Website Development Diary

Website Meta Discussions
1

I keep meaning to log all the changes I’m making to the website. There are dozens of changes that happen behind the scenes every week and I don’t post about them.

I made a channel on the Discord called “The Changelog” but forgot to ever update it. I made a page on the site called “Roadmap” but it only really contains far future things.

So this will be a place for me to just post the day-to-day changes I make, and also my pondering about future features - I have so many planned!

My todo list on my phone has 362 items :exploding_head: and I recently checked lots off, down from over 400!

So yeah follow along with me and feel free to reply with any questions, comments or suggestions!

24 Likes
2

A few days ago I created a new special Admin page that shows all stories that do not belong to a Collectable. This is useful so I can find ones I’ve missed out - turns out I forgot to add all the Torchwood DVDs! So I added those.

I’ll use the new page to go through and add books and comics that I’d missed as well.

Yesterday I added more filters for Quotes and Characters, and also built the function that actually runs in the background when you update a Quote or a Character to add all that stuff in.

I fixed the order of Characters to default to “Most Appearances” and Quotes to sort by date and then ID.

Also yesterday I made a change which will affect future Patrons and improve speed of the site. Before, when someone joined as a Patron I had to reindex the entire site to work out their special filters. Now it just reindexes the stories and collectables, and does it in a much more efficient way.

15 Likes
3

I found a bug today on the next/previous arrows for stories - on the Main Range they are using the Doctor sets to go next/previous so they skip loads! Need to fix that.

Also @YoungCodger has made some images for some new badges, related to the Main Range, which I’ll add when I can!

I thought of a cool Patron-only feature to do with badges which I’d like to implement soon.

I started work splitting out the functionality from the design of the site, ready for the new design and also ready for potentially creating copies of the site for other franchises. I bought a domain name for this :eyes:

And my designer sent over the latest design for the Story page, it’s looking so nice!! I can’t wait to get the new design done! It will be a total rebuild, and I’m going to be using Tailwind CSS which I’ve not used before.

15 Likes
4

Thanks for keeping us up to date on all of your updates and changes - there sure are a lot! I couldn’t keep track of all of this, and I’m s fairly well-organised person! So I admire your ambition and efficiency!

And thanks again for creating this space and bringing us to it! This has been one of the highlights of the year for me!

13 Likes
5

:eyes:
Oh do say more

8 Likes
6

Keeping this ambiguous until I can confirm it’s actually doable lol, don’t want to over promise and under deliver…

13 Likes
7

One thing that may be useful is a feature that allows users to create pages for missing Doctor Who stories. Blu-ray.com has this feature, and it works very well. The way they handle it is that you make a submission, then an admin checks it before approving it, so a bit similar to the Quote section on this site.

Could help lift some of the strain off yourself and the admins. Blu-ray.com also incorporates it so that you can provide a link to a website that shows that what you are trying to add is an official release that exists too.

4 Likes
8

This is a feature I’m definitely going to add, as it will help going forward with new releases (I keep track of everything on TV and Big Finish but some things like books are harder to keep track of because they can come from many different publishers).

However at the moment because there are still loads of missing stories, I feel this could get overwhelming and I’d get people submitting the same thing. That’s why I’ve gone for the spreadsheet approach (which is also quicker and easier for everyone to work on stories in bulk).

Once I’m happy that we don’t have big swathes of content to still add, I’ll switch to being able to add one at a time.

Thanks for the suggestion!

10 Likes
9

I fixed the Main Range bug (was just a case of prioritising the bigger set, which I did by re-ordering them).

Added Main Ranger 1 and 2 badges from @YoungCodger (hidden badges).

Imported The Minister of Chance stories, and a badge for that.

Now going to add some more stories from the imports!

10 Likes
10

I miss when release notes were this good

8 Likes
11

How do you acquire these? And what are the differences between #1 and #2?

3 Likes
12
5 Likes
13

You get one for rating Main Range 1-50, and one for rating Main Range 1-100

8 Likes
14

Then I assume more are in the works for Main Range #101-275?

5 Likes
15

Approximately one per year of the Audio Club

5 Likes
16

Just one more rating in a few weeks and I’ll get #1.

5 Likes
17

Unfortunately #2 is a long way off. Listened to most of them, barely rated any of them.

4 Likes
18
8 Likes
19

Reordered “Medias” and “Ranges” because they were in a weird order.

Considering changing how “Ranges” work because I’ve not been that consistent - why does The War Master have their own range and not the War Doctor? Why is there a range for something as small as “The Minister of Chance”, should that go into The Worlds of Doctor Who?

It was much simpler when I only had TV series to worry about! Still thinking…

11 Likes
20

Finally we can make sure you are doing your job properly and not just booking your next holiday.

11 Likes