I’ve been inactive for the past few weeks for reasons I’d rather not go into. However, it’s almost that time of year where once again, we pack up our computers, buy a crap ton of caffeine enriched drinks and supplements, leave the relative safety of our studies and wonder out into the real world to travel to Telford for another epic weekend of games, competitions, freebies, boxes and booze. Yes ladies and gents, it’s time another iEvent.

This time we are headed to the chilly winter i44. To coincide with this epic event, I have been convinced sit down on my fat arse, load up notepad++ and get to work on improving the site before we hit the event in mere days.

First thing on my list is to actually get our logo on the site, finally. The reason its taken so long to actually get around to doing that simple job is simply out of both my laziness and the laziness of someone else who has taken 2 months to send me a copy of the logo with a transparent background since it appears I lack the programs required to do that simple job (I can’t install adobe products, dumps too much crap on the c: drive even if you tell it not too).

Secondly, I’m finally going to start trying to script the new homepage, which will temporarily be attached to the current site until I start coding the new site.

As far as the new site is involved, I need some help, any web designers out there willing to sit down, give me a few minutes of their time to pick their brains and help me wrap my head around exactly what I have let myself in for, drop me a message on xfire:ukutghost or grab me on either ts3 or mumble (I normally sit on both if I’m sat in one).

So then, GLHF and see you at LAN

~Ghostie!

Now it’s mostly just rough work at the moment, but I’m hoping that the future template will take in to account our sister site and the inter-connectivity. Both side use the same version of wordpress and the same security procedures as each other. They also use the same account database to store user information, meaning once you create an account on one of the sites, an account will automatically be made on our sister site.

As it stands, the only thing both sites are now missing is a theme, which I will be investigating this further in the next few weeks. However with the end of the year getting close I’m hesitate to change the template, however, working on the video site has shown me just how much a custom template will be needed if we wish to continue expanding. As it stands, there is a lot of work to do on both sites and I will be sitting down with people over the next few days to try and draft out what is left to do to get both sites to a functional state.

//Ghostie!

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Sorry that I’ve been a bit quiet of late. My system upgrades were causing me trouble. My computer still isn’t running how I would like it but its getting there.

I managed to find the time to check the users list to today and deleted two users, one was a known spambot and the other was using a temporary email address that I couldn’t check. I then found a post on the forum by a ‘guest’ but since guest posting is turned off, I guess that temp email address was an actual user (sorry).

I’ve installed a couple more plugins to improve security on the site in another attempt to prevent spambots from the registering on the site. That makes 7 different security solutions on the site now, I just hope they all play nicely together.

I’ll be adding the top10 temporary email addresses to the email address blacklist, this is nothing against anyone using them to protect themselves from spam, I’ve had a look around the site and I haven’t found a way for guests to view the email addresses of persons whom register to the site (it might be possible, I’ll have a google in a minute and try to find a plugin to protect them if it is possible). We hardly use the mass email function (don’t think I’ve used it at all for that matter), so don’t expect any spam from us.

I’ve finally fixed the sound bug with my computer which means I can carry on recording F.E.A.R 2 and get that play-through out. Sorry for the delay.

Myself, MiB and Staffo are booked for i43 and we are searching for more players to complete the team. I’m going to talk with the boss over at advancetec about getting ourselves a Call of Duty: Black Ops server sorted, and maybe a public cod4 one (god I miss public cod4 sometimes).

We finally have a logo sorted and our t-shirt design, almost, finished:

Logo: http://utghost.co.uk/Pictures/Logo.png
T-Shirt: http://utghost.co.uk/Pictures/2011-shirt%20-%202.png

I want to get the ball rolling again here at Advance Gamers.

//Ghostie!

