January 17, 2011
I'm pleased to announce that the GDNet+ member webspace is now fully back online - and, for the first time in about 3 years, accessible by FTP once more!
Just FTP into members.gamedev.net, using your regular username and password, to access your personal space. Old GDNet+ members should find all the…
Just FTP into members.gamedev.net, using your regular username and password, to access your personal space. Old GDNet+ members should find all the…
July 16, 2010
For the past three days or so, I've taken some time away from working on V5 to see if there aren't some things I can do for the current site, V4. As you're no doubt aware, we're in a bit of a tight spot on cashflow right now - much like everyone else in the industry - so I figured I'd see if there …
May 05, 2010
Today's chocolate-chunk-o'-LINQ:
public ActivityLogEntry[] GetActivitiesFiltered(DateTime? startTime, DateTime? endTime, Uri[] actors, Uri[] actorTypes, Uri[] objects, Uri[] objectTypes, Uri[] verbs, int? maxToFetch)
{
using(var context = new ActivityEntities())
…
April 18, 2010
At the moment I'm working on the code for managing user accounts. This encompasses logging into accounts, creating new accounts, changing your password, and so on. There are some interesting features and design requirements that make this a non-trivial thing to do, so maybe it'll be interesting for…
March 02, 2010
Well, I could tell you, but maybe it'd be easier just to show you.
(Let me know if you get any errors out of it. I'm aware of two issues at the moment: one, that ads don't load in IE; and two, that sometimes a page displays a generic 'something went wrong' message which goes away when you refresh. I…
(Let me know if you get any errors out of it. I'm aware of two issues at the moment: one, that ads don't load in IE; and two, that sometimes a page displays a generic 'something went wrong' message which goes away when you refresh. I…
February 11, 2010
Here's a little something that had me stumped for 15 mins. The info on the net about it is pretty sparse so maybe this will help somebody.
I was trying to install the GDNet service processes on the backend server. Every service process needs its own user account - it makes security, auditing, and SQ…
I was trying to install the GDNet service processes on the backend server. Every service process needs its own user account - it makes security, auditing, and SQ…
February 05, 2010
Now that Pulse is churning away at the codebase, I've spent time today doing further tidying of the build and deploy process. Once the site goes live I want to be able to get changes deployed quickly and safely, and I want to be able to start deploying builds for the Staff to look at within the nex…
February 04, 2010
I spent a bit of time recently doing some work on V5's build pipeline, implementing continuous integration and making the deploy-to-servers process a bit more formal. Unlike most web developers, I'm a big fan of pre-deployment testing and verification, so a well-established build process is a key p…
February 01, 2010
One of the biggest causes of security issues in sites - XSS attacks, SQL injection, etc - is a failure to properly handle user input, making sure that it doesn't contain undesirable elements.
This is potentially a very complex task, and it gets more complex the more the user's allowed to do and the …
This is potentially a very complex task, and it gets more complex the more the user's allowed to do and the …
December 22, 2009
One of the questions from a previous entry was what's happening to user ratings in V5. I don't have funky screenshots to show you this time, but I'll talk about what the plan is.
The present system
The present user rating system, visible under every post as a number, was created to solve a set of pro…
The present system
The present user rating system, visible under every post as a number, was created to solve a set of pro…
December 18, 2009
Today I'm going to begin talking about V5's top navigation bar. The navbar is really going to be your primary means for getting around the site, so it's important that we get it right. There's a lot of functionality packed in there! I'm not going to show you everything today, but we'll cover enough…
December 16, 2009
I've been quiet for a while now. I've been quiet for a number of reasons; the end of my degree is one, and shifts in my personal life is another. I'm a very different person to how I was a year ago. But those aren't the reasons you're most interested in, are they? [smile]
Work on V5 has kicked up …
July 29, 2009
This may be one of the most annoying developments in web technology I've encountered so far.
I guess it's not the access control spec itself per se, as much as it is Firefox and Firebug's implementation of it. Though it is frustrating that a request from the http version of a site to the https versi…
I guess it's not the access control spec itself per se, as much as it is Firefox and Firebug's implementation of it. Though it is frustrating that a request from the http version of a site to the https versi…
July 01, 2009
My work over the past few days has mostly been on the text sanitizer.
