Main Site Dev "Blog"

[Nayleen]

Hello everyone, welcome to the new Fuwanovel Improvements sub-forum, which Tay was so kind to create for me. In this thread I'll be posting information regarding the main site's development status, ongoing progress related to new features, and keeping an updated list of all upcoming features.
 
The first few posts will be constantly updated along with my Twitter account @almightynay, anyone is welcome to comment on its contents as well as suggest features to be added. My idea was to have the development process become more transparent to our users - people in IRC often catch a glimpse of whatever I'm doing because I keep asking them to have a look at works in progress - while giving you additional resources to throw ideas at me to consider.

[Nayleen]

Technologies used

 

I know this is uninteresting for most users, but it might come in handy one day for finding people who want to help out working on the site.

• PHP 5.4 + APC, running on Apache 2.2
• MySQL 5.5
• Laravel 4
• Doctrine 2 (ORM)
• Twig (templates for the main site and admin panel)
• Bootstrap 2 (admin panel only)

Additionally, the site is version-controlled using Git inside a private repository. To work with Laravel in general and to pull in further third party dependencies (for image generation and HTTP requests) you need knowledge of the PHP dependency manager Composer.

[Nayleen]

Past changes
 
This is a little bit too much to summarize properly, so I'll just leave the link to the blog post Aaeru made when the reworked site launched: http://visualnovelaer.fuwanovel.net/2013/08/big-overhaul-of-the-fuwa-site-thanks-to-nayleen/
 
Since then we've had mostly admin panel related changes, in chronological order:

• Backup system to easily archive all torrents and VN images
• Guest comment management (clearing out / reverting boxes to certain values / banning IPs from posting further guest comments)
• Integration of the forum users and groups into the main site's login system (e.g. the main login works with forum data now)
• I made preparations for a styled login page similar in style to the main page but didn't get to finish it

Any further changes I completed will be listed below.

 

---

 

2013-10-17

 

Main site login now uses the forum user data entirely, overrides are still possible and will get their own place in the admin panel.

 

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2013-10-18

 

Fixed the last page bug, changed the appearance of pagination items.

 

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2013-10-19

 

Finished the new, (a bit more) shiny login page.

 

---

 

2013-11-20

 

API v1 finished: https://fuwanovel.net/api/v1

[Nayleen]

Upcoming features / To-Do

 

Please not that "upcoming" is a really relative term as long as I'm the sole developer of the site.

• User Reviews / LOLIS in some form or another - these are very closely related and will therefore be done in one step.
• Track editing % for all upcoming VNs.
• Track similar/related novels (and move random VNs to Otome page) - big community feature, might involve people like Clephas
• The mobile section, but this one is in the far, far future.

That's about all currently - use this thread and forum if you think Fuwanovel absolutely needs a certain feature!

[Nayleen]

Current work in progress

 

The next upcoming feature relates to project management - here's the blog post about it. It will feature:

• Another admin panel site for managing user access rights - we'll be able to give individual helpers access to the admin panel and do away with the generic admin user.
• Styled login page, visible for everyone (though pretty much useless for anyone who uses neither the admin panel nor the new project management features).
• Project management features for people who have been assigned to certain projects, you'll be able to edit:
  • A project's homepage, team compostion, translation progress and status message.
  • Additionally you'll have control over the guest comment box of your project, though I need to discuss the details with the others to what extend (banning users from posting on your guest comment box, whether it'll be lockable etc).
• Project updates will update a feed for every managed VN.
• There'll also be another feed aggregating all status updates.

Status: 30%, helpers can be added manually now.

 

Project management features stalled for the time being.

[Nayleen]

Reserved.

[Nayleen]

Progress! We're entirely dependent on the forum user data now.
This means forum admins and moderators can log into the main site's admin panel using their forum credentials.
 
People who need main site admin panel access (that I haven't already added) will have to ask to get access again as I did away with the old fuwaAdmin user. Until I've got project management features completed, at least.
 

Added manually:

• RusAnon
• DrKleiner
• Wolfscythe
• Defendos
• Naomi

[Guest]

Progress! We're entirely dependent on the forum user data now.

