****This is purely developmental for sites that want a major sticky item that promotes a huge increase in pageviews and keeps members coming back. This item will when/if finished will dramatically alter your members habits on your sites and should not be attempted by those who are not somewhat experienced in coding until the bugs are worked out of it. I'm sure I'll have errors on this initially so I'd appreciate any/all help on this item. If we can develop it in here, then it's something that can remain free and make a huge difference in Dolphin and ALL OF OUR SITES!**********
Hey guys, sorry I haven't been around lately, as life has been nuts recently moving to NYC this past week and being buried in everything. Now, I know that I've seen a couple people inquire in the past on a major issue that Dolphin has which limits it as a dating script. This is one that we all want, but in reality of some major research it appears severely lacks within Dolphin. So why don't WE fix it instead of just bitching or waiting for one of the modders to do it and then charge everyone for it? After all, we are smart enough.
Okay, here's what I'm talking about: Within Dolphin, we lose our sticky ability because once a member gets to a profile, he has to go back to the search screen to get another profile to view. Now, this has been worked with slightly with the Carousel rotator, but that applies mainly to displaying Featured Members or Random Members and does not hone it in to potential members that the member would want to see. I have another idea for this.
Why don't we use a php switch with elseif commands to make it happen. Now, we will need to make this appear in the correct spot on the page, one that doesn't disrupt most of our layouts and such, which means we would do best using a require once command within the necessary pages that we want it to affect and create a whole new file and drop it in it's correct location. Okay, enough talk, here's how far I've gotten on it and I'd appreciate a hand, as this is a major item that every single one of us can use. For fun, we'll call this file sticker.php (I can't find that name taken) and use the language key sticker for it.
Files we will have to edit:
templates/base/_header.html (best place to place this item is within the header above the menu, I'm thinking of using the thumbnail pics of all the members and placing the 10 most recent logged in members within the members geographical area and the correct age/gender the browsing members looking for in this row. Not rotator like the carousel is, just a basic line. If browsing member is a guy in Austin Texas seeking a Female aged 25-35 then let's pull the 10 most recent logged in females within 50 miles of his location <find it via zipcode> and place them above the menu of the pages he's browsing)
Here's the code:
__includebase _header.html__
<meta content="EN" http-equiv="Content-Language"/>
<meta content="text/html; charset=windows-1252" http-equiv="Content-Type"/>
<meta content=""="description"/>
<meta content=""/>
<meta content="" name="CLASSIFICATION"/>
__ray_invite_swf__
__banner_left__
<div style="position:absolute;top:0px;right:0px;width:1px;height:1px;">__banner_right__</div>
<div class="main" style="width: __main_div_width__">
<!-- top -->
<!--<div class="topestMenuWrapper">-->
<div class="topestMenu">
__TOP_Links__
__TOP_News__
__TOP_ContactUs__
__TOP_About__
__TOP_Privacy__
__TOP_Termsofuse__
__TOP_FAQ__
__TOP_Feedback__
__TOP_Aff__
__TOP_Invitefriend__
__TOP_Bookmark__
__switch_lang_block__
</div>
<!--</div>-->
<div class="topBlock">
__main_logo__
__hello_member__
</div>
__banner_top__
<div class="StickerBlock"> (**Add section within green)
__sticker__
<div class="topMenuWrapper"> (**Note This is Where the Menu is)
__top_menu__
</div>
<!-- end of top -->
Now, we will need to add a block for this within profile_view.css by adding a stickerblock to the profile view pages. We can also do this to any other page we would like to have these thumbnails show up on, and avoid it on those we don't want it to show up on by using individual page.css files. If you would like it on ALL pages, then simply add this block to the general.css file. I'm looking to control which pages have the thumbnails so I'm using specific page.css on my test case here.
.stickerblock
{
position:relative;
width: 960px;
border: 1px solid #999;
background-color: #fff;
margin-bottom:5px;
margin-top:4px;
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
/*padding:8px 10px;*/
}
Now, that block of string may need some work, we'll figure it out as we go, but it will place thumbnails where we want them, I hope.
Next, we need to create a php file. Now, in going through my notes and looking at this, I've noticed that a swtch command accompanying an elseif should do that trick. I doubt this will work the first time around, and as my site is very young I'll be eliminating the miles condition for now, I'm hoping someone with a larger site will hop in and help out with that part of using miles and zip codes. But placing this in any current file is simply not going to work, as it will have issues with it from what I can see and if an error happens with this being in it's own file, it's easy to remove/turn it off.
So here is where my brain is so far on this, and again, it would be great for others to jump into this one as it's going to help everyone of us out that uses social networking as the main basis of our sites. Here's where I am on the code so far:
<?
/***************************************************************************
* Dolphin Smart Community Builder
* -----------------
* begin : Mon Mar 23 2006
* copyright : (C) 2006 BoonEx Group
* website : http://www.boonex.com/
* This file is part of Dolphin - Smart Community Builder
*
* Dolphin is free software. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
* http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
*
* Dolphin is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY;
* without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
* See the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License for more details.
* You should have received a copy of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License along with Dolphin,
* see license.txt file; if not, write to marketing@boonex.com
***************************************************************************/
// --------------- page variables and login
check logged ();
// =================== ============== parse variables ================
// ==============================================================
foreach( $_GET as $key => $value )
{
if ( 'sex' == substr($key,0,3) )
$sex_sel .= $value . ',';
else if ( 'country' == $key )
$country_sel = $value;
else if ( 'age' == substr($key,0,3) )
{
if ( 'start' == substr($key,4) )
$age_start_sel = (int)$value;
if ( 'end' == substr($key,4) )
$age_end_sel = (int)$value;
}
else if ( 'online_only' == $key )
$onl_only = 'on';
else if ( 'photo_only' == $key )
$pic_only = 'on';
return
}
// ========================================================================
// ========================================================================
?>
Now the above is as far as I've made it on this. I've been digging into the browse.php page and attempting to break out the data even further on this, but haven't gotten that far yet. NOTE: We don't want the members to select anything here, which is wny it can not use the functions from browse.php but that is the best file to review for this that I can see. Instead, we want it to select based upon location/gender/seeking/age and be called based upon the criteria of the logged in member. This means we're only going to call the 4 variables and then match them up with the 10 most recent logged in members who match those variables. In addition, for the newer/smaller sites, we should be able to comment out each variable so they can turn them on as their sites grow.
Keep in mind guys, this is an item that is severely lacking on just about every social networking site out there, but if we incorporate it into Dolphin, it will give the members an endless supply of profiles to click on, thus creating that ultimate sticky item we've all been dieing to have. Every page will give them 10 additional profiles to click on, and this is what social networking is all about.
Also, I have not dug into the SQL on this little trick yet. So, who wants to join in and have a lot of fun figuring this one out?
