tutorialtastic: new features and functionality
I was going to announce this yesterday but the idea of letting off some steam about plain text passwords was much more appealing and so I didn’t. I think that says a lot about me as a person actually, how sad.
Anyway, I’ve put in a lot of work during the evenings of this week — and yesterday when I had the day off work — to start integrating some long-promised features into tutorialtastic. You can now register for an account (you know, if you want to) which will allow you to post snippets in the newly added code snippets area. These are moderated for quality control though, so anything I don’t feel will benefit the site won’t get through. Ner :P
The user accounts come with a little mini profile (see mine) and will ultimately be able to rate the tutorials and ask/receive answers to any coding questions you fancy. Registered users may also be the first to see any new features that get added to the site as I go along, but that of course depends on time constraints and my ability to actually think of new features.
The tag search has been fixed; I’ve extended the functionality of the categories which will allow for articles to be posted too; and, I’ve added a Graphics category in the hope that this will persuade me to write some articles about the design side of things. I’ve always said I probably wouldn’t, because I’m not a designer, but I still think I can offer insight into design theory and hopefully persuade some talented artists to do some guest tutorials (hahaha.. here’s hoping!)
Overall, I’m trying to do what you guys suggest: build it up, build a community around it and generally make it more “bookmarkable”. If you have any thoughts, suggestions or spot any problems do let me know. :)
Annie said:
On 22 Nov at 7:16 pm
Oh that’s really cool :) I’m going to sign up. I know you provided the link to register in this blog, but I don’t see it anywhere on the site…?
Carly said:
On 22 Nov at 8:45 pm
OH WOW! I am going to check everything out, and – of course – sign up!
Emsz said:
On 22 Nov at 9:08 pm
I signed up :P I’m dying to become user #2, though I doubt I’ll every post code snippets, since I can’t code PHP xD
Rachael said:
On 22 Nov at 9:10 pm
@Emsz – someone’s already beaten you to user number 2. Sorry! :P Good work on TT Jem, keep it up. :)
Paddy said:
On 22 Nov at 9:12 pm
Well done! It just got thirty times more professional me thinks.
Mackenzie said:
On 22 Nov at 9:44 pm
Wow Jem, this is amazing :O I think that, if you are going to write design tutorials, but you don’t want to go too much into the whole ‘graphic’ part of it, maybe you could talk about typography, colour balance/schemes, colour contrast (i.e. NO THANK YOU BLUE TEXT ON LIME GREEN BACKGROUND) :D It would be definitely suit the new ‘articles’ feature.
Emsz said:
On 22 Nov at 9:48 pm
@ Rachael: Meh.. Well, #3 will do then :P Or something under ten :p As long as it’s under ten, I’m happy xD
Carly said:
On 22 Nov at 10:27 pm
I cannot find the bit where you sign up. I can see the login page, then there’s an unstyled page if you don’t have the requested details. To be honest, I probs just missed it, as I’m a bit silllly at times!
Jem said:
On 22 Nov at 10:31 pm
You’re #10 :) @Carly: I don’t think I’ve linked it from the main page yet but you can get to the Register page from both this entry and the Sitemap at tutorialtastic.
Jacky said:
On 22 Nov at 10:58 pm
If you ever want, I’d be more than glad to write a guest article on design. :)
Carly said:
On 22 Nov at 11:30 pm
Oh, I must of skipped the link… thought I’d opened it in a new tab… silly me!
Bobbi-lee said:
On 23 Nov at 1:12 am
Neat! I am signing up now. I just saw the log in page it says: I am pretty sure that [..features here..] shouldn’t be there?
Kaylee said:
On 23 Nov at 3:00 am
^ I’m pretty sure Jem is still figuring out the features ;P TT is looking greater than ever. Mostly because of the new tagline ;)
Ramsha said:
On 23 Nov at 4:14 am
Any particular reason the “register” link is not on the website itself, aside from the Site Map? Why is a valid website mandatory for registering?
Jem said:
On 23 Nov at 8:16 am
Because I’ve been so busy writing the 188 lines of code that controls the snippets, 97 that control the update profile page, 49 that control the user profile page, 35 that control the login page and 88 that control the register page to worry about the one line that links to it ;) I’ll fix the website field now… should be allowed empty.
Bobbi-lee said:
On 23 Nov at 9:20 am
*sees comment above* Sorry to bother you when you are so busy, but I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw this “Note to self: put member list here.” on the user snippets page (view by user)
Louise said:
On 23 Nov at 11:22 am
Looks like fun! :3 But registration isn’t working. :(
Malin said:
On 23 Nov at 11:59 am
You got something unexpected on line 12 in register.php :P
Jem said:
On 23 Nov at 12:27 pm
Oops.. fix one thing, break another, hehe.
Peter Green said:
On 23 Nov at 5:22 pm
Great stuff! I like the idea of a design tutorial and especially if it covers things like making graphics, i.e. banners buttons etc. I use GIMP and so would love to see tutorials using this amazing free app’. If not, maybe links to other sites covering these subjects?
Sarah said:
On 25 Nov at 8:28 pm
Neat! This sounds like something I would enjoy taking part in. I know via email I asked if reproducing tutorials on Tutorialtastic that are already on 3till7.net would be okay, but I wanted to ask again about code snippets, since they’re much smaller than full tutorials. I have many on 3till7.net as well as on http://snippets.dzone.com/ (which you might want to link somewhere on TT, because I find it to be a great resource) that I would like to add to TT, because I think each site has a different audience but some of their interests may overlap. *shrug* I’m registering for a TT account now. :)