Forum scrabble game, not sure waht to do?

[JRR]

djr33

I was told this when I asked about doing this as PHP:

external storage would indeed require something written in PHP or python or a similar language. its possible to do because a script tag would just call the PHP from wherever it is hosted, but you are at the mercy of finding someone who can and will code in those particular languages. at least you have your own space for storage, so that adds a barter chip in your favor.

I do indeed have a FTP host with godaddy that I store files, pdfs, and images on.

[djr33]

Hm. So can you use PHP on the forum server, or would it all need to be on the other one? This would be very tricky because you couldn't connect to user accounts. I'm not sure what would work best then.
(It's remotely possible to work across two domains but without serverside communication between them it would be very difficult and require advanced knowledge of both JS and PHP. And it wouldn't work well at all compared to just doing it serverside.)

Short answer: this doesn't seem possible on your current host, unfortunately.
Longer answer: if you have time, you can play with some options, but honestly the easiest one will be to get a new host (GoDaddy would be fine). Move the forum, then work on this project.

[JRR]

djr33 what about this possibility? I have had a person who helped me with this crawler code from here say this can be done with a plugin and they will be back after the holidays to help. But here's the problem with using a PB plugin, to store the words (info) they would use keys and they provide 10 free ones and the words would be stored on PB server. So you say what's wrong with this? A key holds about 4000bytes of info and my fear is with a long drawn out game like this 10 keys aren't enough? They will sell you keys but what if before the game ended one needed 50 keys?

Back to this crawler code, look at the photos moving from left to right at the top of my forum:

http://thescooterprofessor.proboards.com/

This is a plugin that the same member that said they could help me with a plugin for this game helped me make with this crawler code:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici...wler/index.htm


Now before we converted to the new V5 software this is how I used it on the old forum V4.

I put this code in my header:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.jr-richscooterdoc.com/crawler.js">
 
/* Text and/or Image Crawler Script v1.53 (c)2009-2011 John Davenport Scheuer
   as first seen in www.dynamicdrive.com/forums/
   username: jscheuer1 - This Notice Must Remain for Legal Use
*/ 
</script>

I downloaded the JS crawler to my godaddy host:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici...ler/crawler.js

This was how I added my photos and also the padding, size, speed color, etc.

<center><div class="marquee" id="Scooter">

<a href="http://picturepush.com/public/12769653"><img src="http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/12769653/640/12769653.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by PicturePush - Photo Sharing" /></a>

<a href="http://picturepush.com/public/12769670" target="_blank"><img src="http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/12769670/220/12769670.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by PicturePush - Photo Sharing" /></a>

<a href="http://picturepush.com/public/12769682"><img src="http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/12769682/640/12769682.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by PicturePush - Photo Sharing" /></a>

<a href="http://picturepush.com/public/12769688" target="_blank"><img src="http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/12769688/220/12769688.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by PicturePush - Photo Sharing" /></a>

</div></center>

<script type="text/javascript">
marqueeInit({
uniqueid: 'Scooter',
style: {
'padding': '5px',
'width': '450px',
'background': 'lightyellow',
'border': '1px solid #CC3300'
},
inc: 5, //speed - pixel increment for each iteration of this marquee's movement
mouse: 'cursor driven', //mouseover behavior ('pause' 'cursor driven' or false)
moveatleast: 2,
neutral: 150,
persist: true,
savedirection: true
});
</script>

So could we not figure out how to make the game on the forum and store the words on my other server? I'm not going to move my forum to another server, first of all it's against the TOS of Proboards, second I've spent too many hours building what I have and don't want to start over. If I can't make this work any other way except the proposed plugin from PB so be it but I sure would like to if I can.

Thanks for listening.

[djr33]

I'm not going to move my forum to another server, first of all it's against the TOS of Proboards, second I've spent too many hours building what I have and don't want to start over.

I was in that situation a number of years ago, and I just created a new forum elsewhere, told everyone about it, and left the old one behind. The benefit of hosted forums is that it's almost no work for you, it's free, and you get support as needed. The problem is that you have no control. You should do whatever is best in your situation, of course! But you will be sacrificing control if you continue as you are. And that might be perfectly fine-- I'm just offering information about what is and what isn't possible, not making any specific suggestions for you. (I can tell you, however, if you want X then you may need to do Y.)

