As it may well look

Hey guys, hope you’re doing well!

Last time I wrote one of these, I said it would be the first of a multi-part look at the storylist overhaul. Predictably, it took me longer to get to writing this as June proved to be a busy month for me. Still, I think you’ll like what you’ll see in this short preview.  

Let’s start with a screenshot of what the new list looks on my test machine:

The basic idea is to have an interface that’s as simple as possible while also presenting as much relevant information as a user might need. It ought to also look good on a variety of screen sizes ranging from a small phone to an ultrawide monitor. A variable number of columns and basic CSS accomplishes this and I tried to limit each story entry to the bare minimum of information, so as not to overwhelm.  

As you might recall from last time, I had to process data before I could even get started. In the end, it took a good chunk of a day of scripting to do away with all the cruft and special corner cases we had for our database. There are no more “second runs” for one and every story is its own distinct entry for one. It’s just easier to manage stories if the data is all formatted in the same way. For whatever it’s worth, it was at least “entertaining” to figure out how to convert the various thread titles and dates in a program instead of inputting data manually.  

While stuff like searching isn’t working quite just yet, you can probably tell what I’m going for with the current build. Users will be able to search for stories using varying criteria such as tags, title and author. It’s a system obviously inspired by booru-style tags which will probably be familiar to most users that use the site. Tags are planned to be clickable, inserting into the search bar to get as specific a result as one might like. Figuring out how to best implement tags into the database took a while since I wanted to balance performance with maintainability. I don’t really have frontends for tag management in place yet, but it’s an eventual goal (and a subject for another one of these posts).

Oh, before I forget: It’s not really pictured but the story list dynamically loads up parent and children threads according to the search queries. I figured that being able to jump around within the story list to see related stories would be a neat feature to have. This works well, even with the various sorting options that reorganize the list on the fly. I’ve managed to keep the code base lean and relatively obvious as well, meaning that it should be easier to extend or retool things in the future if the need should arise.  

I should also note that the current design isn’t final. Colors are obviously subject to change (and possibly preferences from the rest of the site will be honored here) as well as placeholder text and buttons. This along with size adjustments and a pass for mobile compatibility is relatively low priority and I figure I’ll give it a go when we’re past testing and getting close to deployment.  

The next step, which I hope to get done before the end of the month, is to set up a sane interface for managing tags. This includes creating a space for users to submit things. I probably won’t allow just anyone to directly edit stories in the beginning but that’s really a topic for another time. We’ll be taking this step by step and I’ll be sharing some of these first steps directly with you guys, probably via Discord. That way you can help me test/break/add things as clearly all of this will require an increasing amount of manpower. Look forward to all that very soon.

Until next time, take it easy!