SpaceDock.info (Mod Hosting Site)

[TiktaalikDreaming]

15 hours ago, VITAS said:

Weve set up a testing enviroment for you to rip apart.

http://beta.spacedock.info

please post your bugs to:

https://github.com/KSP-SpaceDock/SpaceDock/issues

many thanks

 

VITAS

Hooray for uat environments!  

[VITAS]

ill take a small break and then get to work fixing and adding to the beta env.

We will keep the beta enviroment as permanent installation. so you can check out the latest features and fixes and give us feedback.

dev now works like it should:

local dev env. -> dev.spacedock.info -> beta.spacedock.info -> spacedock.info

beta should always be aspected to be stable so if its not shout at us.

dev can have bugs but shouldnt have them for long

[Snark]

H Vitas,

Just now saw the new "look" -- got caught by surprise, haven't been following this forum thread since things kinda settled down.

Concerning the new style, one request:  Can you re-do the mod page style so that it doesn't put the name of the mod in all caps?

I realize it's a stylishness thing and all... except that I've always named all my mods with CamelCasedNamesLikeThis, and they become unreadable and ABSOLUTELYTERRIBLE when rendered in all caps.  Some examples:

• BETTERBURNTIME
• BETTERCREWASSIGNMENT
• DEFAULTACTIONGROUPS

To take just another example (and not my own mod), one of my favorite mods (and one of the top mods on the site) is SpaceY, which just looks like "spacey" when rendered in all caps; it's like a completely different name.

...Maybe it seems like a little thing, or that I'm making a big deal out of nothing.  But to me, it's absolutely excruciating and I can't stand the way my own mods now look.  Is it possible to change the style?  Any of the following would work for me:

• JustDontCapitalize
• CapitalizeAndBoldface, if you want a visual distinction between the mod title and the rest of the page text
• SMALLCAPITALLETTERS, if you really like the "all caps" look but want to preserve casing distinction

...as you can no doubt tell, I'm really not a graphic designer , and I expect you can do a better job than I can at coming up with something that looks good.  Whatever you decide, though:  uppercase / lowercase distinctions can be important in names, and I would really appreciate it if you could find a way to preserve such distinctions.

[Bonus Eventus]

@VITAS Is Spacedock using Bootstrap? This is what it looks like on a large screen (not 4k) in the latest version of chrome on Mac:

The footer isn't sticking to the bottom (I'm assuming here) and there's hardly any margins on the left or right. The layout looks like what one would do for mobile. As I understand it Bootstrap makes it easy to switch layouts based on user metrics. Might want to reconsider your desktop views.

[Spaceception]

I love the new design, it really looks original

[VITAS]

regarding caps:

the font i use only has caps ...sorry

 

regarding bootstrap: yes it does and i hate it. maybe i will redo the templates from scratch.

 

 

[Bonus Eventus]

@VITAS Here's a couple of suggestions:

• Only allow images through cloud platforms like imgur. Don't host images.
• Have thumbnail links that have titles of mods & text descriptions (not just titles and images)
• Give full control of the thumbnail image to mod authors (competition will naturally produce normative behavior, the good kind. This has worked on Youtube if you consider the partner channels)
• Have a slide show at the top of the main page which shows the newest mods (similar to Hulu or Netflix, but smaller more jumbotron sized)
• Underneath the slideshow have an endless amount of mod thumbs that stream in asymmetrically as you reach the bottom of the page similar to Google image search or Pinterest
  Example:
  
• When thumbnails are clicked load the mod page into a modal window (look through the bootstrap documentation under javascript)
• In modal window include a permalink to the mod page
• Take advantage of front-side databases (one hacky way of doing this is to store data in xml tags through a javascript library like jquery, then one can just traverse the xml to retrieve and populate data. There's also the option of using jquery data api)

Edited April 7, 2016 by Bonus Eventus

[katateochi]

51 minutes ago, Bonus Eventus said:

Only allow images through cloud platforms like imgur. Don't host images.

