ACDB v2 development is well under way. I expect to finish it this month.

One important change is a new forum.
http://www.animecharactersdatabase.com/newforum.php

Feel free to browse it - any missing or broken features, please report here and I'll get right on coding them.

Posting features will not be coded for a while. e107 requires a delicate cascading update on new forum posts, so I must work that out carefully before inserting data that might break things. ;-)

And for members, it will be a simple transition. No new accounts needed, no forum posts deleted... we'll just continue on with a software we can call our own. Guess that also means feature requests and bug fixes will be my business for a change. Haha.

# RANT #
Last month was a realllllly active month for e107 exploits. For those who did not know, we have been using e107 for Member Ship Features and Forums...
Every day we get dozens of exploit attempts. Several have been successful, and scripters have gained shell access, as well as full database access.
Needless to say, I'm sick of it. But I respect the community here, and will not take "reactionary measures" like deleting the forums.
So, I'm starting from scratch, coding my own forum using a only handful of PHP functions, combined with simple common sense coding practices.
We wont be switching over to it until everyone here agrees it is ready.

So, share your feedback, and I'll work to make our next forum the BEST forum ever!
# /RANT #

私は日本語を少し読むと書くをできます。あなたも？

Well Rei i really like the favt that we can now access the DB while still on the forums. But I wonder what the color sceme should be... I know!! The colors should be easy on the eyes... not necessarily the black it currently is but could we put some red or dark blue into there?

And for some reason the loggin sends me back to the old one... or is that on purpose for the time being?

[ Edited Jun 3, 2010 ]

"Further into chaos we shall keep walking. Only to meet our fate." ~Souls
---
Future Mangaka in the works.

The white "border" is really distracting when viewing the black-schemed forum page... I find my eyes wandering toward it (noooo don't go toward the light!!!! lol), so some kind of color standardization would probably be easier and not draw attention away from what you're trying to do.

Also, centering where the pages load (like a character or the forums, etc) would look a bit nicer, seeing how interface toward the top of the screen is centered.

Is it me, or are the characters not loading correctly?

This is all that I've found so far, hope it helps some.

[ Edited Jun 3, 2010 ]

-theme-
Red and/or dark blue... hmm, I think I could work something out with that. Agreed. Easy on the eyes is a must. Guess the mix of dark on white fails. Haha. I'm working on copying the current theme for now. Once that all matches up, it'll be a breeze to change the colors.

-login-
You do need to login twice. Once to use the forums here, and once to use ACDB there. ACDB v1 and v2 use the same login system, but as you see the login script still needs updating.

- 13x31 -
I'm guessing you mean when you hit "Search (Characters)" the images don't load? I haven't decided what to do with that page.... there's a lot of options, but none of them seemed great.
1) Just show thumbnails with a little text underneath - like a Google Images Search
2) No images, just show text links - like a normal Google search
3) Show images and text for first 10 matches, then text for next 90

[ 3 is in use now ]

Other issue is.... what kind of search?
1) REALLY FAST, but inaccurate (only search English words 4 letters or longer, no Japanese support)
2) REALLY ACCURATE, very slow and resource intensive (searches every keyword any format)
3) REALLY FAST, HIGHLY inaccurate (only searches for names that start with the first word searched)

[ 1 is in use now ]

[ Edited Jun 3, 2010 ]

私は日本語を少し読むと書くをできます。あなたも？

Lol i feel so powerful now! anyway that explains the login stuff. Though i havn't tried looking at the pictures, ill do that or sometime

"Further into chaos we shall keep walking. Only to meet our fate." ~Souls
---
Future Mangaka in the works.

What most of us are used to seeing when clicking on a character: (It's not easy getting the whole page and I didn't want to spend all night doing it lol. So I just scrolled to the section of what I was talking about with the "old" site)

What clicking on a character now does:



I don't mind the little strip of characters, but along with increasing the size of the character's picture and posting the character's name on the browser's title bar and the tab's title bar (I rarely look at either of them BTW lol), it should also post the character's name (that you're currently viewing) above or below the picture.

I've also seen elsewhere (I don't remember honestly) the same kind of photo-strip like browser, and the picture with increased size was in the center instead of on the edge. It's a little easier for most users, I think, because if you click on the right arrow, in this case to go to Seta, (with the current system), you lose sight of Naru. But if you use the centered system, Naru only shifts to the left one image, and you still can go back to her.

