RF Generation Newsletter #1, Nov 2006

Other sites do a newsletter of sorts and I was thinking that perhaps it would be a good idea for us to one too. Lot's of things have been happening around the site and I think maybe we should talk about everything that has occurred in the last few weeks and what we are currently cooking up.

First, let's talk about new things that have been started. We have recently rolled out new submissions scripts. Rather than using the submit missing games thread for title additions the "Submit Site Info" script now takes care of that function. Title Additions, Variation Additions, Regional Variations, Edits, Images; games or hardware, it's all submitted through that little script. So please, don't use the old scripts, for any submissions made through the old script will not be approved. If you can not see the "Submit Site Info" Link in the Navigation Bar then I suggest you refresh the page. This submission script should make approvals and additions go much faster, so I hope everyone appreciates it. Come to think of it, I should probably write the FAQ for the games submission part of the script, so be out for the lookout for that. For the time being, the hardware FAQ is pretty similar.

The second new feature that we have isn't entirely new, but at least it is finally complete. The hardware database has been tinkered with for a long time, and now it's finally complete. So please, please, please submit titles and info for the database, and oh, by the way, you can add hardware entries to your collection. I thought some of you might want to know that. On the topic of databases I should mention that the ability to add regional variants has been added. While the system is not entirely perfect, we, the programmers, tried to do something that would be feasible with our system (ie wouldn't require a total recode of the site). So, while it is not perfect we hope it is something that people will be able to deal with. Right now there are only a few subregions in the system (Canada, France, Italy), but more will be added as they are needed.

Lastly, you may have noticed a while back that our site was rendered pretty useless for a week. Well, that coincided with the switch to our mySQL driven database, and if you haven't noticed now that we, the programmers, have learned our lesson and now the site is running pretty well, except for a few mySQL oddities that are out of our control. (Dear IX, Flush the Databases) Hopefully this switch to mySQL will allow for reliability not seen in the file based database, and now that we've worked out the bugs we think it will. Between the hardware database and the mySQL transition Eddie and I have probably logged 200 hours making the system work. It's been a fun time learning to code this stuff, and I hope you all enjoy the fruits of our labors.

Now that we've discussed what's new let's examine what's cooking. First, we have a new staff member. Bum-man has been a member of the site for a for a long while (Member 108ish of 890), and he has been kind enough to volunteer his PHP skills to write a script that will generate system checklists in real time. I'm sure lots of people will enjoy that when his script goes live, but since we are a very lax community don't expect this script necessarily any time soon. We're not one to push deadlines, and this is a labor of love for everyone involved, so it will be finished when its finished. Next, I am currently writing a submissions log of sorts. This log will inform you of all of your submissions that have been approved, and will also let you know which submissions that you have made still need to be approved. As of 2 weeks ago any member submissions were being logged, so when that script goes live you can expect to see some submissions from a while back, not just day 1 of the script being live. Lastly, there are some back end fixes that are going on, but only the staff get to deal with those.

I hope this newsletter of sorts has given everyone a good idea of where the site is, and where it is heading in the near future. For the time being, be active in our community, say hi in the forums, add entries to your collection, chat in the chat room, or make submissions to our site. Whatever you do stick around, for there will always be more to follow when you keep it tuned to channel three.