Jesse - too cool! It works!
Buffistas Building a Better Board
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Cool, ita. Was there not something like that on TT? A Perl script, as I recall. Maybe some of it could be scavenged for parts for a new version.
ita, you are -- as usual -- about six steps ahead of me. My hat's off to you and your rocking ways.
We don't need Perl here. We are in control. It's just me modifying the showthread.php code.
We are in control.
Is it just me, or did other people read this and immediately imagine ita doing an evil laugh?
Not just you.
Not just you. Although it was the "we don't need Perl here" that really sent a shiver up my spine.
It's all about the power.
Ooh, so you could say "hmm, I'm on post 40, and there are 300 more posts. I want to see post 40-150 on one page"? That would be SO COOL!
There's a fundamental point that needs explaining here -- I might err on the side of the patronising here, but it's in a good cause! -- we control this place. It's ours!
With TT/WX, there was a database behind the scenes, which we could only interact with by clicking on things and hoping the right stuff came out. The database was their secret, and the only way we could get stuff out of it was with a browser.
The Perl script I wrote, and the search engine someone (Tom?) wrote, and the number-of-times-we-mentioned-porn counts, were all done by imitating a browser and getting the stuff from their database.
It's like when you go to buy drugs from one of those places where there's a steel-reinforced door with a small hole in it. You shove your money through the hole, ask politely and hope for the best. You've got no idea what's going on. Someone can take your money and give you nothing in return, take your money and give you baking soda in return, take your money and shoot you, or just plain not take your money at all.
So when we create tools to grab content from WX or TT, we're the customer.
On the Phoenix board, we're the dealer as well.
We've got our people on the other side of the door.
So, when people plaintively, endearingly, wistfully ask "would it be possible, maybe, one day, to make a search engine which searched this site? Please?" -- yes, you should imagine ita, and indeed everyone else doing an evil laugh of total mastery, because yes, we can do it right away, in fact it's already done!