Anonymous

How, for the love of god is this even remotely useful? Sheesh JSON? I mean seriously? for cron jobs? What fracking planet did you think this would be useful on? Then there is a laughabale loop that .. wait for it ... requires_once the job.. which will only execute once..   <?php /* y.php */ require_once('x.php'); require_once('x.php'); <?php /* x.php */ echo "me!\n"; $ php -f y.php me!   Do you not actually do testing Spud? Try reading the manual next time, or at least paying attention.

Love the logo

Apparently yes - MWG AKA "Pendants are us" :D

There's an image I really need to erase from my mind   Please explain...

Nope, you managed that all by yourself. W3C's HTML Validation service clearly states: W3C HTML Reference Documentation -- Objects, Images, and Applets in HTML documents States equally clearly that the ALT tag is mandatory. Is there perhaps some part of this you fail to comprehend? or shall I speak more slowly and use smaller words next time?

Bollocks . How you can even state that it isn't basic shows a serious lack of knowledge of the protocols involved not to mention the client applications in general use today.

Surely, you mean<img src="path-to-images/{$itmid['itmid']}.jpg" style="width:70px;height:70px;" alt="..." /> I don't remember HTML having a size attribute after all and AFAIK, the ALT attribute is mandatory.

And who determines what the quality is? Haven't you ever heard of open source or even just sharing? Some of us are quite happy providing code free-gratis, and publishing it for all to benefit from - yet you seem determined to keep your so-called "secrets" under wraps for only those that meet some self serving criteria. I can quite happily conclude from this that you have in fact no "development secrets" at all. Of course, I could be wrong, but then having painted yourself into a corner, you will find it hard to extract yourself. Meanwhile, a few of the rest of us will happily share our knowledge and resources without limit - via IRC rather than MSN. Yes, strangely enough, there are people who don't have MSN, IRC may be an older medium, but its used by a lot more "devs" than MSN.

hehe .

Rather pointless then

I'm with SRB on that one.

So you ignore the type? Tsk Tsk, I'm sure I taught you better than that :D isset / is_string / ctype_digit - then range check :P /me ducks ;)

What you read into my generalized comments about the state of the genre is entirely up to you. I know from my own experience that developing a user list module is in theory straight forward, however with the restrictions placed upon a system in my case by the use of a large dataset; finding highly optimal solutions is an uphill struggle. The method I've personally hit upon displays little similarity to yours however you could say that is a function of the engine I employ. It does however rely on similar abilities inasmuch as retrieving a subset of users whether searched for or within a particular range of values, display them in response to ajax requests.

You are right however - I can't blame you for their (the creators of MCCodes) mistakes. I'm not sure how that relates to me pointing out to the forum users at large that the code as provided exhibits some of the same pitfalls that the base "engine" does and as such would need to be modified at a later stage once (or if) the game garners more support. I have looked in depth at a number of mods presented here - a few quite fun ones, a lot of dreadful ones and surprisingly, there are a few authors who have presented some exceptional code; though I can't but help wondering which authors code is still in use given the age of the posts. Yes, you have released a number of mods, but I don't remember that being relevant whilst discussing the merits good or bad of COUNT(field), caching, or the benefits of using a WHERE clause and LIMIT count versus the much slower LIMIT offset. Does # of mods/posts actually improve query execution speed? I wish it did. I can't really comment on design outside of stating the simple fact that a couple of minor change are all that is needed to gain a large boost in speed and reduce table locking (more so than can be found in any other module of this type presented here) dramatically.   You have me there. I can't add anything to that. You also state that So where do you start? For one, I don't actually remember telling you or even asking you to change the code, I merely pointed out that you were using bad practices. You have done this very same thing yourself so I'm hardly unusual in that respect. I agree however it is difficult to optimize one script in an application which is designed as this one is, however that does not preclude the ability for members of the forum the ability to speak up and point out that there are better ways do perform even the simplest of tasks. Were everybody to take something from this, it would not be long until a few decent high speed applications arrived on the block. Does it not stand that improved workflow, improved practices, and an improve design would assist the overall product(s)? If everybody stays mum and blindly accepts what is presented in front of them - free or otherwise - rather than question everything then what hope have future users have? It is only by discussion, experimentation, careful examination and questioning every single line of code be it PHP, SQL, C, ... in detail that programmers can learn and improve their abilities. I can point to a number of forums posts where users have questioned certain aspects of code which have then been incorporated thus improving the base code. Hardly rocket-science. For what it's worth; while I question the actual implementation; the overall concept of this particular mod itself is good. Using Ajax to fetch data "on-the-fly" is becoming much more prevalent these days, and while it can be over-used, it's useful to learn the basic techniques. @Jaaaacccckkk Go drink your milk, there's a good boy, let the grown ups play now.

I guess that explains why MMCodes/Ravans will never grow up to become a product capable of truly competing alongside bigger products. People - even those who are considered competent by their peers - simply aren't interested in taking the design of the code and data to a level which is necessary in the marketplace today. Poor quality code, restrictive practices, seem to be the order of the day and rather than develop something that is worthwhile, that brings value to an ailing genre, people re-iterate the same poor designs and ideas with not even a glance at usability, or good practices. The few products out there that survive with a decent active user base have learned that the key to keeping the users around is not just new material, fresh ideas, and brilliant designs, but also the attention to detail in the lower reaches of the so-called engine itself; and ensuring that the core game, its restrictions, its foibles and downright stupidities are hidden from the user - who, after all, are the people that the owners strive to please.