Creating a Social Network

My new project is to create a social network. I didn’t want to spend alot of money, but I still wanted the site to look good. Those are usually the obvious goals  :)
I wrote down all of the things that I would want in my Social Network and then I began researching the most user friendly and inexpensive routes to take.

Ten things I felt were necessary in a Social Network:
(1) Member Profiles (2) Walls (3) Messaging (4) Notifications (5) Member Chat (6) Member Photos (7) Ability to add friends (8) Forums (9) Classifieds Section (10) Capable of listing all site activity on the front page.

Social Networking Platforms

There are so many to choose from… Dolphin, Ning, Elgg, phpfox, Open Source Platforms, White label hosted platforms, downloadable scripts, there were some that cost hundreds, while others were free. It really is a debatable topic as to which is the best to use, but since I wanted ‘inexpensive’, I crossed out most of them right at the start. Basically I wanted an Open Source Platform, and the top two in my opinion seemed to be Elgg and Buddypress (I did keep Ning in my sites [temporarily] even though it was not open source).

Ning

Ning was pretty cool, it was easy to setup, and they host everything. They keep their name in the url, but you can pay a monthly fee to have it (and their brand) removed from your site completely. One issue I saw with ning is that most ning sites look exactly alike; There is not much room for customization and uniqueness.

Also, a major problem with them hosting your site is that you would always be under them: If their site shuts down, then yours does. If something happens to NING, then you lose your content. If they create rules out of thin air, then you have to obey them or leave, And that’s exactly what seems to be going on right now. I just found out that NING is now charging a monthy hosting fee. So people with established ning networks have to suddenly pay a monthly fee or terminate their network.

Elgg

Initially, when I first set up my test Elgg site, I didn’t like it because it seemed like I couldn’t get what I wanted out of it. I closed it down and moved on. But after finishing my Buddypress site, I went back to Elgg for another look and to get a better feel for it. So now I like it. lol. I still didn’t get to devote too much time to it, but it definately seems like something I will be interested in experimenting with in the future. It seemed to move more smoothly than Buddypress, but I can tell it would involve alot more tweaking time to set up an acceptable social network. But it just may be worth it.

Buddypress

This is the platform I chose to set up my social network with. Buddypress is actually a plugin for Wordpress that allows you to convert your wordpress site into a very customizable social network. It’s Open Source and Free! It has messaging, activity streams, friends, forums, etc and you can build onto it by using other wordpress plugins. It was easy and straight forward to get buddypress installed and running. This is the one I decided to go with for my social network and the rest of this post will be about Buddypress.

Setting up a Social Network

Hosting

I’m going to assume you already have a domain name and hosting. If not, I recommend LunarPages – I’ve been using them for years and only have good things to say about their support. I’m on their shared hosting, but will most likely upgrade to virtual server if my social network is successful. If you plan to use a different host, here are some critical things to make sure your host has (in order to run a buddypress Social Network):  

• Access to the htaccess file
• The mod rewrite Apache module
• php 4.3 or greater
• MySQL 4.1.2 or greater

Create Database and User

First, login to cPanel and create a MySQL database and user. The user needs all privileges. Write down the database name, user name, and password.

Wordpress

Visit Wordpress.org and download the latest wordpress version. They have a 5 minute install guide that you can view HERE. Extract the files; Rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php; Open wp-config.php and fill in your database details; Upload the files to your server (I use the free FileZilla as my FTP program); Run the installer by accessing /wp-admin/install.php. Follow the instructions and choose ’sub-directories’ unless your host allows wild cards. Then log into your new Wordpress site using the info that was emailed to you (admin and password).

Once logged in, there are a few basic things to do (I did them, but its up to you of course):
  - Admin | Settings | Permalinks | and change it to: /%postname%/
  – Admin | Settings | Discussion | Check the following boxes:
                         “User Must Be Registered & Signed in to Comment”
                         “Enabled Threaded”
  – Then Uncheck: “Comment Author Must Have Previously Approved Comment”

Skip the BBPress Install because BuddyPress makes it an automated process now (So ignore all in blue).

