Anime News site ive been working on

[gokuDX7]

http://ordway.ath.cx:5121/animenews/index.php

I kind of stopped working on the other anime site I was doing since myanimelist became so popular and it has most of the features my other site planned to have (ie. top anime list, voting, community features..etc). So, I started working on a central anime news site that helps bring together other smaller anime blogs and larger major news sites.

Heres how it works:
My site gathers news from other site's RSS feeds and displays bits and peaces of the news on my site so people can get a glimpse of what it is and determine if they want to visit the site in which the news originally came from. I've also added in torrents as well. The same concept applies here. I gather rss feeds of popular anime torrent sites and display them on my site allowing you to directly download the torrent without searching all over the net. Torrents are of course removed after 1 week from the database to make room for newer stuff.

How can you help me?
Right now the site is about 90% done. I still have to work on admin panel stuff and make a better layout but it's all very usable. I've posted the url on here because I'd like you guys to test it out and give me feedback. If theirs a bug, tell me how to re-create it and where it happens so I can fix it. If theirs a feature you would like to see added, tell me about it so I can figure out if its a good idea or not to add.
Not seeing any news from your favorite anime blog that you go to? Well add it's RSS feed into our database for parsing with the Submit RSS Feed link.

Much thanks. Hopefully the site isn't a dead duck like my last one.
http://ordway.ath.cx:5121/animenews/index.php

[Mathias]

I'm not a big anime guru, and yes I know where I'm at :p. My first impression of seeing your site, was Digg.com. It doesn't work like that though on all links.

I clicked on the links and they were torrent files. I can't read those. I'm sure you explain how to do that on your site somewhere, I just haven't spent that much time on it. I'm sure the torrent doesn't provide a description in their feed or you would provide it. None of links work to take you to those sites either, they're all links (three for each) to the torrent file.

[mahou]​_Claymore​_-​_04​_[1024x576][h264+AAC][7F02AC68].​mk (http://tracker.mahou.org/torrents/%5Bmahou%5D_Claymore_-_04_%5B1024x576%5D%5Bh264+AAC%5D%5B7F02AC68%5D.mkv .torrent)


[Live-eviL] Yadamon - Ep 05.​avi (http://a.scarywater.net/live-evil/%5BLive-eviL%5D%20Yadamon%20-%20Ep%2005.avi.torrent)


I read further and found a link that finally took me to a site. That's more or less what I was expecting.

Tenka Seiha: Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Kai #07 — Minagoroshi (http://blog.seiha.org/?p=269)


Who is your target audience, specifically age group. The following link wouldn't be appropriate for my kids.

Viagra manufacturer serializing a manga (http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=3893&goto=newpost)



You mention how many links you have in the database, but not which numbers you're viewing, such as 20 - 40 of 3211.

When you click the search text box, the text "Lets search for somthing good" doesn't go away. Also, when you have done the search, the search string should probably dump back into the search field, so the user can refine their search.

The search dumps all found links on the same page. You should probably offer navigation similar to your main topics, so you don't overload the page. I waited for at least five minutes for it to stop loading and it didn't. :(

I killed your search with the word "the". You should probably ignore all common words unless they are searching for exact wording such the "The Gundam Seed".

I liked your security question for submitting an RSS feed, but you may be alienating some of the community who haven't learned that 2+2 = 3. :'D I'd recommend the words in a picture security to avoid smart robots, or better yet only allow people who have signed up for your forum to post. That should cut out the rift raft who post crap, like me. :p

Alright, that's enough for now. I hope I helped a little, that is if you managed to get this far.

[gokuDX7]

hmm ya I wasnt to sure if I should allow torrents to be listed on the "All news page" since people are gonna click thinking its news. hmm I guess I could fix that 1 of 3 ways.
1) Add a little torrent icon under the url so people know its a torrent.
2) Remove the description that happends to just be a url and how big the torrent is and replace it with "This is a torrent".
3) Remove the torrents from the "all news page"

You mention how many links you have in the database, but not which numbers you're viewing, such as 20 - 40 of 3211.
Ya I might add something like that in later. I was keeping the paging system simple for now but I guess that feature is popular so I might be forced to add it soon.

