Holiday specials
I've decided to put some t-shirts and other accessories up for sale on the site over Christmas featuring some art and specifically visual gags. Might be interesting.
Current subjects for the merch:
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Computers (Geeks, Hackers etc.)
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EK: Tha Strip specials
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Tha Strip specials
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Gamer gags
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Fantasy gags (LoTR for example)
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Custom shirts (custom graphic, custom text): get the shirt you want, drawn and printed just for you
I'll only be using Cafepress (with some PHP integration into the site from PHPGirl), but there should be some original offerings.
CMS v4
Don't mind me, just brainstorming a few ideas (which I've actually had for a while) for the CMS on 1stvamp.org. This would be 1stVamp.org CMS v4.0.
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New modular design, seperating each individual part of the CMS into different loadable modules
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More indexing (partially used already) to make finding specific information in the backend faster
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Static RSS output, and support for RSS v1.0
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MT style TrackBack support
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More intelligent automated XHTML formatting
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BBCode-like code system (partially implemented already)
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Possible XML-based backend, with PHP layer for output
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Site stats (word counts, users etc.)
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User commenting, content-seperated
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E-Mail/IM/CMI/SMS interfaces
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Standardized settings control wizard
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Move away from using hardcoding on some modules
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Implement single modules in CMS which can be used by multiple sites (such as Damo and Darren).
News Commenting
A quick piece of advice for anyone running, or thinking of running a news site. Do not include direct commenting in your news.
It has become the biggest problem for /. (apart from outright biggotry), and it is quickly becoming a strangling noose on Geek.com, a website I have visited for some years and used to write articles for untill I started going to college and found I didn't have the time.
Commenting on news is good, but when you get a shitload of script kiddies and Ken Spawn scrambling to add their worthless and inaccurate comments to the news, the information within the content is depreciated by their comments. Their comments become part of the content. The solution? Don't make it part of the content.
Dettach commenting to a seperate system, like a BBS/Forum system alongside the news system. That way comments are tied into news items, but they are not part of the news itself.
On Geek.com this used to be slightly different as the author of the article would give a quoted news item, mentioning only the facts as they were given from a source, and then below in a seperate section (but still part of the content) would be a seperate comment, stated as pure opinion and not the news itself.