Topic: Coder Profile

[VBAssassin]

Hello guys,

I've spent the past 1 and a half years developing this site from scratch (and no i do not regret not using a 3rd party framework)

http://www.coderprofile.com/

I have also setup a test member account at
username: phpfreaks
password: asdasd

And i would just like some feedback from some programmers as to what you think overall.

Please do not kick off other people on the account via the security center (by destroying active sessions or login keys on the account). I will delete the account when this topic is finished.

Thanks in advance, and have fun.

Kind regards,
Scott

P.S. I'm primarily a programmer, not a designer, or journalist, etc.

[ILMV]

The site looks good, my version of Ubuntu + FF3 usually breaks sites, but yours is holding up pretty well.

My thoughts

* Make it validate


That's pretty much it, I haven't got enough time to surf around, but I certainly will when I return home.

Keep it going
ILMV

[VBAssassin]

The site looks good, my version of Ubuntu + FF3 usually breaks sites, but yours is holding up pretty well.

My thoughts

* Make it validate


That's pretty much it, I haven't got enough time to surf around, but I certainly will when I return home.

Keep it going
ILMV

Thanks :-) i have quite a few users on there who use a very wide range of browsers and operating systems so it is generally well tested in that respect.

At the moment the fact it is not 100% valid xhtml trans doesn't seem to be causing any problems. Even google, microsoft and digg all have home pages that don't validate. I know it should validate, but when comparing time with productivity it's quite low on the productivity end of the scale. Which is unfortunate because i would love to be able to code for 1 browser and have it work in all! But thats just not reality at the moment.

Kind regards,
Scott

[ILMV]

One more thing. I have just signed up for a new account...

* The activation code is unusual, this would be easier to just give me a link to click.
* The activation code is in 4 chunks, which requires me to flick between the two tabs loads of times
* The activation code input boxes should be limited to 4 characters each.

Whilst the activation experience was very clean, tidy and easy (for a techy) to follow, this seemed a bit around the houses, especially for a service that is free (I assume).


ILMV

[VBAssassin]

One more thing. I have just signed up for a new account...

* The activation code is unusual, this would be easier to just give me a link to click.
* The activation code is in 4 chunks, which requires me to flick between the two tabs loads of times
* The activation code input boxes should be limited to 4 characters each.

Whilst the activation experience was very clean, tidy and easy (for a techy) to follow, this seemed a bit around the houses, especially for a service that is free (I assume).


ILMV

Hey up,

That is very true. I did write that in the very first version of the site so it's about time for an update with it i think. Ok, what about this for a solution:

1. They signup
2. An activation email is sent with 2 options (a link they can click, or the option to manually put it in).
3. If they manually put the key in, there will be 1 single input box for the key allowing them to copy and paste the whole thing in one go (and i will remove any spaces automatically).

The reasons the key is "unusual" are;

1. It means bots would have to configure themselves differently to work with CP as opposed to configure it once and work with all vBulletin forums.

2. It's unique to the site and allows me full control over it. The same algorithm to generate the keys is used also for the validation images etc (so great code re-use)

especially for a service that is free (I assume)

Yes it is completely free :-) i even release obsolete parts of the sites source code (classes) as well (on my profile: http://www.coderprofile.com/coder/VBAssassin )

Kind regards,
Scott

[ILMV]

Your proposed solution is definitely more 'acceptable' as far as user interaction is concerned.

I have now on my lunch had chance to browse around, it looks very well constructed.

I was surfing through the code library and found out there were 10 different levels of rating, of which I personally found too specific, usually 5 would be my recommendation.

Also, I couldn't see an option in the code bank for a demo of the code. Perhaps an optional field for submitters if they are submitting a web based script for example. The reason why this came to light is I saw a piece of PHP code on there, but I haven't got the available libraries to test it now, and would probably forget about it later, a demo would clarify any questions I would have had.

ILMV

[VBAssassin]

Your proposed solution is definitely more 'acceptable' as far as user interaction is concerned.

I have now on my lunch had chance to browse around, it looks very well constructed.

I was surfing through the code library and found out there were 10 different levels of rating, of which I personally found too specific, usually 5 would be my recommendation.

Also, I couldn't see an option in the code bank for a demo of the code. Perhaps an optional field for submitters if they are submitting a web based script for example. The reason why this came to light is I saw a piece of PHP code on there, but I haven't got the available libraries to test it now, and would probably forget about it later, a demo would clarify any questions I would have had.

ILMV

Hi ya,

Ya giving some great feedback and suggestions :-)

The thing is with demo's of source code. I'm not sure how i would implement that in a secure way. The second option i know is to allow them to simply enter a link to a demo... but... over time those pages that the demos point to become broken. Which isn't a good thing at all.

