SWDb 3.0 (our massive 2022/2023 project)

Yeah, I thought that list might take a while. :slightly_smiling_face:

you’re talking quick draw @Carlos here and his sidekick Seb the El Copy-Pastore

2 Likes

Don’t want to be the party pooper, but there are scores of titles which nobody remembers or cares about in addition to the aforementioned, such as, say, Quattro carogne a Malopasso or Tara Pokì, you know, those perennial masterpieces of international filmmaking everybody drools over.

If we really want to update the layout for every single film page, including “the armpits of the genre” too so to speak, then I figure it is going to take a while before we can genuinely trumpet the victory, though most of the usual suspects have admittedly already got the necessary face lifting.

The instant I start accommodating all the pictures sections to the new layout, I shall try to take note of the titles which have not received much attention and post them ITT.

1 Like

We never really kept track but I think we are well on our way:)

1 Like

Just wanna give a big old cheers to @Mickey13 who is adding great pictures to the SWDb pictures subpages like a driven madman :slight_smile: Your work shall not be forgotten, sir, we appreciate your work!

3 Likes

Well, I have finished just now. The batch update has made things really much easier, so now it is just a matter of proper naming of the files and muscle memory. In spite of its onerous looks, it’s not so tiresome, though I do feel a little tired and given that I have run out of material (thankfully), I shall take a break now. Hopefully, the database entries look better now.

BTW, if any of you fine folks happen to come across a blog or a site or whatever hosting a number of spaghetti-related images such as posters, lobby cards, press releases, yada yada yada, then head over to this topic and drop a comment pointing to the source, I will get back to it and try uploading all the relevant material.

2 Likes

still a whole bunch left, then i’ll turn my attention back to the other 3.0 projects that are in need of progress. but then i think we should do project by project. these massive overhauls don’t work well if it’s just barely a handful of folks helping out

1 Like

I am open to ideas on how to make the Links page look and work better, and of course happy to add more/new links to it

https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Links

Here is a suggestion of a direction we could take this, feedback welcome:

1 Like

I firmly believe we ought to advert to the search engine now.

Firstly, the search engine should be absolutely case-insensitive, as requiring the user to abide by all the rules of capitalization in their queries seems quite preposterous, especially in view of the fact that there are always some small discrepancies between different titles and languages. I do not give a fig about the kind of case-folding which is to be implemented, the search engine should simply be blind to capitalization, period, this is the standard anyways. The commas may stay, they are part of the design, but the case sensitivity should go IMHO, it is absolutely redundant here.

Secondly, the queries ought to be compared against the Basic Latin Unicode versions of the film titles. Visitors to the site should not be required to enter special characters from another country’s alphabet in order to access some film page, that is ludicrous. For this reason, I cannot directly access the film page for RĂ©quiem para el gringo, because of that second character that is; the auto-suggestion does not help much either because entering the first character does not narrow it down at all. One is either constrained to have recourse to director’s page for instance or to rely on the search engine’s capacity to retrieve the proper data for me. This is obviously not to say that film’s titles should not be internally stored with all the suitable data, all I am asking for is the ability to access at the very least the main film page without resorting to some workarounds.

Thirdly, this is all prescinding from the fact that the search engine is far from infallible; if it had not been for the auto-suggest feature, the engine would appear to be inferior to what we had back in the early 2010s if my memory serves me well. The search engine sometimes fails to retrieve any data at all in virtue of a simple typo or owing to the title being entered in Italian in the situation when the primary title of the SWDb entry is stored in Spanish. In light of the fact we are dealing with something which is essentially a database intended to store and return data, such a behavior is basically prehistoric. Human errors and the said limitations should all be taken into account.

I would not perhaps go so far as to assert that all the additional features and extras presuppose the aforementioned conditions, but these are essentials which, if implemented, would boost database’s usability tremendously. The only reason why I keep forgetting about these things is because I know a lot of the titles by heart and am able to navigate around the database pretty much seamlessly just the same; however, browsing the SWDb might prove to be a nightmare for a neophyte unaware of SWDb’s quirks and unable to recall lesser-known titles at a whim.

1 Like

I agree in all points, however I am bound to the search engine that comes with the wiki software. I wanted to implement a more powerful one but it requires skill and more server resources to set up. The other option is to eather search via google or implemt a google search to replace the current search (and confine that to an “advance mode” page
 but that moves our reliability to a third party, including the data on searches, and I need to sink more time into such an option. But yes, long story short, the biggest improvement to the SWDb would be a better search. And no, unfortunately it seems I cannot just “switch off” case sensitivity :frowning:

Man, that sucks. The reason why I mentioned this was that I had seen you touch upon the improvement of the search engine at one point, so I thought it was doable. Oh well
 that sucks. No matter then.

The funny thing is that apart from the auto-suggest feature, I believe the search engine we had back in the early 2010s was a lot better and reliable for regular browsing. The one we’ve got now is okay I guess, but it could be so much better. I imagine improving the search engine could likewise boost site traffic.

Don’t think it changed though?

I seem to recall a certain downgrade between the previous search engine and the one implemented now. I remember having appreciated the auto-suggest feature on its introduction, but also being very disappointed with the rest of it. I have evidently no way of verifying this, but the sentiment implanted in my memory is quite vivid on this point, then again, I might be just flat out wrong.

Well a better search is very high on my list of things I would like to do with the SWDb. First comes some repair on the databse structure for which I am hoping for a solution, then I can upgrade the wiki to the latest version, and if I can find a solution to the search, one will be implemented in the future (but not much choice there, most likely what wikipedia is using)

1 Like

BTW, I have managed to amass some more material to add to the database in the meantime, so there is going to be another sub-700-picture update after all, sometime in September though, I have to clean them up a bit first.

Thereafter, I will endeavor to go through every single picture section on the site and accommodate each of them to the new layout, but I will take my time doing that.

I shall strive to come up with new stuff to add to the database every now and then, though there is only so much I can glean on a regular basis, it pretty much depends on the amount of stuff other folks choose to upload on the interwebz and on my ability to stash it for a subsequent update.

1 Like

I think first we need to come up with a good layout and user experience for the pictures site. We need to check what the best gallery options are that the wiki software offers, and better caption and order pictures, too


Personally, I believe the simpler the general layouts are, the better, but a new gallery mode would certainly not go amiss, we could experiment with different ways of displaying info then. Irrespective of the section, each picture could then display information regarding its provenance, possibly artists behind the artwork etc. beneath the image shown in the gallery mode with the rest of the site being grayed out or something to that effect.

Much appreciated. We are closing those gaps quickly. And on the other hand, there is no urgency to have all film pages ready by a certain date. That is why I have focused my attention on other improvements already. For example the new browse page, the books cleanup etc


browse all now better adapts to your screen size
 still need to work on the content I think, not quite nailed it
 which sections, subheaders, etc. is it intuitive? We need some feedback