Gamelust

Fall 2017 Updates List

xsuicidesn0wmanx

It’s been a long time coming but here is our current “to do list” for the end of 2017. I spent a lot of time away from developing the site while I worked on my writing style and learned a few more skills to apply here.

Going forward I am hoping to find a few decent and enthusiastic writers to help keep our content fresh while I focus on improving the functionality of the site and improving ease of use. I hope to make a big push towards advancing our Patreon support by including your personal Patreon details on each article you publish. I am also keen to refresh the way we publish articles here so that you don’t have to mess with the clunky back-end/dashboard area very often.

There is also a lot of work left over from the previous update list from last year. Working with Buddypress has proven to be a challenge and has made me wish many times over that I had not used the plugin. It doesn’t perform bad but the support is utter shit and every question I have seems to have been asked already. Normally this would be good, but every answer seems to be from a developer looking down at other devs who want to modify or customize the application.

If you are or ever were a fan of GameSpot you may notice a few of the things we’re working on are features that they removed a few years ago. The most popular of which was ‘unions’ which we have had planned for a while now as ‘channels’. We’ll be looking to expand the emblems and scoring system in the near future while we build the channel system out. Channels will be custom user groups within the community that will come with their own dedicated news/review and blog feeds, as well as a channel specific forum page. Users will be able to create their own Channels and invite friends to join them once they have achieved the proper level. User levels will be based on posting news articles and reviews plus any likes those accumulate. Posting in the forums will eventually join the scoring system but on a much smaller scale(most likely 1 point for every 10 posts).

xsuicidesn0wmanx todo:

Basic Site Overhaul:

  1. Update home page to display less posts but include more natural footer. Reduce data footprint to better suit mobile devices. – Done
  2. Update footer to display lesser used links, add more of a site map to the footer and include links to our friends, our sponsors and registration links. – In Progress
  3. Update News and Reviews pages to use a formal archive system with list of months and years. – In Progress
  4. Finish updating and cleaning up the new registration page. – In Progress
  5. Update home page to display name of user who posted a Video instead of the game title.
  6. Update backend/dashboard so Content Editors can post Videos.
  7. Build forms for posting news, reviews, video, jobs, and updating a resume.
  8. Build user resume single to feature user information and link their local work and external work.
  9. Build up our Twitch page
  10. Look into developer tools for Mixer and integrate into website.
  11. Add PayPal support for individuals. – Done
  12. Update quickie page to display author name. – Done

 

Author/Profile Pages:

  1. Apply design changes to Profile landing page.
  2. Update Activity feed with new styles.
  3. Add Emblems Post Type and connect them to Users.
  4. Add Emblems to the activity feed.
  5. Combine Profile and Settings tabs into individual page.
  6. Add Patreon and PayPal Emblems to user profile pages so that readers can help support their favorite creators. Patreon is done, PayPal still needs to be built up.
  7. Look into BuddyPress Groups for potential groundwork for future ‘Channels’ project.
  8. Design the leveling system, figure out what xp will be required for each level and what title the user will earn based on level.
  9. Create a brief description for each level that injects a bit of humor into the site, breath life into the idea.
  10. Current ideas for user levels…. 0-4 (Noob) 5-9 (Rook) 10-14 (Meat Bicycle – Borderlands ref) 90-99 (Dragonborn – Skyrim ref) – Added list of ranks along with scoring requirements at the bottom of the page.
  11. Give users the ability to toggle profanity on/off.
  12. Fix notification links so that they go to the correct page/reply.
  13. Create dropdown menu for Notifications if unread > 1.

 

Comment/Vote system:

  1. Update comment system to use similar styles to the new messaging system single.
  2. Update comment system to show icons of users who vote and the direction they voted. Users will be held accountable for their choice. Basically means people can’t downvote anonymously, if you don’t like what someone has to say, own up to it.
  3. Add featured comment system, enable users to earn the ‘top comment’ emblem, maybe add multiple top comment emblems based on popularity of the feature.
  4. Build ‘balance’ system to keep users from abusing the downvote system. This will be a mathematical calculation based on the users last 20 votes, of which a limit of 10 can be downvotes. In addition the same calculation will be applied to the last 20 votes on articles posted by the same user UNLESS the author has had a minimum of 100 votes and their upvote to downvote ratio is lower than the ratio of votes from the user for that author. i.e. If the author has 30 upvotes and 70 downvotes, the user will be able to downvote up to 14 articles for every 6 upvoted from that author. – Need more traffic for this to become feasible. 
  5. Further optimize comment auto-update by switching to long-polling method to reduce server load. – Delaying this, will use slow timer with a clickable button to load new comments on click, similar to IGN’s current comment system. Node JS version will be similar to gamespots old comment system from 2014.
  6. Update RTC to check for new comment every 30 seconds and display a button users can click to load all new comments at once, will need more users to test this.
  7. Start NodeJS demo to replace current comment polling system. – Delayed until 2018, new server needed.
  8. Scale back comment system until the ajax/node system is built.

