Roller-Coaster.com.au Development

Hmm…

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Articles system is nearing completion. It is a fully searchable system that adds categories so now press releases are combined into the same system and we have greater scope for editorials and reviews.

New site’s article homepage. From here you can search for articles, narrow it down so you can only view press releases for instance, by year or the most frequent contributors.

The actual article page. It’s very similar to our current article system’s view, really a testament to the constant refinement that has taken place with that system over the past 18 months. The look has been tweaked however to just make it cleaner and easier to read. The new photo system can be seen in action here, where articles can easily include smaller thumbnail photos throughout; a feature we hope will help brighten up articles. I think this new look gives it a much more spacious and clean look.

The bulk of the design and programming is completed. The focus is now on tying up loose ends, tweaking design elements, adding user-friendliness and fine-tuning our backend system that lets users submit content and us approve it.

I’ll see how things go over the next week or so, but I envisage that the first announcements will be made in coming weeks. My December is chockers with work, travel/leisure and all that usual Decembery sort of stuff, so the plan will basically be get things out there so everyone knows where the site is heading (i.e. international, but still very much Australian) and has a chance to weigh in on it all, but not launch until January.

There will be a beta testing period in the weeks that lead up to the launch, so we’ll also be putting up a notice for anyone that’s interested in spending a little bit of time trying to break the site before everyone else gets to.

Today I spent a lot of time working on a system that’ll convert all the existing data to the new site. Obviously with around 250 rides, 50 parks, 50 roller coasters, 1700 photos and 150 articles there’s no way this could be performed manually in any reasonable timeframe, and the huge differences in the site’s programming mean that I can’t just do a direct copy + paste, so I am working on a series of scripts that take the original data, transform it into the new form and insert it into the new database.

What you see to the left is success after plenty of frustrations.

Check out the next page to see a screenshot of how things are going… Continue Reading »

Rules for launching a theme park website in Australia:

1. Buy domain name.
2. Design cool splash page promising the world.
3. You’re 99% of the way there so take a few months off to celebrate.
4. Delay it a few more months to really keep things interesting.
5. Launch site and send out mass Personal Messages on Roller-Coaster.com.au telling members how much R-C sucks and how much better your site is.
6. Live the high life with all the money and girls in the world.

I’ve had a few spare hours recently, in which I’ve made some very good headway on the development of the new site. It’s starting to look and feel like a completed site. The new gallery system in particular is great. It’s a really fluid and cohesive system that lets you seamlessly jump from photo to photo. You won’t need to click into a gallery. All photos tagged with whatever you’re looking at (be it Superman Escape photos, all Movie World photos, Superman Escape construction photos, Movie World publicity photos/artwork etc. etc.) will be listed by date added (newest to oldest). Doesn’t matter who took the photo, they’re all in there together. Any members can add photos so it’s easier than ever to stay on the cutting edge with construction. If you submit a photo, it will appear with your name underneath it, linking to your own profile page featuring all photos and articles you’ve had published on the site.

The site will be Australia-focused but the database has been specifically designed to cover parks and rides in any country equally. The fact of the matter is that there isn’t enough content available to keep things interesting focusing totally on Australia. We’ll cover international news to ensure that there are always fresh headlines. In addition we’ll open up the park database to cover international theme parks and feature photos from any park in the world so that anyone can put photos from their latest trip up. Of course if you only wish to see Australian (or US or UK etc.) content there will an option to easily narrow it all down.

The goal, essentially is to create a more enriching and dynamic theme park community and create a site where there’s something new to read and look at every single day.

(Oh, and I broke the above rules. The site was about 90% complete when I designed that splash image above.)

I’m feeling generous. Actually I hope that it’ll motivate me a bit to get moving with things…

Just a tiny snippet of what’s to come. It doesn’t give a whole lot away other than a slight idea of the GUI.

What you see is 100% completed code. That’s not a Photoshop preview or straight HTML template. Everything about it (and most things you don’t see) is 100% functional.

Things have been quiet here but they haven’t been behind the scenes.

 95% of the framwork for the new site is in place. It’s slow going, but progress is going well. In the next few months there will be screenshots and/or previews available and hopefully a final launch not long after.

A bit about our database…
I believe the new site will be home to the most intuitive theme park database of any theme park website out there. Statistics are being handled by a unique logic that allows for an infinite number of different stats for an infinite number of different types of attractions. As with the current site, you will be able to edit attractions, add new ones and also track your submissions so you know if it’s been approved or not and why.

Progress has been slow. Much slower than I had originally hoped, due largely to problems that occured over the summer.

 A quick update to give you an idea of the all-new gallery system that will be featured.

Galleries will be quite different
Whenever there are updates etc., they will appear as grouped galleries much like they currently do. General photographs of rides however will not be grouped in this fashion. Instead each park/ride/coaster/show will have its own page of photos with all photos of the particular attraction shown. From this page the gallery can be narrowed to only show construction photos, general photos, photos of only certain rides (for park pages), or photos by a certain person.

All users can add photos
Every single registered member will be able to upload their own photos. Users can add an unlimited number of photos to any entry in our database. They will enter a queue, but this is just so we can make sure it’s not a duplicate, irrelevant or porn or whatever. Photos will then appear on the gallery page for the attraction in question.

