I've had many requests to add various features to different sections of the site. Features such as Next & Previous links in pictures, the ability to edit & remove articles, reviews & trick tips, increased maximum size for pictures & videos, etc... and they are all great ideas. However I'm only one person. :(
I've re-written a large part of the back-end of NS to be more efficient and streamlined. Now many sections need to be re-worked including: Cults, Pictures, Videos, Reviews, Articles, Links, Games, Event Calendar, Profile and Classifieds.
Except for feature changes and other interface enhancements, the site will look and work very much like it does now, just better ;)
With all that said, now comes the important part. I'm in need of help to work on NS. I need a few people with some spare time in August, September & October to help me do updates to the site.
Anybody interested in helping should have experience working with PHP & MySQL.
Required skills:
- PHP experience and a good understanding of PHP security & coding techniques. With a site the size of Newschoolers, every precaution must be taken to ensure secure and error-free code. If you know PHP but are not familiar with how to write secure code, I can provide some links to good articles. It won't take you long to get up to speed.
- MySQL experience including joins, grouping & basic knowledge of indexes
- Be comfortable using (or willing to learn to use) a unix shell. Our development server is FreeBSD 4.9 with only shell & web access. If you've never used a shell before I can give you a crash course. It's not difficult but you will need to at least know the basics. For various technical and security reasons, any code development must be done in our environment with our test web server & database. NS code will not be allowed to be moved off our server.
- A willingness to read documentation & document & comment your work. NS is a complex website with many seperate parts. I don't expect anybody to just dive in and start coding (actually I HIGHLY discourage this!!). Before any code is written, you will have to read our design documents so you understand how NS works. Every page load relies on dozens of files, and although you will never have to change these files, you should understand how they work so you know how your code will fit into the bigger picture. In addition to documentation, I will make myself available to answer questions and train coders on the NS internals. I will also expect code to be well documented and easy to read (This means proper indenting & efficient algorithms).
Optional skills (that I'm willing to teach):
- Experience using CVS; CVS stands for 'Concurrent Versions System' and is used to store and manage the code for Newschoolers.
For those who are unfamiliar with CVS please read this:
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2002/01/03/cvs_intro.html
That's basically it for skills. I have a feeling I may have made the job sound harder than it actually is. Really I'm just in need of some experienced coders with a willingness to learn. I'll be around to help everybody out and give some guidance.
I'd like to keep a minimal number of people helping me, but enough to handle the work load. Managing many people is time consuming, and it makes ensuring consitency in the code difficult. Idealy, I'd like to have 4 or 5 simultaneous coders helping out. But I'll keep everybody's contact info handy for the future. Please don't be offended if you are not chosen. There are many people asking to help but I only need a few people.
If you are interested in helping with coding NS, please contact NoPoles or reply in this forum. Please include links & descriptions of sites or projects you've worked on.
BTW, Please don't post useless posts in this thread. I'd like to keep the discussion as focused as possible.
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I'm too lazy to come up with a new signature so now it's this.
