I killed it!

Thread to PDF features:
1) completely styled to match forum
2) ALL replies captured
3) replies are marked with author, author avatar, timestamp and reply permalink
4) all replies are resorted in ascending order (oldest to newest)
5) OP Author featured at top of document with site logo
6) site logo links back to site
7) post heading links to post
8) code boxes maintained but without syntax hilighting
9) super small pdf size
10) valid pdf html and css

And there you have it. The PDF feature started off being total shit (for the most part) and now it is totally bad-ass. Tomorrow I'll write the condition to allow it to get comments from documents and this will be a done deal.

Once I'm done with the PDF leftovers tomorrow I'm probably going to tackle making the shout box way better. The groundwork is laid, building on top of it will be a long fun day.

Completely done.

1) You can turn either a thread or document to PDF with ALL replies/comments included
2) all iframes (youTube, imgur,... pretty much any embed) get converted to links with the display syntax of: [http://www.originalSrcUrl.com] to indicate it was an iframe

I have run substantial tests turning half of this forum into pdfs. It is not impossible that some element will bork the layout of the PDF but, pretty much none of you know the shortcodes that may create this situation so, I'm not too worried about it. There is no stock editor code (bbcode) that will destroy or even interrupt the pdf layout.

...off to the shoutbox code.

I've done quite a bit to the chatroom but, there is still a lot to do. Currently you can share images (jpg|jpeg|gif|png) and youTube videos. In both cases you just submit the link and the chat will do the rest. I set the system up to work with a lot of optimizations. If you post a video or image it will appear immediately for you and everyone else currently in the chat but, for people that join the chat after the media was posted all previously posted videos and images show up as links ([video] or [image]), and clicking the link loads the media in the same row that the link was in. This might not seem like a big deal but, lets say out of the last 300 messages (chat max to keep) there are 100 videos and 100 images. Let's say you have already seen all of it. Now let's say you go away and come back the next day. Do you really want the chat to spend minutes loading 200 pieces of media you have already seen? Of course not. If someone posted new media since you've been gone, simply click the media link and it will load right there where you clicked.

The chat is ugly and junky looking right now. Just like the recent PDF project that will change dramatically in a very short amount of time. Imma go take a nap and when I wake up I am going to bang away at this project. Probably to completion.

I put the shoutbox on hold for the last couple of days to start working on NGQ TV. Unlike my other work here, where I mostly modify pre-existing scripts, I am building NGQ TV as a real wordpress plugin. I'm going kind of slow. I'm currently focused less on the end result and more on a reusable base. All of my PHP is class-based to create a proper OOP structure.

Wordpress has a lot of built-in functions. One of them is add_action(trigger name, function name) ... where trigger name can be a number of built-in triggers that wordpress fires at various states. I have been working a lot with automatically adding actions based on if certain configuration options exist. Not in a true|false way. Let's say I want to create a custom post type (ie.. page, post, etc... aren't good enough and I want something new). If I create an array of arrays that reflect the data a custom post type expects then the action for creating a custom post type is added. If I don't create that array then no custom post type action is added. I'm going over each thing you can do in a plugin with this system.

When I am done, creating a plugin will mostly be a matter of creating all the proper arrays of configuration options. All the rest will fire accordingly. This should allow me to make plugins very fast. In many cases I should be able to basically copy and paste all the config arrays and just change options. Of course there will always be some extra code that must be written that is unique to the plugin but, with the system I am creating that should be more or less all you have to write.

As it stands right now, simply writing the below sets off the chain for everything
$myplugin = new NeedsToBeRenamedForEveryNewPlugin();
$myplugin->actions();

Everything so far is encapsulated in that.

----

I have dug around in and modified quite a few plugins as of late. Everybody uses procedural programming. How do you reuse that? You don't. With my method I don't have to do a bunch of:

if(!function_exists('gyp_some_func')) { funtion gyp_some_func() {...

Aside from that being a lot of extra typing, it isn't reusable. Once you do that in one plug-in, it exists and you can't do it again without changing the names. If you have to change the names you are probably trying to reuse the code. SMH, that's the stupid way. By using classes I can ruse the shit over and over. There is only one class that needs to be renamed and that's the main one. One name. Two spots. No other renaming is necessary.

I just got introduced to Composer and implemented it in my project. Oh, it is so nice. I have always hated all the "require_once" and similar functions for including scripts. I was blown away that I only have to require the autoload.php one time. I was under the impression that I would at least have to require it on any script that uses another script but, it's a one shot deal. It's like magic.

Original posts we're messed up on mobile. It was like 2 columns and the left column was nothing but the poster's avatar. This has been fixed to flow just like a reply. I'm not sure why bbpress was treating these things like they are different style-wise but, it's fixed now. It was kind of a pain in the ass. The way they had things wrapped it wasn't as simple as "float:this" and "clear:that". I had to go to each element for a reply, find and copy the appropriate style and then apply it to the appropriate OP element. However, even that wasn't enough cause they had some "importants" laying around so, I had to get really creative about how to overcome that. It probably took me about 15 minutes, which is way too long to essentially move 2 boxes.

