I don’t know if this is how it works for other people but the less I think about a problem, the faster I can find a solution for it.  It’s like anytime I try to figure out a problem through sheer will and forceful brain flexing, I’m left beaten and frustrated.  But take a game break, surf the web or complete forget about the problem for a few days and the next time I approach the problem, it’s like it never was one.  Further evidence that procrastination is the method of creative geniuses?

Anyway, I made a number of breakthroughs during the past few weeks in my quest for the most frickin amazing website on the planet.  First off, I’m definitely getting more comfortable with ajax, as you can see from the registration validation that I’ve set up.  Never in my life did I think I’d be able to create a username and email check.  That was a great moment…(wipes away a tear). Thanks to yensdesign.com, Roshan’s Blog and the professor.

Another pain in the ass was pagination.  I tried a number of techniques found here, here and a few others.  But either I couldn’t get it working or simply didn’t like the implementation.  Finally decided on a pretty simple version of the existing pagination code that I was using.  One thing I’d like to add is the ability to dynamically hide page links when there are too many…hoping that will come to me eventually.

I’m finally making some headway in using mod-rewrite to take control of my urls.  All of the user profile pages can now be access through qrisper.com/username/.  Shout out to Stack Overflow, one frickin great resource.  Planning to use mod-rewrite across all of qrisper.com.  One concern is what kind of performance hit I’m taking using htaccess.  Will need to move that over to the Apache config file eventually.

In addition, a few other minor modifications:

• sanitized 99% of qrisper.com… there’s one or two pages that still need a thorough scrubbing but hoping to have eliminated most of the possibility for any funny business
• users can now change their previously submitted answers
• a few design/nav tweaks (tweet answer link, what’s your answer link, updates to answers/skipped/index pages

And lastly, I was using this solution to manage thumbnail images from the always helpful folks at nettuts.  But at point, I broke it.  Plus, I wasn’t complete satisfied with the quality of the thumbnails.  So now I’m using the ridiculously awesome Smart Image Resizer by Joe Lencioni.

That was a meaty update.  Next up, a city filter for local questions on qrisper.com!

Update: Ha, speaking of which…In Defense of Distraction.

Sort of hit a developer’s wall, if such a thing exists.  I’m at a point where I can visualize what I want to code but can’t yet execute consistently.

Just read this post about why programmers don’t like to code and I feel the same way.  I get amped anytime I solve something with my own code.  But more often than not, I prefer searching for pre-existing solutions and simply plugging that sucker in.  I’m not coding for the sake of coding.  I’m trying to do something that requires code…a means to an end blah blah blah.

Anyway, here are few updates:

• added an error message for when a login goes wrong (yeah didn’t have one yet)
• users can now login with either a username or their email address
• added validation to the registration form; currently working on a username and email check
• did some SEO work, adding/modifying meta tags and fixing and reloading my xml sitemap
• in the suggest question page, you can now track your suggested questions; will eventually add your friends’ suggested questions as well
• the follow/remove functionality in profile pages are now working as they should; had been having problems with those but problem solved
• replaced the Digg/Buzz links with the addthis button – that’s a great little widget

A couple of biggies.  qrisper eats is now complete.  The site is identical to qrisper except all questions are from the eats categories.  I plan to do the same for other categories as their question pool gets bigger.  Also, I definitely think I have some SEO juice going on because qrisper’s already getting hits through Google searches, with qrisper showing up in the first or second search results pages.  Pretty surprising…

Anyway, there’s a ton of things I still want to do…just have to chip away at it I guess.  I’m also looking into Elance.com and Collabfinder.com.  Gonna need some help sooner or later.