Forums:

  1. Update single threads to have paging again.
  2. Update forums header to resemble profile page header. – Done
  3. Update look to resemble the look of the new profile messaging system. – Done
  4. Add update to forums to display top posters. – Done
  5. Add a square in the forums that shows the latest -or- hottest topics.
  6. Update forum home page to display more information about latest posts – at least user name and thread title, total posts etc.
  7. Update forum styling so that it isn’t broken on phones.
  8. Update all icons with working code, Edit/Flag/Trash currently unresponsive.
  9. Make sticky topics more easily recognizable.
  10. Add button for last read post.
  11. Add icons to indicate whether user has posted in a thread and if there are any replies since they last read the post.
  12. Add Like/Dislike option to forum posts.
  13. Build a leaderboard page.
  14. Individual threads missing paging system.
  15. Add posts per page toggle.
  16. Fix the upload interface once again and find out why it keeps reverting…

Custom Page Templates:

  1. Finish cleaning up the new Login/Register page, work on mobile design.
  2. Update Platform pages to display all game art if total connected games is less than 48. Use pages instead of alpha.  – Removing game list in favor of recent releases, upcoming releases and latest reviews. 7 game boxes max.
  3. Add min height to box art section of platform page so the page won’t jump as much when loading next page of art. – Done
  4. Update Retro page to list all consoles by category with image and short description. – In Progress
  5. Create games page that accepts console=’xbox’ to display a list of all games on that console. – In Progress
  6. Add author name to article lists on home page and all 3 list types. – Done
  7. Add ability to rate a game without having to submit a review, store scores as review w/out content so user can add a review later and scores are still the same.
  8. Add ability to download/export your review ratings and reviews as an xlsx file.
  9. Add container to display information about the highlighted game on the Ajax loaded content including title, avg review score, esrb rating. – Scope changed, no longer necessary.
  10. Limit ‘Recent Reviews’ to 6 on platform page and 4 on game page with link to view all that redirects to the reviews page. – Done
  11. Add ‘highlight text’ into the review/news template. – Cancelled.
  12. Update AJAX on home page to use custom loop. – Delayed due to updated layout, no longer possible with current application. Cancelled, removing Ajax from the site.
  13. Update trio of ‘list’ pages so that ajax only post-loads content from current month + 7 days. – Will need new design for archive pages. Being replaced with standard link archive pages for better ux.
  14. Connect related games to each other (i.e. connect Call of Duty 2 to Call of Duty 3). – In Progress
  15. Add ‘Related Games’ section to full news articles, reviews, and game pages. – In Progress
  16. Add ‘Related News’ section to full news articles, reviews, and game pages. – In Progress
  17. Update News and Review singles to display Patreon Emblem next to the names of any author who have their Patreon account linked with us. – Done
  18. Update News and Review singles to display top Emblems for the author(i.e. highest ranking post count emblem, or likes count emblem). – In Test Phase.
  19. Update news and review singles to further promote an authors Patreon account to increase potential patron growth.
  20. Update news and review singles to display details from the authors Patreon account including how many followers they have, current patron amount and total patrons.

Ads:

  1. Create the Ad pages. Create 3 different tiers for the 3 different types of ads we can make money off of and create a page for each. These pages will only have ads on them and are intended to be a way our users can help us pay the bills. Tier 1 would be for game related affiliate deals and banners. Tier 2 would be for game and technology related banners from other advertising partners. Tier 3 would be for Taboola and outlink generated garbage. These pages are optional to the user and will not be required for use here, they are only for those kind enough to help us pay the bills by lending us their eyes and a few clicks. Cancelled, we can do this with affiliate links only.
  2. Create a page for donating funds through PayPal or Patreon to help us pay the bills, the dedicated server we have picked out will be $90 per month, we hope to move to it between January 2017 and February 2017. – Add to Our Recommendations page at the bottom, and on the registration page/login.
  3. Integrate non-intrusive links to buy the connected game from our affiliated partners at Best Buy, Amazon, and GameStop(Pricing not available via API on GS). – Done, Added ‘Our Recommendations’ page with links to 15-18 games recently released or coming soon that we think will be enjoyable. Currently does not include price comparison, need Node JS(meaning new server) before we can use the NodeJS API’s to pull prices from retailers.
  4. Start writing Articles on Sunday(Amazon, Best Buy) and Tuesday(GameStop) that highlight current deals offered by our partners. – Unable to add this feature until Node JS(new server) is available, both companies have terms that prevent us from manually entering prices into an article to prevent them from being forced to honor typos. Any page with a price has to be pulling that price from their database, not ours.

