The "How do I do X?" Thread

Or, cards-on-the-table, Features that were pushed back til after launch.

We had to make a few concessions in order to hit the deadline we set, so the site is not totally feature-complete with where we set out to be. Here's what we still need to do, in rough order of when it will get done:

  • Better moderation tools --
    Project owners, right now you might find your options for moderating your forums a bit lacking. We'll be adding better tools for this first thing. (Members: this is not an invitation to spam ;) We can still remove posts manually from the site backend).

  • Project forum/blog configuration --
    Right now only Handmade Hero has subforums, because they were imported from the old system. Other projects, I'm afraid you'll have to live with only having top-level forums for the moment. We'll be pushing out more advanced settings pages for this soon. Similarly, blogs will be able to have subcategories, but not just yet.

  • Blog RSS feeds --
    Both RSS feeds for current blogs and a feature to import old posts from an RSS Feed.

  • Email notifications for forum threads --
    What it says on the tin.

  • Better post editing tools --
    For both forums and blogs. Both will get preview and draft-saving functionality. Forums will get a listing of the last 10 or so posts in the thread for purposes of quoting. Blogs will get alternative markup options (including markdown and light HTML). Forums might too, but that's lower priority for us right now.

  • How can I submit a project for consideration?
    We will have a more formal method of project submission in the future. For now, email abnercoimbre at abner@handmadedev.org and he'll add start you on the process.

  • Searching
    • forums
    • blogs
    • projects
    • etc

  • Articles / Wikis --
    We have big plans for this. We want a sitewide database of good documentation you won't find elsewhere on APIs, configuration, setup, usage, algorithms, language semantics, etc etc. This will come in the form of an article system, potentially in a wiki format so that information can be maintained instead of posted once and forgotten about. We'll be blogging more about this in the coming weeks or months.

  • Rewrite in C --
    We built this site on the Python-based Django server, which was valuable to help us get the site up in a reasonable time frame but has led us to become rather exasperated with its convoluted configuration and API. A Handmade-motivated website ought to be as Handmade as possible, and we have some interesting ideas we want to apply. We'll be working on this in parallel with the features we add to the live, Django version of the site, but don't worry, maintaining the current version will still be a priority.


Which brings me to the point of this thread: If you don't see something up there, ask! We'll figure out how high priority it is and where to put it on our to-do list. If it's something simple, it might even get done immediately.

Cheers, and happy coding,
Andrew

Edited by Andrew Chronister on
Couple of questions.
  1. What is the markup language used for blog and forum posts? Is it custom?
  2. Is there a gitlab repo associated with each project? I don't see any way to access it.
steve
Couple of questions.
  1. What is the markup language used for blog and forum posts? Is it custom?
  2. Is there a gitlab repo associated with each project? I don't see any way to access it.


It's loosely based on BBCode, which is what forum software has been using for ages, and what the old Handmade Hero forums used. We'll likely add support for simple HTML and Markdown and perhaps others later.

Projects may have gitlab repos they use internally, but we have not exposed a way for them to link that to their project yet.

Edited by Andrew Chronister on
The entire site needs SEARCH

nvm I am a blind idiot and didn't see that in the original post

Edited by Mikkel on Reason: I am an idiot
1) I cannot login with "Log in" link on right side of page.

After entering my username and password, I get this error:

Forbidden (403)
CSRF verification failed. Request aborted.
You are seeing this message because this site requires a CSRF cookie when submitting forms. This cookie is required for security reasons, to ensure that your browser is not being hijacked by third parties.
If you have configured your browser to disable cookies, please re-enable them, at least for this site, or for 'same-origin' requests.

This is with adblocker enabled. But I get exactly same error with adblocker disabled.
I'm on Chrome 50.0.2661.86, ArchLinux x86_64.

Only way I found I can log in is opening random forum page, and pressing Log in to reply link.


2) if I press ADD COMMENT link in https://hmn.handmade.network/blogs/p/1130/1#6465 page when I am not logged in, it shows error:
Hi there, visitor!

We couldn't find what you were looking for:
https://hmn.handmade.network/blogs/p/1130/e/6427/reply

Why not look at one of our featured posts or projects instead?
It should redirect to login page (or show "log in to comment" link instead).


3) Using https on site is good, but it fetches some resources over http. That's why you don't get green padlock in address bar.
http://handmade.network/static/light/empty-avatar.svg

Edited by Mārtiņš Možeiko on
Thanks for the detailed report, Martins. Jeroen is working on the former as we speak.

The latter was something that was on our radar but slipped off recently, and will likely be addressed tomorrow when we put up the registration page.

Edited by Andrew Chronister on
Thanks!

Btw, not sure who is responsible for this, but "Forums" link on https://handmadehero.org/ points to wrong URL.
That's Casey's doing but our fault. It'll be updated after the stream is over.
Well, the thing is that Casey asked what the forum url was going to be, and we said https://hero.handmade.network/f.
He then later proposed to make it https://hero.handmade.network/forums. We obliged :)
Hello. Congrats on site launch.

How can I submit a project for consideration? I would like to submit Zig, a programming language meant to replace C.
andrewrk
Hello. Congrats on site launch.

How can I submit a project for consideration? I would like to submit Zig, a programming language meant to replace C.


We will have a more formal method of project submission in the future. For now, email abnercoimbre at abner@handmadedev.org and he'll add start you on the process.
Firstly, congrats on the launch!

I didn't get to look over this entire thread, so please excuse me if this is repetitious.

I'm not a designer myself, so I'm not sure how well I'll be able to articulate this.

On a page like this:
https://handmade.network/home
My eye feels drawn to many different places on the page at the same time and it's difficult to focus on the page content.

I'm not sure exactly why this is, but here are a couple of possibilities:
The red background is louder (thus more attractive to the eye) than the foreground page content.
There are a large variety of font sizes and styles being used throughout. Perhaps stick to 2 or 3 different sizes and styles.
Things are packed pretty tight in certain places... maybe play with using margins / padding more liberally.
Is there a way to subscribe to notifications for forum threads? It's currently hard to keep track of when someone's posted to the Papaya forums, or when people have replied to a conversation I posted in inside a thread.

Ideally, optional email notifications + on-site title-bar notifications would be really handy.
andrewjdr

The red background is louder (thus more attractive to the eye) than the foreground page content.
There are a large variety of font sizes and styles being used throughout. Perhaps stick to 2 or 3 different sizes and styles.
Things are packed pretty tight in certain places... maybe play with using margins / padding more liberally.


Mm, well articulated. The /home page only came together on Saturday so it hasn't had much time to evolve its design. I'll take those points into consideration for that, elsewhere on the site as well.

ApoorvaJ
Is there a way to subscribe to notifications for forum threads? It's currently hard to keep track of when someone's posted to the Papaya forums, or when people have replied to a conversation I posted in inside a thread.

Ideally, optional email notifications + on-site title-bar notifications would be really handy.


Email notifications were planned, live notifications in the titlebar should be possible as well. Thanks for the suggestions.
I've just done a bit of an clean up on the backend code. Hopefully this will address some issues found by project owners having trouble uploading files.

Also, if anyone had problems updating their blurb or signature, you may very well find this works better now as well.