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September 4, 2015

How to set up XenForo on Microsoft Azure

I spent far more time than I liked trying to move the Zems Forums from shared hosting to Azure cloud. I’ve written this post in the hopes that it will help someone else who is also struggling with the process.

Set up custom user.ini to extend time before timeout from 120 to 300: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaushal/archive/2014/01/02/php-user-ini-and-windows-azure-web-sites.aspx
One of my early tests was trying to do a fresh install, but it kept timing out on me. Somewhere in the database setup it times out, so if it happens to you, put this in your user.ini file:
```
max_execution_time= 300;
```
Create a file named ‘web.config’ and add the IIS code here: https://xenforo.com/help/friendly-urls/
Put the file in the root directory for your site (not the root directory of the FTP). For me, this was a folder named ‘site’
Sign up for an email sending service: http://blog.smarx.com/posts/emailtheinternet-com-sending-and-receiving-email-in-windows-azure
Azure doesn’t naturally support email services since spammers would likely use it and Azure email services would get flagged as spam, which is not what you want to happen to your emails. You need to use a third party SMTP service (I use AuthSMTP) and put the SMTP details in Admin CP -> Options -> Email Options. Note that a SMTP server does not have slashes in it, so don’t put ‘http://’ or have a trailing slash at the end. I recommend using port 2525, but check your SMTP service for recommended ports.

Note: If you are moving a forum to Azure and need to import a large database, I recommend using bigdump: http://www.ozerov.de/bigdump/

October 10, 2014

Oshine – a Creative Multipurpose WordPress theme

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How to make a million dollars ?

- http://www.themeforest.net

May 12, 2012

Second HTML5 App Update – Text Arranger 1.1

Just a few updates on my text editing app I’ve been creating as a means to learn the canvas text API. New features added are:

Font can now be changed! Not all browsers support the fonts I added though.
Font Size can now be modified.
Font colors, for both fill and outline, can be chosen.
Font style and weight can be edited.

I also added a few optimizations to keep the text on the center of the screen better, but they’re not really noticeable because the first version of the app did it quite nicely.

The Updated JavaScript

$(document).ready(function() {  
  // Uses Modernizr.js to check for canvas support
  function canvasSupport() {
    return Modernizr.canvas;
  }
  
  
  // Once DOM is ready, start the app
  canvasApp();
  
  function canvasApp() {
    // Check for canvas support
    if (!canvasSupport()) {
      return;
    }
  
    // Grab the canvas and set the context to 2d
    var theCanvas = $("#canvasOne");
    var context = theCanvas.get(0).getContext("2d");
    
    // Variables for text handling
    var message = "";
    var fillOutline = "fill"; // set default fill/outline to fill
    var fontSize = "50";
    var fontFace = "serif";
    var fontWeight = "normal";
    var fontStyle = "normal";
    var textFillColor = "#000000";
    var textStrokeColor = "#000000";
    
    // Variables used for positioning
    var textBaseline = "middle";
    var textAlign = "center";
    
    // Event listeners
    $("#textBox").keyup(textBoxChanged);
    $("#fillOutline").change(fillOutlineChanged);
    $("#textSize").change(textSizeChanged);
    $("#textFont").change(textFontChanged);
    $("#fontWeight").change(fontWeightChanged);
    $("#fontStyle").change(fontStyleChanged);
    $("#textFillColor").change(textFillColorChanged);
    $("#textStrokeColor").change(textStrokeColorChanged);
    
    // First screen draw
    drawScreen();
    
    // Event handler functions
    function textBoxChanged(e) {
      var target = e.target;
      message = target.value;
      drawScreen();
    }
    
    function fillOutlineChanged(e) {
      var target = e.target;
      fillOutline = target.value;
      drawScreen();
    }
    
    function textSizeChanged(e) {
      var target = e.target;
      fontSize = target.value;
      drawScreen();
    }
    
    function textFontChanged(e) {
      var target = e.target;
      fontFace = target.value;
      drawScreen();
    }

    function fontWeightChanged(e) {
      var target = e.target;
      fontWeight = target.value;
      drawScreen();
    }
    
    function fontStyleChanged(e) {
      var target = e.target;
      fontStyle = target.value;
      drawScreen();
    }
    
    function textFillColorChanged(e) {
      var target = e.target;
      textFillColor = "#" + target.value;
      drawScreen();
    }
    
    function textStrokeColorChanged(e) {
      var target = e.target;
      textStrokeColor = "#" + target.value;
      drawScreen();
    }
 
