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Platform development diary

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  • Hello !

    Welcome to Sudonix, an exciting new community designed for technical newbies and experts alike. We’re still “moving in” so to speak, and the platform is still being actively developed. Why not take a look around at what’s on offer, and create yourself an account ?

    We’ll keep adding to this post as new features etc are added.

    Don’t be shy 🙂

  • With most of the theming requirements out of the way, we’ve started work on the registration, login, and password reset forms. In the registration forms, we’ve included integration with StopForumSpam, The Honeypot Project, and hCaptcha. Given that Google is a little too light on the privacy side of things, we won’t be using ReCaptcha anytime soon, as it feels wrong to take this route when the founder himself is a huge privacy advocate.

    We were looking at a simple math equation to solve as part of the registration process, but after review, we didn’t feel as though this was adequate in terms of keeping the bad guys on the right side of the door.

    Next up is the terms of service, privacy policy, and everything else asking those lines.

  • I decided from the outset that I wanted to use FA pro on this new site, as I have a subscription, and the icons are better in terms of availability - you get access to a great deal more with a paid plan, and this also means I can use the lighter icons. However, this does mean that some of the icons have had to be replaced with never equivalents. This isn’t an issue as such, but the missing icons are difficult to pin point as they are hidden in drop down menus etc.

    I think I’ve managed to track down all of the icon issues now, but if any seem missing, let me know.

    I also created a few more pages (static) and will be working on the FAQ and policies over the coming days.

  • I decided to enable nginx level caching today, meaning that the backend only needs to contend with the API and not have to worry about serving actual requests (unless they involve the API). In doing so, I totally screwed the registration function on this platform, and it took me a good few hours to troubleshoot and fix 🤭

    Ultimately, the issue was being caused by an incorrect proxy request being sent as http when it should have been https. In addition, policies etc have been added, and I’m working on a FAQ section which will be up in the coming days.

    And b****r… I forgot to add the mobile CSS classes to one of the pages meaning it looks terrible. Need to put that right over the weekend I think 😡

    As a side note, registrations and login work perfectly, so go ahead and get yourself an account. Trust me, when I’m finished, you’ll see why what I’m doing is well worth it.

  • Been a productive day ! I’ve established breadcrumb paths where they were not present, and also fixed a raft of CSS issues between full sized desktops and mobile devices. Very soon (In the coming days) I’ll be adding support for Google and GitHub authentication. LinkedIn support will follow suit, but there are some parts of this particular code that do not work correctly, and will need refactoring.

    I’ve also started work on the dark mode setting meaning that you’ll be able to toggle this setting depending on your preference. The dark theme itself is a bit of a moving target in the sense that is not finished, but this will happen over the coming days.

  • Another big update today in the form of templates. Not much to see on the site itself, but under the hood there are several enhancements. We’ve also added support for Google Auth and will be adding GitHub and LinkedIn support in the coming weeks.

    The breadcrumbs within topics on mobile devices needs a bit of work, and it may be the case we remove these in this view altogether from the mobile view (or perhaps simplify them).

    We are also going to be adding 2fa support in the coming days.

  • More CSS theming today. Spent some time unifying the various pages of the platform towards a central approach. The journey page has also been made mobile friendly (only in dark mode for the moment as this took much longer than I expected) - I’ll extend this to light mode over the coming days. I also noticed a bug on the policies page where light colours are being preferred even in dark mode, so need to fix that also.

  • Some small cosmetic changes recently which make all the difference. In addition to the “Author” tag, there is now also user ranks 🙂

    2c96aefe-1551-45e9-ae88-76a337824297-image.png

    I also modified the groups somewhat so that the badges are radial, and overlap each other (admittedly, an idea I stole from Flarum)

  • It’s been a while since I checked in here. Plenty going on - mostly around rectifying small pockets of resistance between light and dark modes, plus the addition of new features such as an enhanced reputation system and the ability to create polls. Plus, there are several changes going on under the hood which are completely transparent to users or the operation of the platform.

    However, some changes mean that the platform does need to be restarted for code changes to stick and function correctly. I tend to do this during non busy periods, but sometimes, it’s unfortunately inevitable. The good news is that in most cases, a full restart takes only 20 seconds.

    More to come


  • 7 Votes
    9 Posts
    318 Views

    @crazycells that’s as good a test as any 🙂

  • 6 Votes
    4 Posts
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    @cagatay these changes aren’t published anywhere presently, so nothing for you to do.

  • 16 Votes
    21 Posts
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    I relented somewhat here and added another swatch - one I missed, which was previous called “blackout”. This specific one has been adapted to work on the new theming engine, but the others have been reclassified, and renamed to suit.

    image.png

    As a result, the theme you might have had will probably be reflecting something else, so you (might) need to change your themes accordingly. The changes are as follows

    Light -> No Change
    Cloudy -> Is now the old “Dim”
    Dim -> Is now the old “Dark”
    Dark -> Now a new theme based on the revamped “Blackout”

  • 22 Votes
    21 Posts
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    Already found 2 bugs, which have been committed to live code

    Relative path is provided in some instances, so a function now exists to return the full path instead so the image is rendered OGProxy does not target chat - this has been fixed
  • 7 Votes
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    @DownPW Yes, this is the general idea. I’m also in the process of putting together a welcome message to be displayed when a new user registers so they can explore all of the services on offer.

  • 5 Votes
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    280 Views

    Just coming back to this thread for review (as I often do), and it looks like Webdock have increased their available offerings - some are extremely powerful, yet very competitive from the pricing perspective.

    image.png

    10 CPU cores, plus 20Gb RAM? Well worth a look (and the asking price) - there’s also a fixed IP which is hugely beneficial.

    Clearly, this is well beyond what most people will want to spend - it’s more of an example (but interestingly, Sudonix runs on something not too different from the above).

    However, not all that glitters is gold 😕 - just have a walk through the benchmark report I found below and you’ll see a huge difference between Heztner and Webdock

    https://www.vpsbenchmarks.com/compare/hetzner_vs_webdock

    That being said, the amount of HTTP requests that Webdock handles in relation to Hetzner is superior - @DownPW you might want to have a look at this - there’s a free 24 hour trial… 🙂

    5203639b-2f62-47e6-b87b-37580ce5deae-image.png

  • 1 Votes
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    No one has replied
  • 6 Votes
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    And it seems to be less conflicting!