chopstickles blog

At Current:

The Social Network is slowly progressing and its features are very very slowly being implemented and tested for the functionality. As it currently stands the Profile Data and Friends are in place on the Profile but have to be edited through the database as no Edit Page for the profiles have been built yet.

Profiles are now automatically protected to everybody except people on your friends list. A simple “this profile is private” message is shown on attempts to view a private account. This can be turned off or on via the User Control Panel (UCP). A users details in their profile if under the age of 18 are all automatically hidden to everyone, including friends with future access in the UCP to disable the details which you want to show. This can be done to specific types of people, eg: friends, everybody.

Although the details on a private profile are hidden, some little detail is given such as the users nickname and their avatar. The rest including comments is hidden.

The login system is fully functional a updates the database based on your last visit and time and redirects you to your profile on submission. Accounts for this also have to be manually added via the database due to the lack of a place of ‘registration’. Registration may be one of the later objects added as it isn’t really as important during the beginning testing and implementation stages.

The homepage is still a work in progress and only shows the most recent profiles created on the site. The most recent profiles created will soon be fixed to only show the most recent profiles which are both public and the user has agreed for their profile to be featured on the Homepage. Basic data of the total amount of users is also shown.

Near Future:

Some alterations need to be made to the Database, Member and Error classes to improve and clean up the code.

The next feature which will be implmented at a lower standard is the Administration Control Panel (ACP) so the site can be monitored more by the Administrators and the various Modules and the like can be set to allow or disallow as well as the content which is shown in the news and the homepage.

Alterations to the various template files also need to be made for valid html and css.

Current Lines of Code: 2231
Current Version: 0.0.2a

A few days ago I signed up at ‘Google User Experience Research’ in the hope of earning some cash just by filling out some surveys. From what I’ve heard you can earn up to $75 for doing a survey which at the time seemed to good to be true, but then again its Google (and we all love Google) so I just signed up anyway. There wasn’t really anything to lose, just the time filling out your details.

Although there has been much anticipation in receiving a survey I am still yet to have received one, but obviously like most other sites you usually have to wait quite some time. But it seems that alot of people who have signed up before have still not received any surveys yet.

People who have signed up and their comments are in this thread at the Digital Point Forums.

Thread: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=168546
Survey Signup: https://services.google.com/inquiry/user_study

An interesting site…

I’ve currently been using Emailcash Site for a while now, and it is quite an interesting site to visit. It allows you to collect rewards and points for free, without an fees or the like. It allows collect free points from Clicking Links, doing Quick Surveys, reading Emails and the Occasional Survey.

There are various other parts of the site where you can also gain points, such as playing games such as the Guessing Game.

It is quite convenient that the points earned can be stored in a sort of bank where interest is earned over the period it is put in there. The points can then later be converted to real money which can be sent to you upon the request of a cheque or can be used on the various auctions for products on the site.

There are some restrictions on the site though, such as having to be an Australian resident, being over 13, and having a valid email address.

Email Cash site: http://www.emailcash.com.au/

So i’ve decided to build a social-network. Such a grueling task which will probably take a few months to get to a semi-decent stage where it can be tested by users. Currently the idea is to create a simplistic social-network which can be fast loaded and works well with people with slower internet connections.

Currently the feature list is only very small, mainly including the basic features of a social network such as:

• Profile with numerous fields about the Person
• Display Picture
• Frients List
• Comment System
• Forum/Community Bulletin Board

Later additions such as a photo gallery being added at a later stage if the social-network starts to get members.

A *nix server, Apache, MySQL and PHP will be used to create the project as well as some Javascript for smaller aspects of the site.

The main aim is to provide an alternative to MySpace or Bebo. The GUI will be made to provide customisation on different levels such as basic editing of colours through a form, to full CSS editing as well as Layout Management and which modules are to be displayed. We also aim to comply with the w3 standards for html and css and provide security for people at or under the age of 16 with all details of users being hidden until chosen otherwise, and details of minors being restricted to friends only.