When you click the search text box, the text "Lets search for somthing good" doesn't go away. Also, when you have done the search, the search string should probably dump back into the search field, so the user can refine their search.

The search dumps all found links on the same page. You should probably offer navigation similar to your main topics, so you don't overload the page. I waited for at least five minutes for it to stop loading and it didn't. :(

I killed your search with the word "the". You should probably ignore all common words unless they are searching for exact wording such the "The Gundam Seed".Hmm ok I'll fix all that later. Right now I had it set up to display the first 40 entry's in the database this way I didn't have to make a paging system. I guess I'll have to add one then. I'll fix the box clearing issues ASAP too.

I liked your security question for submitting an RSS feed, but you may be alienating some of the community who haven't learned that 2+2 = 3. :'D I'd recommend the words in a picture security to avoid smart robots, or better yet only allow people who have signed up for your forum to post. That should cut out the rift raft who post crap, like me.If people dont know what 2+2 is then they probably don't know what an RSS feed is. I don't really want to invest time adding in a captcha image security system for something as simple as this. Although I could add an apple and ask "What is this fruit?" lol


Thanks for your help so far. Now I have something to work on this weekend :)

[gokuDX7]

K fixed a few things.
1) Added torrent icon next to the torrent title (name). Only torrents have that round icon next to them on the main page.
2) Fixed search page so it doesn't show duplicates of the same entry over and over again xD haha. Also limited it to 30 items for now till I can create a simple page system for it.
3) Fixed a bug that would keep adding the same torrents over and over again to database. Now the database is much smaller, as you can see, and should only show unique entry's.
4) Made it so when clicking the search box it will clear it :).

This weekend I'll add in page system for search pages, start a more advanced page system for the other pages, add in a hotlink option so people can directly link to an article on my site, add in Tags/filter by date, and clean up some code to make the page load faster :).

[Sledgstone]

The functionality appears nice. The only thing I can recommend off first glance is maybe some sort of organization to the news. like categories for anime news, anime blogs, etc. I'll take a closer look at your site later today or tomorrow.

[gokuDX7]

I wanted to do somthing like that but its getting hard when parsing RSS feeds. Some "News Blogs" have usefull news but then after a few weeks start talking about random stuff lol. But I guess I'll try filtering out the blogs from the actual news sites in a sub category on the news page.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Mathias]

I still think you should have better security for the submission of RSS feeds, such as forcing them to login to the forum. That's your call of course. It may be something you'll need to add after you get a good following and it starts to become an issue.

Having the search field go blank is a good step for the first search, but I think the search field should keep the previous search string.

Your site name is complicated right now. I would suggest applying a .htaccess file to rename the address and definitely use post instead of get. I didn't test it, but are you filtering out the MySQL hacks? There's an article about it on http://php.net. I have some standard code that handles these cases already if you need it.

http://ordway.ath.cx:5121/animenews/index.php?id=search

By the way, what program do you need to view a torrent file, and can you post a link on your site to one or more viewers that you would recommend. I'm sure there will be more like me who find the site by accident, but will be put off by the lack of support for the viewing of torrent files.

Hope that helps. Looking good! :)

[gokuDX7]

I still think you should have better security for the submission of RSS feeds, such as forcing them to login to the forum. That's your call of course. It may be something you'll need to add after you get a good following and it starts to become an issue.
The feeds are not added to the front page untill I log into my admin panel and varify them first. So even if someone submits a bad url it wont harm anything becuse I have to phisicly varify that the url is correct and is legit.

Having the search field go blank is a good step for the first search, but I think the search field should keep the previous search string.
Ahh I forgot to add that last night. I'll add it in next.


Your site name is complicated right now. I would suggest applying a .htaccess file to rename the address and definitely use post instead of get. I didn't test it, but are you filtering out the MySQL hacks? There's an article about it on http://php.net. I have some standard code that handles these cases already if you need it.

http://ordway.ath.cx:5121/animenews/index.php?id=search

The url isnt going to be the final url. After I finish getting everyones feedback and make the correct changes, I will buy a .com so the url would end up being a bit shorter :).

Yes I use allot of security checks when it comes to data entry by users. I strip out any html tags and add slashes to just about everything.