    // Draws or updates the screen.
    function drawScreen() {
      // Background
      context.fillStyle = "#ffffff";
      context.fillRect(0, 0, theCanvas.width(), theCanvas.height());
      
      // Outside Border
      context.strokeStyle = "#000000";
      context.strokeRect(5, 5, theCanvas.width()-10, theCanvas.height()-10);
      
      // Text
      context.font = fontWeight + " " + fontStyle + " " + fontSize + "px " + fontFace;
      context.textBaseline = textBaseline;
      context.textAlign = textAlign;
      
      // Variables created in order to center the text on the canvas
      var metrics = context.measureText(message);
      var textWidth = metrics.width;
      var xPosition = (theCanvas.width()/2);
      var yPosition = (theCanvas.height()/2);
      
      // Draw the text differently depending on fill or outline (stroke)
      switch(fillOutline) {
        case "fill":
          context.fillStyle = textFillColor;
          context.fillText(message, xPosition, yPosition);
          break;
        case "stroke":
          context.strokeStyle = textStrokeColor;
          context.strokeText(message, xPosition, yPosition);
          break;
        case "both":
          context.fillStyle = textFillColor;
          context.fillText(message, xPosition, yPosition);
          context.strokeStyle = textStrokeColor;
          context.strokeText(message, xPosition, yPosition);
          break;
      }
    }
  }
  
});

The App

Check out the updated app at: https://www.zesix.com/html5/textArranger1.1/

September 30, 2011

First Post In 2011 – And The Year Is Almost Over!

Where Have You Been?

I got an email a long time ago, probably a month after I stopped posting, asking where I had gone. My reply was simply, “I’m busy.” Needless to say, it’s been way too long since I’ve blogged, and I figure it’s high time I start up again before the entire year passes by without a single update.

Firstly, I’ve installed a new theme. The older theme I had was custom-made, but its style is rather old and not something pleasing to see. However, I’ve done my best in not going too far with the theme, so this new theme is as minimalistic as the old one.

This past year, a lot of work has been accomplished on Zems. While we’re still not quite at alpha stage for the game yet, we have released a lot of new content such as stories, artwork, and even some music. A lot of general playtesting has also been accomplished, and many of the ideas in the design document for the game have been cut. Cards have been revised, tested, scrapped, rewritten, and tested again. And after all this, I still feel like I wouldn’t be ready to release the game, even if we had the platform ready to go. No release is perfect, but I want Zems to launch with the minimum number of issues in terms of the content within the game.

All this testing has led to the tossing aside of numerous media. I now have a small stockpile of artwork and music I won’t be including in the Zems release. For about two months, I’ve been deliberating what to do with it, but about a week ago I finally decided I’m going to give it all away for free.

Giving Things Away Is Easy Right?

Not if you value your content. Most of the stuff I plan to give away would be best used in someone else’s indie game project, and so this past week I’ve been searching for royalty-free, indie game content sites I could release my stockpile on. I found quite a few, and they were more or less the same in terms of how they were run. I ended up discovering the following (what I now label as “universal”) problems in royalty-free media sites:

They are third-party submission dependent – these sites depended on outside sources to submit new works. The sites themselves didn’t have any internal development team that progressively released new content.
Quality control is nonexistent. These sites, being depending on third parties for content, are happy to hear when an artist wants to contribute work. This leads to a massive cluttering of submissions that differ in quality. Sure, some of the sites I found said they screen all submissions for quality, but for the most part I didn’t find much “high quality content” on those sites.
The sites look like crap. Now there are a few well-designed sites out there that I found, but most look like they were made by inexperienced developers who scrapped together a bunch of free web scripts they found online, without any sort of cohesive framework tying the site together.
Licensing is inconsistent. Since most of these sites have art contributed by a wide variety of artists, there is no standard license used on these sites. Instead, a developer looking through these sites will have to make sure the content they want will not have licensing conflicts with their project.

