Ah, december 31st, a few beers in my belly, I figured it was time for a little preview of what to expect of FilesNetwork.com (of which this site is part) in 2003! Of course we'll be launching the necessary new sites such as Q4Files.com for Quake 4, Simcity4Files.com, Unreal2Files.com, WoWFiles.com and more. But on the following, I will be spending most of my time: - More features (listed below) - A more advanced (easier to moderate and cooler) comments system - More features for members (listed below) - Customization (order of content on the frontpage can be specified, etc. etc.) - Ways to increase our IRC channels’ popularity - Conversion of Demo-Files.com to FilesNetwork.com backend plus the hosting our demos locally. - Launch of a new X-Box site; X-BoxNetwork.com in the same style of our GamecubeNetwork.com - GuildNetwork expansion (of which MappersGuild.com) is part - And near the end of 2003 we hope to launch our own online magazine with reviews etc. (currently planned at ArfGamers.com) - And finally, 10 or more (don’t have an exact count yet) FilesNetwork.com staffers will be @ E3 2003 in L.A. in may, pimping filesnetwork and supplying developers and PR folks with truckloads of beer, just to suck up :) We’re considering an E3 news site but that’s not decided at this point. So yeah that’s it in general lines, it’s gonna be a very good year. Here’s an overview of the features / site additions you’ll see in 2003, if all goes well: General Features: - Redo the File Browser (sort.files page) to support easy sorting per column, and choose manually what fields to display and which ones not to show. - Redo the File Search engine for more specific search options. - Who's online? (x members and x guests) Will be back - What's new (since your last visit) will be fixed. This is currently stored in a cookie (lastvisit) but this will be switched to database storing so it works 10 out of 10 times :) - The File Info (file.info) page will get a new look and a new way of how and where file info is shown. It will also show additional information relating to the developer and possible other files by that person. - File Ratings will become advanced. This means seperate ratings for guests and for members as I’ve done some “research" and it appears that 80% of the 1 (lowest grade possible) votes are voted on by guests. I will also start logging each vote so a little graphic can be generated which shows how many 1 votes, how many 2 votes, etc. etc. Developer / Author Features: - Developer Profiles - Ability for the developer to edit their profile - :thumbsup: Ability for the developer to UPLOAD THEIR OWN FILES and add info along with it! - see the adendum below for more detailed info! Member Features: - Member profiles - Edit member profile - Recover lost password - In member profile: Custom options; customize the crap out of this site to suit your needs! (Examples: Hide comments by default, Hide screenshots by default, Hide readme by default. Show latest 100 files on frontpage, or latest 5 (or in between), whatever you want) Etc. Comments Features: - Titles: Usergroups like Staff, V.I.P. Members, Banned users, Developers. Titles like that will be shown next to someones username. - Edit Comments: The Edit Comment feature will be back! After it was removed about 5 months ago due to the fact that comments weren´t being pulled from the database in real time which made it more of a bitch than finding osama to make it editable :) - Report bad post: Visitors can click a simple "report this post to moderator" link next to every comment to report it to a moderator (doh). However anti-flood protection will be built in of course to prevent abuse as I know some of you outthere can’t resist. - Comments Rating: Staff will have the ability to rate a comment, like "spam", "useless", "compliment", "helpful", "informative", etc. Then, visitors can choose to only show "helpful" and "informative" rated comments to weed out the useless posts. This is very helpful for files like the Jedimod or the Patch on JK2Files.com (over 400 comments); people can filter out comments like "it´s not working aaargh :furious:" and can only have the posts by people that tell how to fix things or install it properly shown! - Maximum of 10, 20, 50 or 100 comments per page, customisable in your member profile - Threaded / Flat: Haven't decided on this one yet but it will mean you can reply to someone else´s comment which means your comment will be threaded underneath that post (so yours will show a bit to the right). A bit hard to explain, but I think both Slashdot.org and Tweakers.net use this style as well so check that out if you´re curious. - Easy Banning: With the new behind-the-scenes additions to the comments / member database it will be 99 times easier for a upper staff member to ban a user, to set a 24 hour ban, a 30 day ban, etc. Well that's it for now, I'm sure I have more things planned. I actually wanted to have "Show smilies as graphics in comments" as an option in your member profile but I realized that’s a) not that urgent as it’s limited to 1 (guests) and 3 (members) at the moment anyway. And b) hard to do, waste of server CPU and storage as I gotta render each comment double. Oh and again, we hope to bring in some more people into all FilesNetwork IRC channels, we'll focus on that next year. You'll also see some features on the sites to support our IRC channels. MrGreg is even working on a customized version of mIRC so you hardly have to do anything to join us in IRC! Developer / Author Features Adendum: I wrote the paragraphs below a few weeks ago in a news post, busy (or lazy, whatever you want) as I am, I’ll just paste it below unedited, enjoy :) I just wanted to drop a quick update regarding the Developer Profile pages. As most of you know when clicking on a developers name, you'll get a "coming soon" page. Well, that will soon change. We'll show you any info a developer wants us to show. By default for example, the email address is not shown, you can only contact a developer by mailform (if that hasn't been disabled by the developer). But the greatest thing about a developer profile is that you'll be able to check: (XXXX = is the game for the site you are on) (John Doe = is our imaginary Developer used in this example ) - Latest 10 XXXX Files by John Doe - 10 most popular XXXX Files by John Doe - All files by John Doe - Files for other Games / FilesNetwork.com sites by John Doe (if any) - Top 5 Developers in number of files - Top 5 Developers in number of downloads - Top 5 Developers in average rating of all their files - Top 5 Developers in activity in the past 31 days. Then when that is done, I will work on the Developers section where developers can edit their info / profile. After that, every developer (currently 3,000 networkwide) will get 25 MB of non-public FTP they can use to upload their files. After that they can add the file to the site just like our staff does. Of course the file will be placed in a moderating queue. A note about the 25 MB FTP. It will only be possible to upload to this FTP, not to download from it and as I stated earlier, it's non public FTP so it cannot be used for anything else besides uploading files for this site. If you have files bigger than 25 Megs you can request a temporary quota upgrade. Anyway this is still a bit off so I'll stop talking about it now as I haven't planned out the details. Oh and if there's someone with a lot of C++ and Unix FreeBSD brains... please get in touch with me! If you think I “missed" a feature that you’d really like to see, than do shoot me an E-Mail. Also, if you have good ideas for a future Files site, contact me as well. Do realize that the game should be customisable, (semi-)popular and not out (for a long time) yet. So please quit E-Mailing me to tell us how we should launch GTA3ViceCityFiles.com :) Wow well I think that’s it! 19.30 here, I’m gonna hit the shower and then carry on with the beer kegs and have a good time. To everyone where ever you are in the world have a good evening and morning :) and here’s to a healthful, peaceful (to bad that ain’t happening :() and fileful evening! :beer: :thumbsup: Jos “Pro-Filer" Jongejan, FilesNetwork.com Founder / Network Manager etc. [email protected] P.S.: Yeah sorry I always end up writing long pieces of blabla, so it seems... P.S. 2: If you really really want us to finish all or most of the above and not have us hit the website graveyard, we’d really appreciate a donation. I know asking for money is pretty lame but hey, shall we say "everyone is doing it"? Click here for more information if you don’t want to donate through paypal, contact me.