Hey Folks,

So I don’t know about you but with me releasing all these videos on youtube at the moment and then posting them on the site. I found that the front page was getting abit spammy with videos. So I’ve been looking for a good way to hide them on a different page for the past couple of days and finally managed it today. If you want to watch any of my playthroughs, they can be found on the youtube link in the category bar each each game getting its own sub-category. Main videos, such as announcement videos will still make it onto the front page but without pure homepage spam.

I’m going to work on a sidebar widget to show the 5 latest videos posted so that should go up sometime in the near future for quick reference.

I’d like some help to make some new banners up for the site and the youtube channel. I also need a nice background made up for the youtube channel, since I’m working with limited C drive space, I can’t install any adobe projects due to the shear amount of crap they dump on the C drive.

Thanks,
Ghostie

Just a few quick heads up.

Shortly after coming over to Advance Gamers, pRn ran into trouble recruiting a 5th member and took action to improve their efforts, this however proved counter productive and resulted in the pRn team disbanding after several weeks of failed trials to recruit 2 new members.

The CoD4 team also had similar bad luck recruiting new players for the upcoming LAN event i42 which kicks off later today (thursday 21/04/11) with the doors opening around 6ish for early arrives. I (Ghostie!) will not be attending this event due to life commitments. MiB, staff0, walker and James will be attending under the Advance Gamers banner and are joined by LethalCleric and Chef, long time friends of several members of AG.

Its been a slow year so far here at AG but I’m hoping things will pick up and I have few things in the pipeline to help us along. I’ll give details at a later date once I get my head around everything and out of my ar*e. The site progress has been and will remain to be on a backburner until I can secure funding to update the theme and buy a new template. I will be adding more features to the site as I begin to put some of my plans into action so watch this space.

The WoW guild has also been put on a backburner considering MiB has moved on from WoW. I have since moved realm to play with friends from University and walker (who never actually put his main in the guild) has joined a different guild so naturally… meh. The plugins related to the guild will be turned off and hidden but not removed. I still have hope for it but I’m kinda enjoying the other guild I’m in now.

Since progress and development of the site are on a backburner. I haven’t given much thought to the current forum set-up but I’m not too happy with the limited feature set that the current forum plugin provides and would perfer a fully featured forum integrated directly into the blog without too much hassle while still providing all the required functionality, but this isn’t very high on my to-do-list and will probably be covered in the theme update when I secure funds.

I think I have covered everything so…

Good night

Ghostie!

It also cleans up the site, both the front-end ( the bit you see) and the back-end(the bit me and mib see).

After several months of delaying it, and in line with the PBBans requirements, I’m finally sorted the forums out… I’ll be using a WordPress Plugin for ease of installation so its going to take some trial and error but fingers crossed it’ll work out fine and theres no bridging databases for accounts (which is always a pain). Having 5mb upload helps alot though

UPDATE: 15:50 10/12/10

Right guys, the forum is live, its going to take some tweaking to get right but in order to allow members to register and use it, I’ve have to activate the Register function again for the site, which was deactivated due to spambots. So while I carry on working it out, heres what I have working so far

Multiple Categories, viewable depending on access level, the lowest being public going upto admins. This includes the Community group which any confirmed real person will be added to when I get the chance which opens a couple of extra forums up.

The forum needs a little testing but the server info forums will be populated with certain information depending again on access levels, admins will get links to the cpanel for the servers, team will get rcon, public/community will get the ip addresses… simplez

UPDATE: 19:30 10/12/10

In order to use all the features provided by the forum software, I have installed another plugin called Mingle, which happens to be a social networking plugin ¬.¬. this is mainly for the account features, but most of the other features have to be turned on my default… this includes an activity page with status updates, a friends section and a pm system(needed for the forum anywho) but it also means page spam in the header.. sorrwie

UPDATE: 19:52 10/12/10

Link spam across the top of the page fixed, not sure why the pages still work but at least the spam is gone eh

I have decided to switch to a Blog system, a basic forum will be installed at forum.advancegamers.org when I get around to it.

Enjoy

~Ghostie!