TinyPortal

Strangely as I am working on the BAC features - which include a..tada.. portal lol, I started looking at ideas for easy-made blocks. Like one I coding now called "Movie of the week". Basically its a block that takes a youtube link(for a trailer of course lol), a IMDB id for fetching plot etc. and then a assignable Poll id, which links this whole thing to a topic with that poll. The poll can be anything of course, but a logic step would be whether you seen the movie or not - or liked it for example.

Of course I then had to also add a BBC tag that allowed the same info fetched(and cached of course)from IMDB inside the topic..and a Youtube tag for the same purpose.So, a liiiittle more to it than what I started with haha. :) But it feels fun, creating things like this, that really feels can be of interest to me. I mean, I like movies, and this is a good way to put up movies I want to highlight. maybe some poor soul will even take part in the poll lol.

Other uses for this could be book reviews..or TV-shows of course. Or just any bit of news. Polls are under-rated as a tool, and SMF have always focused too much on them as the "main thing" in a topic, while they really are just a cog at best.

Sounds like an interesting process, it will be fun to see the end result.

Sounds interesting. Only thing I thought was about copyright at IMDB.

I list movies on one of my sites with trailers and artwork. For the synopsis I use Wikipedia and then put a license message as per their copyright rules.

To be fair I don't know what IMDB has for a license of their wordage. maybe they will allow it.

Not sure either, but worth to investigate. I do however, have a linked IMDB icon next to the info. Its after all their info lol.

What is BAC?

Its the admin part of the mod tied to themes I am creating now. Blocthemes Admin Center or BAC for short. Its a way to combine everything, and make it easier to update as its a mod etc. That is, it started that way, but now have grown into a mod where it installs themes but do not use the theme xml file to install it. In fact, they don't even have one atm. The features it has, are a lightweight portal + the boardtype stuff I used in Protendo and earlier theme projects: showing boards as blogs, galleries etc. Adding new BBC types are a part of that.

I guess it will move towards it being a mod thats adds themes(but without the theme_info.xml files) - rather than a theme that also add a mod. In the latter it implies having to duplicate the admin files in every theme, but I see thats counter-productive in the long run, so I am going for a mod that installs itself - then adds the themes you like through fetching them from the blocthemes site, or just package the whole thing together.

You see, I expanded the "current theme settings" in these themes to more things like uploading image files for logo,background, color control for setting a background color and so on. But its only reachable inside the BAC portion of admin, not "current theme settings". That way its only tied to those themes and not every SMF theme.

Anyways...its whats its interesting to work with right now, I have a use for it, and theres not much time for anything else. Sorry for the long(ish) reply. :)

I always thought it stood for Blood Alcohol Content but, like you Brad, I couldn't imagine what that might have to do with blocks. LOL   :2funny:

Here's one version in use on my live site.
http://www.ourfamilyforum.org/FamilyForum/index.php?action=forum;theme=64

Any TP staff wanting to look inside let me know. (PM me)  8)

Quote from: ZarPrime on November 20, 2014, 11:04:59 PM
I always thought it stood for Blood Alcohol Content but, like you Brad, I couldn't imagine what that might have to do with blocks. LOL   :2funny:

It does? Hehe, never would have guessed.. :)

To give an update, I added some screenshots of things.

Very nice looking Bloc, clean and attractive  O0

Sorry I'm late on parade again, still renovating our house.

Great ideas there their bloc, liking your way of thinking as always.  O0

Same here, late as usual  :P

A lot of driving and long days in nov dec hahaha X-mas knocking on the door.

I like the idea of the way you want to show and create discussions for movies, ( but still liked your "blogg site" best, just because it was simple and not cluttered up )

But the again, im totally off the "show all and everything everywhere" sites now, dont know if it is an age thing, but i feel that less is more, a lot often now. And easy looking sites with less things in them that takes focus from the main thing you want to show are more fun IMHO.

I somewhat looks for sites that show the things im interested in, moves, photos etc, but there are very few i like to saty on and keep following, just because they mostly have a lot of other crap that disturb the eyes, and to me, i want to feel the relaxings things on the net now. Hard to explain, but somekind of site, where you find nothing else but the content you are looking for or want to see. A moviesite, without all the crap in it like IMDB, If i want to see or know about a movie, i miss a site that just have a review, simple and up straight, IMDB have a lot going on all the time, but the simpleness, im missing out of.
Less is more kind o a site.
That were the thing i liked most from your own site Bloc, where you only had one simple blog, with small notes about the movues you saw, and also the imagecreations you made, great images, shown in a simple way, with the info needed. I never got tired of being there, it was easy, and informative, in a short nice way. :D

Thanks. :) I haven't updated it in a while...maybe time to get back in it. Its Protendo driven, and even a few versions back on that too hahha. :)

But yeah..I think maybe a lot of the simplicity on there comes from a very "clean" theme being used..and of course the viewtypes(blog,gallery) were made without bloat at all. Those ideas/features will be added into this BAC mod too, so you should see the same there eventually. Current theme (Studio001) at blocthemes is more busy, with background images etc.