Be careful with this and check the imgur TOS!!  They are ok with you displaying imgur hosted images on "user content" (ie things like forum posts, and I think that would include things like mod pages), but they consider using them for hosting thumbnails to be against their TOS.  

[Hobbes Novakoff]

1 minute ago, katateochi said:

Be careful with this and check the imgur TOS!!  They are ok with you displaying imgur hosted images on "user content" (ie things like forum posts, and I think that would include things like mod pages), but they consider using them for hosting thumbnails to be against their TOS.  

Another issue is weird firewalls like at schools or public wifi systems. For instance, the image at the top of Devnote Tuesdays and often the art in Fanwork Fridays glitches out on school wifi, because the images are hosted on Tumblr and my school blocks Tumblr.

[Bonus Eventus]

12 minutes ago, katateochi said:

Be careful with this and check the imgur TOS!!  They are ok with you displaying imgur hosted images on "user content" (ie things like forum posts, and I think that would include things like mod pages), but they consider using them for hosting thumbnails to be against their TOS.  

That's a good point, hadn't thought of the thumbnail use case. However, you may be able to figure that out.

8 minutes ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

Another issue is weird firewalls like at schools or public wifi systems. For instance, the image at the top of Devnote Tuesdays and often the art in Fanwork Fridays glitches out on school wifi, because the images are hosted on Tumblr and my school blocks Tumblr.

Well, that's possible even when you host images yourself, perhaps even more likely

[VITAS]

thank you for thos suggestions.

1. what would be the reason for not hosting imiges myself?

2. descriptions will be added back in again (soon)

3. i can implement seperate thumbnail uploads

4. if you go back several pages youll find a screen for the site that has a slideshow on top. im split if thats the way to go or not.

5. the browse page will be endless scrolling with sort capability and grid/table mode

6. why modals ?

7. form my point of view the current theme code is a mess. ive to decide if i want to rewrite it or stick with the current mess...you know wich one ill choose sooner or later.

bonus:

you know how caotic your screen looks? i think letting ppl choose their own thumbnail dimensions is a no go.

[DStaal]

But then they'd block the whole site, not just the images.  In general, I prefer if a site host's it's own content itself, as it tends to minimize issues with 'this part of the site works, but that doesn't, but only from this location/computer' types of problems.  (As well as the whole legal issue thing.)  As long as they aren't overloading their bandwidth, keeping the site together is a good idea.

Also, I hate sites (like this forum...) that rely over-heavily on javascript for things that can be done in simpler ways.  My computers are slow enough, without webpages bogging themselves down further.

And my first impression of that mockup posted a few posts up is: 'Ack, that's horrible, I hope they don't go with that.' 

[Kerbart]

3 minutes ago, DStaal said:

But then they'd block the whole site, not just the images. 

Yep. Same with Yahoo (Flickr). Flickr has (used to have?) it in their TOS that an image always contains a link back to the Flickr page of that image. Various photography forums where people were "### that, I'm not posting the link, pound sand, Flickr!" found out that at one point, Flickr images would no long be shown.

On a site like Spacedock you should be hosting your own images, it doesn't make sense depend on an external service (with all the uncertainty it brings) unless it's a service that advertises itself specifically for that purpose (like Amazon's s3 service)

[katateochi]

Imgur is fine with images being used as user-content on a site, for example on this forum.  One reason to allow users to have their images on imgur is for their convenience; a lot of the time they'll have already uploaded the images to imgur so they can share them on the forum, so it's more convenient for the user than having to upload to two places.  Or you allow users to hotlink the images uploaded to your site so they can use them on places like the forum/reddit/whatever, but then you have less control and less ability to predict what sort of bandwidth that's going to use. (and there is also onerous on you to ensure that the images you are hosting and serving to other sites are not the bad kind of image)

[DStaal]

10 minutes ago, katateochi said:

Imgur is fine with images being used as user-content on a site, for example on this forum. 

Um...  I wasn't aware that you could post images from Imgur to this forum.  I see links to Imgur in a lot of threads, but I never see any images embedded into the posts.

[NecroBones]

 

Great work on the updates so far!

