Urls, design time and code

This morning I thought of something that could cause an issue with the way i want to work not only this project but the OJF new build as well. That being pagination and how it will work with the url rewriting.

Currently I have a couple of re-write conditions that work, these take into account section and a selected item from the Database. So two areas section (games, animations etc) and the selected item being an actual game or animation. But here in lies the problem I have just realised, if you need to paginate how will that work with the url rewrite?

You can simple pass in the section and a number because it will think that number is one of the selected items. I know this isnt a huge problem but it is an issue none the less. In my head I thought I could write another clause in the url rewrite something like section / page / number but only stating the page part the section and number parts could be anything that are passed through. There for making it work for any section.

So I added this to my htaccess file and at first it didnt work but after a little tinkering and and added bit of editing to help with validation on the input i got it to work. So I can now pass in another variable in a set of certain circumstances that will work for the pagination. Remember this is all just the basics as I haven't even though about adding in pagination into what's there yet.

Design

So I had a thought last Wednesday about a style to use and did a test on how to do something in Photoshop which worked. Thanks to this my mind has been buzzing with ideas of things I could do with the design, I also even had an idea of something for the new OJF design as well. I had been jumping between 2 different ideas in my head for the arcade for the base colour of the site either it being very very dark and white. Now with the test in photoshop I think it is going to be another dark design. Im going with its name (arcade) as a bit of inspiration on this one and if it all comes off it should look quite cool.

Structure and Code

So far I have done very little final coding on this project, I have created some functions i will keep and use but the bulk of the coding I have will need to be scrapped and started again as this was just to get test bits working. Hopefully I will start the coding this week as Ideally I want to have all the coding done for early in Dec as in by the end of the first week as I would like to get started on the new OJF during my break over christmas.

As for structure of the site (not content but build wise) I have a very clear vision at the moment of what I am trying to achieve. The whole site running from 1 index file. This includes everything from homepage, sections and items as well as the 404. I am splitting up all the functions and functionality into an include and putting it all into functions that I can call and pull out the info and display.

For the page layout im still not sure which road to go down, I have 2 ideas. 1) put the layout in the index page job done or split the design up into sections in an includes then place the includes in the file to make it look less busy and filled with code.