Hello all,

Well, as you all know I'm now out of hospital (finally!). I'm not 100% but I'm certainly 1000x better now than when I went in. I had a very comfortable time, and the nurses were excellent, and tended to my every need. I couldn't have asked for more while I was getting better. It was a tough time, and I was very ill when I went in, but my health is on the mend, and I hope to lead a normal lifestyle in the end. Its been a blow to my life though, thats for sure. I never thought I'd ever get this ill, but then you never do until it happens to you, do you? I'll tell you one thing though, it feels good to be able to type quickly again! The damn keyboard on the hospital TV/Internet screens were AWFUL! I have a picture on my phone which I'll post at some point.

Well, even though I was in hospital, my work on BA still didn't stop. About a week into my stay, the backups at home stopped working as Norton Ghost decided it would be nice to crash. The only reason I knew is by e-mail updates that I have setup. They stopped appearing, and thats a sure sign of a failure. Thankfully Craig was on hand to remote desktop into my home server and restart the service for me. But, despite doing that, no e-mails! I asked him to check the e-mail settings, and they had been wiped! Strange. Anyhow I got him to add them again and all has been well for the remaining time I was there.

Cameras... As some of you know I set up a few web cam's around my home server just for fun. I won't post the link due to the bandwidth requirements it puts on my broadband at present but I will say one thing, they're very temperamental! Some work fine, but there is one that has a driver issue and likes to crash out, and the only way to get it working again is to pull the USB plug out and plug it in again, then restart the software. Its a pain but it does solve the problem. I think I'll look into seeing if there is a way of "soft" unplugging/replugging it in so I don't have to physically go to the server and do it. If anyone has any ideas on how to do this please, do tell! It would solve issues with USB hard disks as well.

While I was in my hospital bed, bored in the evenings with nothing to do, I thought to myself, what can I do to BA when I get out to make life easier. Well, I came up with not only a list of small cosmetic changes for the site but also behinds the scenes stuff to make my own life easier, including, you guessed it, more cron jobs! This server is held together with them I swear... I must make a list one day of each and everyone and what they do for you so you can all see the huge work involved otherwise!

A few things I'd like to add is a new search box below the main logo with options to search posts/topics or users. This will add a nice touch and allow quicker and more obvious searching of the site. Another is just spelling mistakes. Well, not a spelling mistake but the word "beta" can still be found in uppercase on some of the site, including the main template itself on the top left. It should be "Beta" not "BETA" as its been pointed out before, since its not an abbreviation.

If its OK with mrpijey and the moderators (as yet undiscussed with them all, you're the first to know!), I want to make some changes to the forums as well, in the sense that "hardware support" should also include "hardware discussion" rather than using general computer discussion or off topic discussions. I think it would help categorise the topics a little better instead of them being spread everywhere.

Now, onto something I noticed on another forum, feature wise. Private messaging... Its become plain to me that some people often don't realise they have a private message because they choose not to get an e-mail notifying them, but also because the text on the forum telling them they have one isn't immediately visible without looking deliberately. What I want to do to improve this is make it "flash" when you have a message to get your attention. There is nothing worse in my opinion than not realising you have a private message for days, when it could be important! Someone on the forum who I don't talk to that often, but who does visit daily, has done just this when I replied to him in hospital. He still even now hasn't viewed the message as its still sat in my outbox. Let me know what you think of this one, I think it will be a nice addition if I can figure out how to do it effectively and without too much modifications (as you know how much I hate them!).

Stats... You know how much I like them, and I've thought of a few more to put up on the server information page. These will include information from MRTG traffic graphs in the form of current, average and maximum bandwidth IN/OUT over the day, week, month and year. They will be in text values in a nice table so they're easy to see for everyone. It might interest some people and not others, but that page is mainly for me anyway, I just allow it to be public for those interested! I also want to add server spec information and CPU stats on the page too in a nice table, but I'll work on that when I get chance as the basic information is already available on the top of the page anyway.

Finally, I might add a few helpful pages to the site. If I do these would include a proper FAQ of things asked on the site, a team page, for admins and moderators to write a little about themselves (if they wish), and an about page, to explain more about BetaArchive and our purpose. I don't think the small paragraph on the homepage does the site enough justice.

I hope this is enough for everyone and I hope you had enough time to read this whole entry. I've been away a while so these things add up!

Let me know your comments and opinions, and of course ask questions if you have any. I love the feedback. But remember, these changes will be slow since I am still recovering and I don't have a whole lot of energy yet. I also have a lot of rehabilitation to go through to build my strength up again, I'm still tired quite a lot even when I've slept all night.

Thanks all

Andy (Admin)

[sarcasm]What does the edge of the universe look like [/sarcasm]

Good to hear that you are getting better of course. And as for the webcam you can disable then re enable the driver should work (I hope) do not now about the usb drive though maybe someone knows some software.

I like the idea of more stats (who does not like more data?) and I would suggest reopening editing to the wiki. Fo a private Messages you could make the text much larger for "x new private messages" when there are some and make it red.

I reinitialised the camera but I had to do it by unplugging it and plugging it back in. Not ideal really.

I will get the wiki up again eventually, but of course the database was lost so all of the content will have to be put back on again I did recover the images though, which are kept archived in the photo gallery, so thats available for those who had rare images uploaded to the wiki on their articles.

Glad to see your getting better again

Gosh! wo doesn't like stats!

The current search box needs a to be updated so a new box will be good

Go for it Andy, Ba is great and you know it. You can only make it better! Im loving the idea about the flashy code too, its great. Means your attention would instatly be drawn to it.

As requested by Jake (pureelite) I've added a centering function on the posting screen. Just use {center}text to center here{/center} replacing {} with [] to center text. I'd appreciate it if people used this just for signatures though please, we don't need centered text on normal posts

I also added a text indent function as well, {indent}text to indent here{/indent} replacing {} with [] again, will put text 5 characters to the right when placed inside this tag. Multiple spawns can be used to move it further to the right as well. I often use this for lists.

I took the liberty of upping the signature character limit to 2048 characters as well from 512 yesterday so you can fit more BBcode into your sigs should you need it. Remember the limits as described in the rules though please!

Enjoy!

How about a justified option on normal posts? (I am bit obsessed with that)

Justified becomes a bit messy and spaced out if you don't have enough text on one line, so I think its best left how it is.