Official ICE Forums
Gamer's Corner => General Discussion => Topic started by: ob1knorrb on March 05, 2016, 04:08:14 PM
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For those of you who like the ICE Product listings on my website, www.icewebring.com I thought I'd post an update on what I've been up to.
I’ve completely revamped the underlying database for the site, normalizing most of the tables and creating some views to make working with the tables easier. This allowed for major improvements in how I have been handling Authors and the extra images that are attached to some of the individual product pages. It also allowed some clean up of Publishers and Book Types.
It’s going to allow me to develop some additional features that I’ve wanted for awhile, such as a list of related products attached to the individual product pages, a list of links to websites with additional information on the individual products and a more flexible way to handle links to places to purchase products.
The visible changes are to the Product Lists, there is now just one entry for each product per edition. It is a little inconsistent on whether a change of publisher gets it's own entry or not. Most of the items that used to be published by ICE but are now available as direct reprints or pdfs from GCP didn't get a new listing. If the product underwent any sort of revision, then it usually gets treated as a new product with a new listing.
Individual formats such as Hardcover, Softcover, Pdf no longer have individual entries on the list, instead these are now listed in a small table on the individual product page. I think it’s just a cleaner way to handle the lists. It does mean I will need to go through all the lists and make sure I have the most appropriate thumbnail image being used but that’s a minor issue which mostly seems to have affected the First and Second Edition Rolemaster lists.
If you notice anything that seems to have broken or is incorrect now, or just have any general feedback please let me know either by posting here or sending me a message.
Thanks!
Currently the link to buy a product, when available, is in the little table listing the different formats. The plan is to consolidate those and move them to a separate list as many of the format variations link to the same page anyway.
The next step is also behind the scenes, I’m redeveloping the forms that I use to update the products to match the new database structure, and I need to do some clean up on a few items that didn’t convert well. I’ll also need to revamp the “Recent Releases” sidebar to use the new tables.
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The Thumbnails should all be sorted out now, so if anyone spots any that aren't correct, please let me know. Thanks!
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Heads up that Silent Death 2nd ed "Silent Death The Next Millenium Deluxe Box Set" has the picture for Battle of the 5 Armies
All looks good, and the linking of related texts sounds good to me
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Thanks! Got that one fixed now.
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Now I'm doing something I thought I did ages ago, uploading all of the files for Guy Fullerton's awesome "Printing and Edition Reference for MERP Middle-earth Role Playing" reference. He gave me the source files a year ago, I thought I had uploaded them and fixed the link on my site to look at them, but must have just done it on my test site. Likewise fixing/deleting a few other links such as to Terry's Shadow World pages.
I realized I hadn't posted them today when I started work on the new "related webpages" portion of the Product pages.
http://www.icewebring.com/MERP_Print_Ref/PrintingEditionReference.html (http://www.icewebring.com/MERP_Print_Ref/PrintingEditionReference.html)
Doing some checking on the newly posted files, I've realized that the links to my products have changed, not quite sure if it is just with the recent updates I've done or if it was from a previous revamp. In any case, I'll have to update those in the Printing Edition Reference. I'll add that to the task list :)
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I've now got the structure for "Related Products" in place. It will take me awhile to populate the table behind it, but you can see a couple examples of how it works on the various versions of Arms Law:
http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/Product_Page_test.php?product_id=202%20Arms%20Law (http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/Product_Page_test.php?product_id=202%20Arms%20Law)
And a variation on this version of the "Rolemaster Boxed Set"
http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/Product_Page.php?product_id=208%20Rolemaster%20Box (http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/Product_Page.php?product_id=208%20Rolemaster%20Box)
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A question, looking at the Arms Law page above, does it make more sense to have the related products before the Table of Contents listing, or is it better where it is now at the bottom?
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Personally, I would put the table of contents first. The related products listing is interesting but it isn't necessarily obvious what the relationships are in each case. The ToC is very clear about what is included in the product.
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Do the Thumbnails on the MERP First Edition list look particularly small to other people, or is it just something with my browsers?
http://www.icewebring.com/ice-products/merp-first-edition/ (http://www.icewebring.com/ice-products/merp-first-edition/)
They look okay in Explorer, Firefox, but small in Google and Safari. That page isn't set up any differently than any of the others, in fact, it's the same page, just being passed a set of parameters.
My best guess is that the different browsers are handling the width of the Product Name column differently, some give it priority over the Cover column, and others give the Cover column priority.
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Ahh!
https://boulderinformationservices.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/chrome-shrinks-images-in-table-cells/ (https://boulderinformationservices.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/chrome-shrinks-images-in-table-cells/)
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Okay, the database revamp is almost done, just need to go back and clean up a few columns that aren't needed anymore, check some of the linking and constraints.
After that, finish up some of the data entry forms and start filling in some of the data that's missing.
I've now got the "Related Products" functionality working, "Related Websites" and "Purchase Links", all of which can now handle multiple entries.
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Well, I think all the "bulk" changes that I could handle with SQL code and similar methods has been done. Now it's a matter of going into all the entries individually and manually updating any glitches that have crept in.
If anyone spots anything in the Product Lists that doesn't seem right, please let me know. Posting here is fine.
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We appreciate all the hard work you have put in ob1knorrb.
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Thanks Alwyn!
