Philosophy of Lockmor 3.0

1. Philosophy of Lockmor 3.0

   #1

   There are currently three central issues that I would like to concentrate on for 3.0: Standards, Usercentricity, and Settings.
   
   Standards: The redesign will concentrate on CSS and standards compliant XHTML. The site layout in its current form will be gone. CSS is now king for structuring content and I shall happily bow to this fact. It will be cleaner, adhere to standards, be able to validate, have better accessibility, and will be quicker overall. I also thought it would be fun to allow for anybody to create their own theme for the site as well. CSS will make that much easier of an undertaking and will allow a better separation of presentation and content so that more designs are possible…to include handheld devices and better phone accessible pages.
   
   Don’t count on miracles, but I will do my best. This will be a slow, methodical process starting with usability and then transitioning to being pretty. Don’t expect sweeping changes to the way the data is formatted and such, just expect it to look a little different while the structure will still be familiar and comfortable. If we find things that we would like to improve/change we will address those as we go.
   
   Usercentricicy: Content we definitely have and it is improving every day with your excellent work. It is now time for a paradigm shift from content to the user experience. We need an updated format that will attract and hold visitors. V2.0 concentrated on the content, how to display and organize it, and how to make it as useable as possible. V3.0 will continue this tradition but the main aim will be on user experience and how they view and interact with the available information.
   
   The author profile page will be totally redesigned, the front page will be totally reworked, the Citadel Explained and tutorials will be optimized and condensed so you don’t have to read as much, you can concentrate on doing, the submission page will be reworked to be more intuitive and easier to get through, the level system and permissions will be reworked and become a more visible, codices and scrolls will remain basically the same but the interaction will change, and many other small usability issues that will be tackled as we get into it. We want the site to be easier to navigate, simpler to understand, yet retain all its innate complexity to allow as much interaction between everything as possible.
   
   Settings: The usercentric model will be inherent in the creation of the settings portion of the citadel. Settings will not be an automatic feature for users (although there will be spin-offs of it that will use some of the features but won’t have the entire featureset available). Settings will be applied for and approved.
   
   Settings will basically be an author’s area where they can build a setting using submissions from the main citadel. Sort of like a Codex on steroids with many more configuration possibilities. They can be all of the author’s own or they can be mixed and matched. The area will be styled slightly different to reveal its unique nature and, with that unique style, the author will have the ability to design how their pages will look separate from the rest of the Citadel.
   
   So if you were to visit Moon’s Arth, for instance, he will have the ability to change colors and graphics, add his own self-created category system to organize all the posts, and basically put the site together the way he wants. The Citadel category view will still be available as an option but the page will pretty much be at the whim of the author.
   
   This function set will extend into the main citadel to perhaps replace the current Codex to allow for more organized listing of submissions and such. We will have to see how the Settings progress before we can decide how they can be used, but the abilities will definitely bleed over into the main Citadel to be abused.
   
   Don’t fear the technology. All the details will be hashed out as we go. There won’t be any sudden surprises.  We will test everything as we go so if we see some incompatibilities we can create work a around or dump it altogether. I love using new stuff but only if it actually enhances the usability of the site. While I like trying pretty much everything (and I may try some stuff nobody likes…count on it) I won’t sacrifice the user experience for the sake of using a new toy…no matter how cool that toy seems.
   
   As the days go by I will slowly list my more specific ideas to hopefully entice some comments. I will probably start on the redesign before the Con but I can guarantee that nothing new will show up till after it.
   
   All of this will happen slowly with as much interaction and debate as you desire. We am very dependent on your opinions to form 3.0 so don’t hesitate to let us know how you feel.

2. Re: Philosophy of Lockmor 3.0

   #2

   
   Easy Choices, Simple Browsing, Reduced Complexity

3. Re: Philosophy of Lockmor 3.0

   #3

   Efficiency.
   
   Copied from http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/Top10SQLPerformanceTips so I have a local copy of it. Some gems in there that I know I can improve with!
   
   ======================
   
   Top 1000 SQL Performance Tips
   
   Interactive session from MySQL Camp I:
   
   Specific Query Performance Tips (see also database design tips for tips on indexes):
   Use EXPLAIN to profile the query execution plan
   Use Slow Query Log (always have it on!)
   Don't use DISTINCT when you have or could use GROUP BY
   
   Insert performance
   Batch INSERT and REPLACE
   Use LOAD DATA instead of INSERT
   
   LIMIT m,n may not be as fast as it sounds
   Don't use ORDER BY RAND() if you have > ~2K records
   Use SQL_NO_CACHE when you are SELECTing frequently updated data or large sets of data
   Avoid wildcards at the start of LIKE queries
   Avoid correlated subqueries and in select and where clause (try to avoid in)
   No calculated comparisons -- isolate indexed columns
   ORDER BY and LIMIT work best with equalities and covered indexes
   Separate text/blobs from metadata, don't put text/blobs in results if you don't need them
   Derived tables (subqueries in the FROM clause) can be useful for retrieving BLOBs without sorting them. (Self-join can speed up a query if 1st part finds the IDs and uses then to fetch the rest)
   ALTER TABLE...ORDER BY can take data sorted chronologically and re-order it by a different field -- this can make queries on that field run faster (maybe this goes in indexing?)
   Know when to split a complex query and join smaller ones
   Delete small amounts at a time if you can
   Make similar queries consistent so cache is used
   Have good SQL query standards
   Don't use deprecated features
   Turning OR on multiple index fields (

4. Re: Philosophy of Lockmor 3.0

   #4

   http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html
   http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

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