Buddypress

Download the BuddyPress plugin from HERE. Extract and upload the files to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder. Then goto ADMIN | PLUGINS | and activate BuddyPress. FYI – Wordpress uses themes to customize the layout of your site, but once you install BuddyPress, you will only be able to use a BuddyPress theme for the main site theme (all other members can use regular wordpress themes for their blogs). Therefore, activate the default BuddyPress theme (until you search & find a better one). Now go to Forums Setup and select ‘Create New’ to setup forums (Even if you don’t plan on using them yet). Then go to: Site Admin | Options,  and enable registration so that visitors can create an account with your site.

That’s it! That’s the basics to setting up your Social Network using BuddyPress. You will need to go through all of the options and set them up according to your needs. And YES,  your site will look extremely plain and boring using the default BuddyPress theme, so if you are ‘really’ serious about your new social network, then search online for a nice quality theme. My next post will be about customizing a BuddyPress social network site to make it look nice. 

To the left is a snapshot of my first BuddyPress Social Network site. I ride motorcycles and am also a member in a club, so I created a social network for motorcycle riders: You Ride I Ride.com.

If you’re using Google Analytics to track visitor statistics to your website, then you will NOT want to include your own visits in the reports. And if you have a dynamic IP address, then using the filter to exclude your IP only works temporarily since your IP can change without warning.

That’s what I’ve been doing: Using Google Analytic filters to exclude my IP, but it seemed to change every 3 or 4 months so I had to check my IP every now and then to make sure it was still the same. Annoying, and with my bad memory I rarely caught it in time.

So today I searched for an alternative method. I found three contenders.

• 1. AdBlock Plus addon for firefox.
• 2. Javascript code to enter into the url once you’re on your site.
• 3. Using an html page to create a cookie on your computer.

ADBlock Plus Addon for FireFox
Initially I was going to go with this one because it was as easy as installing a plugin for firefox. Supposedly you could download subscriptions that would block google analytics from counting your visit. However after researching it more, I found that some of the subscriptions have caused page errors, and many have even taken out the google analytics lines because of the errors. There seemed to be an issue directly related to the google lines. I really didn’t want to use seperate browsers whenever going to my sites anyway, so I wasted no more time and moved on…

Javascript Code
This is a pretty good method. You basically visit your site, and then replace the url with some javascript that would create a cookie on your system. Then you login to google analytics and add a filter to your site profile excluding any computer containing that cookie. If you’re interested in this method, I found it HERE.

Using an HTML Page to Create a Cookie
The last method and the one I chose involves adding an html file to your site. You then visit the file on your site and enter a name for the cookie to be downloaded. Then login to google analytics and create an exclude filter; Enter the name of the cookie you just created into the “filter pattern” field, and you are all set. This and the Javascript method are pretty much the same, just with different ways to get the cookie onto your computer. If you are interested in this method, you can read more about it and get the source code from the original Count Me Out Article.

Creating a Blog Site

In this post, I’m going to explain in detail how to set up a blog site from scratch. Lately, I’ve had a few of my friends asking how to set up blogs, so now I can just direct them here.

Remotely Hosted or Self Hosted

First you have to decide if you want to host your blog yourself, or use a blogging network site to host it. I recommend hosting it yourself for various reasons. Think of it as renting a home (remotely hosted) verses owning a home (self hosted). If you remotely host your blog, then your files and content are located on the blog platforms server. If they decide to shut your page down, then you lose all of your content. Also, on a remotely hosted blog, your domain name will be prepended to theirs, i.e., “myblog.wordpress.com” instead of “myblog.com” (as on a self hosted blog). Any page rank would just be given to the blog platform instead of your site, and you can not monetize a remotely hosted blog. Most importantly a self hosted blog will allow you to have complete control over every aspect of your blog and site. If you still would rather use a remotely hosted blogging platform instead, then I recommend wordpress.com. However, if you are going to host it yourself, then lets move on to the next section.

Domain Name and Hosting

The Domain Name is your unique URL (i.e., myblog.com), and hosting provides a home for your URL on the web. All of your files that make up a website are located on the host, and your domain name is just pointed at it so that your website is displayed when someone enters your url.

You need to find a catchy domain name (i.e., myblog.com etc). Go to NetworkSolutions.com and enter a few of your domain name ideas. That site will let you know if your choices are available or not. Don’t register with them though because most hosting plans come with one free domain registration anyway. I use and recommend Lunar Pages for hosting, but go out and research hosting companies, and whichever you choose, set up your domain name and hosting before moving on to the next step.