But I think the block features too will be simpler than its counterparts in TP or other portals. Thats one of the goals anyway. :) This one type of block described above is more like a proof of concept using OOP in block creation. Ideally it should rather point to a topic using the "movie type" boardview, like on my blog. I just haven't transferred the code over to the BAC mod yet.

Maybe it could be adapted to reviews of things like games, game maps, etc...

I was also thinking along similar lines.  Music related stuff in my case, youtube vids, sound cloud, and Reverbnation tracks.  And of course, gear reviews.

Exactly. Its relative easy to add "fetchers" to these, Soundcloud also has a "embed" feature i think. Reverbnation I am not sure..

Because that is what the movie block does, fetching and caching info from Internet Movie Database. Others could follow the same, the block could be generic with 1) image upload, 2) text, 3) a rating value 4) poll id and last: a fetcher which could be selected 5) youtube/soundcloud/vimeo/imdb etc. Again, since the info is cached it will be quick between the updates. The IMDB I only let update itself every 24 hours. Youtube videos are of course directly streamed.

Quote from: WillyP on November 24, 2014, 04:48:12 PM

Maybe it could be adapted to reviews of things like games, game maps, etc...

Apologies  WillyP, I somehow modified your post, instead of quoting it.  I've used SMF long enough, you'd think I'd know how to operate it by now.  :-[ This was my bit.

"I was also thinking along similar lines.  Music related stuff in my case, youtube vids, sound cloud, and Reverbnation tracks.  And of course, gear reviews. "

np, I've hit modify instead of quote a few times myself.

So Bloc --- Have you built the YouTube mod into your portal then? I really like the looks of the block creation image you attached.  It looks very cool and easy to use.

Yes, the Youtube block is already there + the combined one. Right now I am working on the BACViews part, thats the part where boards are assigned to blog/gallery/etc.

Speaking of movies, has anyone seen this trailer yet?

http://youtu.be/OMOVFvcNfvE

This one im really want to see :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXiahojLbOw

Yeah, that one is gonna be cool as well. I have a feeling that 2015 is gonna be a good year for movies.

Agreed, both are something to start drooling about lol. :)

This one is interesting as well:

Yes, very cool. Like I said, 2015 looks like it's destined to be one of the best years for movies in the past few years. I'm even looking forward to the new Peter Pan movie coming out. O0

BTW, I posted that Star Wars teaser just a little over 6½ hours ago on here. When I posted it, it had about 17½ million views in less than one day (Disney just released it yesterday). I just checked it and it is at just under 21 million views now. That is truly amazing. A lot of people are getting excited about that one and it's still over a year from release.

Its incredible.

But Star Wars have always been a major force (..) :D Chapters 1-3 were good, but people have had years to watch chapter 4-6 over and over, no wonder it felt a little disappointing. To me they felt a little less serious than the original 3, so heres hoping 7-9 will be just awesome. 

Reboots are all the rave now though. Spiderman, Star Trek(which I actually like better than the originals lol), Batman(also very good), RoboCop( Ugh, original everytime) and Dredd(again, a better one than the cheesy Stallone movie)...plus probably more I can't remember right now.

Actually, the original film was episode IV, titled A New Hope and the original trilogy consisted of episodes 4 to 6. It's kind of confusing but I bet that you meant to say episodes 4 to 6 were the best ones. After they released the first 3, episodes 1 to 3 came out and those 3 weren't as good as the original 3, at least IMHO. My personal favorite was episode V, titled The Empire Strikes Back.

Here's a synopsis. I hope I got URL correct --- http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Star_Wars&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop#Original_trilogy

Thats what I wrote: chapter 4-6 are the best(those that came out in 1970-80's) ;)

But yes, agreed, chapter 1-3 had better effects, more money thrown at them when they came out..but were less engaging. Actually, when watching Star Trek reboot movies I get similar feeling to the SW movies - the first I mean. They are a good mix of suspense, scifi and humour, and they take the story/storytelling seriously. Lets hope something was learnt before starting making these new SW movies too.

As long as they don't make another Jar-Jar-Binks character it should be fine. lol Man that character was annoying...