[Tohopekaliga]

Hey there, Trispheeites! (Trisphites? Trispheeans? Trisphee-goers? Delightful conveyors of thought?)

Something I realized recently: I don't talk enough about what I'm doing. (Nor do I do enough, really, but that's another matter.) There's a multitude of things that Trisphee needs, and I'm slowly getting to what I can do, but it can take a while.

Therefore, I've decided to start posting "Dev Diaries", like Paradox does with their games, but less detailed...because I'm not a huge team of programmers making stuff, I'm just one guy getting to things when I can. But I'll still give you at least weekly updates of current projects from me.

Not everything will be revealed, of course, wanna keep some stuff under wraps, but there's always something I can show!



This week, for my inaugural run of doing this every week, I want to tell you about a new front page in development!

Trisphee's front page has looked entirely unchanged for years. Nothing different about it. And further, it's not really that informative, is it? Not a place to go to check on things, or even a particularly good landing page.

Well! No longer! The front page will have much more information very soon: News articles from Trisphee Times, some splash images for major stories, random shop item features, random user avatar features, recent new posts! Lots to see.

Now, I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it again in the future...but I am not a graphics designer. I can look at a design and determine what's good and bad about it, but I'm not so good at making one from scratch. I'm currently working with Coda for some nice visuals, and, in fact, that's all that remains before I can roll this out.

As a part of this work, lately I have written new code for collecting data into one unified screen (the front page), and a new image uploader for staff (the existing image uploaders are very specific about what they do...items, mostly).

Here is screenshot of what the front page looks like right now, in all its visually-incomplete-but-functional glory.

!!THIS IS WIP APPEARANCE, AND IN NO WAY COMPLETE!!

Also this week, I happened to notice some issues with how our emails were being rendered, so if you've been getting some jumbled up emails from Trisphee in recent times...that should be resolved now. Much nicer.


In the next week, I am hoping to have the front page finished up, and then I'll begin work on an adjustment to the shops. Specifically, Archaic Antiquities will group items by 'sets,' Monthlies, Seasonals, etc. That'll make it clearer what sort of thing it is you're getting or looking for, and pave the way to being able to provide old, impossible-to-acquire DIs in a nice fashion.

That particular update will not be done in a week, but it's my next planned work.




Do feel free to comment on what I'm doing, and what you think I should be doing. :)