By the way, what program do you need to view a torrent file, and can you post a link on your site to one or more viewers that you would recommend. I'm sure there will be more like me who find the site by accident, but will be put off by the lack of support for the viewing of torrent files.

Hope that helps. Looking good! :)
ABC torrent is an easy to use one.
azureus is a more advanced one. Theres loads of torrent downloaders out there. I will be sure to add some info on the site for people that are new to torrent downloads.

[Mathias]

Cool, sounds good. I'll check out the site again later, but you may have to remind me in a couple weeks.

I'm doing a major rewrite of my base PHP page classes, but hopefully I'll have it up and running again soon. I figure I'll be posting a similar request for testing my site in a couple weeks.

[gokuDX7]

your doing a php page class? Have fun :P. I hate page systems and avoid it at all cost lol Thats why the page system on my site is very simple.

[Mathias]

My page system is actually very simple and straightforward. I wrote it up on my couple days of vacation in July when Sledgstone came down to visit. He keeps SAYING he'll post pictures, but I don't think he'll ever do it. Of course I won't, but that's because I'm too lazy, I mean busy. ;)

The trick to the paging system is to pass the row number for the top option and use the SQL limit command to grab the number of records after it. The Next and Previous options are the row number plus or minus the limit with a check for the min and max records for that select statement. I can provide code examples if you'd find it useful.

[gokuDX7]

I was never any good with page systems :S. Ya sure if you have some snippets that would be cool since this is gonna take me some time creating a revised page system for the site.

My specialty is regex and parsing :P

[Mathias]

I've been getting pretty good with regular expressions myself. I use them in my .htaccess file in the RewriteRule feature to add the my link variable based upon the site you visited. I also used preg_match in php and regexp in my sql. I'll make a new thread with my common functions. Maybe improvements can be posted as well.

[gokuDX7]

.htaccess regex is cheating :P lol. When making urls shorter I pre-program it into the php just in case the code is going to be hosted on a non apache server. This makes clients happy since they don't have to be forced into something they don't want to use or dont understand how to use.

[Mathias]

My company and my personal site all run off apache. I don't do outside jobs at this time. I just don't have the time for outside work, with my family and my personal site. Check out my new code threads and tell me what you think.

[gokuDX7]

Looks like you spent allot of time on your class. I should probably invest some time to make a global class or framework for my self lol. Would make work so much easier. Keep up the great work.

PS. Fixed search box on my site. Now when you search the item you searched for will show up in the second search box on the search page. From their you can edit it anyway you want.
Also added in an RSS feed for just the news and not the torrents (yet). The RSS feed, if you subscribe to it, has the direct urls to the blog or news sites. So when you click on somthing it will send you right to the correct page and not to mine. I did for now since I haven't made private pages for each news bit yet (should be done soon).

Now I'm working on sub category's and filtering options. People will be able to filter news by date and by blog, news, torrent, user submitted. Once thats done I have to finish up the user submitted news part :)

[Mathias]

Sounds like you're on the right track. Sledgstone said he'd recommend a different layout. I'll let him get his opinion out before adding my own. :p

[gokuDX7]

ya, I'm planning on taking my old layout that I was going to use on my anime vote site and using it on this news site. I'm sure you guys will notice the changes once I finish all the back end work.

Then I can add in some code that allows you guys to change between themes and save to a nice cookie for a few months :)

Edited
Finished sub category's for blog and news filter. So next time the crons run the news that appears should start being put in the correct category's. Now if you go to the "News" Page you will see a sub menu. Choose between blog spam and real news. However old news that's already in the database will say in whatever category is was previously saved in untill db clean up.

Now for a brake to go eat and take a shower :)

[Mathias]

Interesting that you brought up the option of themes. I have a themes class that sets the theme for each page based upon a default theme associated with the link. Right now they all default to the same page, but it does work. :)

Each theme can set its own CSS file, though right now I only use one, and a ton of color settings. My CSS doesn't set any colors. The colors are instead read from a table and populates the style tag on the page. This lets me color my site and set background images anyway I want to from a simple form. The themes can be carried from page to page through a session variable, and set to a user-defined theme (though this may change to admin only) good for that session only (don't want to hose the user if they picked a horrible color combination).