I, for one, take too much pride in what was developed for Zems to release my content on any of the sites I found. Instead, I’m going to launch a new web project that promises to fix the aforementioned problems.

Another Web Project… But You’re Not Done With Your Current One!

It’s true. I very rarely work on two web projects at once. Back when I first started working with the web, I had bunches of ideas stored in my head and I tried to create them all – and ended up finishing none of them. I learned pretty fast that if there’s a project you intend on finishing, you better give it your sole attention and put all other side projects aside until you finish it. So why the exception here? Well, the way I see it is, I’m working on Zems but by doing that I’m also garnering this stack of unused media as we go through Zems testing stages. By creating this side project, I will be able to release that media to the public. This side project is actually more of a subproject that spawned from the Zems project, so there’s not really much harm in making it. Will it take away from Zems development time? Yes. Will it degrade the quality of Zems? No. Will Zems still get finished? Yes. Once this site is up and running, I won’t be making massive changes to it, but rather use it as a platform to release unused Zems media.

As to how this site is going to tackle the above four problems, here are my solutions:

Hire a team of artists to regularly produce content for the site. None of these artists are working on Zems, therefore this won’t delay Zems work, but they are all personally screened by me to be high-quality artists. This eliminates the source of most of the problems, since this new site won’t be dependent upon third-party submissions but instead be able to regularly produce content on its own.
Require human quality control. Since the site won’t be starving for third party submissions in order to produce content, we can raise the standards on this site to a level much higher than the royalty-free media sites currently in existence. Each third-party submission will be screened by me personally on the grounds for quality before release on the site.
High-quality, coherent website design. Just because the content on the site is going to be released for free doesn’t mean the site itself needs to look like it was made on a cheap budget. I’m personally investing money in order to have a clean, user-friendly site design. As one of the primary coders of the site, I will be able to personally ensure the site isn’t merely a series of scripts scrapped together to add functionality.
Sitewide license for all released content. Everything on the site is going to be released under the Creative Commons Attribution License 3 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). This way developers looking through the site won’t need to check each content’s individual license – instead, they will be able to rest assured that everything is under the same license and by reading the license text once, they know what they can and can’t do with the site’s publications.

Most free media sites also have a forum, and I’ll certainly include one, but as to the structure of the forums I’m still deciding. I want to avoid a mass-cluttering of indie developers requesting help and free content specifically tailored to their games, but I also don’t want to drive away developers from collaborating and helping each other. I simply need to do more research on forum structure, but that’s not my primary focus with this project yet.

Good Stuff… So What’s the Site Called?

Illustrosity. Not sure on the slogan or tagline yet, but the idea is that indie developers should be able to come with their working game prototypes, find the media they want to make their game look ‘good’, and then drop it into their games. Most indie games run on what is labeled ‘programmer art’, and nobody likes to prototype or test something that looks low-quality, even if the project itself is developed with a high sense of quality. I’m hoping Illustrosity will be able to help indie developers illustrate their game by providing high quality content. I figure most of the content won’t be directly used – instead, developers will take what they find on the site and modify it for their own projects. This is fine by me, as the hardest part in making something is usually creating the base or framework for the content, and Illustrosity will be a fine place to get those bases.

So yeah, that’s my website side project I’ll be working on.

…And School?

School is tough. But, I’m enjoying my classes this semester much more than my classes from previous semesters. Most notably, I’m taking a computer science course on the Java programming language, which is something I’ve always wanted to learn.

My other classes are Signals and Systems, Social Psychology, and I’m teaching a student-run course on web development. Overall, this is an exciting semester so far.

I hope the few readers I have left enjoy this update on my life. I need to get back to work and finish some homework. I’m not sure when I’ll be blogging again, so this might be it for the rest of this year. Goodbye and thanks for reading!

