So it is complete, the project what started out as “let me code up a better way to rate stickfigure files right quick” and turned into a three-month-long adventure of learning the inner workings of WordPress and how to develop custom plugins. The Stick Nodes website has had a complete (well, 80%-complete) facelift and not only looks better, but should function better as well!

Design

Back when I first started the site in July 2014, I honestly can’t remember if I put more than five minutes into the decision of what theme to use. I quickly found DW Minion and, for whatever reason, took it. I slapped on the SN logo, changed a few colors, and the site was live.

Very boring, very bland. At this time, there was no community. There was no intention for there to ever be a community (lol). So as a result, the website took on a very static and Web 1.0 feel with the most rudimentary of features, just to get by.

In fact, there may have been a brief time period where there was no Stickfigures page at all, as that was not going to be a thing until Sean suggested implemented it very early on.

Fast forward ~3 years to mid-2017. Finally “user accounts” became a thing. Prior to this, everyone was a guest. This was also the launch of the Activity section of the site. Only true veterans of the site will remember back when the About Us page was the unofficial “random discussion” page in the comments. “Days random thing”, as a now-infamous Turk once said.

The timeline becomes a bit blurry here. But as the years went on, more and more features were tacked onto the website.

Speaking of, daily stickfigure uploads were never going to be a thing. Not “daily” – only an insane person would do that. In fact I remember the days when manually downloading attachments from my email, quickly creating thumbnails, and uploading the 10-20 stickfigures was something I’d do just a few times a week and take me just a few minutes.

For comparison, I now receive about 300+ submissions every week. I’ve actually coded a bulk-downloader which scans all submission emails, downloads the proper attachments/thumbnails, renames the files, and stores them in folders for me to review. Single node files are run through an automated screenshotter, where they are afterward approved or denied. Packs/ZIP files are manually opened and checked for quality before being screenshotted – this takes up a massive chunk of my time.

Once approved, all files are then run through another custom program of mine to find filename conflicts, where any offending files have their names tweaked – usually appended with a number.

All in all, the process of going through ~100 submissions can take an hour or two, and results in a “couple” day’s worth of uploads – scheduled ahead of time. This is performed a few times a week until its time to download a new batch of 300+ files. A far cry from the simplistic process it used to be.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, daily stickfigure uploads were never meant to be a thing. But when they did become a thing, the underlying file-managing plugin no longer would cut it. I still use it, to this day, even though it’s developer has long abandoned the project. To replace it now would be…just, let’s not think about that.

I’ve since hacked away at it for years and transformed it into something completely new. Ratings, sorting by downloads, linking files to individual user profiles, Users’ Choice voting, the “Daily Feature”, and all the other badges/etc that are now a staple of the site are a result of that old plugin being given new life.

And this new website update only solidifies that foundation. The backend code was cleaned up significantly and made to be much more robust. The modularity introduced also allows for much easier future expansion, and new features.

Because, to be honest, all of these new features added to the site over the years were done so in a very haphazard manner. There was no plan, no goal, and there was certainly no webdev finesse on my part. So as a result, the fact that the website ran at all was a miracle. I’m glad to have things running in a much more stable manner, even if it’s not noticeable to the end user.

(Speaking of, the periodic slowdown the website experiences is due to the high-dynamic nature of the website coupled with high-traffic at times. Will this new update alleviate that? I don’t know. I will watch and see, and plan on upgrading the server if need be.)

Also, shouts out to TheStewMan for the 15×15 pixel icons for all the stickfigure categories. A small detail but really add a bit of visual eye-candy to the site.

Features and Changes

So what exactly changed? Well, not much. I didn’t want to change the site too much but rather just refresh certain areas.

Ratings

For one, guest accounts can no longer rate stickfigures, only registered users can. Guests will see a “log in to vote” prompt upon viewing stickfigure files. This is to allow for a better rating system, taking into account performance and security. Now, the rating system is much more robust, and the “5-star” rating is used to properly rank stickfigures with the brand new list-sort parameter of “Sort by Likes” – which is very interesting, go check out the results.

Users’ Choice

Users’ Choice has been revamped a bit. Since the criteria for who can be a UC Voter has changed, some members were cut.

Also, winners of the UC badge now have tiers, similar to Featured Lvl1, Lvl2, and so on. Currently, there is nobody ranked UC Winner Lvl4.

Animation Spotlights

The Animation Spotlights were probably the biggest “thing” I had to update, outside of the CSS design in general. Before, Animation Spotlights were not “posts”, by WordPress standards. They were just blocks of text in one page. So I had to meticulously go through all 200+ of the past Animation Spotlights, copy all the pieces of data (author, link, image, title) and manually create new “actual” posts for them.

Why?

Well now, each Animation Spotlight can have its own page and comment area! Also, each one had a robust rating system where users can rank the animation’s visuals, humor, plot, and “overall goodness”. So that’s pretty neat.

(Note, I tried to link as many past Animation Spotlights I could find to user accounts on the website. I’ve likely missed a lot, so if your animation is an Animation Spotlight and it’s not linked to your account, let me know.)

Notifications

Speaking of individual pages, authors of animation spotlights and authors of stickfigures – as long as they have an account on the website – will receive email notifications when their pages receive any comment activity. This can be disabled on any of your stickfigure/Animation Spotlight pages, check the top of the page.

Reporting

Found a smeckled stickfigure? Use the big-ass red button at the bottom of the file’s listing where you can report it directly to the admins. This will make tracking stolen stickfigures, or even stickfigures that need to be edited/taken down, much easier.

DemonBot

The weirdest thing. So as I’m here updating the website, I noticed a new user was created… But, since all users are currently locked out while the site is undergoing maintenance, I don’t know how that could be?

I can’t even delete the account, it’s locked. But honestly, whoever this is, he’s just logging noteworthy website events in the Activity section of the website, live, as they occur. I get whoever is doing this is just playing up the (fake) “Stick Nodes Demon” meme but…he’s doing a good job with his notifications, so I’ll leave him be.

And more

Many pages have been revamped, my favorite being the Roles & Badges page which is much cleaner and each role-page has well-organized lists.

The profile information under your profile page and stickfigure-author page has been refreshed as well.

Custom SN-themed avatars are now used in place of those weird monster figures, the log-out time has been increased from 14-days to 365-days so no more random logouts, and probably a lot of other minor things I forgot. Go just have a look around.

What’s Next?

Since this post is already too long let me make it short.

Next up I will return to the app and get out a new update. Some fixes and tweaks, a couple new features, and also a new language – Russian (shouts out to HauntedOne, who has joined the ranks of Stick Nodes Translators).

Then I will return to the website and push out the backend tweaks required to accept “movieclip” submissions. Maybe also add some new website stuff I have planned (monthly theme-based stickfigure competitions?). I also intend on updating the Activity section of the website, which was largely skipped over in this massive website redesign.

Finally, back to the app again where I will get out another update actually enabling these movieclip submissions, among other planned things.

This will definitely take a few months… Why do I keep doing this to myself.

Polls

Oh yeah. During the maintenance period, a static page full of polls was available for users to vote on. For no reason at all.

Here are the results of those polls, for the lols: https://strawpoll.com/user/ralph