I think these two things is what confused me with the new layout, it just seemed like something was a bit off and missing. So I don't mind having the profile nixed, but having the source anime/game/manga/etc along with the character also helps. It can kinda be like the old, where you click on it, and it gives you the companies (which isn't too necessary, but it doesn't bother me) and the list of all the characters.

Okay... I think that's it for this round lol. (Maybe I should'a made the screen caps a bit smaller? lol

When you search by character traits, it comes up with a Google-like layout where you see the pictures of the characters. But when you search by text alone, it seems really weird and the thumbnails are a little bit too small to make out faces...

Good:


Bad:


(God... I haven't really done a whole lot of these screen caps, but I'm kinda tired of them... lol)

[ Edited Jun 3, 2010 ]

Rei Other issue is.... what kind of search? 1) REALLY FAST, but inaccurate (only search English words 4 letters or longer, no Japanese support) 2) REALLY ACCURATE, very slow and resource intensive (searches every keyword any format) 3) REALLY FAST, HIGHLY inaccurate (only searches for names that start with the first word searched) [ 1 is in use now ]

I'd leave this the way it is, It seems accurate enough for most purposes. As you said, increasing the accuracy only slows down the search, which isn't what you want if you're trying to speed up the site while minimalizing the interface. If you speed the search up faster, IDK honestly... I'd have to try it out (well, the "highly inaccurate" is a bit scary lol). But as I said before, I think it's fine the way it is.

-character profiles-

oh OH! The character and game profiles are "just begun".

What you're showing in the screen shots, I call it the vector. Gives you a heads up of the next and previous characters. I like the suggestion of putting the Current character in the middle. If that's OK with you, it's OK with me. I found having it at the end allows you to speed browse more characters, but if the middle is OK, I'll move it there.

What kind of profiles do we want?

The layout of the old site always seemed so plain. I liked having realllly long pages will all the features on one page, then I broke it into Linked sections....

So far the features I see to be of value are:

1) Character Details
2) Character Image
3) Additional Images
4) Character Sources
5) Character Voice Actor
6) Comments
7) Add to Favorites
8) How Well Known
9) Character of the Month
10) Character Appearances
11) Wiki-like long text character profile...


-search results-

Got it. I'll update it to use all thumbnails.

[ Edited Jun 4, 2010 ]

私は日本語を少し読むと書くをできます。あなたも？

Hmm... I just thought of another idea for the character browsing. So instead of five pictures, do six, and then instead of having the current character at the left most, it would be the second in the series

So (forgive me for using a bit of ASCII art) it would be roughly like this (X = current, o = not current):
<<- < o X o o o o > ->>

So the "speed browse" still exists, while keeping the previous character on the end.

The only other idea is to increase the number of pictures. The only downfall is that it may slow down the server a little bit (depending on how many pictures are present and the size of them, etc, etc...). But looking at it, it seems that there's really only enough space (comfortably) for two more pictures (since the picture increases size a litte bit when you hover over therm.

Hmm... Profiles... I haven't paid too much attention to this section much (except for erroneous values like Sayako from Oh My Goddess being a teen lol...), but I know it really should be tailored to the way people are using the character search.

Although it's a bit of a sidetrack and takes away some valuable time, a usage poll could help with this, since not everyone uses ACDB in the same manner. So the poll would be along the lines of:

What do you use ACDB for?
1) Finding the character's source
2) Finding random character
3) Finding the characters to a source
4) Learning about a character
5) Etc
6) Etc
7) Etc


But it's always a good thing to learn how and why people use ACDB and to tailor it to the majority, so if (for example) people are primarily using it to find the source of the character, then you would want to make sure that when a person goes to the character's profile page, that one of the first things they see is the source. So like in my previous screen cap of Naru's character profile, you'd want to have that "table" with her picture on the left, and the source on the right, at the top (under the browse strip) instead of having to scroll about halfway down the page for it.

However, it really depends on how and why people use ACDB, and having that poll here in the forums won't exactly help us as much as posting it on the main page.


This poll is really a double-edged sword. If we have a low amount of voters (less than 10), it was a waste of time, but if we have a lot of voters, it will help the site greatly. So ultimately, I suppose it's up to you.