Air Bud
Internet Superstar
Some plants even masturbate into their own vaginas in order to reproduce.
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Posts: 6785 (0.975)
Reg. Date: Sep 2001
Location: TEH INTARNET!
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(Originally posted on: 11-20-05 11:35:26 AM)
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Need background on INTL4? Read this thread.
Okay, so over the last few months, I've been harping on and on and on about the new version of INTL and how awesome it's going to be. Well, let me just say again that it's going to be awesome, at least from a development and technical standpoint. I'm pretty fucking proud of the obstacles I've managed to hurdle in order to create a message board that is (at least to me) leaps and bounds better than any other message board out there. The new version of INTL's source code is going to be more secure, more flexible, with more options and abilities, while also allowing more expansion, plug-in support, personal customizations, and just all around more everything.
While I'm not quite ready to unveil the new version to a mass audience, I do think that were I not in Iraq, I'd be willing to at least allow people to peruse it without being able to access administrator functions. Why? Well, simple, they're not quite done yet; although I have been working on the main scripts over the last few days. Since most of you have never been administrators, you won't really be able to compare and contrast between the two versions. However, I'm positive that once beta-testing kicks off, those of you involved will be rather impressed with the options and general ingenuity of the features I've implemented (and I'm not even close to being done tweaking things yet).
Enough of that. It's time to move on into how you can get involved with beta testing, what beta testing will involve, and the benefits you'll receive from helping beta test the new site.
First off, there really is no concrete date for when beta testing will kick off. As I've said before, if I were an optimist, I'd guess that beta testing could start as early as mid-to-late January; however, a more realistic approach yields a February 2006 kick off, with a mid-to-late April changeover to the new code. Now, all of that is subject to change, so don't wet yourself in anticipation just yet.
So you want to be involved in beta testing, how do you get accepted?
I will be involving anywhere from 8-to-12 people, excluding the administrators, who by default will be involved. That doesn't mean that just because you're a Premium Member or a Moderator you'll be involved. No. I basically want people who are willing to spend their valuable time fucking around with a message board in order to:
assist me in discovering obscure bugs that I may have otherwise missed
looking for spelling errors
creating new layout designs
creating new stylesheets for already created layout designs
possibly getting a glance at the code and critiquing it
coming up with ideas to better streamline or make the interface user-friendly
coming up with new ideas to help aid administrators administrate via scripts and administrator options
drinking beer and destroying everything I've worked for over the last year!
I'm willing to do all of that, especially the last one! What else do I need to do?
Well, it can't hurt you to know a little bit about HTML, Javascript, CSS, PHP, and MySQL, but that's not a requirement. It will definitely help you, but again, that's not the only thing I'm looking for. I want people who are creative and are willing to subject themselves to constructive criticism of something that I've invested a fuckton of time into. Basically, what I don't want is someone who just sits back and says, "LOL man that looks like shit! fix it bitch!" without offering other viable options or even going about fixing it themselves.
So why will beta testing take so fucking long?
It's going to take so long, because I get lazy occasionally, but also because I have a feeling that while I have eliminated a majority of the main bugs, there will always be more bugs to discover through means that I may have not even thought of. However, having run this message board for damn near the last four years, I've learned a thing or two about how to effectively code a message board, so I may be completely off-base with that assumption.
Fixing bugs is not the only objective though, so just because no bugs are found doesn't mean that the site is ready to be released. I'd like to integrate a user-friendly interface that has useful information integrated into the site, I'm going to need people who can look at the site and say, "okay, if I were a newbie who had no idea what the hell I was doing, what would I want to be said to explain this weird thing called karma?" Basically, the site's own FAQ built into the site, instead of located in an obscure 5000 line document. That, however, is just one example.
When the time comes, I will be issuing a TODO list that I will list things, you guessed it, to do (help sections, inline comments on features, etc.), and while removing them as they are fixed/added. It will be totally up to the beta testers to accomplish whatever they want to do on the TODO list. If you're on the beta testing team, you don't have to do anything on the TODO list at all, but instead just create stylesheets, try to break the site, figure out ways that people might screw things up or malicious users might try to circumvent the code and exploit some hole I never thought to cover.
Fine. I'm in, what do I get out of it when it's finished?
Well, you probably will not be receiving monetary compensation in any amount that is anywhere near the wages a sweatshop worker makes, but if that's what you so desire, we'll work something out, based on what you accomplish during the beta testing phase. Really, what you receive when it's all said and done depends mostly on you. If you sit back and jackoff and just brag to everyone that you're an almighty beta tester, while just posting threads in Retardation Station without bringing anything constructive or creative to the mix, you'll probably get jackshit and you'll likely get replaced after the first few days.
Now, if you are actually a contributing member of the beta testing team, you'll be rewarded with whatever you and I both feel is adequate. It might be a hundred MB of upload space, a Premium Membership, or perhaps even a Paypal donation from me to you. On top of that, you'll be included in the listed as beta testers in the credits and credited with whatever feature you worked on, whatever documentation you wrote, whatever design layout you made, stylesheet, bug fixes, and so forth. This will all come into play when I eventually package the source code to INTL4 and release it independently in open source format. Yeah, in case you didn't know that, I'm releasing the source code as open source.
What the fuck? Why open source?
Some might think I'm fucking insane, but my goal with this message board is not to make money. While making money would be nice, it's not my main objective, it's a distant secondary motive. My primary goal with the new version of the code is to help me create material to help my future as a programmer, whether it be in the video game field, the web design field, the porn website field, or whatever. It's résumé material, while also being something that I'm fiercely passionate about, thus my complete dedication to INTL4 over my last 11-month deployment in Iraq. If I weren't passionate about the site, I wouldn't be at version 4.0, let alone version 1.0. Anyway, enough of that.
In conclusion, if you've actually read through this entire thread that could barely pass as a book report in a 7th grade classroom, if you're interested in beta testing for INTL4 let me know in this thread. That way, I have a chance to figure out who I am going to use when I do finally initiate the beta testing phase. If, for some reason or another, you have to back out between now and then, so be it, I won't be insulted or upset, as I'm sure there are enough people at this site willing enough to help out.
So yeah, if you have any questions, concerns, comments, suggestions or whatever, please bring them up in this thread.
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