Installing WordPress

WordPress.com is for Remotely Hosted Blogs, whereas WordPress.org is where you go to download a copy of the latest WordPress software for Self Hosted Blogs. Did I mention that I recommend WordPress for self hosted blogs? lol Only the best. If you used Lunar Pages, then you can avoid a lot of stress by automating the WordPress install: sign into the CPanel (of Lunar Pages) and click on Fantastico. There you will see a link to install WordPress. Once installed, make sure you have the latest version. If it says to upgrade, then click on the upgrade link. It’s automated too.

WordPress Theme

A Theme is the look and layout of your blog. You can find free themes all over the web. For this tutorial, I’m using the Swift Theme, download it free HERE so you can follow along with me. You can change your theme later. Once downloaded, go into the Admin section of your wordpress blog, select Themes, and upload the Swift Theme.

Customizing Your Blog

SETTINGS

Admin | Settings | General | and enter your site details
Admin | Permalinks | Select “custom” and paste the following:   /%postname%/

 INSTALL THE FOLLOWING PLUGINS
There are a lot of plugins to choose from, but these are the necessities (in my opinion).

• Akismet: Activate Akismet plugin found in the plugins section.
• PHP Code widget: install this plugin. It is needed so that we can use a php block in the  widget section (to add code & even login etc).
• SI-Contact Form: (Fast & Secure Contact form). Then goto “Admin | Pages | Add New | and insert [si_contact_form=’1′]  (including the brackets).
• Google SiteMap Generator: After you have submitted posts, Go to Admin | Settings | xml sitemap | and click the link to “build for the first time”.
• All In One SEO. (#1 SEO plugin for Wordpress) Make sure to configure it.

 WIDGETS
Admin | Widgets | Drag a “php block” over into a tab and insert the following login / logout code:

<ul>
    <li><?php wp_register(); ?></li>
    <li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
</ul>

DESIGN OPTIONS
Set site colors & fonts: Admin | Swift Options | Design Options | Colors, Fonts, etc

Add Your Copyright

Admin | Appearance | Editor | Footer.php | Find where the copyright is located in the file (via search), and then edit it so that it looks like below:

<div> <p>Copyright 2010 <strong><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></strong>. Proudly powered by <a href="http://wordpress.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">WordPress</a>. <a href="http://swiftthemes.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Swift Theme</a> by Satish Gandham </p> </div><!--/copyright -->

HEADER LOGO

If you created a logo image, then add the image to the header attribute found in the style.css file.

Admin | Appearance | Editor | style.css

#header{padding:10px 0; background:#d7e5ed url('http://bipolaronmyshoulder.com/header-logo.jpg') no-repeat; height:130px;}
h2.blogname a{font-size:2em;margin-bottom:0;text-decoration:none;color:#069;display:none;}
h2.blogname {margin-bottom:0;margin:.33em 0 .4em;}
h2.blog-title{font-size:1em;line-height:1em;color:#000;padding-bottom:.5em;}

* There’s also a background header that you can change background color & leave the blog title text etc.  (Design | Background Images).

FEEDS

Burn a feed at http://feedburner.google.com | Then click on your site name | publicize | Create a chicklet | grab code and paste it in widget text box (Admin | Appearance | Widgets).

Once you have the feedburner ID, add it here: Admin | Swift Options | General | Feedburner ID

GRAVATAR

Go to www.gravatar.com and set up a gravatar for your admin user name. This will set an avatar for your comments as well as when u post on other blogs etc. (as long as you leave comments using the same email address.

SITEMAP

After you have posts up, Then go to Admin | Settings | xml sitemap | and click the link to “build for the first time”.

Then Submit your sitemaps to google, etc:

GOOGLE: Go to Google Webmaster Tools and add both versions of your site to google (www and non www); Verify them both by html upload; then set one to preferred; add your sitemap to the preferred.

Preferred domain setup: Webmaster Tools Home | [select site] | Site Configuration | Settings | Preferred Domain | (select method, then repeat for the other domain).