 

Bug report today:

When uploading a mod update now, it doesn't give the correct list of KSP version numbers, and it doesn't pre-select 1.1 (which isn't even in the list). So I posted my mod update with "none" selected. Now, when it says I have an outdated mod, and asks me to automatically update, that button returns a 500 Internal Server Error.

 

EDIT: Referencing Discontinued Parts

 

[VITAS]

hi i noticed some deep rooted problem with how version numbers are handled by the code and db.

we are working on a fix but it will take some time sorry for that.

btw

it only applies to mod updates not to new mods

and i have allready commited a fix for the version list issue but not for the error 500 issue.

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

On March 16, 2016 at 5:26 PM, VITAS said:

Its us!

How'd you do that image?

[VITAS]

you can add media from urls?

[Bonus Eventus]

2 hours ago, VITAS said:

thank you for thos suggestions.

1. what would be the reason for not hosting imiges myself?

2. descriptions will be added back in again (soon)

3. i can implement seperate thumbnail uploads

4. if you go back several pages youll find a screen for the site that has a slideshow on top. im split if thats the way to go or not.

5. the browse page will be endless scrolling with sort capability and grid/table mode

6. why modals ?

7. form my point of view the current theme code is a mess. ive to decide if i want to rewrite it or stick with the current mess...you know wich one ill choose sooner or later.

bonus:

you know how caotic your screen looks? i think letting ppl choose their own thumbnail dimensions is a no go.

Yeah, I would stick to a uniform size. That might have not been the best example to have chosen.

1. Reduce bandwidth and load times for user. Unless you pay for amazon web hosting on a slide scale, you won't be able to give people the kind of load times that a CDN can provide. Images can still be uniform by using javascript (get image dimensions) and CSS overflow limiting within a div and then scaling. Essentially you would crop the images. Users would learn what makes for best presentation and it would still be easy. As to legality, this is from the Imgur TOS:

"Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network. If you do – and we will be the judge – or if you do anything illegal, in addition to any other legal rights we may have, we will ban you along with the site you're hotlinking from, delete all your images, report you to the authorities if necessary, and prevent you from viewing any images hosted on Imgur.com. We mean it."

This seems kind of like a grey area, considering users would be linking to content of their own volition. All the images I've used on GitHub, for instance, through markup have been hosted on Imgur. It's not even clear what users should or shouldn't do based on the fact that they have overlays on their site which give users the direct link to an image. I'm not suggesting you use Imgur as your personal CDN, but similar to youtube and short film sites that embed youtube videos from users. 

2. Cool. Couldn't remember if they were there before.

3. Ok

4. I suggested this because it would provide a nice segmentation to design within compositionally and programmatically. But, it's just one solution out of many one could use.

5. Great!

6. This is partly to do with immediacy for the user and also, because, if done correctly, you would have the flexibility of using frontside databasing, reducing potential http calls. Users won't always want/need the info on a whole page of images/videos/media and no one will be paying the hosting for those served resources.

7. In my experience it's best to redo it, if...

1) you'll likely repeatedly be digging through the code when things break
or 
2) want to extend the capability or capacity of the system
 

Edited April 7, 2016 by Bonus Eventus

[Svm420]

@VITAS

I am not a fan of the new layout. I don't and do not want to look at picture to find mods I am looking at titles and you have shrunk that down making it harder for me to find/identify mods. Thanks for the best mod hosting.site.

[VITAS]

@Svm420 as i stated early: i will add table AND grid view so you can decide. I also just added a mouse over trgger that shows a short description of the mod to the repo.

@Bonus Eventus Sounds like i could use your help.

We have our own CDN (see previous posts for map of server locations)

Im strictly against third party services since they dont do it for free (they want at least collect user data) and they can stop or change their services at any given time.

I inherited much of the code and its based on bootstrap wich i find to be unflexible and massive. So i will have to redo the themes at some point but i fear the mountain of work and bugs.

i also want to integrate more ajax so that it stops reloading all page each time you click something (and cause more http requests).

....also json is slimer than transfering html for each mod box.

for now im still on the bug hunt and pretty exausted from the past weeks rework of the site.