In regards to the ratings. I actually plan on using a 5 star system which will allow for half of a star (which would make 10 possible ratings). Using a mouse over system instead of a select an option from a selection box.

I'm still not sure about ratings at all though. I'm thinking about replacing ratings with reviews where each coder on the site can write 1 review per source code etc.

Also the commenting system has some problems that i really don't know how to fix yet (the comment systems works in regards to 0 bugs - it's more of a logical problem like how to reply to comments). I'm thinking that the way digg deals with comments is pretty good... but still looking around and want to come up with my own unique way of commenting.

Any help is appreciated.

Kind regards,
Scott

[Adam]

Looks very nice! I love the look of websites like that.. Can't see a single problem with design.. Can't quite work out what the drop down menu is for on the nav though?

I'd definitely implement a way for demos..

The thing is with demo's of source code. I'm not sure how i would implement that in a secure way. The second option i know is to allow them to simply enter a link to a demo... but... over time those pages that the demos point to become broken. Which isn't a good thing at all.

Could have a 'report broken link' type thing? I'd say your site has the potential to take off, so if you were to get some good mods could work out well with responding to these reports..

Could also create a script that runs once a day/week via cron to loop through all the demo links, searching for any kind of error pages and reporting them back to you if any are found?

I reckon you could probs get better results with some more SEO!

It's a shame it's made with tables - close to perfect!

Great work!

Adam

[VBAssassin]

Looks very nice! I love the look of websites like that.. Can't see a single problem with design..

Thanks. Thats cool considering i'm not actually a "designer". It went through 3 re-designs till i got it like that which i am now happy with.

Can't quite work out what the drop down menu is for on the nav though?

Yeah, it does seem a little strange don't it... let me explain... at the moment... they are pointless! Bet you weren't expecting that! lol. Basically the drop downs on the first 6 items allow you to select a new item to replace it with (allowing you to customize the tab things). The one on the far right shows them all and allows you to jump to a new network. At the moment i am perfecting the sites systems such as i need to replace the comment system with a system that allows replies and  allows votes for a comment (to weed out spam). I'm also working on a new category class which will allow you to categorize everything on the site, and so on. All of next year i will simply be adding new applications such as blogs, coding challenges, etc... and that is where those drop downs will make sense. Since there could be 20 applications meaning 20 networks in those drop downs to choose from ;-)

I'd definitely implement a way for demos..

The thing is with demo's of source code. I'm not sure how i would implement that in a secure way. The second option i know is to allow them to simply enter a link to a demo... but... over time those pages that the demos point to become broken. Which isn't a good thing at all.

Could have a 'report broken link' type thing? I'd say your site has the potential to take off, so if you were to get some good mods could work out well with responding to these reports..

Could also create a script that runs once a day/week via cron to loop through all the demo links, searching for any kind of error pages and reporting them back to you if any are found?

Thats a great idea! I love the cron idea. Although, with a lot of source codes could be quite processor and database intensive. Also it wouldn't detect codes that don't work on the demo (only links that point to a 404). So maybe "report as broken" would be best :-)

I reckon you could probs get better results with some more SEO!

Actually... the recent SEO work i did in the latest update increased the pages being indexed on google from 300/400 up to over 3,000! :-) Also, using i seem to be getting good traffic come in from search engines from a few codes like the calculator code i wrote in VB and Delphi. Since the breadcrumbs, title, and page headings all pain the same picture it works great!

It's a shame it's made with tables - close to perfect!

Sorry, but through experience i decided not to go down that route. In theory it makes perfect sence to use divs, in practice, it's not! Simply seperating the CSS from all pages in to a seperate file creates an extra http request (and css don't gzip for some stupid reason... browsers don't like it)... also... changing it in one place has knock on effects (which can be good) but since the site changes so much it's actually harder to keep the css files up to date without affecting other pages. Using inline style tags is better... but then adding the extra connection from the html tag to the css code is another complication (no longer encapsulated) and you have to keep looking up what the css was for each class etc. Then you got name clashes and so on... inline is easier when a site like CP is changing so frequently.

With divs the width is often a problem since there generally is no overflow control i have seen that mimics that of a tables and many other sites have the same problem. Type in a really long URL... and watch as the URL goes straight over the design! Tables however, stretch when that happens. Max/min width is an option however, it's not supported on all browsers. It's all these sort of problems that tables solve. When the time comes i will change it... but until there is a real need too it will wait.

Also, tables seem to work better across browsers etc without the requirement of CSS hacks etc. Good job tables are sooooo old now, meaning they are so well supported. And as already stated...

