I'm still hashing out what to do with the parody author pages.  The voting totals are really dragging the scripts down and making the server run slowly when I build the author list every day.  I have some solutions in mind, but it might be a day or two before the author pages get updated. 

Hi,

So you are planning a complete overhaul of the parody author interface on your site? I like the way its laid out at the moment, and I must admit I wouldn't want to see a radical change to it. If you do change it will it follow a similar layout to the existing one?

Jason.

Hi,

So you are planning a complete overhaul of the parody author interface on your site? I like the way its laid out at the moment, and I must admit I wouldn't want to see a radical change to it. If you do change it will it follow a similar layout to the existing one?

Jason.


I'm going break up the author page listings into multiple pages.  Malcolm Higgins' page is 800K, which would take forever to download on a slow connection. So instead of all of them on one page, it would be more like 100 to a page.  That means for authors with more than 100, the column sorting will have to go away.  Considering how slowly that works now, I doubt many people use it. 

I really need to remove the voting score totals from the pages.  I can actually change the way it works so that the current voting scores appear next to each parody listed, just not the totals on the author index and the bottom of the author page.

I'm also thinking of a little DHTML, so that you can click next to a parody to see the comments appear on the page, without having to view a seperate page for them.

I'm going break up the author page listings into multiple pages.  Malcolm Higgins' page is 800K, which would take forever to download on a slow connection. So instead of all of them on one page, it would be more like 100 to a page.  That means for authors with more than 100, the column sorting will have to go away.  Considering how slowly that works now, I doubt many people use it. 

I really need to remove the voting score totals from the pages.  I can actually change the way it works so that the current voting scores appear next to each parody listed, just not the totals on the author index and the bottom of the author page.

I'm also thinking of a little DHTML, so that you can click next to a parody to see the comments appear on the page, without having to view a seperate page for them.


Yea that sounds pretty good. If the listings are spread over multiple pages it should speed things up a bit. Also why did Max Power's 'Peas And Carrots' parody get deleted? I didn't think there was anything inappropriate about it, except for a rhyming error.

Jason.

I'm going break up the author page listings into multiple pages.  Malcolm Higgins' page is 800K, which would take forever to download on a slow connection. So instead of all of them on one page, it would be more like 100 to a page.  That means for authors with more than 100, the column sorting will have to go away.  Considering how slowly that works now, I doubt many people use it. 

I really need to remove the voting score totals from the pages.  I can actually change the way it works so that the current voting scores appear next to each parody listed, just not the totals on the author index and the bottom of the author page.

I'm also thinking of a little DHTML, so that you can click next to a parody to see the comments appear on the page, without having to view a seperate page for them.


So that means that if someone has 500 parodies on their page, it would have 5 pages then.

Yea that sounds pretty good. If the listings are spread over multiple pages it should speed things up a bit. Also why did Max Power's 'Peas And Carrots' parody get deleted? I didn't think there was anything inappropriate about it, except for a rhyming error.

Jason.


I believe he asked me to remove it so he could submit another version.

So that means that if someone has 500 parodies on their page, it would have 5 pages then.


yes.  I think 100 per page would be a good size without getting too carried away.

yes.  I think 100 per page would be a good size without getting too carried away.


Cool.

For now, I haven't broken down the author listings into separate pages. I'm going to take a wait and see stance.  With the voting results and the extra "all comments" pages gone, the load on the server is tiny, (not to mention it runs in 20 seconds instead of an hour).

Let me know what you think.

Different, for sure... One thing I'd like back is the alphabetical sorting feature - it would be easier to pick ABC entries.

While I have DSL, it is pretty slow on uploading - 200kbs is about all I get (sh***y Verizon). Even with that, only the authors who have more than ~400 parodies really take more than about 5 seconds to sort.

Dial-up is stone age

I'm kinda with Jason on this one - I like the old setup much better, for now anyway. What about just doing author updates once a week instead of daily? If it is something I can do, let me know as I'm up very late - the server being slow for an hour at 4am EST would hardly be noticed...

so no more rankings, and no more statistics (pacing, humour, total) on the Authors Index.  Is that permanent? 

seems a shame to have all those stats and no way of accessing them

Different, for sure... One thing I'd like back is the alphabetical sorting feature...


That was my first reaction too! But then again I guess it's pretty easy to write down all ones titles in a word document and have them sorted there... unless you're Malcolm or anyone of the others in the four numbers club! :P

I thought the rankings would still be there, but we wouldn't be able to sort columns from highest to lowest anymore. That shouldn't be a big deal anyway, because sorting only works in Windows and if yu have that you can use phil's amiright viewer for that.

Thing is, the viewer got its numbers from the author's page, so that's going, too...

Unless there's some other way of getting the info - say, Chucky, could you make the voting data available as a monthly csv download?

Thing is, the viewer got its numbers from the author's page, so that's going, too...

Unless there's some other way of getting the info - say, Chucky, could you make the voting data available as a monthly csv download?


The voting totals are the problem with the author script, which is the reason I pulled them off the page.  What exactly do people want for voting information?  The latest score for each parody?  If that's the case, I can probably pull it back in.  I have some ideas that will cause less strain on the server once I code it.