This is the entire code of the new site so far:

<?php

?>

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So, as I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to upgrade the site, I’ve been doing some thinking about the source code of the site as it is now (v4.1). The code isn’t all that organized, but it works. I’ve decided that whatever I upgrade to will be open source NO MATTER WHAT, and so will the code that the site is running on now.

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I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the future of this site. While yes, I agree, the site is virtually pointless (it’s a site about itself), There’s a lot I can do to make it a bit better.

In version 3 of the site, the site was powered mostly with AJAX, using an AJAX library that I didn’t create. While it’s true the site was pretty good, looked cool and all, but it was not customizable at all, customizing took a lot of work. The code was not organized, and it just did not work well at all.

I’m thinking of reworking the site, but keeping most of the design that it has right now. The site would be portable, and would work really well, using AJAX. I would have an .htaccess set up so all scripts are PHP, including javascript, CSS, etc. This will be really useful, and allow more functionality of the site.

Whether or not this will be 4.5 or 5.0 is a tossup, really. I’m leaning more towards 4.5 at the moment, but might go with 5.0, seeming how EVERYTHING would be redone, including the admin panel. The admin panel sucks.

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NOTE: I was extremely sleep deprived while typing this, forgive any typos

Okay, so I’ve come to a conclusion. The portfolio page sucks. WHOO. I don’t really think that that’s much of a shocker to anyone, but I’ll go ahead and say it. Not only does it suck, but it’s been sitting there, unchanged, since 4.0 was released.

That’s why I’ve decided to remove it until I can be bothered to either make a new one, or register for Google Code so I can host my stuff there.

Google Code will be alright if I stop being lazy and set it up, but there might be some non-code things that I want to host, and I’m just not sure what to do about those.

I might update this when I’ve actually slept. Maybe not though, I promise nothing.

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I spent last night coding on the core of yet another small feature of my site, which is a basic search engine to search the text of my news posts. This engine is VERY new, and shouldn’t be taken for granted, of course.

There’s a lot of things that I’m going to change on it. For one, the form simply goes to /!search, and the form uses POST. In the future, it will be changed to a GET form, with the URL syntax of: /search/search-term/. This will probably be done today, but of course, no promises.

Another thing that I will be coding is an actual engine to match different words, similar to Google. Right now, if you enter "d c" (without quotes), it will search for all news posts with that string in it. For example, any news post with "red cat" will show in the results. In the future, it will search for "d" OR "c" in the results, and (if I can code it right) place results with both at top.

Right now, when you search for something, all it does is return the (linked) title, and the text to you. In the future, it will even more resemble Google, in the sense that it will only provide a short paragraph, maybe three sentences worth, cropped to show the (bolded) search term, where it appears in the post.

I know, I could just set up a Google Search engine for my news posts, but I don’t really want to. I like coding things from scratch. This entire website was coded borrowing no scripts, everything being made by hand (or fingers, for that matter), and it’s going to stay that way.

Oh, so to sum this post up in one sentence, "The search engine sucks, but I’ll make it better."

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Almost an hour ago, I released a post about my new idea, on the two-user connection library. I’ve been very excited (and still am), but I’ve remembered something else that will halt my developing for a bit.

I don’t go into my personal life at all on these posts unless it has to do with developing. This does. This new year, I’m making resolutions a big part of my life, that will bring lots of new things into my life that I will need to adapt to. I’d post the list, but I won’t for two reasons: One, they’re kind of irrelevant, not to mention personal. Two, no one cares.

These adaptations will take time to adjust to, which means I’m going to be pretty busy for the next few weeks. Don’t plan on seeing many updates to the site for about 3-4 weeks. I’ll be back though, don’t worry. When I’m back I’ll be more organized, which will mean more productivity, which will mean production on the site going further, and getting better.

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A new idea popped into my head while I was waiting for my father to get off the phone with our relatives (wishing them a Merry Christmas). I had had similar ideas in the past before, but this is one that I’m actually going to do, complete, and release. The main site might be on a bit of a hold as far as development goes, but v4.5 of the site is still in my head -- somewhere.

The idea in my head has to do with communication, client based. I’ve always been fascinated with the way, say, Omegle works, and I’ve always wanted to build something like that.

My idea will allow for servers to connect two people together, to perform any number of activities through a custom protocol that would be extremely flexible. This won’t be something for just the average person, with only basic HTML skills, to put on their website. Some development skills will be required, but it will still be a tool that people will be able to use to connect two people together randomly.

There will be two ways (so far) that users will be able to be connected. One will be random, just like Omegle. The server will wait for a second connection, then connect the two users, regardless of who they are. The second will be specific. The server will send data along with the normal request codes, with an ID, specifying the user that the client wants to connect with. The server will check to see if the user is available. If not, the server will return a WAIT code, and wait for a certain number of seconds, then try again. The server will then either try again if failed, or abort the connection attempt.

I’m still in the concept stage of this, I’ve yet to code anything. One of my new year’s resolutions is to follow through with my project with a valid time line to complete them within, and hopefully this will be the first test of that. As always, I’ll keep you posted.

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So, I’ve decided to do away with my mini-project for updating the site, dnRoyston.dev. There’s several reasons for this, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop working on the site.

The major reason I started the project was to update the site, while being able to push updates out to it when I knew it was error-clean. However, this caused a lot of conflicts when copying over the files.