The nice thing about my color my site page is the ability to quickly change colors on the form and see them applied immediately without overwriting any existing themes or adding new themes until I'm ready. No uploading of multiple CSS files with the only changes involving colors or background images.

I've thought a lot of this through from the beginning to make life easier for me to make updates later. We'll see if that's true when I'm done.

[gokuDX7]

hmm never thought about saving css related stuff to mysql...although when dealing with hundreds of people you definitely want to keep your query's down to a minimum. So in most cases it might be better to have multiple css files and not connect to mysql to gather the css. I supposed that would be something nice to test. Add an "amount time it took to generate" check and flood it with connections. Then compare if mysql method works better or the same as multiple css files. That would be interesting to find out about.

[Sledgstone]

Ah, I'm glad you'll be changing that layout. It reminded me of those auto-generated search pages you get when you type a domain name wrong. :p

Another suggestion I can make is to have a third category for official anime company news. Advfilms, funimation, rightstuf, viz, I'm pretty certain all of them have rss feeds for their news about new licenses and upcoming release dates.

*edit*

also, when submitting a rss feed, maybe it'll be easier to have a drop down box for the category. I just submitted a couple rss feeds and I noticed it said to type in the category name in lower cases, so I tried typing a category name with a capital first letter to see if a error came up, but it looks like it went thru ok.

[gokuDX7]

ya I ended up making a small check that makes the upercase letters into lowercase anyway. But ya I'll add in a drop down box soon. Also, good idea about the company news section. Looks like I'm gonna have to add that in sometime soon. Although most "news" sites like ANN, ANI, theotaku, all display that type of news anyway...so I'm not sure if I should add it in.

[gokuDX7]

Ok, finally updated my layout to the new one I was working on for my other site. Tell me what you guys think! There's probably allot of bugs so just report back here if you find any.

::Things added::
1) Icons on the main page that signify what the news is (torrent = blue torrent icon, blog = orange B icon, News = bluish N icon)
2) Search Icons will be added in a few mins
3) Search page optimized to hopefully run a bit faster.

::Things working on::
1) Admin and mod page.
2) User news submission for people to submit news thats not on any sites yet.
3) Voting for the user submissions to help filter out whats good news and whats bad.
4) API.

Feel free to post any ideas or suggestions. The site is still in beta and I have allot of things still left to add/change.

[gokuDX7]

Do you think an anime calender would be of use on the site? It would show when new anime subs and manga translations come out. I have an idea on how I could make it but not sure if anyone would use it.

[Mathias]

I wouldn't, but I'm not into getting the latest and greatest anime. I'm bumming off Sledgstone for borrowed shows.

[Sledgstone]

an anime calender would probably target more of a toonami/adult swim audience. I'm not sure if many of them are into the latest episode/torrent downloads. *shrugs*

[the56ker]

an anime calender would probably target more of a toonami/adult swim audience. I'm not sure if many of them are into the latest episode/torrent downloads. *shrugs*


i like that idea and also i will take a look into it im good at find bugs and breaking things eppy can vouch for that so when i get to nj i'll put it on my list of things to do ^_^;

[gokuDX7]

hmm, so I guess I'll get started on that as well. I'll give users the option to add or report false anime/manga release dates so I don't have to do all the work :P.

I'm also thinking about changing the way the news is displayed on the pages. I had a few people complain that the spaces between the news wasn't "defined" enough. So I might add a bar or something across the screen to make it less confusing. Streaming videos will be added within the week also :).

[gokuDX7]

K I updated allot this past month.

1) Cleaned up the layout a bit to help better distinguish news.
2) Sort by date (tag cloud)
3) Security updates (you wont see any of this)
4) Admin Panel so I can easily edit, add, varify user submitted rss feeds.
5) Fixed RSS feed bug where ampersands would screw it all up.
6) Updated FAQ and About page.
7) Search page is cleaned up.

::Bugs I know about::
1) Design is not consistent on the torrent/news pages (i'll fix this later).
2) Design when using date filter is not showing the correct frame images for torrent/news/blog posts (i'll fix this later).


I still have loads more to do on the site. But please visit and tell me what you think, what should be changed, etc.

PS. sorry for double post XD