DuoPhile.com

There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just come right out with it.

DuoPhile isn't going to launch today.

I know, I know... all two of our users (Google Bot and myself) are disappointed, but I assure you the failure to launch was not for lack of effort. I don't want to flood the front page with updates, so check the replies to this news item for more details and ongoing status updates.

OK, here's the full story on why 10/15 won't be the day our children's children celebrate (you know, national DuoPhile launch day).

• I had underestimated he sheer quantity of stock images, templates, and styles that remained to be customized for the forums.
• I discovered a glaring layout glitch in some not-too-old Webkit browsers (which drove me nuts because my phone was affected, so I spent entirely too much time tracking down that bug and squashing it).
• The universe got the memo that I had a goal, so it gathered its forces to make everything go wrong that could go wrong. My twin 3-year-old boys wouldn't stop fighting. PC crashes. Unexpected errands. Hemorrhoids. Angina. Flatulence. My dog ate it. I left it in my other pants.

Now that the excuses are out of the way, let's focus on what actually did get done.

• Completed 80% of the changes needed in the forum system. Of particular note are the forum/topic icons of Duo consoles, Hu Cards, and my favorite, the "Locked Topic" icon. Can you tell what it is???
• The CD "busy" light in the site's header now allows you to not only login/out from any page on the site, but it also takes you back to whatever page you were on instead of dumping you into the forum index.
• The DuoPhile YouTube channel and Google+ page have been established and are in the process of being customized and populated with content. Be sure to check out our YouTube channel; it's a riot!
• Numerous improvements to the site's design both superficial (notice that the front page actually has stuff on it now?) and under the hood (fixed many CSS/HTML validation errors as well as browser-specific rendering bugs).
• Created the first content admin tool. Doesn't sound like much, but it makes the process of tagging things super easy and lightning quick. Plus, the framework for it will be used in other areas of the site to accelerate the process of adding content, as well as to allow users to build their "collection" of items from our database. (trust me, this will be huge when it is finally implemented and everyone sees first hand what i've been rambling about for so long).
• Fixed an issue which was causing incorrect page titles to be assigned to non-forum pages. Also removed the stupid jumplist from the forums. These changes not only reduce server load, but will help keep all of our content highly searchable and easy to find.
• Forum member (and moderator) Scruffles rocked the magazine section and created hundreds of tags, linking games from our database to the magazine pages on which they appear. Big thanks to him for this!
• Fixed issue with tag list generation on the Games pages. Quite proud of this one, actually. Generating a multi-level nested unordered list might sound easy... hell it might actually be easy... but to me, figuring out how to get the html elements to open and close when they need to was an achievement on par with the building of the pyramids.
• The beginnings of a 'breadcrumb' navigation header for the main content area of each page is in place and will make its debut soon, further helping with SEO and ease of navigation.

The tagging system is super easy and pretty cool too, as is the youtube channel, which has such hits as "TurboGrafx / Turbo Duo Game System and Software #2 (Vhs promotional video)" and other fan favorites. It gives me a manrection how much stuff actually did get done in time. Failure to launch? More like success to not launch... everyone just pretend I said something clever there; it's too early for this.

Thanks, Scruffs.

Ok, not nearly as much has been done as I'd hoped prior to launch, but...

• Admin system for adding company info to games, as well as for adding new companies.
• Bread crumb nav links are everywhere (except in forums, but they don't belong there)
• A nice DHTML dable with sorting and real-time filtering has been added for the game directory.
• Magazine pages now reflect the true page number rather than page sequence in the nav controls.
• Misc styling and touch up across the site to make the appearance a bit more uniform.
• Addition of Google Custom search, which not only has some bugs to work out, but which suffers from crap results because google indexed my site long ago and is taking its sweet time re-indexing the site now that i've...
• Spent a few minutes on SEO; mainly, clearing out h2 tags used in design elements which were accidentally left in (and confused the hell out of google) as well as the forum jumplist (which also confused the hell out of google).
• 90% done replacing forum icons and, as i write this, smilies that i'd completely overlooked.
• Added EGM's 1993 Game Preview magazine w/ game tags.
• Gave company tags to roughly 10% of the game pages.
• Fixed miscellaneous script bugs around the site.