[phpslash-users] Contributing...?

[Midnight R. <mid...@mi...>]

Hi all -
Well, now that I got the site back up and running again, I was looking at
finally contributing some things back to PHPSlash - IF anyone is interested
in what I have to offer.

I'm wanting to put in some new variables - some of them other people might
or might not like.  I'd like to add:

    remove_department    bool    when true, the "From the [x] dept." is no
longer displayed.

    remove_section_display    bool    when true, things like "Home" from the
main page (since it's really not nessisary, and a more appropriate path is
displayed just below the topic bar now (ie, Home -> JumpmanGames)

    remove_sitename_display   bool   when true, the site name + ":" is not
display.  (Sorry, I've always thought that was ugly, and if you already have
the site logo above it, what's the point?)

    remove_edging    bool   when true, removes the normal edging that
appears on the left hand side of all articles and blocks.

    remove_search    bool    when true, removes the 'search' at the top of
the page

    remove_topics    bool    removes the topic displays

    default_width    int    sets the default width for the PHPSlash site
table (IE, so the bloody thing can be set to take 100% of the browser
window!)


To the blocks I'd like to add:

    bodybackcolor - background color for story or block
    bodytextcolor - text color for story or block
    headerbackcolor - header background color for story or block
    headertextcolor - header text color for story or block
    tilegraphic - points at a file to use as a tiled background for the
story or block
    headergraphic - points at a file to use as a tiles background for the
header for a story or block

And to the stories I'd like to add:

    bodybackcolor - background color for story or block
    bodytextcolor - text color for story or block
    headerbackcolor - header background color for story or block
    headertextcolor - header text color for story or block
    tilegraphic - points at a file to use as a tiled background for the
story or block
    headergraphic - points at a file to use as a tiles background for the
header for a story or block

And, of course, the appropriate additions to the various areas.

Ok, why in bloody hell do I want to add this?  Well, I'd really like to be
able to make certain stories have certain colors, ditto with blocks.  By
doing this, it's fairly simple to do - the script checks to see if (for
instance) bodybackcolor is empty, and if so, it just uses the site defaults.
If it does contain a value, it does the appropriate things and gives the
story the proper background color from bodybackcolor.  (And, doing it this
way, no one needs to change all of thier current stories - they just use the
existing colors.)

However, there are three problems here...

1)  Would this potentially cause problems with 'skinning' PHPSlash later
when users are allowed to select thier own schemes for the site?  (Something
I really could care less about, because of what I'm using PHPSlash for, but,
I can see why some people might like it ;-)

2)  I don't do CVS, and don't have developer access anyway - but, who would
I submit changes to?

3)  If everyone likes the idea - are the variable names of liking to
everyone?

I also thought about instead of doing it this way, creating another table
called psl_quickstyles which contains the actual styles, and just giving the
blocks and stories an entry to look up the information from psl_quickstyles
(that way, you don't have to enter the information by hand each time you
want to change the color of a new story) - but, that requires another lookup
from the DB from a new table for each story or block display.  Yucky.

And, as for the other changes that I'm proposing there - I'm using PHPSlash
for a commercial site, so I've got a slightly different expectation than
most people do for what it should look like.  The variables that I've
proposed (and the minor code changes) are designed so that they are by
default going to work with everyone's site. (Er, besides the width one...
<GRIN>)

Any comments?  Should I do it?  (I'm trying to avoid making changes unless
they are going to be in the normal PHPSlash - that way I don't have to fool
with too many changes when upgrading... like I just did.  Blew away a bunch
of custom changes that I didn't bother to track... <GRIN>)

Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr
Author, Boulder Panic!, Boulder Panic! 2
President, MidnightRyder.Com