I don't know exactly what a "key" is. Yes, certainly, that would help. But I don't see how that would fix everything. Javascript cannot ever be secure, and you can't edit the PHP code (which is secure). This means you cannot rely on logins. This would be possible (not necessarily easy) if you didn't mind allow anyone in the world (without logging in to the forum or being associated with their personal account) to modify the information. Would you want that? I've been assuming you don't.

There is simply no way I can see to integrate this with your existing database of users-- usernames and passwords are off limits if you can't modify/extend the PHP code for the forum.

Another option would be to simply create a second website for the game. But again I've been assuming that isn't your goal with this. (For the record, that would be VERY easy to do-- you could just add it in an iframe, assuming you could modify the template or use Javascript to add it in there, but then you'd just be displaying a completely independent website that would, for example, require its own login system with new accounts.)

In short, the easiest answer for this is to move your forum (or just recreate it) on a new website where you have control over the code. That will actually be less work for you than any of the possible options with your current set up, and none of those options seem particularly functional at the moment.



The only thing I can think of is the following:
You could use a second server to watch (="crawl") your forum and look for new posts. Then you could write PHP code that would take that information and change it as required and generate statistics. Then you could display that second website (in an iframe, etc. -- even a dynamically generated image!) in your forum.
But this would require a fairly advanced knowledge of PHP and an ability to extract content from posts, using a cron job to make it run continuously, and figuring out how to integrate it. This actually is, in fact, possible. But it would not be easy (much harder than moving/recreating the forum).
Basically, this of is an external automated hand counting things for you. This wouldn't require direct access to the user accounts because it would be automated-- any post on the forum would be assumed valid (it is, of course) rather than allowing users (or guests) to directly manipulate any content.

[JRR]

djr33

Plugin keys are the only acceptable form of Ajax that Proboards allows on their forum at this point:

http://support.proboards.com/thread/431718/plugin-keys

One can make a special request for Ajax permission but in a thread that I asked if Ajax was still off limits I was told that a plugin could be made for this game and that I could use a key for storage of the words. Please read this:

http://support.proboards.com/thread/...quests-allowed

Now I have a person who says they can create a plugin for this game which is what is used for a lot of things on PB.

http://support.proboards.com/thread/...plugin-request

They have a concern about storage too but hopefully the way it was explained to me it won't be an issue? Lots of plugins and I mean lots of them use javascript coding just like the crawler plugin I mentioned earlier. In fact if you turn javascript off on your computer for any reason you'll find yourself in trouble on a PB forum.

I'm going to wait for Todge to build the plugin, he has done many for people and hope for the best on storage and even ask if he can somehow make the plugin use my godaddy server for storage instead of the storage keys like was suggested, that's why I asked all you great people here first if this could be done.

Thanks

[JRR]

djr33

I just had this told to me by one of the coder/moderators at PB, maybe this makes a difference?

AJAX concerns are only valid if you are trying to get stuff from proboards servers. if you are getting stuff from somewhere else it wouldnt be a TOS violation. what you want to do is perfectly valid, but as I said, you will need to find someone who can write the interface code in PHP to query the database on your server and supply the results back to the plugin. the concept isnt hard, you just have a database of stored words in a mySQL or whatever database, a PHP function to query that list, and return a true or false if it already exists. a second function would add a word to the database if the word wasnt already there.

[djr33]

I guess I just don't understand enough about these plugins/keys to know whether it would work. If using a "key" means you can access serverside code in one way or another (even indirectly), then this will work. But as I've said, unless you can somehow modify the code on the server (and a "key" might allow that), then you can't integrate this with user accounts.

I'd recommend hiring someone from proboards who knows this system well. It's not anything more general that users here would be familiar with.

AJAX concerns are only valid if you are trying to get stuff from proboards servers. if you are getting stuff from somewhere else it wouldnt be a TOS violation. what you want to do is perfectly valid, but as I said, you will need to find someone who can write the interface code in PHP to query the database on your server and supply the results back to the plugin. the concept isnt hard, you just have a database of stored words in a mySQL or whatever database, a PHP function to query that list, and return a true or false if it already exists. a second function would add a word to the database if the word wasnt already there.

The bold sections require access to serverside code.
The underlined sections suggest this is on a second server.
Now I'm still very confused about how you would be able to integrate this with your user accounts.

As I said above-- if this is all on a second server (via AJAX) then you can't integrate user accounts securely. Anyone would be able to do anything in the game. Perhaps you don't mind.



You (or someone else at proboards) should write up a very clear step-by-step numbered outline of how to design this and/or the requirements of what must be included. For example, exactly what actions triggers this new script? And do you need it integrated with the forum's user accounts?