[Bonus Eventus]

15 minutes ago, VITAS said:

@Svm420 as i stated early: i will add table AND grid view so you can decide. I also just added a mouse over trgger that shows a short description of the mod to the repo.

@Bonus Eventus Sounds like i could use your help.

We have our own CDN (see previous posts for map of server locations)

Im strictly against third party services since they dont do it for free (they want at least collect user data) and they can stop or change their services at any given time.

I inherited much of the code and its based on bootstrap wich i find to be unflexible and massive. So i will have to redo the themes at some point but i fear the mountain of work and bugs.

i also want to integrate more ajax so that it stops reloading all page each time you click something (and cause more http requests).

....also json is slimer than transfering html for each mod box.

for now im still on the bug hunt and pretty exausted from the past weeks rework of the site.

I know that exhaustion well  

Thanks for all the hard work.

Guess I wasn't clear before, but that's what I meant when I said load the mod page into a modal window, just through jsonp and ajax calls, however Bootstrap provides javascript for this and it's meant to work with JQuery. https://nakupanda.github.io/bootstrap3-dialog/

Edited April 7, 2016 by Bonus Eventus

[Gegenschein]

I'm having a strange issue. I can't log in to my own account, but I am getting someone else's account. Kinda.

1. Navigate to Spacedock.info. Notice that the "Your Mods recently updated mods you follow" section is displaying mods that I never favorited.

2. Try to access my Profile, get UNAUTHORIZED error. Notice that the top corner says "Welcome crockpot84", not "Welcome Gegenschein"

3. Click Log Out in dropdown, get taken to a page listing KSP, Stardew Valley, Starbound, Factorio. (oh, cool. Mods for other games? Neat)

4. Log in, confirm that it says "Welcome Gegenschein" in the top right. Click KSP.

5. Notice that my "Your Mods" list is different, but still incorrect. Notice that I'm now logged in as "lambuck" Get UNAUTHORIZED error when I try to access profile.

6. Repeat steps 3-5 ad infinitum.

 

Whats up? I'm on my computer at work, but I'm the only one who uses this machine, much less logs into Spacedock with it.

Edit: I hit refresh a couple times, now i'm logged in properly as Gegenschein. Only, if I log out, I'm taken to the game selection page, and it says "Welcome Lexx" at top. If I click KSP, it logs me back in as Gegenschein, no password asked for.

Edit2: Now I can't access my own profile, It just gives me UNAUTHORIZED. I guess it has no idea who is logged in at all.

Edited April 8, 2016 by Gegenschein

[Banshee6]

20 minutes ago, Gegenschein said:

I'm having a strange issue. I can't log in to my own account, but I am getting someone else's account. Kinda.

1. Navigate to Spacedock.info. Notice that the "Your Mods recently updated mods you follow" section is displaying mods that I never favorited.

2. Try to access my Profile, get UNAUTHORIZED error. Notice that the top corner says "Welcome crockpot84", not "Welcome Gegenschein"

3. Click Log Out in dropdown, get taken to a page listing KSP, Stardew Valley, Starbound, Factorio. (oh, cool. Mods for other games? Neat)

4. Log in, confirm that it says "Welcome Gegenschein" in the top right. Click KSP.

5. Notice that my "Your Mods" list is different, but still incorrect. Notice that I'm now logged in as "lambuck" Get UNAUTHORIZED error when I try to access profile.

6. Repeat steps 3-5 ad infinitum.

 

Whats up? I'm on my computer at work, but I'm the only one who uses this machine, much less logs into Spacedock with it.

Edit: I hit refresh a couple times, now i'm logged in properly as Gegenschein. Only, if I log out, I'm taken to the game selection page, and it says "Welcome Lexx" at top. If I click KSP, it logs me back in as Gegenschein, no password asked for.

Edit2: Now I can't access my own profile, It just gives me UNAUTHORIZED. I guess it has no idea who is logged in at all.

I'm having the same problem too. Believe it or not it gives me  Welcome Gegenschein instead of Welcome Banshee. So that's cool, I guess...