First off I have been working on a rather large project for a company.  It’s turned into something bigger than I expected.  Like I guess most projects.  I am closing in on finishing and I hope that will free up more time soon.

Secondly I have had a ton of personal issues to deal with.  Started with my father-in-law getting bladder cancer.  Then my mother having kiddney issues.  I guess when it rains it poors.

I wanted so badly to have the Alpha of phpBB-Evolution done by Jan but I just don’t see that happening.  I haven’t been able to free up enough time.    So lets hope for more next year.

Anyways after reading some good articles I began to find areas where we can improve both phpBB-Evolution and Nuke-Evolution.  One of which is the lack of proper indexing.  Nuke is a villain when it comes to this.  The indexing in its piss poor to put it nicely.  So I figured it would be a good place to implement some of the ideas I have found.  No better place to do it than the NE site….right!?

So I started going through and making better indexing.  I started with the core files and I just got done.  I have to say the difference is extremely noticeable.  I can already tell the page is loading much faster in many areas.  I also turned off the optimizing so I can see what tables get overhead and I can use that as a key as to what needs fixing.  So we shall see what the effects are long term but so far it has been positive.

If you are interested I have been keeping note on what I have done.  So give it a try if you want.

[UPDATE] So I went too far with some indexing.  Though it sped up the site it took up to much memory and caused SQL to crash   so I had to reboot the server and the site was down for a day.  So I took out the biggest indexes and I am leaving just the ones that I think will help and not cause memory issues.  Enjoy.

ALTER TABLE `nuke_modules` ADD INDEX ( `active` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_blocks` ADD INDEX `active_weight` ( `active` , `weight` )  ;
ALTER TABLE `nuke_blocks` ADD INDEX `time_bid` ( `time` , `bid` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_stories` ADD INDEX `topic_ihome_time` ( `topic` , `ihome` , `time` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_stories` ADD INDEX `topic_sid` ( `topic` , `sid` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_banner` ADD INDEX `position_active` ( `position` , `active` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_session` ADD INDEX ( `uname` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_evolution` ADD INDEX ( `evo_field` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_bbadvanced_username_color` ADD INDEX `groupid_groupweight` ( `group_id` , `group_weight` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_bbranks` ADD INDEX `rankspecial_rankmin` ( `rank_special` , `rank_min` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_bbcategories` ADD INDEX ( `cat_title` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_themes` ADD INDEX ( `theme_name` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_nsnst_admins` ADD INDEX ( `password_md5` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_session` ADD INDEX `guest_uname` ( `guest` , `uname` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_session` ADD INDEX ( `host_addr` );
ALTER TABLE `nuke_bbadvanced_username_color` ADD INDEX ( `group_name` );

phpBB-evolution.com has fallen to the second page of results behind the SVN and other stuff. Why the hell is this happening? I know it’’s new and I could see us behind sites like phpbb.com but seriously!?

I used as many tools as I could find online to analyze the sites. Not one of them pointed out any serious issue. We are still tops on all the other search engines including MSN and Yahoo! So what’’s the deal!? My only guess is that the link advertising at the bottom of the page is the cause. Because only in the last month or two has the NE site fallen like that and that was around the time that I put those links on. So that’’s my only guess. If they hadn”t paid for a year I would pull them off and see what happens.

So I guess word to the wise don”t do what I did. >:XX>:XX

So now development and info on the project can be found at http://blog.phpbb-evolution.com

We also updated the site to a newer alpha so check it out phpbb-evolution.com

Email, PDF, and print all work now.

The RSS is also working so people can keep up on news (and everything else at some point).

Reads are now tracking. They are run by a cookie to keep them from showing to many reads per user.

You might also notice that there is the Add This! button. This will help your users control and send messages to all the sites out there such as Digg!.

Categories are now also functioning. The big difference is that categories will be SITE WIDE. Meaning if you setup a category for lets say WoW. You can have news, downloads, faq, etc all in that category. It will make is easier for your users to find everything having to do with specific items. Or you can be vague. It’’s up to you!

The final note is the main screen of the article is limited to 255 characters. Anything beyond that, or anything in the extended content will cause a read more to show up. The read more area is a Medium Text so it can hold A LOT of text.

This is the start of the user info bar. As you can see it’’s still pretty basic but it will get better as time goes on

There has been a lot more work done but most of it has to with non-visible items and core/backed coding. So there isn”t much else I can show you.

Once the News article is working it will be pushed up on www.phpbb-evolution.com and that site will start to take shape.

Obviously we have no alpha time set yet. But you can keep track of its pending release by watching the roadmap

Or you can see the SVN if your brave: http://forums.phpbb-evolution.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=42

This is the default install look so far with the default theme:

Here is a closer look at the menu block so far:

Here is a closer look at the current news article view

The stars are AJAX”ed so you can easily rate and re-rate any article. Also printing and PDF are also functioning.

Not much there yet, but its a start for sure