The Dink Network

Well, I decided to work on the new reviews system. It seemed like a good idea. So I modify an old script to go and go through the reviews database and replace some numbers and junk. I even made a backup of the reviews database, so everything is going rather spiffy. Then, I log in and look at the database... and it hasn't changed. Then I realized something awful... I overwrote the user database. The last backup I had was from January 15th. Dang. Dang. Dang. Dang. Dang. So, the current user system is that of January 15th, if you created an account since then, create another one (with the same exact name). If you modified it (icon, description, etc.), modify it again. Sorry. Feel free to insult my foolhardiness.

View the comments to read the rest.

Dang. I was planning on making backups regularly... and yet, dang. Sorry about that, everyone. Everything else made it through intact (reviews, files, and everything else).

The new reviews system is working, at least. Now there are Full and Mini reviews instead of Staff and User reviews. I noticed that sometimes users wrote long reviews whereas the staff wrote shorter ones, so this seemed like the natural evolution of the system. Too bad the danged evolving system decided to take a big juicy chunk out of the user database. The problem detailed above came about with a very silly problem... see, I wanted to change all of the reviews from Full Reviews (which is designated 1) to Mini Reviews (3). I already had a script that went through and reset everyone's points to 0, so I just modified that. Well, I modified it so it read the reviews database... and overwrote the user database. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

As for why I set everyone's points to 0... the points page will be replaced by a rankings page of sorts, and an overall points total is therefore unneeded. Points may be used later for something completely different, but I'm not quite sure about that yet.

Then I had to go through all the scripts to make sure they would work with the Full/Mini system (its a tad different from the Staff/User system), as well as make sure that for people who no longer had accounts, their comments and reviews would still display. So far everything seems to be patched up... if you notice any problems, leave a comment detailing them.

This should have been done sooner. As for why not... I happened to get Diablo 2 a week ago. Diablo 2 = The Devil Of Stealing Time. That, and a few days ago there was a nifty new demo released called C&C Renegade. It was multiplayer only. I decided to try it, but I don't appreciate multiplayer games very much at all. But... I played it at least a good 8 hours on Sunday. And a lot on Monday. It is simple a really fun game. And I happen to do quite well at it ;-)

Warping back to Dink related news, as you may remember (though probably not), a year ago I posted a news item about Love Through Dink, about Alexander Schrøder and Sharp falling in love over the internet through Dink. Well, I received a progress report of sorts, and while this would've been great on Valentine's day, D2 beckoned then. Alex wrote:

It's now been over a year since Sharp and I met. We are still together. This summer we will get to meet.

I wonder... If you feel like it, help us celebrate our "anniversary" by again posting at the DN that we're together. Just for fun. It IS special, I mean, we're probably the one and only Dink couple.

Do what you want.

-Alex

Spiffy good.

I really should post some Prowler Poll comments and probably a few odd links as well... but I'm just not in the mood to with the deletion of all the accounts and such. Oh well, I'll have plenty of backups from now on at least.