This project has been discontinued
URL: http://www.designshare.co.uk
Aim
The premise behind this site is a community based design resource. Users can enter a design request which can be viewed by all the other users. They can create an image that represents their interpretation of the request. The users can then vote for the submitted designs.
Technical
The site is written in PHP with a MySQL database at the back end. There are some Javascript features on the home section of the site. These are created using the JQuery UI library. This allows the users to personalise their home page with a drag and drop functionality.
Issues
The first version of this site was put onto a Fasthosts box. Unfortunately this box was running a version 4.3.2 PHP. This caused issues with the thumbnail generator code I had written. Having spoken to the guys at Fasthost it was clear that they were unwilling to upgrade this version of PHP.
Version 2 of the site was developed locally on my Windows machine. The improvements included…
- Captcha’s on form
- Customisable content via a CMS
- Custom meta data per page
- Admin tool to prevent inappropriate images appearing on the site
- Home page to show most recent requests and designs
I’m currently trying to get this working on a friends box (the same box which is serving this page). I’ve recently transferred this to my MacBook Pro. However, the version of PHP doesn’t come with the GD library installed. I went through a long winded process of installing this using this resource. The errors it mentioned of not recognising the function name went away, however the image itself still didn’t show. This will need further investigation….why is nothing simple?