The site looks good, my version of Ubuntu + FF3 usually breaks sites, but yours is holding up pretty well.

So theres little problem... other than maybe an extra few KB in markup. You have to know when to stop perfecting something :-)

I'd say your site has the potential to take off

I hope it doesn't yet because i don't want to move my attention from development to member management and scalability and hosting issues. At the moment i want to develop it until i have finished adding the final applications and then get ready to promote it. I have a 5 year plan for the site all written down and so far, it's all going to plan :-)

Great work!

Thanks :-) I enjoyed reading your post.

Kind regards,
Scott

[moon 111]

The design is beautiful. Did you make it? I think the website really has potential.

EDIT: The design is beautiful. Did you make it?

[VBAssassin]

The design is beautiful. Did you make it? I think the website really has potential.

EDIT: The design is beautiful. Did you make it?

Hello,

Yes it is one of my few designs. It takes me aaaages to do a design because of my curse (being a perfectionist). Thats the best design i have done though. I prefer programming... basically anything but design lol

It's cool how you all seem to see the potential of the site. Though i am not naive. I know there is a lot i have to do yet, and there is still a great deal missing. I am happy with quite a few systems on the site though such as the BBCode System i wrote, the way you can add and remove applications on your profile all works great, the notification system is really good too. But there are then systems such as the comments that have problems such as not being able to directly reply. The discussion forum has direct quotes which i'm not happy with, and so on.

Though i do aim on clearing them all up over xmas (before january).

I'd love for some of you guys to register and watch as the site develops. In fact, i'm about to upload a new version of the site (to v1.46, check the footer to see if the update has been applied yet) :-)

Kind regards,
Scott

[nrg_alpha]

Here are my thoughts:

- As someone else mentioned.. you should make every effort to validate your code. Yes, you mentioned that it still diplays correctly, but there is always a risk that some broswer may interpret non-valid code in its own way and well... 'results may vary'. Clean valid code is always the way to go. Also ensure you validate your CSS!
- I really enjoy the looks of this site. Nice and clean and light. A few things to be aware of however:

• In firefox, I have set my default background colour to black. Result, you have a td tag without any background colour declaration. Always set background colours so that the page looks correctly regardless to user browser colour configurations.. to see what I mean, in the firefox url field, type 'about:config' (without the quotes). Then, in the filter field, type 'color'. Double-click 'browser.display.background_color and set it to say balck (#000000) and then view your homepage to see the problem.
• The top menu (discussion forum, source codes, etc..) are not the same width as the site's content. It breaks the natural flow of things..keep things consistent width wise..make things line up.
• I am noticing that those pretty little icons are all separate images.. this causes A LOT of http request / response headers flying around. Consider using CSS sprite techniques to merge related images and use css to display them. Makes for faster response times for the end user due to less http requests. A great tool is a firebug extension called YSlow (by Yahoo developers). This will give you an idea of the trouble spots.
• It never hurts to compress the most memory out of your images.. Un-optimized imges add bloat to a site, causing some unecessary bandwidth suckage. Consider using the Firefox add-on smush.it! as an excellent way to handle this issue. To use your home page as an example, when I checked it out on smush.it!, I noticed that you can save over 40k on your images! While some may argue that for DSL / cable modem users, an extra 40+k is not a big deal, it is the principal of saving bandwith and making your site even that more responsive.
• I think I would center the footer content.. it seems strange how it is currently positioned being how the site itself is centered. It boils down again to consistency.

All in all.. nice site. I really like it. Nice stuff
Hope that all helps out.

Cheers,

NRG

[VBAssassin]

- As someone else mentioned.. you should make every effort to validate your code. Yes, you mentioned that it still diplays correctly, but there is always a risk that some broswer may interpret non-valid code in its own way and well... 'results may vary'. Clean valid code is always the way to go. Also ensure you validate your CSS!

I'm not saying validation is a bad thing, i'm saying it's time consuming and not as productive use of my time as it could be spent doing higher priority updates and additions. However, there are many little tweaks i need to do nearer when the site is completed such as convert the icons to sprites (as we will talk about in a minute).

- I really enjoy the looks of this site. Nice and clean and light.

Thanks :-)

In firefox, I have set my default background colour to black. Result, you have a td tag without any background colour declaration. Always set background colours so that the page looks correctly regardless to user browser colour configurations.. to see what I mean, in the firefox url field, type 'about:config' (without the quotes). Then, in the filter field, type 'color'. Double-click 'browser.display.background_color and set it to say balck (#000000) and then view your homepage to see the problem.

