Four Island

Finally. It's finally here. The new Four Island....

Well everyone, I hope you enjoy the new Four Island! It was quite a lot of work to put together! How about I start by enumerating the new features?

The blog has many new Wordpress-esque features even though it isn't Wordpress. I've written a Related Posts module that searches for other posts that could possibly be related and shows you the top 5. There's a Popular Posts module that gives each post a Popularity score that can be increased by reading it, commenting on it, and most importantly, giving it pingbacks.<!--more-->

Speaking of Pingbacks, yes! The Pingback support is finally here! And, peoples, just to test out this newfound Pingback support, I would appreciate it if someone Pingbacked this post. You know, add a link to this post in a post on your blog. Thanks in advance to anyone who does this!

Another great new feature. Anonymous commenting has finally been re-enabled! But, rather like Wordpress, you must have your comment moderated before it can appear. But after you've had one comment moderated, any others using your same Anonymous Username and Email will automatically appear.

The Popular Posts module has also added a Thumbs-Up Thumbs-Down method of rating a post. This way, you can support the post without writing a comment. However, a post won't get as many popularity points from rating than commenting, and it is possible to negatively rate a post.

One of my favorite new features (though I don't quite know why) is the usage of slugs. No you lollipop licker, I'm not talking about slimy little molluscs, I'm talking about the method of writing pathnames. Let me elaborate. If I had a blog post called.... say.... "The New Four Island". The equivalent slug would be "the-new-four-island". And thus, it's path would be: "http://www.fourisland.com/blog/the-new-four-island/". It's a newer (and better) method of naming paths than URLEncoding them as the old Four Island did.

That gets me onto the Wiki. The Wiki system has been completely rewritten. And guess what, it uses slugs as well. It also has Page History support so if there are bad people doing bad things, an admin can go look at the past and revert.

Also, while I've written the new Wiki, I haven't moved the old Wiki to the new Wiki. I'd like some people to help me do so. I'll release a link to the new Wiki in a couple of posts, kay?

Fourm time. Well, the Fourm is muchly the same as ever, but due to being included in a strange fashion, the Fourm has a couple of bugs now that I'd like to resolve. First of all, when logging in, registering or searching, the page looks really hideous and has other information at the bottom. Another thing, clicking on the "Fourm" button at the top logs you out. Please stand by these errors while I try to resolve them, kay?

The Poll is pretty much the same, except for the new rendering model that has gripped nearly all of Four Island. Using the beautiful CSS-Bubbles located at http://www.willmayo.com/2007/02/10/css-speech-bubbles/ (hey look, I've sent a Pingback!), I've redesigned most of Four Island to include them. Just look at the RightBar, the blog, the blog comments, the Poll Archive. They look prettyful, and you know it.

The Quotes DB has been completely re-written so that it isn't Rash anymore, now it's completely my own code. Also, I've added a convenience method. If you are logged in while contributing a quote, you don't have to get it moderated.

Something you may have noticed. Look at the date if you haven't. Anyways, if you are superstitious, you may be thinking "What's Hatkirby doing, releasing the new Four Island on Friday the 13th?" Well, to answer that, for some reason Friday the 13ths have normally actually been more lucky for me than unlucky. Strange, but true.

Goodness, this has been a loooooong post. Well, anyways, I hope you enjoy the new Four Island! I'm so excited for it, and besides, it was a whole ton of work completely re-writing Four Island!

EDIT: Wow, it turns out that all of the problems with the Fourm have been resolved before I'd even had the chance to examine them. I think that they probably had something to do with the test subdomain I was using to test the new Four Island.

A few days ago (my birthday, as a matter of fact), I wrote some blogging software for Smiley. He's using it for his website The S Site. But that got me thinking.... If I'm going to be writing projects and codes and stuffs, why not write a PHP blogging system for other peoples to use? I don't want to release Four Island's blogging software, that's MINE. But, SimpleBlog I can.

When the new Four Island's done, I'm going to start a new project called SimpleBlog, which will be the blogging software that Smiley is currently using. But I'm going to have to enhance it. Trust me, just ask Smiley about the Admin Panel. 8D

EDIT: This project has been created. It's called simpleblog.

I have a short question post here: What is Slashdot? More importantly, what's so good about it? People apparently flock to it like flies to a supernova, but I can't see what's so good about it. If anyone could elaborate, I'd be much gratified.

There's my short question post. I may have more of these in the future. If you know the answer, comment. If you don't have an account, post on the Fourm or email me.

About that. On the new Four Island, I'm writing a moderation module that allows you to comment even if you aren't logged in, but if you aren't, the comment has to pass through moderation.

Speaking of the new Four Island, I have an update on it's production. Sorry, it defiantly won't be out until at least Friday. I finished the Wiki yesterday, but today I have some work I need to do, and even if I do the entire Admin Panel tomorrow, I won't be able to release it until the next day. Sorry about that.

Also, while I'm asking questions, here's a second one: When the poop is the Internet Archive going to archive me?

First of all, I apologize. This post was released at 12:30 as usual, but a glitch in the cronjob replaced the post's content with "S". The reason the cronjob was different from usual is that it has been modified to use the new Four Island's post adding functionality as to allow the posts to be compatible with the new Four Island.

