Wow, lots of changes this week. First, I decided to remove all ads from qrisper.  Figured I wasn’t going to be making money that way any time soon.  So why clutter up the site?

Removing the ads gave me some room to play around with.  So I changed the content and layout a bit, primarily by removing the leaderboard section.  I also gave search its own tab and removed the searchbar from the page.  And I moved the recent answers into the search tab and added categories to the left column.  After chewing on it for a bit, I think I’m going to bring back the search bar…just need to figure out where to put it.

Had a couple of duh moments.  I was maintaining duplicate files with slightly different content for logged in/not logged in users when I realized that a couple of PHP if statements could swap out the content using the session id.  Yeah, duh.  Doesn’t end there folks!

I was using Simplepie to pull the latest q&a’s from my database.  But then I realized, why the heck am I not pulling the data directly from my database instead of using my own RSS feed?  Umm, beats the heck out of me.  Anyway, changed that.  Progress!  Slow but tangible.

I didn’t forget about the non-existent logged in users out there!  The right column will become the exclusive domain for the logged in user.  Added some stats (questions answered, skipped, remaining, etc) so that users can keep track of their progress.  Gonna be adding a lot more exciting stuff so stay tuned!

Furthermore, the main questions page was modified to  focus is more on the users answers.  I came to the conclusion that I need build two very different qrispers – one for folks seeking answers, another for folks seeking questions.  And with that, qrisper just became a lot more complex.

I’ve been meaning to write a few thought pieces on where qrisper is headed.  Read a couple of interesting blog posts that I plan to respond to.  Hopefully some time next week.