BWTF/Ben updates

[Dominic]

Been there Ben. Trust me, I sympathize completely about paying a price for the folly of my youth.

You are still young enough to bounce back though.

You know how to get in touch with me in any case.

Dom
-partyboss@fastmail.fm

[JediTricks]

Hi everybody,

Dave Van Domelen sent along this link to me so I thought I'd drop by and say "Hi". Thanks for keeping the flame of BWTF alive and I'm sorry it's taking a year and a day to get the site back up. It's a big job and I'm doing my best with it. One of the larger hurdles now is figuring out what type of server to put it on. I was on a dedicated before, but I'm not quite sure what my readership levels will be like initially and then a month later. Other than that, things are going very well with the rebuilding. I'll pop in here now and then if people want to chat about anything specific.

Howdy Ben! Nice to hear from ya! I know what you mean, choosing a server is one tough nut, I only use Dreamhost here for my little personal stuff, work stuff needs more. But then again, I like that server management isn't my responsibility here, I can come and go pretty easily. Of course, since you have FTP access, you could pretty easily transfer all the hard files directly from server to server if you go with Dreamhost now and then move up to a dedicated later, leaving only any scripts to deal with (and even that you can put in a clean version of the script on the new server and then transfer the backup file server-to-server). Glad to hear things are going well with rebuilding BWTF, I can't wait to see the new site.

Hey ben, been worried about you. How did those medical procedures go?

Fortunately it was nothing life threatening (in the short term), but everything seems to be better now (the price of getting older). Sadly I did not take very good care of my health the last 20 or so years of my life, so now I'm furiously making up for lost time and effort.

Ah, so you're in the same boat as nearly all of us in that regard, welcome to the club. Glad to hear your medical stuff has worked out well.

Just to touch upon another reason the updates are taking so long. When I was with figures.com, they had a lot of ad code inserted into my pages. As you may recall, my pages were all individual shtml pages, not in a db. That means I have to strip all that code out manually. While automated text find and replace has taken care of some of the code, some of the older code was varied and thus difficult to have a program track down. This and of course, sheer volume are the biggest hurdles for me to cross right now. I do appreciate everyone's patience.

That sucks about pulling out ad code. There should be a few common denominators though, mostly from the Action Online adserver URLs, you may want to try searching for just that, then going in and ripping it out. I was going to suggest using Text Exchange, it can take care of find-replace work in a batch, you can replace a line or a block of code in EVERY file in a folder at once, but the prog appears to have fallen off the face of the web. I'll look for another one like that, or I can email you a copy of it as it's freeware (it's dinky, 263k for the actual program).

Best of luck! And love the new username!

[onslaught86]

Heh! Go the username.

Good to hear things are shaping up, Ben, we all crash and burn every so often. I'm currently struggling to keep track of work, my budget life, and four forums, and it's a bit of a stretch. I've thoroughly missed BWTF for pics and reference quite often of late, always been a great resource. Thanks much for the link, too, be good to have more of the crew lurking around here. Ahh, so many memories, it's fantastic that this crowd has stuck together through the years..

[Dominic]

Throough the yeeeearrrrs.....the sweetest days I have found, have found have found....throoooooooough the years......

Dom
-needed to say that.

[Misanthrope Prime]

Ben, remember, as your ravenous fans and, perhaps even friends, we'd all be more than willing to help you make your new website.

[Bumbleyee]

That sucks about pulling out ad code. There should be a few common denominators though, mostly from the Action Online adserver URLs, you may want to try searching for just that, then going in and ripping it out. I was going to suggest using Text Exchange, it can take care of find-replace work in a batch, you can replace a line or a block of code in EVERY file in a folder at once, but the prog appears to have fallen off the face of the web. I'll look for another one like that, or I can email you a copy of it as it's freeware (it's dinky, 263k for the actual program).

Best of luck! And love the new username!

Heh, my coworkers started calling me that last year so I figured the UN wouldn't be taken.

The problem with the ad code is that the actual advertisers varied a lot, and they wouldn't just put their actual URL's, but also a ton of date specific code. So somewhere in the string would be "=" signs and then stuff like 20051009 to indicate a date. It's super messy.

The other thing I have to do is try to slowly recover the gallery. My backups are incomplete apparently (which irks me because I thought I had it all) so a good portion of the gallery may have to get recreated. In retrospect, that may not be a horrible thing, but I feel bad not providing the resource up front. Still, it will come in time.

[Starath]

Hooray, Sir Ben lives! *glomp* Good to hear from you and I'm glad you're doing well. I eagerly await BWTF's resurrection!

I don't know much about building up a website, but I have a few thoughts. Your toy gallery is a wonderful resource, especially when I've gotten a loose TF and I have no idea who they are. Is there any way you could have a "search by name" thing? Previously, to find somebody, you had to know which series they're from. That works if a searcher is educated in the ways of TF toy series', but not for the layman (sp?).

As for your audience, I'm sure things will slowly build back up. There are all kinds of new TF fans now due to the 2007 movie and Animated. They'll find you, just like the old audience. There might be ways to appeal to new TF-fans, but I dunno how up-to-date you are with the toys and whatnot cuz of life situations.

[Dominic]

Starath is right about this. I have seen terribly designed "search by line" pages that are more trouble than they are worth to use.

Dom

[Bumbleyee]

The CMS that I am using for the new BWTF has a built in search function. That will be launched with the initial release. In time, I plan on slowly updating pages with an additional module that allows for a type of "tagging" of pages. For instance, I could categorize toys by say, what they transform into. The initial launch will be fairly raw, with several things to add in over time of course.

[JediTricks]

The problem with the ad code is that the actual advertisers varied a lot, and they wouldn't just put their actual URL's, but also a ton of date specific code. So somewhere in the string would be "=" signs and then stuff like 20051009 to indicate a date. It's super messy.

Ah yes, I know what you mean, and it all has to be rooted out. I'm so lazy that I'd probably find their common code elements (source URLs) and convert them into comment-out HTML: <!-- anything here is commented out --> How many pages are you looking at?

The other thing I have to do is try to slowly recover the gallery. My backups are incomplete apparently (which irks me because I thought I had it all) so a good portion of the gallery may have to get recreated. In retrospect, that may not be a horrible thing, but I feel bad not providing the resource up front. Still, it will come in time.

That sucks. Are you talking the folders which held your review images, or the photopost gallery? Might they still exist on Action Online's server? Of course, going fresh instead of relying on those old gifs you used to have up for the early stuff may not be such a bad idea, but the amount of work would be a beast.

The CMS that I am using for the new BWTF has a built in search function. That will be launched with the initial release. In time, I plan on slowly updating pages with an additional module that allows for a type of "tagging" of pages. For instance, I could categorize toys by say, what they transform into. The initial launch will be fairly raw, with several things to add in over time of course.

Good idea on the tags. Are you using Joomla though? Just a quick note, Joomla is a resource-hog.