I've never done that before... so thats quite cool. Though what sort of users would generally do that without actively editing the config file such as yourself? Nice little touch anyway :-)

The top menu (discussion forum, source codes, etc..) are not the same width as the site's content. It breaks the natural flow of things..keep things consistent width wise..make things line up.

They aren't supposed to be.

I am noticing that those pretty little icons are all separate images.. this causes A LOT of http request / response headers flying around. Consider using CSS sprite techniques to merge related images and use css to display them. Makes for faster response times for the end user due to less http requests. A great tool is a firebug extension called YSlow (by Yahoo developers). This will give you an idea of the trouble spots.

Yeah, because at the moment i'm adding new ones, removing ones, adding new sizes, etc etc etc... messing around with sprites will add a lot more work thats not needed yet. Once the site is nearer finished and / or starts suffering from to much traffic then i will make that change. But right now, there is no need. I think it's known as premature optimization ;-)

It never hurts to compress the most memory out of your images.. Un-optimized imges add bloat to a site, causing some unecessary bandwidth suckage. Consider using the Firefox add-on smush.it! as an excellent way to handle this issue. To use your home page as an example, when I checked it out on smush.it!, I noticed that you can save over 40k on your images! While some may argue that for DSL / cable modem users, an extra 40+k is not a big deal, it is the principal of saving bandwith and making your site even that more responsive.

Yeah, but i like the quality of png images. 40kb is something i can live with compaired to the fuzzy jpeg (or higher quality results in higher file sizes anyway). PNG does a nice file size with a very nice quality. All thumbnails however (all user images) are converted to JPGs for the reason you stated. The sites design and template however, i'm keeping as PNG.

I think I would center the footer content.. it seems strange how it is currently positioned being how the site itself is centered. It boils down again to consistency.

Not sure what you mean there? The footer actually is the same layout as the very top of the site (with stuff on the left and right, not in the center).

All in all.. nice site. I really like it. Nice stuff
Hope that all helps out.

Thanks, and yes, your feedback is helpful :-) Often explaining yourself to someone helps you make sure what your thinking is actually right or wrong. If that makes sense at all. It's getting late.

Kind regards,
Scott

[nrg_alpha]

I'm not saying validation is a bad thing, i'm saying it's time consuming and not as productive use of my time as it could be spent doing higher priority updates and additions. However, there are many little tweaks i need to do nearer when the site is completed such as convert the icons to sprites (as we will talk about in a minute).

This is probably why only 4% of sites sampled out there validate (according to Opera).

In firefox, I have set my default background colour to black. Result, you have a td tag without any background colour declaration. Always set background colours so that the page looks correctly regardless to user browser colour configurations.. to see what I mean, in the firefox url field, type 'about:config' (without the quotes). Then, in the filter field, type 'color'. Double-click 'browser.display.background_color and set it to say balck (#000000) and then view your homepage to see the problem.

I've never done that before... so thats quite cool. Though what sort of users would generally do that without actively editing the config file such as yourself? Nice little touch anyway :-)[/quote]

True, ost users probably don't modify their browser settings.. my point was that by declaring background colour properties regardless, your site will display correctly, as opposed to risking having it display incorrectly to those who do make modifications.

It never hurts to compress the most memory out of your images.. Un-optimized imges add bloat to a site, causing some unecessary bandwidth suckage. Consider using the Firefox add-on smush.it! as an excellent way to handle this issue. To use your home page as an example, when I checked it out on smush.it!, I noticed that you can save over 40k on your images! While some may argue that for DSL / cable modem users, an extra 40+k is not a big deal, it is the principal of saving bandwith and making your site even that more responsive.

Yeah, but i like the quality of png images. 40kb is something i can live with compaired to the fuzzy jpeg (or higher quality results in higher file sizes anyway). PNG does a nice file size with a very nice quality. All thumbnails however (all user images) are converted to JPGs for the reason you stated. The sites design and template however, i'm keeping as PNG.[/quote]

I think there is a misunderstanding here. smush.it! does compress into png format. So say you use a gif, it will make a .gif.png.. Either way, the end result is a .png file. The difference here is that smush.it will compress the file much better than any image editing program can. There is also no image quality loss... the compression is 'under the hood' and does not effect the image visually.

I think I would center the footer content.. it seems strange how it is currently positioned being how the site itself is centered. It boils down again to consistency.

Not sure what you mean there? The footer actually is the same layout as the very top of the site (with stuff on the left and right, not in the center).[/quote]

What I mean is since the site is centered on screen, it seems strange that the content within the footer is left and right. What I'm suggesting is centering the footer content.. I'm not sure if I am explaining myself properly here or not.

[waynewex]

I don't think I can seriously knock this website. A+ from me my friend.