Each user will have a content page
Every single registered member will have their own content profile. Basically a portfolio of every single piece of content that user has added to the site. If you submit an article, modify or add a database entry or add photos it’ll appear on this page so you have very solid recognition for your contributions. Where your name appears (beneath photos you’ve added, articles you’ve written or on our credits page etc.), it’ll also link back to this page. It’ll be separate from your forum profile.

 Photos will be tagged
Each individual photo will be tagged so it can appear in multiple ride galleries if it’s a photo of two rides etc.

Plenty more surprises to come so stay tuned!

Since my last post a lot has changed in the development…

Layout is everything. Without an attractive, functional layout a website is nothing. It’s always good to look back at early stages in a project and refine before it gets too late. At this stage in the project it’s easy to do because there’s absolutely no programming associated with the design - it’s all straight HTML. Ultimately I found that the new design wasn’t accurately reflecting the new components I want to introduce and in the end it was really just a revision of what currently exists.

Of course mentioning layout, you can’t go past the fact that this blog has once again changed theme. Should stay this way for a while…

Speaking of programming, after weighing up a lot of different options, I’ve come to the decision to programme from this point on in an entirely different manner, using object-oriented programming (OOP) to create a neater, safer site and dramatically cut down the amount of scripting required. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it, but the entire site will be completely recoded from scratch with not an ounce of the old programming or database design coming along. Of course existing database content will be imported so it won’t appear to be quite as much a clean slate to end-viewers.

At this stage I’m totally convinced that what’s to come will put Roller-Coaster.com.au onto the international platform in due course.

Normally when I develop a website after I conceptualise it my mind, I’ll jot down on paper notes about what it’ll have as well as sketches of some particular layouts to get a feel for where everything will slot in. Especially now that I’ve started designing entirely using DIVs instead of tables, having every single box drawn as they’ll appear on paper makes designing CSS to go along with the DIVs much easier.

This time it’s different. I started with a basic idea for a website. I’m not going to say what that basic idea is - all will be revealed soon enough - but I started with nothing more than an idea. Then, rather than design a site’s functionality around that idea and finally come up with an attractive design to fit that functionality, I’ve got a design that is based on that one key idea.

It’s interesting, because where normally the design facilitates functionality, this time the design facilitates the big picture, the essense of the site. Designing this way lets me think of graphical solutions that best serve the idea. Where there’s a graphical solution, designing code that brings that graphical solution to life in a dynamic fashion is a piece of cake.

I have spent two weeks, probably working a minimum of 2-4 hours a day on it, just coming up with an index page. At a very basic level it’s pretty much similar to how Roller-Coaster.com.au looks now. The latest article in the top left. Instead of having the older news to the right of it, I’ve put them below. To the right there is the latest gallery and above that a new feature which, again, I’ll save for another day. The Random section and construction watch remain in their same spots, both will look and function completely differently to how they do now. Underneath Random will be press releases (truncated significantly), to its right will be latest forum posts.

I’ll confirm a few things:

1. The Park / ride / coaster counters will be scrapped. They just haven’t been popular enough to warrant redeveloping them. And trust me, they need a complete overhaul.
2. Opinions I’m unsure about. Their main problem at the moment is they’re confusing and hard to find. If I find a simpler way to include them in this new project then I’ll keep them.
3. The way videos are published will be changing. I’ve mentioned in the forums that the current system is being redeveloped. Most likely it’ll happen in two phases - first I get the current system working in its revised format, which will only be a temporary solution until the new site is made available.
4. I hope to make the site overall a more interactive experience. This means blurring the lines between “us” and “you”, and hopefully make how you perceive this site a lot more real. I’m sure you can tell I’m being pretty vague about this, and that’s really because I have dozens of different ideas and which ones make the final cut I’m not sure about.

 In the next few months, Roller-Coaster.com.au turns three years old. With it come some changes - probably among the biggest in the five years since Total Thrills launched.

A few key points about what the future will entail:

1. Roller-Coaster.com.au will be changing directions. No, we’re not turning into a field hockey, model trains or Klingon fansite. It’ll still be theme parks, but in a different way. Yes, we’ll still be bringing nothing but top-notch reporting and quality photographs.
2. The changes will warrant a new design. I’m very happy with the current design for Roller-Coaster.com.au, it works quite well and with the many changes to the articles system over the past year I think that graphically we display the best theme park news on the Internet. The change isn’t about limitations of the current design, it’s to reflect the direction change.
3. The scope of the site will be expanding. The strengths of Roller-Coaster.com.au currently lie in our reportage. Statistically, people visit our site for the news and construction updates. Construction updates have been difficult for a while because it’s hard for me to find time to visit the parks (most updates in the past year or so attributed to me have been taken on my way down the coast for a surf), but whenever possible I do publish them because they are a huge draw. So with that said, we will still maintain our focus on breaking Australian theme park news. It’s the rest that may (or may not…) change! Expect everything that is good and much, much more. This also means that certain things will be removed as they’ve been deemed clutter and unpopular.

Sometimes things just click. Ideas that come to fruition exactly how they’ve been planned. That’s how I feel about the future here.