The Anime/Games Section

[wanderingaddict]

Recently I noticed that the Games section (along with the main Anime section) was broken into Alphabetical categories, and I was wondering if I could ask why? If it's something related to the software running the site and unchangable, I'll understand, but if it was just some cosmetic reason, could I get other people's opinions? To my mind, it was far better the way it was before (talking either section) in that all the different animes and games were available from one, easy to access page. There was no back-clicking, no page changes to get to another sub-section of the same genre, and, honestly, I thought it was so much easier to simply browse that way. If I felt like just looking around in an area that caught my eye, I was already at the main category ready to click the title I was interested in.

Honestly, I always thought that was one of the major, major everyday draws to this site. The archive here is so easy to browse, easy to use, and anyone can find whatever corner they're interested in pretty quickly, without having to tab through a bunch of pages. I for one never thought that the big block chunks of Titles were hard or annoying to look through. If anything, having so many listed so easily and clearly made for the finding of all the little gems authors have written about half-remembered animes and games all the sweeter. I know there are many titles I'd have forgotten entirely about until I saw them when I was just idly looking through the main page.

I know it's "not that hard" to click the back button on my browser and look through the titles by alphabet, but it's just... kind of disheartening I guess? I mean, if it was just a choice implented, does the site really need it? All it does is seem to create one more pointless "blank" page, and from what I've been lurking and reading, no one really wants or appreciates that. I get that I may jsut be a vocal minority though, and maybe everyone appreciates this new aspect, but I was hoping to bring attention to the fact that I think it actually hinders one of the site's most user-friendly features.

Edited April 12, 2008 by wanderingaddict

[DemonGoddess]

It's not cosmetic. There are very good technical reasons to do this, in that part of what you're looking at is we are dealing with very old script. To make it so it's less of a load on the hardware framework, it's better to have less data parsed per page draw. This'll help stop the STILL ongoing daily sql server resets caused by the archive software. Granted, it's not near as often as it used to be, but that's because OTHER software modules have been tweaked already (forum, and banner software). Still, even one reset of that server is one too many.

As to bringing up some of the anime and games up to top level? Those all have 200 or more stories and need to be at that level. For one, they've earned it, for another, it makes it so that additional sub sub categories can be added to those particular new top level categories. The archive ONLY supports three category levels, so that's why those were moved UP a level. Otherwise, those additional sub sub categories could not be added. And, they're already being used.

Before anyone even asks, yes we've looked at other fiction portal software, but none of it fits our needs. So, there is something else being worked on there.

It's not so hard, you'll get used to the new format I'm sure.

[wanderingaddict]

Ah, thanks, that was what I thought it might be. I guess I'll have to look at it more like "The sections are getting an upgrade!" instead of "oh, poo, useless changes." Thanks for taking the time to explain it so clearly.

[DemonGoddess]

FWIW, the original plan was going to be to split in the manner I've already done, but not at the top levels. The problem we encountered with that is that the current software ONLY supports three levels of categories. Category, sub category, sub sub category. Again this has to do with the language that this was written in quite a few years ago. There are actually instances of php v 2 and mysql v 3 code and queries. The program is THAT old. Needless to say, with the servers having php 4.x and mysql 4.x, there are incompatibilities. We find them, then we squish 'em.

manta2g is in the process of actually rewriting everything, with help from xax (particularly with queries, he's super with queries), I help with other stuff and a bit of that as well. We each have our strengths working within a database program and framework to construct something like this, and the good thing is is that they complement each other. This is still some months away though, so we work with what we have.