YAHOO: Go to siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and add your site; verify; Add your feeds (yahoo lets you add your sitemap and rss feeds to your feeds) do both like so: Submit Your feeds | Submit Site Feed.

TRACKING VISITORS

Google Analytics. Set up an account with google. Add a website profile; get the code from them and insert it into swift field where it asks for code: Admin | Swift options | General | Footer Scripts.

That’s it! Happy Blogging!

Even before I started “this” blog, I had wanted to start a blog dealing with Bipolar Disorder. I have the disorder myself, and have been keeping a journal on the struggle. I think that starting a bipolar blog would open doors and allow me access to others that have the disorder also. It’s not something that I can talk about with my family, so it could be a valuable outlet for me to open up to. I finally got around to setting it up a few days ago. I like the domain name a lot: “Bipolar on My Shoulder”, it sounds catchy and it represents the burden of Bipolar. I used the same “swift theme” as I currently use for this blog, because this to me is the most customizable theme I’ve come across. You can visit the site Here.
Below is a snapshot of the site:

Creating an SMF Theme

When I upgraded my forums from SMF 1.1.10 to 2.0 RC3, my old theme wasn’t compatible anymore. I spent about an hour browsing online looking for a new one, but I couldn’t find any that I liked, so I decided to create one myself. Below is the steps I took, just in case anyone is interested in creating their own… If you do decide to create your own, obviously you wouldn’t want to create a theme off of your live forum because you likely already have modifications, etc. on that forum. So create a new install of SMF and use that to create your new theme. You also don’t want to just start editing the current theme, it’s better to make a copy of it.

(1) Create a Copy of the Default Curve Theme.

• Go to: Admin center | Themes and Layout | Overall Forum Default | and make sure you have the Curves theme loaded.
• Now go to: Install A New Theme | Create a Copy of Default named | and enter a name for your theme.
• Click “Install”

That’s it.  Now set the new theme as your forum default by going back to: Themes and Layout | Overall Forum Default | and select your newly created theme from the drop down box.

When you look at your new theme on the server you’ll see the following:

 Yet, If you take a look at the Curve theme, you’ll see alot more files:

This is supposed to be a copy, right? Sure, and it is… One of the best things about SMF is that if a file is not within your theme’s directory, it will automatically pull it from the default directory. So instead of copying all 4,300+ files into your new theme directory, SMF just copies the basics (OK, well a little more than the basics, a few thousand – lol). If you ever needed to modify a file that was not in your themes directory, you would just copy that file from the default directory over to your new theme directory and make modifications to it there.

(2) Changing the Colors of Your Theme

This is pretty simple to do. Navigate to the following directory:
/Themes/[your theme]/images/theme/    (* notice the second “theme” directory).
You will be editing these files:

1. main_block.png
2. menu_gfx.png
3. backdrop.png

Open up the “main_block.png” file in Photoshop (or whatever you use).

Each layer of the above file represents an aspect of your site. I figured that out by just changing each row to a different color and then viewing my site to see what affects it had on the site. I’ve found the following:

• Row 1: Ok, I actually haven’t figured out what this row affects. lol.
• Row 2 & 3: These two rows are used in threads to alternate post background colors. Basically one row should be slightly lighter than the other so that posts are easier to separate from the next.
• Row 4: This is used to apply a border around posts and articles. If you zoom in, you can see there is a thin border outline.
• Row 5: This is used in the Info Center. It is the background colors for the categories,  such as “Forum Stats”, “Users Online”, etc.
• Row 6 & 7: These are used in the boards. They are the background colors for the board titles.
• And finally, everything below the 7 rows affects the header & webpage itself.

I wanted a nice red theme with a black header area (that I will later add a logo to), so I made the following changes:

The next file, “menu_gfx.png” is used to add hover affects to the menu. I just changed the top row to red so that it will match the rest of my theme.

The last file, “background.png” is for the site background, I changed the blue to a red gradient.

(3) Customizing Your New Theme

OK, SMF allows the header to expand and shrink, but this is unneccessary for the theme I’m creating, so I’m going to set the header to be shrunk by default.