This means forum admins, moderators and members of the new "FuwAide" group can log into the main site's admin panel using their forum credentials.

 

People who need main site admin panel access (that I haven't already added) will have to ask to get access again as I did away with the old fuwaAdmin user. Until I've got project management features completed, at least.

 

It always lifts my spirits to see you motivated and contributing.  You're a blessing to Fuwanovel.  I love our new panel, it's so much more convenient; thanks for your hard work on it Nayleen~!  Look forward to continuing to share what we love to the world with you.

 

*Highfives* Go Naoleen Team~!

[Nayleen]

And feedback like yours is exactly what sustains and keeps me going Naomi, please look forward to some more new public features I can actually share with everyone. ^.^

 

Hint hint: New login page in the main site's style, as it'll have more public exposure in the very near future.

[shcboomer]

Nayleen is the best. <3

[Nayleen]

More progress, shinies:

 

[Guest]

More progress, shinies:

 

Looking good Nay~!

[Nayleen]

The group itself and the idea behind the FuwAide group has been scrapped.

 

Updated this post with people who got access to the main site's ACP, people who still need it can PM me; When I've finished the UI for it every staff member can add new people.

[Nayleen]

Motivating myself with some work on a new API for Fuwanviewer and whoever else wants to access our data (I remember lolgc asking a while back). Will be up by the end of the week.

[Nayleen]

New to-do items added.

[Tay]

Motivating myself with some work on a new API for Fuwanviewer and whoever else wants to access our data (I remember lolgc asking a while back). Will be up by the end of the week.

This sounds awesome. What kind of functionality will it have?

[Nayleen]

It's basically just another way to fetch our data which Fuwanviewer obviously needs to be able to do it's thing (except if they were to replicate the entire database, which would be a stupid amount of work). For now it'll be read-only, but it probably will be more interactive in the future.

[Nayleen]

v1 of the API is already finished as far as endpoints go (still need to write up some caching and Last-Modified headers), check it out here (use your forum login details to gain access):

 

https://fuwanovel.net/api/v1

https://fuwanovel.net/api/v1/novels

https://fuwanovel.net/api/v1/novels?full=1

 

Scary amount of data in the last one.

[Guest]

v1 of the API is already finished as far as endpoints go (still need to write up some caching and Last-Modified headers), check it out here (use your forum login details to gain access):

 

https://fuwanovel.net/api/v1

https://fuwanovel.net/api/v1/novels

https://fuwanovel.net/api/v1/novels?full=1

 

Scary amount of data in the last one.

 

*Ahem* ...HOLY CRAP THAT'S A LOT OF WORK NAYLEEN.  And it's so organized and neat too; I expected nothing less of the Fuwa Heaven Coder~!

[Nayleen]

I think you'd be even more impressed if I told you just how easy this was, our database models are just so freaking easy to work with now.

[Guest]

I think you'd be even more impressed if I told you just how easy this was, our database models are just so freaking easy to work with now.

 

Oh~?  Yeah, I know that it was a bit of a mess at some places--great job on fixing that up~!  I look forward to helping you with this in the distant future--still have to learn how in college though 

[Nayleen]

Small change so we can track our downloads in a more meaningful way:

 

(Example) https://fuwanovel.net/torrents/129 is now https://fuwanovel.net/torrents/[Fuwanovel] Grisaia no Kajitsu.torrent - everything else behind the scenes stays the same, this change is reflected everywhere else on the site (including the API). The old URL using the ID will stay functional, but return a 301 redirect to the new URL.

[Kendjin]

Ah just the torrent page not the novel page. nice.

[Tay]

That's nice. Classy change, Nayleen. Classy.

I just wanted to thank Nayleen for the Holiday snow effect on Fuwanovel.org. When I saw it I poured some cocoa and listened to "

".

[Nayleen]

As posted here, made some changes to the API responses to include Last-Modified headers and will wire up some server-side caching for the API.

 

Taking it slow with anything else, might work on some new stuff in the near future.