Main site redone

[Firestorm ZERO]

Been working on the main site (http://www.zero-type.com/) for the past few months and a pre-alpha is now up so have a look. Nothing much to see though as most of the work is in the backend. I learned PHP (which is what it uses) during my free-time and database design was not my forte when I graduated college. So there is bound to be bugs when I eventually open it up to the public.

Decided to focus on art books first. The "collection" system is currently being worked on which will allow you to track your stuff, etc. After that is the "gallery" system. But as I only work on this during the weekends, it will take a while T_T. Plus the fact, I am not a web programming guru. Design-wise I am only focusing on modern browsers so IE will get a less fancy look until IE9 comes out. I use a lot of CSS2 and upcoming CSS3 features so let me know if the rendering is slow.

If you have comments, criticism, design or ideas, feel free to post in the Site Discussion forum or send me a PM. I'm open to all ideas. I will be most likely posting some questions there in the coming days for your opinions .

[Slaigar]

I'm really liking it, FSZ. The database looks clean and easy to browse.

One Q: Will we be using our same ZeroType Forums account when logging into the main site database?

[MrDisco]

i love the idea of a collection db for users. is it going to be free form (i.e. i enter my own titles, author, circle) or will it be structured/uniform?

i'll toss some ideas in the feedback forum.

[Firestorm ZERO]

@Slaigar
I'll try to get it connect to phpBB but I have to research on it.

@MrDisco
I ideally will want users to contribute and add items that they own. So say a new art book comes out. A user will put like title. If the artist is not in the list of artists, he will have the ability add it.

Currently I will focus on art books because I have yet to see an art book collection system site. (If there is one, let me know as I like to see how it is).

[Onegai]

I ideally will want users to contribute and add items that they own. So say a new art book comes out. A user will put like title. If the artist is not in the list of artists, he will have the ability add it.

That's good!

[nat]

Wow, that's really cool! I like the style of the database entries, it's really clean and organized looking. As for another artbook/doujinshi collection system, there's http://doujinshi.mugimugi.org/ which mainly focuses on doujins, but does have some art books. They also have a bot that basically adds the new entries from Toranoana so it's always quite up to date. But they do all kinds of doujins, not just the art/illustration focused ones.

Sounds like it'll be really useful!

[Firestorm ZERO]

Yeah I been looking at other collection systems. If you know any other specific ones, post it in the site discussions. I like to see how they handle the stuff.

I don't know if mugimugi is parsing the pages to get the data. Is there a RSS feed in Toranoana? For figures, Hobby Search has a RSS feed I can use. As for art books, I don't know of a site specialized in it.

[asgard]

Not too sure whats happening with this, but would love to see a nifty functionality that allows us to make artbook "walls/montages" of all the artbooks we own. Even if it's a single picture snap shot.

Or, something similar to what LibraryThing has which is a widget that we can embed on our sites that refreshes with a new list of artbooks (with images) that we own, that are clickable to more info about the artbook with the ability to set up affiliate links to places like Amazon JP.

Have a look at my domain, bottom right to see what I mean.

[Firestorm ZERO]

The site is still being worked on but yes the suggestions you made are one of the "features" that is planned. But since I am only able to work on this during my free time ;_; it is taking longer than expected. Another set back is that the site is being converted to a new framework (but will hopefully speed up on development a lot).

I don't like to show off what I have right now because I think it will lose it flair lol. But I will guarantee it will be great

[MrDisco]

sounds intriguing..

ooh Quick Reply. I like that.

[jkno]

Please is there a chance to modify the resizing option in the forum because it cuts off the right part of an image...