I did some work on the data entry portion recently, still have some additional work to do but it's already simplified the process of getting new entries in immensely ;D
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caught a couple more pictures that are out of place
Written in Blood on the "misc" page http://www.icewebring.com/ice-products/misc-ice-products/ has the picture for Mirkwood (main article is fine); also no picture for Run out the Guns
Also "Castles & Ruins" is showing up twice http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/Product_Page.php?product_id=297%20Castles%20&%20Ruins and http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/Product_Page.php?product_id=307%20Castles%20&%20Ruins
Again thanks for keep the page going, great help and great resource
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Thanks! Got those fixed up. The second Castles and Ruins is the Guild Companion pdf reprint. One of the ones that got it's own entry instead of just being listed under the original. I think there may be a few differences between them, I'll have to take a closer look. Seems to be there was a swap out of some spell lists or something.
Or, maybe it's just the replacement of page 192, the original had a page advertising other Rolemaster Standard System products, the reprint has an Addenda on "Land Costs, Quick Contruction Estimates and Sample Rents"
I've updated the Cover photo for the GCP version to the correct one and set up the "Related Products" link between the two
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Added in the newest version of "Cloudlords of Tanara", added in the rest of the "Electronic Rolemaster Assistant" software.
Did some tweaking to the "Related Products", allowing for multiple categories of relationships.
Still need to add in some missing "AutoHARP" software, and the "Rolemaster Combat Minion" software.
Then I'll go through the recent entries on RPGNow and see if there is anything else I missed. Most likely to have missed versions of items that can now be ordered as physical books instead of just pdfs.
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I think I've now added all the products that I had been missing, including the Fantasy Grounds packages for Rolemaster Classic.
Still need to do some work on the Related Products portion and add some links for purchasing used products on Amazon.
I think there are also a couple thumbnails and cover images that I'm still missing as well, but overall I'm pretty happy with the progress that has been made.
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In addition to having links to purchase used products from Noble Knight, I’ve now created an Amazon Affiliate account for myself and have started adding purchase links to Amazon. I’m about halfway through the First Edition MERP products right now.
I also realized that I’m missing a bunch of French translation products, so I’ll have to track those down and get them added to the database as well.
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Brent,
Once again, thanks for all your hard work providing this to us!
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Summer seems to have arrived early in my neck of the woods, so I've been spending most of my free time outdoors and haven't done much work on the web site recently, but I haven't forgotten about it. I tend to focus on my computer type projects more in Winter than Summer, but I'm sure there will be a few rainy weekends upcoming where I'll get more done.
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And, the most recent update is that there are no recent updates ;D
Still enjoying good weather and tied up on other projects.
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Got the latest Guild Adventurer added today
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Brent,
Once again, a big thank you.
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As ever a good service from the site, one further correction found (as was trying to track a book down by ISBN), the ISBN for Races & Cultures is incorrect (it's currenlty the one for The Armory, it should be 1558066063
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Thanks, I'll check into that and get it fixed up
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Haven't fixed it yet, but on the list. Came home to a flooded basement that night so have been busy dealing with that. Fortunately just about everything down there is up on bookshelves or in plastic containers so it's really only the carpet and the bottoms of the bookshelves themselves that got damaged.
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Weird, We just had our Basement flooded as well..
I will be looking for a dimensional portal hidden in the walls connecting to your place.
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Sorry to hear about your flooding gents. Hope everything that was damaged was covered by insurance.
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Yup, added on some extra overland flooding coverage a couple years ago ;D
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Finally got this fixed up
As ever a good service from the site, one further correction found (as was trying to track a book down by ISBN), the ISBN for Races & Cultures is incorrect (it's currenlty the one for The Armory, it should be 1558066063
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Now have updated my Evolution of Arms Law article (http://www.icewebring.com/articles-and-indexes/the-evolution-of-arms-law/ (http://www.icewebring.com/articles-and-indexes/the-evolution-of-arms-law/)).
I still need to sort out some of the information on the early printings, there is one cover I can't quite place and there are the full colour slipcovers that I need to describe, and figure out which printing they went with.
I also need to do a detailed analysis of the Rolemaster Classic version of Arms Law.
However, that part will need to wait until all my gaming stuff comes back out of storage once my basement rebuild is done.
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I've now switched to a new Theme on the Icewebring site, primarily to fix some issues I was having with wide tables. Please let me know if you run into any issues on the site. I had to make a few adjustments to my coding for pulling the Product Pages, but I think I have things working okay.
http://www.icewebring.com/ (http://www.icewebring.com/)
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I've finally figured out how to pull the individual product pages back into Wordpress and populate them by passing in a parameter from another Wordpress page.
The good news is that this will solve several problems I have had with getting the menus and formatting working properly on those pages. The bad news is that it will actually change the URLs of the individual products again, meaning another scan through my pages to make sure I update any existing links.
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I've implemented the new changes for the Product Pages. Please let me know if you run into any problems or find anything that seems odd with the new layout. Thanks!
http://www.icewebring.com/ (http://www.icewebring.com/)
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Solved my last issue with the new theme and moving the Page generating code into Wordpress, the title tags, which populate the browser tabs and are important for Google and other search engines now include the name and stock number of the product being displayed instead of all of them just saying "Product_Page".
Typical programmer, take a week long detour and completely revamp something just to solve a small problem with table layouts that only really affects a couple of pages ;D
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Updated the site with the new ERA Software modules
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Added in the new Bladestorm products from Metal Express
http://www.icewebring.com/ice-products/product_page/?product_id=730&product_title=Bladestorm%20Rulesbook%202nd%20Edition%20 (http://www.icewebring.com/ice-products/product_page/?product_id=730&product_title=Bladestorm%20Rulesbook%202nd%20Edition%20)
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Added HARP Loot and the most recent ERA modules.
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Added HARP Folkways and just discovered that I only have Express Additions 1 - 12, need to add 13-19 and I'm missing all the detail information for them. Just when I think I've got everything caught up ;D
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Updated the missing information for Rolemaster Express and Express Additions.