Open up “index.template.php” and FIND:

bCurrentlyCollapsed: ', empty($options['collapse_header']) ? 'false' : 'true', ',

And reverse the “false, true” like so:

bCurrentlyCollapsed: ', empty($options['collapse_header']) ? 'true' : 'false', ',

Open up the index.css file which is located here: /Themes/[your theme]/css/
And lets get rid of the SMF logo at the top right corner.
Find:

#siteslogan, img#smflogo

And add “display:none;” (without the quotes). Like so:

#siteslogan, img#smflogo
{
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	float: right;
	line-height: 3em;
	display:none;
}

The upShrink button is used to expand the header, Lets get rid of that too.
Find:

img#upshrink 

and add “display:none;” (without the quotes).

(4) Logo

Now is a good time to add the logo.
Go to: Admin | Configuration | Current Theme | Theme Settings | Theme Options | and enter the url of your logo.

Then you will most likely need to resize the header area (to match your logo height) by adjusting the “min-height” pixels. You can find that in the “#top_section” in the index.css file.

(5) Add Your Copyright

If you plan to share your theme, add your copyright to it.
In the index.template file, find:

	<li class="copyright">', theme_copyright(), '</li>

And add your copyright immediately below that line, like so:

	<li class="copyright">', theme_copyright(), '</li>
<li>SimpleRED Theme design by <a href="http://dannyshane.net" target="_blank">Danny Shane</a></li>

(6) Packaging Your Theme

To package your theme, just Copy ALL files in your theme folder and zip them. Whatever the name of your zip file is, will be the name of the theme when uploaded into SMF.

THATS IT!

That’s pretty much the basics of creating your own theme. Just use the index.css file to also change font sizes etc… You can download my SimpleRED theme HERE.

Below is the new theme used on my HipHopForums.org site.

TIME TO UPDATE
It was time for me to update my business site again (I can’t give out the URL for obvious reasons), and I had been giving alot of thought to using WordPress this time around instead of just redesigning the site again. Mainly because WordPress seems to get indexed much faster than regular sites, in fact I’ve even had some topics show up 3rd & 4th in results with certain google searches only 2 days after posting the topic. So I’m hoping it will help my biz site in the same way.

THE PERFECT THEME
My top two competetors use a very simple and mostly white layout, so I plan to follow suit, lol. I was looking for a simple, white, easy to read theme for WordPress. I found a few decent contenders and used this blog site to install them and get a feel for how they looked and functioned. All were pretty boring until I stumbled onto a theme where the layout had an array of bonus features: There was a slider section under the header where it would rotate between specified posts. This is perfect for my biz site (in fact, even for this blog site). I was able to select which category to assign to the slider and how many posts the slider would scroll through. Another big plus was that the remaining posts could be set up to be displayed in magazine block style (with a ‘Read More’ feature to expand to the full post). This really makes a big overall difference. There’s so many ways to customize and use this theme, I may even be using it for my upcoming review site. It’s the easiest theme to customize (that I’ve come across), and everythings customizable!  Theres even an Ad Management section where you can add your afiliate codes and simply ‘check a box’, or ’drag a widget’, and your good to go. 

BEFORE AND AFTER
Of course I have to add Before AND After pics.
Here’s my blog before I used the new theme:

And here it is with the New Theme:

I have to give thanks where thanks is due, and Im definately thankful for this theme. Did I mention it’s free?! Thank you Satish Gandham! If any of you are interested in the theme, you can download it from his site: SwiftThemes.com

UPGRADING SMF
Tinyportal came out with its newest release (TP 1 beta 5). In this release they added some features which I had already been looking for (through other mods & block codes). One main feature that I really liked was the ability to set any topic to the frontpage. They also improved the articles layout and the way they are displayed on the frontpage. I needed this because the forums were just boring and plain. I had already been looking into ways to swap out posts & articles on the front page, and now TP made it simple for me, so I installed the upgrade (Tinyportal 1 beta 5) onto my forums which were using SMF 1.1.10. 

No luck, It didn’t work, in fact it gave me erros and made the forums unusable. Searching through the TP forums I found that others encountered similar errors with the new beta on their SMF 1.1.10 forums. Their only solution was to uninstall 1 beta 5 and reinstall 1 beta 4, but I really wanted the new features, so I decided to just upgrade my SMF to 1.1.11 and hopefully the new TP beta would work on that version. Why not just upgrade to SMF 2.0? Because my current theme will not work with 2.0, and I really like my theme. 

