It’s been 26 days since I first put pen to paper (or rather, finger to, uumm, keyboard – you know what I mean) and started to physically code the site – and now it’s online:

http://www.unknowntales.net/

It is not 100% finished, but it is working well enough for testing by the masses. So what are you waiting for? Click on the link above and give it a whirl – then let me know what you think.

I would spend more time talking about it, but I’ve had a long hard day coding, and I need to say goodbye to my old Xbox 360 (getting a new one tomorrow), so I’m off to do some gaming and chilling out.

This past week or so has not been my best. I’ve managed to use, and then break, two different authentication systems, and finally after building my own, had some major problems getting the registration page working. Happily however, by last night I had not only got the authentication system working, with a fully functioning registration page, but I had also been able to improve all my other existing code to make it function much more efficiently. But that’s not what this post is about Read the rest of this entry »

So, after all the great work that I did on the site during the first three days and a half days of coding, it’s now four days later and and I’ve had nothing but trouble. It has been so much hassle in fact that I almost gave up on CakePHP and considered changing to CodeIgniter! (But didn’t.)

I don’t want to get into too much detail, but I was having some issues with both the wonderful forum that I was raving about three weeks ago, and a star-rating system that I wanted to add to the site. In the case of the former, the latest edition of the plugin has some bugs which prevent access to the administration system (and the author is currently very busy with other projects, but hopefully an update will be released soon), and in the case of the latter, I was missing some user session data that I had no idea how to add. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know where I thought I would be by this point, but I think I’ve made a lot of progress in just three and a half days of coding.

(Warning, this is a VERY long post.) Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve done the research, the focus group, the planning, and even an evaluation, but now I need to get started on the thing that all of this has been leading up to – the physical coding of the site!

I have to admit that I’m quite nervous at this point. I have some experience with CakePHP, having built two sites using it in the past (one of which has been lost, and the other for an E-Business Technologies assignment, for which I got a C- *boo*), but I’ve just not had enough exposure to it to feel totally comfortable with it. Read the rest of this entry »

Just a short post to let everyone (and by everyone, I mean both of you) know that I’ve successfully moved into a new flat. For the first time in my life I’m living on my own. My kitchen is MY kitchen! My bathroom is MY bathroom! It’s great!!! Check out my Twitter feed for some photos of the flat.

Because of the move, however, I’ve once again fallen behind schedule on my Independent Study. According to my project plan, by Friday I need to have completed two Cognitive Walkthroughs and be ready Monday to start my data modelling – I can’t see that happening at this rate.

Oh well, now that I’ve finally sorted things like moving my telephone and broadband connections to my new address, I think I’m going to enjoy the rest of my evening, then start fresh tomorrow morning with the rest of my project.

You know, I don’t really expect that the Miles Johnson referenced in this post title will ever see this post, but if he does, I just wanted to extend to him my warmest thanks and gratitude!!!

For everyone else, the reason I’m thanking this gentleman is that it it appears he is my savour when it comes to the problem of trying to get a forum integrated into Unknown Tales. Up until now I was investigating into the idea of using a login bridge or single-sign-on system which would use the user admin features of an external forum system such as phpBB or vBulletin. The problem is that I could not find any suitable ways of achieving this, and even if I was to successfully build something like it myself, it would feel a bit… dirty! Read the rest of this entry »

I’m having a conceptual crisis.

Although it might be a bit early to be dealing with this (at least according to my project plan, which after changing last night puts me back on schedule – but only just), but I’ve started to work on the models and tables I need for the project.

I’m using CakePHP as my development framework, which uses the OOP patten of MVC. What this means, from a practical point of view, is that I need to think of all my data as models rather than database tables. It shouldn’t be too hard to make the switch – but apparently it is! I’m used to thinking about data in tables, and how the tables relate to one another – and although models work in a similar way – they don’t! And to make things worse – once I have finished designing the models, I then still need to go back and start thinking about the tables the models required due to Cake’s Bake feature (which automates the generation of the classes used within your application) using the tables in the database to build the models.

ARGH!!!!

But wait, there’s more. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know about you, but personally I think that the focus group I hosted on Thursday was a huge success.

Out of the 15 or so people that I invited, seven confirmed their attendance, but only five turned up. This wasn’t a major issue however as the five I had obviously had their thinking heads on. We were even graced with the presence of my Independent Study Advisor, the wonderful Sue, who sat in and observed the first half. Read the rest of this entry »

According to my project plan, yesterday was the day I conducted my focus group (used to gather information on the features the site needs to have), and starting Monday, I’ll should begin writing the project’s functional specification – based on the information gathered from the focus group.

The truth is that I’ve done it the other way around! For all purposes intent, the functional specification is complete, and yet the focus group is not happening until Thursday 17th! What’s going on? Read the rest of this entry »