been my motto.

[Iggy]

Status update = Public parts of the Quotes, Blog and News sections are complete, the Admin part is done except for some fiddling with JavaScript I need to sort out. After solving that it's testing with different browsers to insure compatibility. Should go live not too far into the future. The collection section will take up a lot of time, filling the database with the content I want will take the most time.

[Doctalen]

Really would like to see a Cinema section ya. An hey Iggy I remember you from the DNF forums.

[MrBlackCat]

Hey Iggy... had any time to work on your site lately?
Just curious.

MrBlackCat

[Iggy]

Actually, yes. I picked up development after some downtime. Currently bitching with the filter function of PHP. I could put the blog and news part online already but I won't do that until those parts are absolutely 100% finished.

[MrBlackCat]

Actually, yes. I picked up development after some downtime. Currently bitching with the filter function of PHP. I could put the blog and news part online already but I won't do that until those parts are absolutely 100% finished.

Cool... I want to see what you come up with.
My old game site was 100% HTML and looked like an 8bit arcade game... hehehe.
It served its purpose though... 200 pages through a 28.8 modem.  I kept the images small as I could.
Good luck!

MrBlackCat