At RF Generation, we try to give the kids want they want. A few people thought it would be cool if the staff blog script was modified to allow anyone to use it. Initially, I didnt want to code it, I thought it would be a royal pain in the ass to do. Issues such as security and actually creating unique blogs seemed as though it would cause a task that simply would be a pain in the ass to do. So, I had two potential pain in the ass projects to work on, the next version of the submissions system, or community blogs. I chose to start working on the former.




The next version of the submissions system will be complex. Thats not to say that I havent worked on complex scripts before. The original blog script was horribly complex. Functions interacting with other functions, boy, it was fun. I decided that it would be wise to break the submission project into stages, and release scripts in stages. The first set of functions I set out to work on involved getting a true image search to work. Essentially, these functions will catalog every image that we have and insert a log of them into a mySQL table. So, I began to code this script, and I quickly began to realize that this project would be a painful one. I have some functions working, but the fact that it takes an extremely long time to inventory the images into an array makes me weary of coding anything else until I can optimize this initial function. Of course, this initial function will only be used once if all goes well, but it seemed as though it would be a pain in the ass to get it working just right. Coupled with the lack of input regarding the new scripts, my desire to code these scripts became somewhat lacking.

The blog request  someone was really interested in it, and well, from my perspective, it had potential to be used and perhaps even expand our reach. It also wasnt something that seemed as though once it was coded people would be clamoring for more, horribly exacting features that would potentially require a complete recode. It may not seem this way, but coding takes a long time to do, and for the programmers of this site, things will be complete when they are complete. Of course, we have priorities, but as a labor of love we do things when we have time to do things. Simply put, life takes precedence over the site.

So, I decided to work on expanding the blog to be used by anyone. Why not? It couldnt be that hard, right? It was mostly coded, and it shouldnt take more than a week to code. Ha-ha right. How would members use the blog? How would the blog look? How would I make the system safe for the site? All those issues and more would have to be tackled. So, what seemed like a relatively easy task ballooned into something much more, and here we are today, with a new blog script. I wont go into specifics of everything that is new, but there are a lot of new features over the old staff script. So yeah, enjoy that.

Why do it? Why not? Sure, other sites had community blogs to offer, but from my perspective, I want to give you guys another tool to chronicle whatever you want, whether it be collecting, gaming, or anything else. We will always be the classic and modern video games database, but of course, were here to offer you things in addition to that. If we didnt offer you these additional things there would be no collection tools, no forum, no checklists, and no community. Itd be a rather boring place, dont you think? These additions give us a community with an identity, and substance to our site. I hope that you enjoy these additions as much as I enjoy doing them.

So, keep it on channel three, put it on channel three, stuck on channel three, what about channel four, heres a new tagline for you all  broadcast on channel three. Keep it tuned, and perhaps there will be new taglines in the future.

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