Config screen progress and a new look for the website

Config screen progress and a new look for the website [Wednesday, 29 July 2009 22:55]

Hitting the ground running again after 1.2.0 and made a start on the first of the new features - a config screen.

We have shifted all of the main config variables out of the file they were in and they will now live in the database instead. The database config vars obviously will stay in a file, and the main config.php is able to override any of the database vars if needed. We specifically want this functionality after I had to set up a forum once to have two installations using the same master database for shared messages. It is nasty trying to hack that functionality into a system so we are providing this simple way around it. The config page will only save to the database however so changes to a second frontend install will have to be done manually, but anyone doing that would know what they were doing anyway.

We have the config page added and a form built and styled in both templates. Next up is writing the server-side part to save the new vars and javascript to verify them before a submit and hide/show the different sections.

I spent this evening working on a design for a new Joomla template for moagallery.net as well. The current one was only ever meant to be temporary but we wanted to get 1.2.0 out before starting on a proper one. Several bits need changing on this - I don't like the sf logo where it is, the text is all a bit too big and the news box is not styled in any real way yet. But as a preview of what we are aiming for it should be ok.