OK Nightmare time…
After upgrading to 1.1.11, My forums were completely inaccessable. I got an error regarding my mySQL server version. SMF Support recomended I upgrade the mySQL servers, but when I checked my phpinfo.php file, I found that I was already using the latest mySQL servers. I searched through the support forums for awhile until I finally just gave in and took it as a loss. I restored my site back to a working SMF 1.1.10 by uploading my back up files. I didn’t want to lose my forums theme, but  I REALLY wanted the new TP beta so I decided to go for it. I’ll upgrade to SMF 2.0 RC3. I put my forums in maintenance mode; uninstalled TinyPortal (and deleted it from packages); Switched to default theme; Downloaded the 2.0RC3 upgrade; extracted; Uploaded the files to my site; ran upgrade.php; Deleted the upgrade.php file; Installed TinyPortal 1 beta 5 and guess what… I still had problems! It turned out to be an issue with block code, so i just turned off all blocks.

Thankfully, Bloc quickly released an update 1 beta 5-1 to fix the issue. SMF 2.0RC 3 is up and running, but the nightmare continued… I have no theme now, so i’m stuck using the boring default theme, but the worst part is that all of my users’ avatars and image attachments were not showing up in the threads. I checked the mySQL tables and everything looked ok; I also checked the avatar and image directories and the images were there… So why were they not being displayed? I found out 5 hours later: Because SMF saves attachments without extensions, and since my FTP program was set by default to treat files without extensions as ASCII files, when I backed up my site it didn’t download my images properly (as binary), and therefore when I restored my site back to 1.1.10 earlier today, I replaced the actual images with corrupted files. Stress.

Back in 2004 when I started my first online business, I needed a way of tracking customers and all of their information. I decided to use MySql databases to store that information so that I could access the data from any computer that had internet access. I had designed a php site as my front end. I called it the Matrix. lol. It had nothing to do with the movie, I simply called it that because I felt as though it was the central nervous system to the business.

I programmed the matrix site to have a pretty in depth array of features, but for reporting purposes I’ve always liked working with Microsoft Access because… well, it’s just really simple to use. So I used Microsoft Access for most of the reporting and data analysis. Guess what I called it? Yep, The “Offline” Matrix. lol. (Later I started calling it, “The Matrix Reporting Tool”).  Anyway, To get it to work, I obviously needed MS Access to connect to my MySQL database and import the data so it can be used locally on my PC.  

ODBC and Microsoft Access
You can use ODBC to connect Microsoft Access to your MySql database. The Connector/ODBC can be downloaded from MySql. I actually just updated mine today with version 5.1.6. Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, Open up Microsoft Access. Select File | Get External Data | Link Tables. In the dialog box, change file type to ODBC databases. This will trigger another dialog box; Click the ‘Machine Data Source’ tab and then the ‘New’ button. On Windows Vista, I get a DSN error, but it still allows me to continue once I click OK. Another dialog is opened; select ‘User Data Source’ and press ‘Next’. From the list, select ‘MySQL ODBC 5.1.6 ODBC Driver’. Press ‘Next’ and ‘Finish’.

Now you should be at the Data Source Configuration dialog box. Fill out the connection parameters.
Data Source Name: Enter whatever you want to call the connection.
Server: Enter the server where your MySql databases are hosted. My databases are hosted with LunarPages and so I would sign into my lunarPages account and copy the IP address that is displayed on my cPanel home page.
User and Password: Enter the user name and password that you setup for your MySql database (Don’t forget to include the id that preceeds the user name and password). Once you enter valid information, the database drop down box will be populated. Select the database you want to connect to and press ‘test’.

Click on ‘Details’ in the lower left corner and under the ‘Flag 1′ tab, make sure to check the following two boxes:
1. Return matched rows instead of affected rows.
2. Enable auto re-connect.
Press OK and it will populate MS Access with links to your MySql tables. That’s it.

HeidiSql
I’ve never really liked using phpMyAdmin to administrate my MySql databases, so originally I purchased a program called MySQL Front, but a few years later it was discontinued. I think HeidiSql is it’s replacement, but im not sure. Either way, HeidiSql was free and worked better than the other program, so that’s what I used and still use to administrate mySql databases.

