This week I've implemented Sumea Wiki into the site, and transferred across all the info we have there (developers, developer games, developer services, education institutions) so it can be edited and updated by *anyone*. I'll admit that I've made a meal of the release dates for games during the transfer, but I'll cross check my backup of the database and fix them next week sometime.
I've also integrated Sumea Wiki into the site so that when you look at a developer, game etc profile, it'll pull the info from Sumea Wiki. I think you can tell from my posts that I'm pretty excited about the potential of Sumea Wiki. I don't think I've seen any site that uses a Wiki as the information hub of a site, but they should! Every page on Sumea Wiki has an xml link, so even any website out there can draw info from here if they like. This is the basis of what I meant about further potential for Sumea which I will outline below.
I haven't spent too much time figuring out Microsofts XML DOM, but parsing out the xml from Sumea Wiki using .text seems to strip out all html tags. Once I figure out why it's doing that, I'll be onto the following...
Sumea Maps:
I've been meaning to fix this up and make it look all pretty. I was also planning to make it so that visitors can add their own locations, which meant I will have to add some textfields, asp code, prepare the database, and put in some admin pages to maintain all that. However, this will be better served with Sumea Wiki. I've made a page in Sumea Wiki called Sumea Maps where people can update/add their own locations, and I'll add the xml parser to the actual Sumea Maps page to grab and display that list. I'm sure quite a few of the locations I have for developers are incorrect (Redwyre informed me that the location I had for Pandemic Studios pointed to a cafe), so hopefully others will correct whatever else I have wrong.
Sumea Linkstation:
Same thing with Sumea Linkstation. I'll make a page in Sumea Wiki with all the info that's currently at Sumea Linkstation, and the Sumea Linkstation page will grab the xml and print it out on the page. The benefit to visitors is that they can add their links to Sumea Linkstation.
Sumea Newstation:
I had some big plans to do this in Macromedia Flash, but damnit, it will be better served on Sumea Wiki. In fact, the Wiki software can read rss feeds and parse it nicely, so people can add/update rss feeds themselves on that list easily. I mentioned somewhere before that I had plans to put in some asp to spot keywords related to local game development so I can easily find news. This needs a tonne of rss feeds listed, and a script to spot the hundreds of keywords against all those rss feeds. It would probably be too server intensive to be available to the public, so I'll probably limit this to a few people interested in posting news for Sumea.
So, to sum it up, I'll be integrating Sumea Wiki to more parts of the site, and it'll mean that more pages on Sumea can be freely updated [:D]
One more plan which doesn't regard Sumea Wiki, is Sumea comments. I've noticed that Sumea comments is getting pretty popular, and I'm planning to transfer the service into xml format. I'm kicking myself that I didn't make this in xml format from the start and it's going to be a real pain converting all the old comments. However, once it's done it'll mean that we'll have the latest Sumea Comments for your rss reader, the option to display Sumea comments in order from newest comments first or vice versa, and it means much less code stored on the server. I'm sure there'll be other possibilities of it being in XML format too.
Anyway, this thread is about my further plans with Sumea Wiki, and also getting feedback. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to write about it here.
quote:Originally posted by redwyre
It was valid when I gave it to you ;)
I guess I've already volunteered?
Actually, I'll just do it myself and keep it server sided. What I wanted to get you to do via javascript was to parse the xml, add comment numbers, and add options to change the order of sorting (by date, reverse order etc). I thought that would be a pain in the arse to do, but having looked into it, I've already been able to do all of that with XSL.
http://www.sumea.com.au/include/zxmltest.asp
http://www.sumea.com.au/include/zn1.xml
http://www.sumea.com.au/include/zn1.xsl
So anyway, I should get this up real soon after I convert the thousands of comment files into xml format and change the Sumea comments code again to write xml [:X]
After that I'll be looking into putting in the ability for people to reply to certain messages and have it display under it (rather than having people refer to comments by their comment number). Anyway, I'm an xml convert. It's really cool [:)]
Just an update on this, I've completed converting all the comments into xml format, and Sumea comments reads/writes it all out in xml. Amazingly, you won't tell the difference anyway [;)]. You'll also find an rss link so you can bookmark any news item/gallery picture/vote/profile comment etc. I don't think I'll put in the functionality to insert comments under other comments.
quote:Originally posted by Souri
I'm sure quite a few of the locations I have for developers are incorrect (Redwyre informed me that the location I had for Pandemic Studios pointed to a cafe), so hopefully others will correct whatever else I have wrong.
It now points to a vacant unit [:D]
Are you doing the xml stuff client side or server side?