Collection Database Idea...

[thund3r]

This maybe a long shot and if so feel free to throw away the idea but i was thinking this evening about the possibility of having a database (maybe in PHP?) where members could register for a user account which would enable them to create a list of their master system games and share it with others.
Heres an example of what i mean (its anime but its relevant!) animeseen.net/
Now on that site theirs a list where you can drop down menus to add curtain anime's and put the status of what your watching or a rating. Now could we maybe tweak this idea and have something where the user can add the game, condition, manual/no manual and that sort of thing?

Its just a thought but it would be a really good addition to the site and the community here and amoungst other sms boards. Still, this all depends on a good coder...

[Aypok]

I wrote an application (in PHP) to do exactly this about two years ago - I even offer(ed) to host people's lists for them, so they don't need to know anything about how to set it up. Due to the lack of interest, I took the instructions and stuff off-line - but the SVN repository is still publicly accessible. I haven't committed [sic] any new code to the project for about six months, but one of my friends checked in some new code last weekend.

It works fine - but due to the age of the code, it's crappy in places (and is missing some features I now want). I have long planned to rewrite it from scratch using a nice framework (the Zend Framework, to be specific), but can never seem to find the time.

If people are genuinely interested in this, it'll give me some incentive to get to work on the rewrite. If not, I'll keep using my current version. :)

There is a demo of it available at www.aypok.co.uk/ogl_test/trunk/index.php - it's not using the very latest code, though. You can login using the user name and password combination: "demo_login" / "demo_login". Feel free to muck around and alter what you want - it's all test data.

[Kenneth]

Something like this ?
www.guardiana.net/Community/Profile,MD_fan.html

[ninjabearhug]

Something similar to Guardiana's database for the SMS would be great.

I keep meaning to update my profile on Guardiana, according to that i've only got 117 MD games ;D. I'll get round to it one day.

[thund3r]

Aypok that looks top notch mate! We'll if theirs interest i would love to see something like this for the site so people would stop having to make "OMG look at my collection" threads every once in a while. I think it would also be nice for alot of members to show what they have and allowing others to browse their goods when they please.

I mean its up to you if you dont mind writing a new one? Maybe get some of the admins involved and see what we can do from there...

[Stan]

Good idea, and it would be a good way to beef up the member collection section instead of just having pictures.

[Policenaut]

I use the pcedaisakusen database for my pcengine games collection. Something similar for the sms games here on sega8bit would be great.

[thund3r]

bumping my own thread here, but aypok have you looked into creating a database for the site yet?

[Aypok]

Aug 20, 2008 11:44:06 GMT thund3r said:

bumping my own thread here, but aypok have you looked into creating a database for the site yet?

You mean rewriting it? Yeah, but I've not written any code for it. I wasn't sure if there was enough interest in it.

There's also the fact that the Sega8bit site uses "classic" ASP, so running a PHP application on the same machine could be problematic. Hosting it elsewhere is a possible solution, but that means it won't be very integrated with the site - which kind of defeats the purpose of it.

[Sinistral]

It was always something we wanted to do with the site, but haven't got around to. In order for it to work there needs to be a dramatic overhaul of the site and database. We need a good way to list identify and list all known variations and alternate game titles, also the hardware database needs to be complete.

How can you choose what to put into your collection list without the list on the site being definitive? You could manually type each title, but that doesn't help when cross-referencing games with other collectors, different people may call something slightly different.

I've looked into this and found that I couldn't do it well enough to be worth adding with my current tools/resources/skills.

If anyone wants to take over the reigns and re-write what's needed I'll be more than happy to hand them over as long as I can remain part of the project in some way.

[Aypok]

There's the near-complete Sega16bit code-base, which could be useful. It's a clone of the existing site, but in PHP and has minor improvements (I think). It's not 100% done, but it shouldn't be too hard to finish (the code isn't too bad, either). I could have a go at fixing the biggest of the out-standing things and set up a test site for people (you) to play around with and see what you think, if you want - probably on the weekend, or something.

How I envisioned the adding of games to work is that the user would have a few drop-down boxes: They first choose the region of the game, which then fills out the list of games (showing all known releases for that region) - allowing them to choose which game they have (that way it could be automagically linked to the games database).

There'd also be a few other drop-downs for whether or not it has the manual, box, and its condition out of ten (maybe), etc. Possibly even allowing them to add a link to the cover scan on SMS Power! to show the variation.

Just an idea.

[Stan]

If you planned to do this, Andy, and switch to PHP, I'm up for helping. I can, of course, move all the old content into the new format or what have you.