<div class="header">## Seneschal Report

December 7, 2009

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<div class="divider">### News </div>

SCL Praetor Position: Open

Due to RL, Karel has stepped down as my Praetor and has once again donned his Magistrate to the SCL hat. Thank you, Karel, for all the work you put in as Praetor (he has done quite a bit with the PHP recode planning process and developing some MS SQL to MySQL conversion plans...not to mention lots of DJB site bug fixes).

That means the SCL Praetor slot is open. I've a number of high-priority projects that need doing and I could use a second hand. As such, I am now accepting applications. I plan to appoint Karel's successor two weeks from today (December 21st) so get your applications in! I am looking for someone that has the following qualities:

<li>Strong HTML experience</li>

<li>General Programming experience - i.e. knows or feels they can learn PHP</li>

<li>CSS skills are a big plus, though not necessary</li>

<li>Desire to learn from me/teach me/collaborate with me</li>

<li>Drive to work on secret projects for the Brotherhood</li>

Site Conversion

For those of you that are not aware, the Dark Jedi Brotherhood is currently undergoing a re-write of the code that drives the website. We are converting from the Microsoft centric ASP language to the Open Source language called PHP. The process of doing a recode is a long and complex road that has been travelled down a few times before but abandoned each time.

In the past, the ASP to PHP conversion was attempted in one fell swoop - coding a parallel site completely separate from the live DJB site. The largest issue with this was the time it takes to do the recode. There are over 150,000 of lines of code that need to be converted...which means thousands of hours to execute the task. Needless to say, the need for new features and/or bug fixes on the live site would drive the DJB developers to have a split focus which inevitably killed the conversion task.

My goal in my term as SCL has been to attack this same conversion issue. My approach is different enough that progress can be made (and not lost) as the upgrade is executed. How? I am tackling sub-sections of the DJB site at a time; converting them to PHP and then launching them live...happily living amongst the ASP code.

I am pleased to say that the DJB conversion to PHP is progressing steadily so far. The Brotherhood APIs (the core of our back-end code) are filling out and giving me the ability to now migrate a number of the pages you access often. Be aware that filenames will change during this re-code, though I am attempting to minimize the number of broken links that creep up.

The majority of the pages that have no real 'logic' to them have been converted to PHP thanks to some grunt work by Vexxtal! Here are some pages with logic that have been converted already:

<li>Layout Options</li>

<li>Roster Search - I also took the liberty of more tightly integrating the Name/Pin search box that appears on every page so that if you enter a name or pin then hit enter before using the auto-complete, a search is executed on the search page.</li>

<li>Competition List - I have added a few new features to this: 1) if you notice, the competition URLs are a lot cleaner. Thank you to everyone who suggested that improvement! 2) I've added a "Stuff that matters to me" link that shows you all competitions that are in your BattleTeam/House/Clan/Club 3) I've added a few checkboxes to the Advanced Search.</li>

So far so good. Stay tuned for more migrations!

Character Sheets

I've worked with Muz and Erinyes to launch some new features on the Character Sheet recently:

<li>Clan Powers - Oh god this one was a lot of work...but the powers are sweet!</li>

<li>Saber Points for PRT - JH</li>

<li>Form 0/Banlanth Saber form for PRT - JH</li>

As always, when new features get added to the Character Sheets, in order to save them you MUST create a new character sheet from scratch.

Site Bugs

As is always the case, I have been doing bug fixes on existing pages when they arise.

<div class="divider">### Ye Olde SCL To Do List </div>

This todo list has changed drastically due to the site issues.

<span class="ul">PHP Recode</span> <span class="status">(Status: 10%)</span>

<span class="ul">Possession System</span> <span class="status">(Status: 20%)</span>

This is a fun project :) Database design is complete. GM/DGM/SCL Admin UI is in its last stages of development.

<span class="ul">Forum Migration</span> <span class="status">(Status: 0%)</span>

I still need to tackle this one...I'm avoiding the inevitable.

<div class="divider">### Real Life </div>

I am happy to report that my RL work has quieted down enough for me to start hanging out in IRC more often (i.e. I am no longer working 50+ hour weeks)! Yay! I have been happily cranking out code for the past few weeks with reckless abandon. I will, however, be taking a limited LoA in January (13th - 20th) when I head out to Seattle to visit my family.

<div class="divider">### Closing Remarks </div>

Thank you. That is all. Bork, bork, bork!