Comments System, A Fresh Look, and More!

Users now have the ability to post comments on friends’ news posts.  I actually thought this might be pretty difficult, but it turned out to be pretty easy to set up.  Well, making sure you can only post comments to posts by friends proved to be tricky, but it should work as intended.

Currently you still can’t comment on new feed items that automatically appear via the Auto-Update feature.  You’ll have to refresh.  I’ll fix this later.

As you may have noticed, the front page of the site has gone through a bit of a makeover.  I believe this look gives it a much more friendly, welcoming, and overall fun feel to it.

Fixed a bug with the registration form.  There were some problems with the “Register” button being disabled when it was supposed to be enabled and vice versa.

Ethan is currently working on the module system for the home page.  If you log in and see weird things going on, just ignore them for now.

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Progress is Going Well!

Here are some of the latest changes/additions:

• “Control Panel” where account-related stuff can be viewed/modified
• “Dev Blog” tab so you can view this developer blog while logged in
• News feed now only shared between friends
• “Friends” page where you can view/accept friend requests and view/remove friends
• Some layout/design improvements
• [DELETE ACCOUNT] button now asks for confirmation to prevent accidental account deletion

Some areas are still messy, but we’re working on it.  I know a lot of the code can be cleaned and improved, but what I have right now is at least functional.

Here are a few things I want to try getting done next:

• Comment system for commenting on friends’ posts.
• Improved messaging system
• Real-time chat system (completely separate from the messaging system)
• More layout/design improvements

I had planned to give the FriendGrid home page a modular design, allowing the user to customize their home page the way they want with movable “modules” that contain different areas of interest (inbox, news feed, friends list, etc).  These modules can be moved, collapsed, hidden, added, and customized in other ways.  While I believe this is a great way to allow the user to customize their social networking experience, this implementation would take quite some time.  For now, we’ll try to present you with a static layout that I hope you will find easy to use and pleasant to look at.

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Friend Request System Active

Friend requests can now be sent/accepted between users.  It’s extremely basic, and there are some more conditions that need to be added.  However, this was a big step.  Now that there is a functioning ‘friend’ system in place, the site can finally start living up to its name.

Upcoming tweaks and fixes to the friend system:

• Ability to unfriend
• Ability to decline a request
• Restricting news feed to friends only
• A more interactive and aesthetically intuitive friends list/page

There is still a LOT to be done, so your patience and support is greatly appreciated.

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Upcoming Features

Just an update from the JavaScript side of things about what new features we’re planning on implementing in the future.

As vertigo has already told you, the very next feature we plan on implementing will be a friend system. From here, there’s a lot of things we plan on doing to add to the site, including a live chat system, editable profile information and settings, custom page layouts, and the ability to post pictures separate from your profile picture. From there we have a couple possible ideas in the mix which we may or may not add, but be sure to give us feedback about what we should do with the site and what features you’d like to see, we’d love to hear your responses.

-E

News Feed Auto-Updater Working Finally

Ethan and I have spent too much time trying to get the news feed to auto-update itself properly.  It seemed simple enough but there was always something going wrong.  Well, we finally set our pride aside and posted for help on StackOverflow and the issues were quickly solved.

Feel free to test it out, although you will need someone else online posting stuff in order to see the auto-update in action.

Also, the actual “Auto-Update Feed” checkbox isn’t 100% bug-free yet.  It will automatically re-check itself after posting something or refreshing the page.  Should be an easy fix.

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Features so far

We still have a long way to go.  Here’s a summarized list of some of the features we’ve already got working:

• Secure registration and login
• Email activation required to complete registration (temporarily disabled)
• News feed and status posting abilities
• Mail-type messaging system
• Ability to upload a single default profile picture

These are all extremely basic things.  The next step, most likely, will be to implement the “friend” system, which of course would be the way you link up with your friends.

 

New FriendGrid Dev Blog!

This new dev blog will be the primary source of updates and information regarding the development of the FriendGrid social network.  I will be posting less on the FriendGrid Facebook page and more here, although these blog posts should automatically post over there as well.

Well, not much else to say right at the moment!