For one, the main configuration of my site involves some site-specific variables, that I obviously had to change for .dev. However, I could not just simply copy those over to the main site, or chaos would ensue. I actually had that happen when I pushed out 4.1, the main site was acting just like .dev for about an hour before I figured out what had happened. There are about 5 files that would break the site if I moved them over from dev to main. However, those files _do_ get updated, and the only way to really move those updates over without breaking the site is to do it on the site itself.

I might be starting a new project, similar to .dev, but it will be closed source, and a lot more thought will be put into it. It will be updated, and have a system for files to update and files not to. I hope to make a system where I can update the site when needed without having to change anything in the ./main/ folder.

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After 11 days 8 hours of solid uptime, we had a power outage while I was asleep, and it was down for a few hours. It’s all back up now, though.

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Just a little game I whipped up: Link

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So I’m pretty much done with dnR | TXT in its current version, but I’ve noticed something crucial and, well, kind of funny. The IE support (or lack thereof) really cracks me up. Seriously, if you want a good laugh, open dnR|txt up with any internet explorer browser.

However, the whole thing now is entirely AJAX powered, which is great. Now all I need to do is:

• Build IE support
• Make the code look pretty
• Build a page so viewers can see an archive of most recently submitted posts

You know... whenever I get around to it I guess

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I haven’t really advertised it well, at all, but a miniature project I made literally in about seven minutes was a pastebin-like application that would allow users to enter their own text, and then submit it, where it’s set as a 5char long text file. The application had built-in support for is.gd, where it would summon an iframe that would return the appropriate link through is.gd.

Thanks to the not-so-dead Justin, I’m taking that project and I’m making it 10x better with AJAX support. This will allow seamless pasting, and it will be awesome.

EDIT: Oh yes, this means that dnR|TXT will be down for a while.

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Wow, that was FAST. I’ve already upgraded to a complete linux server! Everything’s working now, save for dev. I’ll be fixing that later, whenever I start caring enough to, I guess.

I love this :3

EDIT: There seems to be a bug with returning the time on news posts. I’ll get right on it

EDIT2: It’s fixed. When I say fixed, I mean that it’s an hour ahead, just like it was on Windows. At least I’m consistent.

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Within the next few days (possibly a week or so), the site will undergo some downtime. Maybe a few hours or so, but I promise nothing. The reason for this? I'm upgrading the site to its own server. I finally have a computer I can use as a dedicated linuxbox, and that's right where my server is going.

I really don't know what to expect with it. I mean, I'm going to be testing everything thoroughly before the transfer, but if I had a dollar for every time I've said "nothing will break" I'd be filthy rich.

I'll give you an update later on when I'll be doing the upgrade. I really don't care at the moment, I'm going to go play with my shiny new linuxbox :D

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Just this morning, in about 45 minutes, I performed open-heart surgery on the theme engine, and by performing open-heart surgery I mean I made a theme engine. The engine scans /css/, finds the /* THEMENAME: */ text, and parses that to find the title for the theme name. It’s really cool, here’s the code: Link

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It's 11:30 at night, and I FINALLY pushed out v4.1 of the site! The site has a whole lot of new features, but the two features that you probably noticed are the themes, and the linkbar! If you're using IE (booo), you've noticed the new IE support as well.

Being that it's so late at night, I won't be able to put up a full list of features at the moment. About half of them are under-the-hood, and the other two quarters are user features and admin panel features. v4.1 will be undergoing some other refinements, possibly a v4.1.1, but that will probably be some time this week

I'm really happy of this release, and I hope you guys like it. I really can't wait until v4.5 of the site, so people can use my code. My beautiful, beautiful code :3

Good night everyone. It's been a long day.

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Okay. This weekend, I've worked a lot on v4.1. It looks really good, but there's still some work to be done.

Here's what I've done so far:

• Full IE support [Screenshot]
• Theme support [Screenshot]
• Admin password changing support [Screenshot]
• Admin panel post.php sends headers instead of javascript:history.back(); (to avoid cache issues)

Things I still need to do:

• Complete theme engine (w/ PHP support
• Make the admin panel prettier
• Add more features to the admin panel

ALSO:
As of this post, I am planning on releasing v4.5 of the site as a fully open source engine that anyone can use for their site. It will be added to my portfolio page, and everything will be released. I was thinking about doing this for v3, and v4, and v4.1, but v4.5 is my deadline. As for when that will be released, I dunno lol

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So far, v4.1 has full IE support (save for rounded corners and borders on the sidebar). I also moved theme support to v4.1, which you can view at dnRoyston.dev.

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My site is ugly in IE, but amazing in all (decent) browsers.

I'm going to start working on that from dnRoyston.dev, it will be released with v4.1

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I added theme support, yay!

There's no real reason for doing this, other than it looks cool. I plan on adding more themes later, such as red and white, maybe a minimalist theme

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Since everything's gone, I really don't know what to do with the site from this point. I have no way to get back the SQL database that I dropped, and my latest backup is from over a month ago.

From this point, I think I'm just going to work on v4.1 and my other domain, but no promises

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Everything's gone. I accidentally dropped the database for all of the site, yay :3

I can't really get mad at myself over this, because I just might end up deleting the site and starting over again.

Proceed as you were.

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