The sanitizer is an interesting beast. The basic task it faces is to take a chunk of what may be approximately something approaching XHTML (annotated with custom GDNet extensions), parse and lex it into an XML tree, strip away any…
The sanitizer is an interesting beast. The basic task it faces is to take a chunk of what may be approximately something approaching XHTML (annotated with custom GDNet extensions), parse and lex it into an XML tree, strip away any…
June 23, 2009
One of the major philosophical elements of the V5 design is one taken from Google: Search, don't sort.
The problems with rigid categorization - sorting content items into distinct categories as 'containers' - are fairly well-known:
The problems with rigid categorization - sorting content items into distinct categories as 'containers' - are fairly well-known:
- How do you decide what categories there should be? GDNet only create…
June 10, 2009
Not much to report today.
IE support is now better, though not on a par with the other platforms by a long shot. Funnily enough, the problem wasn't the mime type - I've been serving it up as text/html for IE for a long time - but more with the actual document content itself. Specifically, benryves d…
IE support is now better, though not on a par with the other platforms by a long shot. Funnily enough, the problem wasn't the mime type - I've been serving it up as text/html for IE for a long time - but more with the actual document content itself. Specifically, benryves d…
June 09, 2009
Happy 10th birthday, GDNet! I got you a present. It's not much. I'd hoped, planned, for so much more, but you know how these things go.
Yes, folks, the V5 codebase is finally at a point where I can start putting bits of it up for public dissection, consumption, digestion, and *ahem* feedback!
There's…
Yes, folks, the V5 codebase is finally at a point where I can start putting bits of it up for public dissection, consumption, digestion, and *ahem* feedback!
There's…
May 23, 2009
So yeah I've been a bit quiet recently. This is mostly due to life events, partly due to being busy working on V5, but mostly due to my Masters' degree. A degree which, as of Monday at noon, I will have finished.
Monday noon is the final deadline for the last piece of work I have due in: my disserta…
Monday noon is the final deadline for the last piece of work I have due in: my disserta…
March 23, 2009
Right, you know the drill by now I'm sure. I'm in the Press Lounge with Dave and Kevin, preparing to head out for the day's sessions. Today and tomorrow I'll be covering the Casual Games Summit. There's a curious 'red ocean versus blue ocean' theme going on, but in general it looks like there's a n…
October 20, 2008
V5 work continues. Today I added the IRC client; rather than using the Java applet again, we're going with Mibbit, which is more fully featured, and runs purely on javascript/AJAX. It's also under active development, and we just embed it, so as they add new features to it those features sho…
October 10, 2008
Looks like I just missed Gaiiden's weekly journal roundup. Oh well.
I've spent today and yesterday implementing a security measure against cross-site request forgery attacks, otherwise known as XSRF attacks. These are a slightly terrifying class of attack, not least because so few people seem to be …
I've spent today and yesterday implementing a security measure against cross-site request forgery attacks, otherwise known as XSRF attacks. These are a slightly terrifying class of attack, not least because so few people seem to be …
October 05, 2008
Some people have been running into problems when uploading new files to their webspace recently. Well, I checked, and it looks like the problem is that we finally filled up the one-terabyte NAS that the member files are stored on.
To be fair, that 1TB is actually I think 500GB because we've got it s…
To be fair, that 1TB is actually I think 500GB because we've got it s…
September 23, 2008
I've been in Tuscany for the past week, with little to no internet access. I'm now back and getting stuck in to V5 work once more. Time to continue this little blog series with a small but what I feel is very elegant section of the V5 infrastructure: error handling.
Historically, GDNet's error track…
Historically, GDNet's error track…
September 12, 2008
So, how do the services produce their XHTML? I can hear you all quivering with curiosity and anticipation.
The services composing the site aren't all ones that you, the users, can consume directly from your web browser: there are a number of internal services as well. Amongst these internal services…
The services composing the site aren't all ones that you, the users, can consume directly from your web browser: there are a number of internal services as well. Amongst these internal services…
September 11, 2008
We're approaching the point where I'll be making the first V5 bits publicly available. There won't be that much to see in this first release; most of the work has been in terms of laying down infrastructure parts and establishing how things should work.
The most notable restriction is that there are…
The most notable restriction is that there are…
August 23, 2008
I'm not around much at the moment as I'm in the process of moving house. Presently I've got nothing more than a rucksack full of clothes and a bed; the rest is coming on Monday when my parents can spare the time (and their car) to help me move things like my computer.
Once it's here I should hopeful…
Once it's here I should hopeful…
Advertisement
Popular Blogs
Advertisement