Celebrity Pictures with News – the blog

Every now and then I get really good ideas from the more loyal users of the site.  Tizerri came up with two suggestions that I decided to add today.  Here they are in no particular order

1. Profile Submit History.  Each user on the site already had their voting and comment history.  So why not submit history?

2. PWN Views.  Each PWN story now calculates how many total views it has.  This counts for both registered and unregistered visits.

I have also tweaked the styling of the site in a few areas.  The most obvious change is that all input boxes have a mouseover effect.  The other change is the way conversational comment boxes are displayed.  Its basically just a subtle gradient to the heading to make it look more polished.

Also, I am happy to announce that threaded comments and notifications are working beautifully.

Don’t you hate those sites that stay in beta for like 3 years? :cough: Google’s Gmail :cough: Well, I do too. www.Celebritypwn.com was in beta for about two months. Now I’m fairly confident that most of the bugs are gone. Coming out of beta means quite a few things really. . .

The most obvious changes are the new graphics and header logo. The header logo is nothing snazzy but it fits the site. Believe it or not, that navigation bar took me like 2 or 3 days until I was satisfied with it. Kinda funny I guess.

There has been numerous bug fixes like always. The most notable fix was with the “who voted” page failing to render correctly. But the rest aren’t worth mentioning so I’ll just move on to new stuff. . . I have added the Most Popular PWNs for the past 30 and 365 days, and is located on the main page. PWN comment smilies now get converted to images (It’s limited at this point). User classes are now similar to celebrities. For example, an A-List Member is now the best user class on the site. There are a total of five user classes now (A-D and the lowest is newbie). And yes, its pretty hard to make it to an A-List member. I have also added a user class box when you view profiles as per user request.

Just when I get all excited that my site gets #1 in a very popular phrase.  Traffic jumped quite a bit.  I was really thinking I could already be on my way.  But then  I look today and google completely removed me from ALL searches in ANY keyword that cpwn might be in.  Even if you google the name of the website “celebrity pictures with news”, you get nothing.   All my meta tags are perfect with keywords and descriptions.  Seriously, wtf is that shit?  How is that even possible?  Anyone have any ideas?

It’s time for some good news.  I have added a featured called “nsfw mode”.  This helps those of you who happened to go to the site at work and were worried about seeing thumbnails of naked girls.  Now you get a pic that just says “nsfw”, but when you click on the thumbnail it will load regularly.  The best part about it is that it works by making a cookie on the computer you are using.  So when you go to your work computer, nsfw mode would be enabled.  Then when you get back from work it will work regularly.  Also, there is an icon next to your login name that shows you if its enabled.

And Im still not over this google bullshit. >;0

I realize I just had an update yesterday, but I have been working on these other things at the same time. I did not expect to finish them all so soon.  I want to get the site out of beta status as quickly as I can.  So on with the features . . .

1. Improved slideshows. I came across a new slideshow script a few days ago and was completely blown away by it. Not only is it easy to implement, but it’s extremely powerful as well. The slideshow looks very similar to the way regular pictures load up now except a toolbar will load underneath the pictures. It has things you might expect like play slideshow, direct link to the photo, and skip forward & back, etc.

2. Spell Check. You can now spell check your comments and PWN submits. It is straightforward and very easy to use as well. Most important, its free

3. Color Comments. Registered users on the site who are considered “normal users” or above will have their comments in a different color. This way you can quickly scan the comments and pick out someone who is a regular here and MAY know what their talking about. The higher the user class, the more noticable the comment becomes. A reward for being so loyal to the site.

4. Enhanced Celebrity Stats. The stat page now has the top 25 most popular celebrities. My previous update modified the “Most Popular Celebrity” on the rightbar to reflect only the month. I figured some people might still be curious about the most popular celebrities all-time on the site. Well, now its available to you.

Am I going too crazy with all these javascript apps? Are they unnecessary? Is the load time 30 seconds for some of you? If you feel it is too much, please let me know

www.celebritypwn.com

This update includes significant profile changes.  Each profile now has the option to add more information about themselves such as location, favorite celebrity, favorite gossip site, etc.  Plus, each user’s comment history is now visible on their own tab similar to voting history.   Profile page views has also been added for each user.

There has also been various redesigns to certain sections of the site.  The most important change is with pwn submission.  It is much cleaner and easier to submit a story than ever before.  There has also been a few behind the scenes changes to make sure the proper information was submitted.

Of course there have been the usual bug fixes, but I did manage to add a new fun feature.  Some of you may have seen it at digg.com called ‘digg spy’ to view site activity.  Well, at www.celebritypwn.com/realtime/ you will see a similar feature that shows real time voting.  As the site grows, this should be much more active.

Till next time !