DashGrounds Update

As of right now the update process of DashGrounds in on hold. At E3 this year Microsoft unveiled their new software for the Xbox 360. This new software may eliminate the idea of DashGrounds all together. Until I know more about what the upgrade will consist of I will stop upgrading DashGrounds.

Just trying to keep everyone informed. I know it has been a while since I gave any update but I figured I would let everyone know this. This update could make or break DashGrounds so be prepared for a shutdown of the site.

I have gone to the doctors office today and got medicine for my sinus problems, but thats not exactly the reason why there wont be updates. I will be having minor surgery, well major in my case, on Monday. This surgery will have me in bed for about a week or so, and I can tell you right now I will not be in the mood to do anything but watch TV and play Xbox.

I don’t really want to tell everyone what the surgery is for because it is very personal and I really couldn’t talk about it in a post anyway. Thats all the information you are going to get from me about it, let your minds fill in the rest.

After a lot of trouble coming from this little part of the site, I have finally integrated the Top Bar into the template. I had to recode a lot of it, and it looks a bit messy but it works and I can always clean it up later.

Hopefully this Top Bar has given me enough experience to be able to code the New System Easily, which is what i will be moving to next. Once I complete that endeavor I will let you all know.

The progress list and bar have both been updated after this completion. They are both accurate now.

After two days of stressful coding, I finally figured out what was messing up the coding in the Top Bar. I forgot to add some periods before the required path and that is what made the error message come up every time I tried to test it. It’s funny how something so small can make such a huge difference.

I have a couple of things to finish up with the top bar, but after that I will move on to the News System. I will keep you all informed as I work on that as well, that is if anyone even reads this :).

EDIT:
I have finished coding the login script. So right now I have moved on to the News System. I will keep you all informed on my progress.

EDIT:
I had to start editing the Top bar again. When I tried to integrate it into the actual template, I started getting PHP errors again. I will be working on it some more tomorrow when I get home from school.

On a side note, the progress page now has some nice and pretty indicator icons. This way you all know exactly what I have done, and what i need to do.

This will be one of the last previews I will give out on the new template. Nothing personal, its just there really isn’t that much to show, so I don’t want to show it all at once.

This image displays the buttons which will be located at the bottom of the web page. These buttons include Donate and Affiliate. As time goes by I may add more but for now those will suffice.

Here is a slight preview of the new website. This is the Top Bar which I have been coding lately. It has been giving me some problems, but I will eventually get it. This is a temporary design and may change at any time.

On the left side there is a welcome message which will either display your name, or “Guest” if you are not logged in. The right side will display one of two things. A logout link, and a display of your Personal Messages, or a Login link. All dependent on whether or not you are logged in.

That is about everything with the Top Bar. It all does sound simple, but it is harder to code than you would think. I will have more information about it when I get it finished.

It has been a while since I had to use PHP, about 4 years to be exact. As a result, I have forgotten a lot of the code and need to brush up on my PHP skills. So as of right now, I have put coding the website on hold to learn PHP all over again. I hope this will only take a few days but I don’t exactly know. PHP is pretty simply to learn, it’s just there is so much too learn which is the problem.

This may or may not slow the production of DashGrounds 2.0. But it will be better for everyone if I learn PHP and become fluent in it. I will let you guys know when I have started coding the website again.

I have created a simple but nice looking progress bar that will be located in the header. This little bar will let everyone know how close the upgrade is to being completed. I will update this bar everyday and it is pretty accurate. The list I have made is fairly long, and some of the items have “sub items”. These sub items better help determine how close I am to actually completing that item.

Please not that this progress bar wont constantly update. It does not have a steady movement and may not move at all for a few days. I just want to try my best to keep everyone updated on the process.

I have provided the list of items on this blog. This list however may have an increase or decrease of items. This is just my prediction of what I have to do. I may have forgotten something and will have to add it later.

You can accsess the list here

Welcome to the DashGrounds Update Blog. Here I will discuss the new upgrade and what all it will have to offer. I will try to keep this updated regularly but sometimes I may not be able to update. This first page will be about the template I have created for DashGrounds.

The template will be based on the Xbox 360 Dashboard. I figured that would be the best design for DashGrounds. It will also have the forums integrated into the website, this way you can log in and out from the website and not have to go to the forums. At the moment there wont be any reason to, but later on I plan to make pages which only members can accsess.

There will also be a poll on the main page. This is where I can gather information from all the users, and make changes to the site in this manner. I want DashGrounds to be user friendly and I will accept any type of feedback anyone can give.

I already have the template ready, all I have to do is code it and add content. This will be the hard part which will take up a lot of my time. There is no set release date, but I expect it to be done sometime in August. I will have more information on that as we get closer to the expected release date.