The File Section

[The Robman]

I just wanted to let you know that work on the File Section is continuing, and today I got the first page to successfully load, so I thought I'd give you a sneak peek. It has taken SO MUCH work just to get to this point, but there's lots more to go. Now, I need to click on all the links, see what the errors are, fix them, then keep going. And once I've got all of the MANY bugs sorted out, then I need to work out what differences there are in the database tables, so I can work out how to convert from the old database to the new one. I have to give a big shout-out to Copilot, because I couldn't have done this without it.

[The Robman]

Quick update on the effort to revive the file section. So far, I have the view category, view file, edit file and delete file pages working (the delete file one took about 3-4 days of work to get all of the bugs out). I'm currently working on the download file screen. Next up will be all of the admin control screens. Then, once all of the bugs have been worked out, I need to go through the screens themselves as I think the screens in the extension are not as good as the screens that were in the mod (ie, what used to be used here). To do that, I'm going to need to set up two computers. My current laptop is using the latest version of PHP, so I'll need to borrow my wife's laptop and install PHP 5.4 on it, so I can run the old forum software, which will let me see what the old screens looked like, so I can see them side-by-side with the new ones.

If I had to guess, I would say there's probably 2-3 weeks of work let to get the file section up and running again. Remember, there's no team here, it's just me, painstakingly going through each screen, each link, one at a time, listing all of the bugs and then working through them with Copilot.

[The Robman]

Today, for the first time ever, I made it through all of the file section screens without getting any errors, so we are closer, but there's still more work to do. Now, I need to revive the old forum offline on a computer, so I can remind myself how the old screens worked and make sure the new ones work in a similar fashion.

[The Robman]

I have just released the first draft of the File Section. It still needs some work, but I think I have enough pieces in place that you can find files and load files now. The "view file" page is still kinda ugly but I will work on some of the cosmetic stuff later. If you do find bugs in it, please list them here.

[n8nagel]

Nice! Can I upload the stuff I've done since the site went down, or would there be an advantage to waiting until you get it polished and in its final state? Or are you going to pull in the deltas from GitHub?

[The Robman]

Sure you can load stuff, and everything that was there before should be there now. If anyone added any new files to github while it was down, they can load them here too now.

[The Robman]

I just launched a new feature today, if you look at the top of the page, next to File Section and Upload a File, you'll notice that there is now a "File Search" option. This is all brand new code as there wasn't any kind of search module supplied with the PafileDB extension, so I had to write it all from scratch. Hopefully it works ok. Let me know if there are issues.

[Mark Pierson]

I just launched a new feature today, if you look at the top of the page, next to File Section and Upload a File, you'll notice that there is now a "File Search" option. This is all brand new code as there wasn't any kind of search module supplied with the PafileDB extension, so I had to write it all from scratch. Hopefully it works ok. Let me know if there are issues.

Hey, Rob... great job on resurrecting the forums! I can't even imagine what kind of effort it must have taken.

As for your new search feature, I just quickly played with it and everything I tried seemed to work just fine. Well done sir!

[The Robman]

Thanks Mark, and yes, it's been an effort!