Multiple cars in profile

[ribbo]

any chance of being able to add more than one car to the profile in the future? as some of us have multiple mr2's (not me mind)

great work btw

[poyntesm]

any chance of being able to add more than one car to the profile in the future? as some of us have multiple mr2's (not me mind)

great work btw

Short answer is not for a good bit. Main problem would be currently there is only one template for viewing profiles. I would hate to have fields for a second car but all empty on 99% of users. If I work out a way to load different templates based on some DB info then I might be able to do it.

So if I get a chance I will look into it...but currenly I would not hold your breath.

[Waldo Dobbs]

Could you have multiple car fields but just not display empty fields? So if there's nothing in the db it doesn't show at all on the front end.

That could also get rid of the 1/4 mile times and mod fields for those of us who don't have any (yet)

I know it's doable in asp/access, I just don't know php/sql well enough to work out how...

[poyntesm]

Could you have multiple car fields but just not display empty fields? So if there's nothing in the db it doesn't show at all on the front end.

That could also get rid of the 1/4 mile times and mod fields for those of us who don't have any (yet)

I know it's doable in asp/access, I just don't know php/sql well enough to work out how...

Hi Waldo,

Yeah the way phpBB seems to work is you have set templates for different pages so one for viewing profiles...the templates are the HTML and just expect data to be passed to them. So the template currently has the stuff for all mods...Obviously I can not do if/else statements in the HTML...so I need to work out how to load a different template based on what fields have data...Problem then is you need a template for each combination of what user may have / have not... I know in IPB how to handle all that but in phpBB me is still a learner. Once I work it out I am sure I will do it...just lots of other things to get done first.

Regards
Esmond

[Aidy]

Surely you can code the PHP to optionally display things if they exist or not? The way you are expanding things now can't work in the long run. You can't just have everything on a single "profile" page. As you have already mentioned, that is a lot of redundancy and as people want more features added the problem is only going to get worse.

Rather than starting off on the wrong foot and having a lot of re-work to do, you're better off thinking about things in the longer term and designing a framework that is flexible and can be extended to accommodate any future needs.

Maybe what IMOC needs is to take the money from affiliates/membership etc and pay a professional developer to put something together? Might be better in the long run....

[BenF]

Maybe what IMOC needs is to take the money from affiliates/membership etc and pay a professional developer to put something together? Might be better in the long run....

Why exactly should we pay anyone when there are a group of keen developers doing an excellent job in their own time?

[Waldo Dobbs]

The problem with getting a pro in is that you end up with a super-shiney system but no idea how it runs - it makes any change in the future pretty difficult unless you go back the the same people, which is a PITA

I had a look at the phpBB code as well, and the way it pulls the templates, pages and db stuff together makes it pretty hard to make the fields optional - it's probably possible but you'd need to know a lot more php than I do, and even then I think you'd end up dragging all the template stuff into the main page - which kills your customisability (this is me making up words ).

Having looked at it, I think Esmond's plan of multiple templates might be best in the long run - stuff like that takes a lot of tweaking though. It's getting better all the time though, eg changing the right/left alignment so the car details and times line up nicely.

If I was going to be picky I'd mention Manafacturer/Manufacturer and Color/Colour in the car details and suggest stripping out the width="150" attributes from the mods td elements though

Cheers, Waldo.

[Aidy]

Maybe what IMOC needs is to take the money from affiliates/membership etc and pay a professional developer to put something together? Might be better in the long run....

Why exactly should we pay anyone when there are a group of keen developers doing an excellent job in their own time?

If you read my reply you'd see that I am pointing out that while the method of expanding the profile may work in the short term it is not a long-term solution. Whilst most people can grab a bit of php and run with it, it takes the experience of someone who develops these things full time to do things like thinking ahead and doing things right first time.

Every developer makes mistakes but if you get one that has already made all of theirs and has learned from it then you get a better product with less hassle.

[poyntesm]

Just going through the suggestions and updating..

This suggestion will soon be completed.

I have written a totally new system for handling car profiles for the site.

Check out the test site @ www.13awingfield.com/imoc/forums/garage.php

I am sitting down with the other admins and trying to work out a schedule to bring this live. Should not be far off.

[poyntesm]

Well now the garage is up and running and premium member stuff people have display more than one vehicle.

Looks like we did not need to pay anyone at all??