Note: We have affiliate status with Amazon.com, Best Buy, and GameStop. We will have links posted that you can click on that will give us credit for any purchases made on those 3 online retailers websites. We make roughly 1-2% of the total sale, which is not much but it adds up. 

Data Entry:

  1. Connect boxart to game. – On Going… Xbox One and Playstation 4 are completed, WiiU and NX are next.
  2. Update database with complete list of modern games. – Xbox One and Playstation 4 up to date as of 9/21/2016.
  3. Update database with list of retro games.
  4. Create custom forms for adding news and reviews t0 provide users with a better, more intuitive GUI when posting new articles.
  5. Connect Amazon ASIN’s for current games. – On Going
  6. Add new games announced in 2017.
  7. Add new metabox for secondary box art(i.e. Nintendo Switch boxes)

New Features:

  1. Build ability for users to create ‘channels’ where multiple users can post under a single unified group. Channels will allow multiple users to post on a single article, and increase the chances of being featured on the main feed.- Coming December 2018 or earlier. Need more users for this feature to be feasible.
  2. Build collection features into Games Post type and allow users to track their collections through the site. – Collections built but not enabled, will be part of the user profile page update in the near future.
  3. Add ability to download/export your collection as an xlsx file.
  4. Allow user-to-game post relation to also indicate games that user is currently playing. Display this on their profile page and in forum signature.
  5. Increase amount of user levels available to users who use the site frequently, these will be based on their overall score from posting news & reviews plus likes received.
  6. Add Emblems to the user profiles that are awarded for achieving various tasks(i.e. 100 posts, 1000 likes, 500 comments, 2500 forum posts, etc) plus custom Emblems to be awarded for specific events that we will hold in the future. Include Editor Emblem to be given as a special emblem for users who help us correct mistakes on our website(i.e. typos).
  7. Example Emblems… Founder(given to contributing members during our first year, 2016) Popped Your Cherry(posted first news article or review) Wat(wrote a confusing article or post that made zero sense at all)
  8. Blog of the Month – Need more users, foundation already built.
  9. Link Blog Posts to Forums.

Note: One of the special Emblems we will be giving out will be the Founder Emblem. In order to receive the Founder Emblem, users must create an account and be a contributing member of the community by January 1st 2017. This would include posting News Articles, Reviews, Blogs, Comments, and/or Posting in the Forums.

Killer todo:

  1. mock up new archive pages for News, Reviews and Blogs.
  2. mock in product placement on quickies and videos.
  3. mock up PSA 1920×1080 image for deal finder section on home page, this will replace the featured article with a post that lists on-going sales from our affiliates to be updated daily.
  4. Mock up Add Article/Review form page.
  5. Mock up full ‘Start Here’ page(mentioned adding in small images before certain blocks of text?)

Collective todo:

  1. Get more writers for the site.
  2. Adjust CSS for responsive stages 2-6.
  3. Get more writers for the site.
  4. Throwback Thursday gameplay sessions and write-up, possible user interaction where users decide what game we play.
  5. Get more writers for the site.
  6. Week in review post on Sundays(maybe build the week in review post during the week in the forums and let users create & submit articles to be featured in that post, great way to build a following.
  7. Get more writers for the site.
  8. MST3k style youtube series
  9. Get more writers for the site.
  10. Buy remaining items for our podcasts
  11. Get more writers for the site.

Proposed User Ranking System:

  1. Level 1 – Starts with 1000 points – Title: Virgin – Emblem: Cherries
  2. Level 2 – 1070 points – Unlocked Title: Noob – Unlocked Emblem: Popped
  3. Level 3 – 1145 points
  4. Level 4 – 1225 points
  5. Level 5 – 1311 points – Unlocked Title: Half Chub – Unlocked Emblem: TBD
  6. Level 6 – 1403 points
  7. Level 7 – 1501 points
  8. Level 8 – 1606 points
  9. Level 9 – 1718 points
  10. Level 10 – 1838 points – Unlocked Title: Grub – Unlocked Emblem: TBD

 

Comments do work, so if anyone thinks of something that can improve the site or has any questions please drop us a line. Feel free to also use the comments below as a place to report any bugs, glitches or annoyances you find while we build the site.

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