SELECTING FEATURES

NOTE: There is a schedule for adding features, don’t just go changing them unless you’ve been asked. If you are interested in doing features, please contact Mezmoron or I.

Picking a Featured Game

Featured games are chosen on two conditions. First, the game must be of some merit or interest. How many people really care about Fisher Price’s I Can Remember for the NES? The answer to that question is probably not many. Secondly, the game must have a complete game page. We do not want to be showcasing a game that nothing contributed to it. A complete game page definitely has at least a game / case scan, review and overview; and should contain trivia/Easter eggs, and external links (such as to the gamerankings page). Extra Media and instructions, while extremely nice to have, are not completely necessary for the featured game. While Jade Empire has been featured twice (my bad), we should make a concerted effort not to feature the same game twice. Please use the Features List to determine whether or not your game has already been featured or not.

Picking a Featured Image & Collection & Featured Hardware

Pick either a nice looking image, or an image of a game of merit. No image should be picked twice. With 12000 images (and counting) we should have no problem with that. For Featured Collections, pick a nice looking collection. Pictures of Collections are rare to come by, so it may be necessary to feature the same collection more than once. However, always try to feature new collections before collections that have already been featured. For the featured hardware, please find a hardware entry that has an image. It would also be nice if the hardware piece you are featuring had an overview, but that is not required. Like with the featured game, please consult the features list to determine whether or not the hardware, image or collection you are planning on showcasing has been featured already.

ADDING FEATURES

Changing the features used to be difficult. You had to go in to the index page, and manually change all the links, and then you had to properly resize all the images. Luckily for you, I learned how to program, and the process has been made exponentially easier.

Once you have determined everything that you want to feature for the week, we can begin the process of changing the features. I recommend that we make a forum topic for the featured game. An example of what the forum topic should look like can be found here. You may be wondering how to get that image to show up in your post. Thankfully, it’s rather simple. The code for the image path is as follows:

You will need to append something to the image path, assuming that you are using a screenshot from the games database (and you should be).  To the end of the imagepath add &sizex=200. This addition to the link will tell the PHP script that it needs to resize the image to 200 pixels wide. This resize cuts down on the image size, and will make dialup users happy, therefore, please use it. Once you have written the topic go ahead and post it, and then take note of the topic number at the top of the page. For example, the topic number for this thread is 574.0. You will need to know the topic number for when you add the features. Now that the topic is created, let’s go ahead and change the features.

If you are cleared to change the features in the staff script menu under Main you will find a link called “Add/Edit Features”. You should click that, and then once the page loads click “Add Features” located under the features controls. You should now be add the “Add Features” form. This form is hopefully self explanatory, but in case it is not let me walk you through it. There are a whopping 9 fields that you need to fill out. Terrifying, I know, but I have faith that you can figure it out. For example for any place where it asks for the ID of whatever you are featuring, you should place it in the form. If it asks for the game, hardware, or image path, you would input the path in the following manner:

...screenshot.php?THISJUNKHERE

The stuff in bold would be what you want to add. For the featured game discussion thread topic number, that is the topic number I told you take note of earlier. For collections, those forms are filled out differently. For the featured collection username the information needed there would be the Username of the user, not their display name. For example, I know Mike is no longer with us anymore, but while his display name was Nepenthean or a variant of that, his username was actually admin. An easy way to determine what the username is of a user is to look at the collection link. For example, in this link: ...collection.pl?action=profile&name=den68&folder=Collection, we can see that Den’s user name is den68, and that should be the username entered. For the collection image path, what you would do is first find the image you want to display on the front page, and then note the link. For the link .../images/collections/den68/room01.jpg, you would want to place den68/room01.jpg in the collection image path field. Once all the fields are filled out, go ahead and change the features. Congrats! If everything went to plan (and it should have) the features should be changed on the front page. If there is an error, you can edit the features entry in much the same way as before by finding it in the features list and then selecting edit.

Now that features are added, what to do next? First, PM the person with the featured collection, not only congratulating them but also kindly asking them not to delete the image being featured until after the featuring period is over. If they delete it before then the the front page will have a broken link. Lastly, make a news post, they’re easy to do, so please add one!

That’s how you add features, if you have any questions contact Mezmoron or TraderJake.