Project: Portable Map Database
Goal: Simple to use and effective web based application to keep a virtual portfolio of projects available for anybody to download and use.
Features:

• Easy to use administration panel that makes uploading maps or tags easier then ever. This means simple workflow stuff like the ability to drag n drop directly into the browser and have the web application do the rest for you. Drag n drop multiple high quality images into the browser and have it automatically generate high quality thumbnails and attach it to the file upload. Drag a .map file or a .zip and have it automatically unzip and then compress at a high compression ratio and include the description as a filename.txt inside of the compressed archive.


• Usage statistics such as visiter counts on specific web pages, search queries, referring websites, file downloads, how many time a screenshot has been clicked on etc.


• Fully SEO able with ability to add keywords, specific titles for each page, etc.


• More to come.. Can't think of everything atm

Portable Map Database is a powerful easy to use web application that will eventually be available for download by anybody. I have been coding the backend PHP code that is powering this beast and I'm currently in the need of web designers to make some default themes that will be launched with the PMD. I'm not the best designer myself but I can definitely do what is needed for the server side code and most of the jQuery stuff that will be involved with the website.

This can be used not only as a map database (like what halomaps is) but it can be used for a personal portfolio. Depending on what you upload and decide to post as you can really make it show anything you want. If you upload a mp3 file you will see a mp3 player instead of a download button, if you upload a bunch of images you will see a gallery of images. Stuff like that.

What i need is a few people to design some website concepts like the one I have made below and send them my way. If you can code them in CSS and HTML that would be great and save me some time hassling with div positions and making things look right. Please do not code with tables and <b> and stuff like that. Be sure it is 100% compliant to todays standards.
http://validator.w3.org/



http://www.wmclan.net/i/images/43509815112306270264.png

As you can see there is some potential for the design in the means of how it can work. The AJAX search bar to the left that as you type you will narrow down your search results closer and closer in real time. Once you click on one you want it will load up on the right. If you hover over an image you will get a larger view of the image and if you click on an image it will go full window sized to the highest quality available that you have uploaded. (Scaled of course to fit the window). When you hit read more it will resize the div enough to read all of the text. It makes it all clean and it fits all in a specific area so that no matter what the download button is always in the same place unless you decide to read more.. You can see the statistic information in the upper left for the entire website which uses %_SITEVISISTS_% to grab the information. I did not design it to show file specific information such as downloads and rating etc but other designs will be fully capable of displaying that information.

Coding a theme is going to be really simple. In fact, i'm pretty sure just about anybody with basic knowledge of notepad and Copy Paste will be able to figure it out. Once you have your design ready all you have to do is include some basic stuff like %MAPTITLE% or %MAPDESC% or %MAPFILEURL%.

Here is an example page that is parsed..



If you are interested feel free to reply to this topic with your ideas or contact my email E3pO@wmclan.net to get in touch.

Nothing here is final, the design is just an example of what will eventually be possible with little effort on the designers end. How it will render the text, such as %_RATING_% is not yet final. I haven't decided how I'm going to do that in the end, this is just how it works right now.

Edited by ethreepoh on Jul 20, 2011 at 05:11 AM

Whatever happened to the all new and improved HEK?

It's being worked on just very slow development. Don't worry, you will hear more about it in the near future. I tend to get bored of projects and work on other things and then come back with a fresh mind. I worked about 2 weeks non stop on HEKAIO and burnt out my brain and my physical health was not so great after staying up several days in a row...

Please stay on the topic of PMD, this isn't a thread about HEKAIO.
Edited by ethreepoh on Jul 20, 2011 at 05:12 AM

It dosen't really seem like a map database, but rather more of you hosting everyone's stuff for them. Just sayin'.

Guess i wasn't clear!

Portable Map Database is a portable virtual portfolio for anybody to download and use. This means it is an open source package that you can download and run on your own website, I will not be providing hosting for PMD other than the people I'm currently hosting that want to set it up on their account.

This is more for personal portfolios or possibly mapping team's collections of maps and tags and screenshots. Maybe someone just wants a place to upload their mp3s for people to share or download or maybe someone is a photographer and want a powerful gallery to display their images.

You download pmd-nightly.zip, extract to your web server, install it, get a theme for it, start posting posting stuff. You have all the code on your server!

Requires PHP, MYSQL, APACHE or NGINX (I will be running it from nginx).
Edited by ethreepoh on Jul 20, 2011 at 01:33 PM

Nevermind, I see now.
Edited by d4rfnader on Jul 20, 2011 at 01:29 PM

Ah, I see. See's like it could be useful for some people who don't know how to set up websites.

Here is a design i made back in 18-Dec-2008 when i got the idea of PMD. Just finally got some time and will to start making it.




Just showing how you can style it anyway that you want and be able to easily pull the information into your design.

The CSS for that can be found here...
http://bd.wmclan.net:41/hal/design/testenv/template/site.css

It was never finished i was just testing my css skills back in 08.
Edited by ethreepoh on Jul 20, 2011 at 03:51 PM

Best be watching your tense ;).

i made this site

its not actually up
you should make the site dark so its easy on the eyes
dark gray or black or dark blue variant would be nice

I can script and code CSS and HTML. I can help if you want. The problem is I use notepad and word pad and don't have dream weaver so I can't actually view my website and what it will look like when coding.if i help I'll need to download adobe dream weaver through torrent XD but yeah I can upload some pics of websites that I have made in a matter of days (I havnt really done a long project before but I am capable of it)

I am caple of making that concept but won't be able to make the download system.a way to resolve that is by uploading to dl drop box and making it so that when you click on the button it takes you to that direct download link that instantly makes a download. All it would take would be a few link styling in CSS and other stuffis easy. I reckon grade 9 students (Australian age group and schooling system) would be able to do it
Edited by Cheddars on Jul 21, 2011 at 07:51 AM

It doesn't matter what you use to code it. I use VIM. As long as it is CSS div based etc it should be fine. Everyone is welcome to make designs and pages...

Finished coding support for each page now so this is how it is setup:

Main Page
Blog Page
Image Gallery
File Page
Search Page
Categories

The file page will pull from the database whatever item and type it is and then fill in the blanks with the needed stuff. If the content type is map and it is associated with screenshots then it will show the screenshots and show that it is a map file. It will also put it on the category page as a map..

For your concept when I make it can you give me those screen shots? Me an my friends will also make that background as a texture in fier works and use that as a backgroun image

Get WAMP?http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php
Easy to install and free.

Also I would recommend notepad++(also free), instead of notepad or wordpad.
It makes your coding more clear thanks to its markup and thus leaves less room for mistakes.
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
(Just a suggestion.)

As for the topic.
Good luck with the project.

Sounds like a very interesting project. I can code the CSS and HTML, I need practice designing pages so I could give a few pages ago.

Lets talk :D