It’s 2pm and I haven’t even slept yet. I just had too many little projects to keep me busy and I was determined to finish them. Crazy schedule, huh? It still beats going to work at an office for some uptight-power-tripping boss though. I need to get going on the affiliate marketing process, but I’m trying to get this Hip Hop Forums site finished first. Here’s a few of the things I did last night:

Music for HipHopForums.org
I needed to add some music to the site, so I pulled out my old flash player and set it up. The problem is that it would quickly become boring and repetitive since it would always play the songs in the same order, so I searched online for a jukebox type of flash player that would shuffle the music for me. I found a decent free one that I liked. I set up a window popup link in the blocks section. I disabled this for guests because I don’t want them using up bandwidth without at least registering with my site.

Rotating Banner Block Code
I needed a way to randomly display different banners and advertisements for my current forums as well as future forums. This way I can have different affiliate advertisements being displayed randomly. I found a few php code snippets over at the tinyportal’s site that should handle this.

Revamp DJKasper.com
I also revamped my DJ Site (www.djkasper.com). It’s a flash site and since I haven’t made changes since 2007, It felt like I was learning Flash all over again from scratch! Whoa! Even the simple tasks seemed hard (like trying to find out where the actual url link is embedded!). Anyway, I just got rid of all the old page images and added new ones; deleted old links (like myspace) and added a nice link to my Hip Hop Forums (of course); and changed the wording on the ‘About Me’ section.

I like it, I just have to do the photo gallery and weblog pages still. But I will save that for another day. I’m going to sleep! or hmm, maybe I’ll go ride my motorcycle.

OK, I’m a little disappointed in myself for not putting much effort into my Hip Hop Forums site. I’m a DJ, so I have a genuine interests in music and I really want to see those forums grow into a decent sized online community, but it won’t happen magically so I better get going with it. But before I jump all in, I want to make a few changes. They’re small changes, but i think overall it will make the forums more appealing.  

Things I needed to change are:  

1. Forums Appearance.
   The Forums are kind of plain looking; I wanted to add some life to it. I figured I could do this by adding a section to the front page that would contain a recent music related article along with a nice sized picture of the artists. I wanted the article to appear at the top, with the forums starting immediately under it. Setting up articles in the tinyportal mod was slightly confusing, but eventually I got it set up. There were a few unexpected issues, such as when viewing the actual article in a browser window that was not expanded, the blocks from the right panel would float in front of the article. The workaround was to disable the right panel while in article view.
   

   New look with Artist Image

   Not a big deal I guess. One nice feature about using articles with Blocks (Tinyportal mod) is that I can create a bunch of articles (with artist images) and when I’m ready to give my forums a new look, I simply select a new article from the Block drop down list. Another issue was that once you view the article, the text was a light blue almost transparent looking. It was using the body tag in the css file. I changed it to black, but then of course since it’s the body tag, a few other areas were affected: the pop up windows now have black text over a black background. I’m still trying to find the actual file (not the css file) that references the article text so I can assign a new class.  

2. Incorrect Copyright Year.
   A very small issue, The copyright year still says 2009. I don’t want to keep having to remember to update it each year, so I added some code to grab the current year automatically.
   Insert the following: 

   <? echo date(‘Y’);  ?> 

   So the full code would read:  

   copyright 2009 – <? echo date(‘Y’); ?> HipHopForums.org 

   That would set the copyright to: 2009 – 2010 

3. Font is Too Large in the Recent Posts Section.
   The Recent Posts section lists the last 10 posts. The font is so large that each line gets word-wrapped and just looks sloppy. I don’t enjoy searching through smf site files; it makes even the smallest changes take up too much time. I’ll give you an example, I just did a properties check on my Hip Hop Forums directory and the site has 10,480 files inside of 300 folders! Now of course all of those are not being used, and many are probably images, language files, etc, but you have to see what I mean! lol. Anyway, I found the file (BoardIndex.template.php) that I needed to make the changes to. I want to make the font size smaller, and stop the text from word-wrapping, so I deleted the first column (board name) and just adding a new class to each of the remaining two table columns. The new classes were obviously font size classes.

Well that was enough for me, I am ready to get this forum started!