August 19, 2010

August 19, 2010 – A Frame In Time

Last Post Before California

Sadly, this is the last blog post I will be writing until I move to California this Sunday. Upon publishing this, I will have completed my first tenlist goal for the summer, which is to update this blog weekly until I move in.

I’ve decided to dedicate this post as what I see as “A Frame In Time.” In other words, this is simply a snapshot of my life, my thoughts, and my feelings as of today. Maybe someday in the future I will look back upon this post and think about how things have changed.

Tenlist Completion… So Far

As mentioned above, this blog post will complete my first tenlist goal.

My second goal is to commission the following designs for the Zems project: Card Back/Logo, Card Front Templates, Index Page, Splash Page, vBulletin 4 forum skin. As of right now, all but the card front templates have been commissioned and fully paid for. I hope to have a deal for the card fronts finalized within the next few weeks.

My third goal is to finalize all card texts for the launch of Zems. This comes to be a total of 92 cards I have to come up with. So far I have come up with 58, so I am a little over halfway done.

My fourth goal is to organize and conduct my Eagle Scout ceremony. That has been done, and I think it went smoothly.

My fifth goal is to acquire an Alienware M11x laptop for college. My main reasons for getting this when I already had a laptop was because the M11x is very portable, more powerful than a lot of other laptops that are larger, and is built to handle gaming, which is virtually unheard of for a laptop that is only slightly larger than a netbook. This goal was completed a few weeks ago. I was able to secure some special savings deals because I ordered before July 15, which is when the Dell promotions for the laptop ended.

My sixth goal is to complete a P90x routine. As of today I am on week 10, day 2. There are 14 weeks in the program. If I am able to assemble the necessary equipment quickly enough after I move in, I should be able to finish before August officially starts.

My seventh goal is to read Eve: The Empyrean Age. This was completed about a month ago, and the book was very, very, comprehensive. I wouldn’t exactly recommend it to people, but there are some very unique and interesting characters in that book I have not seen elsewhere. Overall, the book astonished me because I am generally let down by books that are based on video games or movies.

My eighth goal is to hire artists to paint the artwork for the Zems Origins Set. This set consists of the 92 cards, 6 player powers, 20 favors, and 4 shrine cards that will be included in the initial launch of the game. As of right now, I have set up deals to have all of them painted by some very good artists, but only 51 cards are actually fully paid for at the moment. Frankly, this goal is the most expensive of all my goals for this tenlist, as it comprises a little over $6000 in commission payments.

My ninth goal is to complete 10 photoshop tutorials. To be frank, I have pretty much lost interest in this goal. I want to learn how to design for the web, I really do, but I just haven’t had the motivation. I believe I will carry this goal over to the next tenlist.

My tenth goal is to get Sudden League up and running. Right now, the site is fully functional, although parts of the homepage simply need content. Since content is pretty much being handled by one of my staff members, I consider my portion (coding the website) and this goal, to be complete.

What’s On My Mind

To be totally honest, I am quite nervous to be heading off to California. For a school that is supposed to be the top in the nation, I have been quite let down in terms of housing assignment mix-ups and I am a bit wary of the nerd culture that seems to be the norm there. While I realize I’m a pretty nerdy person, I try not to bring it out too much because I don’t particularly want “geek” to be my public image. Maybe I just care too much about my public perception.

One thing that has occupied my mind is nightly hangouts, especially tag. I absolutely love playing tag – it’s an awesome full-body workout (see my previous week’s post “Intense Play” to read about it). I just hope I will be able to find a group at Cal who are willing to play it with me. Did I mention I am very, very, serious about tag?

Another thing is P90x. As soon as I get there, I need to order a chin-up bar and some free weights. I don’t plan on getting a gym membership. Besides, P90x is harder than what most people do in gyms anyway. With friends, it becomes absolutely hilarious because in all honesty, a lot of the workouts are really silly-looking (besides being very strenuous).

Overall, I believe I made the right decision to commit to Berkeley. The education will be tough and rewarding, and having a degree from the top public university will definitely pay off in later years.

Oh, and last night I had a meeting at Starbucks with my favorite Catholic. Just so I don’t forget.