Some more info about the new Four Island! First of all, it's nearly out! I just need to finish the Wiki and do the Admin Panel and then it's done! In fact, if I'm super productive, I may even finish today! Wow!

Also, the new Four Island's blog will support Pingbacks. This is exciting. If you don't know what Pingbacks are, well, here's a short explanation:

Suppose that there are two blogs: Alice's blog and Bob's blog. Alice posts a link to one of Bob's blog posts on her blog. Because of this, Alice's blog then sends a "pingback" to Bob's blog notifying his blog that Alice has posted a link to him. When Bob's blog recieves this Pingback, it posts a comment on the post in question saying that Alice has linked to him.

Pingback will be very useful as Gryphic seems to have a fun tendency to post replies to my blog on her blog. I ask one thing, though. Peoples (that includes you, Gryphic), if you wish to post a reply to one of my blog posts on your blog or reference it in some way, please include a link to the post of mine that you are referencing so that I can recieve a Pingback. Thanks!

After seeing some people be VERY annoying on our Yaplet channel, I've decided to write up a list of behaviorial rules because sometimes people just start..... fizzles away<!--more-->

1. DON'T impersonate people! It's lying, confuses people and can get you into trouble! For instance, see what happened after bro01 pretended to be tamasys at #117.
2. DON'T NPC unless you're being useful! Senseless NPCing confuses new users who don't understand NPC! It makes them think a new user is online! So, as a collary of this rule, DON'T change your name!
3. DON'T stream numbers!

5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 .... 9 8 7 6 5 4 4 4 4 4 4

Timbo94

That can ACTUALLY annoy people! Who knew? 4. As an extension to the streaming numbers, DON'T endlessly repeat ANYTHING! Constant :('s that go on forever because you are Ctrl-Ving them ceaselessly can slow down Yaplet! 5. DON'T use real names! I shouldn't even have to say this. 6. DON'T talk about eggs! It's taboo! I don't know why, but when you start talking about eggs, the smell of eggs suddenly appears....

I can't think of any more right now. But please, adhere to these rules. You can seriously annoy people if you don't.

Wow. I love The Daily WTF, and looking back at some of my code, I've written some WOEs myself. (WOE = What On Earth). So, I'd like to share them. Because they're funny. Yes.

for (i=0;i<toParse.length();i++)
{
  if ((toParse.substr(i, 1) != " ") && (toParse.substr(i, 1) != "4") && (toParse.substr(i, 1) != "\n"))
  {
    cout << endl << endl << "ERROR: Unrecognized character in line " << lineNum << ":" << endl;
    cout << "\t" << curline;
    endProgram();
  }
}
int j = 0;
i = 0;
if (toParse.length() > 0)
{
  while (toParse.length() != 0)
  {
    if ((toParse.substr(i, 1) == " ") || (toParse.substr(i, 1) == "\n"))
    {
      if (i == 0)
      {
        toParse = toParse.substr(1);
        i = -1;
      } else {
        string2int((char*)toParse.substr(0, i).c_str(),paras[j]);
        j++;
        toParse = toParse.substr(i + 1);
        i = -1;
      }
    }
    i++;
  }

If you haven't gotten it yet, here's the explanation. The program first verifies that the string toParse does not contain any non-4s, non-dashes and non-spaces. Then it examines each character and if it is not a dash or a space, it converts the character from an integer to a string. This is absolutely ridiculous as the only value that character could be at that point would be a 4.

This WOE has been taken from lines 43-72 of singlefour.cpp of the singlefour project. This code was introduced in revision 7 and fixed in revision 26.

It's PARADOX TIEM! RUN! GAH! Sorry, but seriously, who voted NO on this weeks poll?

Yes - 6 vote(s)! No - 1 vote(s)! Huh? - 2 vote(s)! Don't care - 0 vote(s)!

In other news, you may have guessed that today's my birthday! YAYZ! Also, the weirdest thing happened this morning. (No, not as weird as the personality swap) When I woke up, I looked at the clock and it was 4:44. StRaNgE.

Well, once again, I'm hosting another site. This time, it's a blog for Timbo94! It's called Dream Weaver and he's already populating it with interesting posts! Find it at http://timbo94.fourisland.com! It's also on the Four Island Links page!

In other news, the new Four Island is doing great! The quotes db has been completely re-written, and I've now decided that, if you are logged in while posting a quote, you don't have to get it verified. You only have to get it verified if you're anonymous.

No, you haven't lost your mind again. I have changed my username. Again.

I just felt as if Starla was too common, I mean, I really liked the name, but too many other people on the Internet used the same name, so it wouldn't be unique.

I've come up with StarlaXY as an alternative as it's unused and actually makes logical sense (though I won't tell you why, and be quiet Tamasys, you're lucky I told you), but I don't think it's cute enough.

So please leave comments on what you think. I'd like help on this because I don't want to always be changing my username. I may even decide to go back to Hatkirby. Please tell me what you think.

NOTE: The Login button is still in existance, it's just invisible. Sorry. That's fixed in the new Four Island. For the time being, it's located next to the "Links" button on the NavBar.

[ #30 + (8) - [X] ](/quotes/30.php)

....We've got a new QOTM. And guess what, it's the (in)famous #30! Click on the link for the full details.

Also, the new Four Island is doing great! I won't reveal much, but I'd like to give you a tiny hint: CSS Speech Bubbles | willmayo.com