If anyone would like to help make the board a bit more navigable for long threads, drop this in your signature. I made the code as short as possible. I mean, I could have made it one character shorter but, I would like at least 2 letters in the class to give me some idea what it's for when I mess with css.

<span class="gn"><a href="#bbpress-forums">top</a> | <a href="#new-post">reply</a></span>

Alternately, you could just go with reply. Clicking reply jumps to the reply form at the bottom of the thread.

<span class="gn"><a href="#new-post">reply</a></span>

I have no expectations for anyone to do this. It's totally voluntary. However, at least consider the reply code as this can help you. If someone wants to reply to something you wrote, they will not have to scroll (maybe a long way) to do it. Clicking "reply" above a post is nonsense. It refreshes the entire page just to bring you to the post box. Clicking "quote" works but, if the person doesn't want to quote anything they have to erase all the text that gets put in the reply box.

I am well aware that the spammer that I thought I blocked last night got through to the PM box of some of you. This is mostly my fault and partially yours (if you got a PM). It's my fault because I marked the member as SPAMMER but, I did not know that left access to Private Messages and the Forum. Marking as SPAMMER stops Wordpress comments and we aren't even using that. That was my mistake and I apologize.

You know who didn't get any spam PM's? Everybody that has done these 3 things:

1) Do not use your login name as your display name. This won't stop spam. It's just super smart.

2) Do not leave your profile visible to members. You should mark it as friends only. Do you know every member that is ever going to join? Your profile has information about you, like your email address would be a good example. Why leave this information "public"? Anybody can sign up here so, having your stuff set for Public or Members is as good as being the same thing. It's not just this site where you should consider the visibility of your profile and/or the individual data fields. You should be considering that on EVERY site. It's possible to get robbed in the suburbs. It's less possible if you are carrying a gun. ~ It's possible to get spammed ANYWHERE. It's a lot less possible if you take some precautions regarding who can contact you or has access to your contact information.

3) Hide from the members list ~ your friends should still be able to see you by clicking the Friends selection on the members page.

In your Profile under Settings you can set a lot of visibility options. I have said this over and over. I really am sorry to everyone that got a spam PM. In the same breath, if you are expecting me to be able to "protect you from the world", especially when you are basically handing people your info, you are going to be disappointed. I do EVERYTHING I CAN DO to make this site as secure as possible. It is very important to me and I take it very seriously. You have responsibilities too, though. I didn't get a PM, email or anything else from our spammer. I also don't have my profile wide open for anybody and their grandma to view.

EDIT: All new user registrations have to be approved by me. I tested the system and it works. We do not have enough people signing up for this to be a big deal. I get emails when people sign-up and I almost never sleep so, most new users will get approved pretty quickly.

EDIT2: Registration email updated to inform users they will have to be manually approved.

Completely overriding the guts of a page without breaking my theme or even touching the theme for that matter. This is where magic is going to start happening. I have complete control over the guts of the page so, I can start creating an interface for NGQ TV in it. All the time that I spent working on custom fields, sanitizing and serializing gave me all the info and elements I need to store and retrieve all the necessary data from the database. When I wake up I will literally slap together the back-end interface necessary to store the data and then start building the front-end interface for displaying it. I have one missing link that needs to be considered and that's exactly why I am about to go for a long walk. I can think of three different ways to handle it but, all of them seem kind of hacky. I want rock solid implementations.

This is a ways down the line but, I want to do something different with this forum eventually. I want to get rid of the huge forum index and force members to post in their own public groups. Members can still have private groups and semi-private groups but, I want to change this system to where you automatically have one public one. There will be some nicer things involved with this. For one, you can moderate/elliminate members from your public group. For two, instead of having this big semi-empty forum index, the recent posts on the right will be ellaborated and moved to the center of the page. There will still be a forum index (for all group forums combined and maybe 1 site one) but instead of it being a major page of the site it will just be a link in the sidebar.

I could do this without forcing people to have their own public group and just do everything I just said but keep the current index. I hate that idea. I hate the forum index. I'd rather look through an index directly related to the people that I want to read stuff from than see "code", "mods", "models", etc... and a bunch of that isn't even getting used.

Nobody will lose any of their posts, thread or anything else. It will just all get moved to the public group for the original poster. I can do it in bulk. Anyway, that's my eventual vision and I have every intention of making it happen. My wordpress knowledge is increasing exponentially. I can make this software do whatever I want (even if I don't know how yet). I'm pretty sick of the gazillion plugins and some other things. I have like 5 or 6 plugins that add functionality directly to BBPress. That shit is going to become one plugin ... or maybe even just completely melted into BBPress. After I finish NGQ TV, the youTube plugin is gone (this will not effect you, it is only used for the video gallery, which will also be gone). The gallery and docs plugin needs to be melted into BuddyPress. Hell BuddyPress needs to be melted into BBPress.

There is just too much shit. A lot of this stuff is made by the same people. I do not understand why it is so distended.