This is a fantastic blog system! I simply adore it!



It fails in internet explorer,but then again, what is compatible with IE these days?

Hello Every one, My names Aliza and I'm new to J-Spot.

I'm pretty tired but at the same time too excited to fall asleep. I really see the potential that Jappleng has just after snapping my fingers and saying "open the door for a thousand new users each day". Okay, it wasn't that easy but now that I can easily invite people here, I get so happy because I know that Jappleng will one day provide the information and content that people want. And let's say I don't do a good job, people will let me know, and if they don't do so directly, then I can view statistics and judge what they like and what they don't like from there.

I really don't want Jappleng to be all corporate-like but rather have a sense of a friendly community which so far has been wonderful. In my mind right now I have so many bugs to fix around the site, the forums, and other things, and I have ways to make Jappleng a better user experience and I am ready in my head to move on and add new sections and other great features. But then, I am a one-man-crew for the programming and seldom will I get help, but when I do, I really appreciate it (special thanks to Lammert!)

I'll talk more about what will happen when I get back from my 2-week vacation to see my family in a day or two. In that blog post, you will find out just how amazing Jappleng will be in January and February because that's when the public will begin to know about us.

OH and, anyone reading this should take the time to create their own blog posts and even replies in the forums. Currently the center of attention is in the image-boards and forums so the more activity, the more people will stay and register! If you have any comments, concerns, or even suggestions on how Jappleng can be improved, feel free to add a comment bellow and I'll read them when I can. Take care and Happy Holidays!

I'm being pressed for time here. It seems that a lot of the design has flaws in it when put into use and I'm having to redesign things after the next to make it work. Like that gray bar at the top that says "Jappleng University is still under development until mid-february, thank you for being a JPL-U Student!" if you're logged in, or notifies you if you have a PM or something? Yeah, that needs to be removed because it looks too cluttered. Instead, it will be a yellow notification at the top when something happens.

The top left profile info thing needs to be redesigned so it better fits with the site and the overall look of the nav buttons for the community doesn't sit right with me, but that can be changed later on.

I am working on the image-boards and there are many features that I want to include, especially the front page. I want the front page to be more interactive but unfortunately it would take too much time and what I need to focus on is getting the image-boards to work entirely instead of any extra feature.

The forum themselves are going to be hectic to repair. Because of the overall change of some layout elements, things are no longer working properly, the colors need to be changed around, and Internet Explorer just breaks the site because it likes to handle things uniquely. In other words, I have to re-program the forums to work solely with Internet Explorer if the browser is IE. Incidentally without JavaScript you can't add conditionals for other browsers and that just has to show you just how unique IE is by telling programmers that they like to do things the difficult way so they will create a conditional that is easy to implement so you can adjust your site appropriately. Sad right?

I think the biggest challenge will be World Jappleng. The only thing is that World Jappleng will have to come next week after the implementation of JV·Share and the finalization of J·Spot. I'm aiming to have the community entirely complete with some of the site updated with new sections by Valentines day. Wish me best of luck!

Getting Jappleng completed is very tough because I'm in a spot where I have to design and build the website by myself. It wasn't always like this, but after being backstabbed by a trustworthy "friend", I couldn't imagine sharing the idea of Jappleng with others until recently without fear that others would take the idea or source code and run, like someone did in the past.

I am fortunate to say that there are those few who occasionally help with new articles, or editing, and sometimes even programming. I know that Nick was really cool at volunteering his time by working on some flash stuff, and Lammert was amazing at helping build the content management system. There are others here and there who helped and I will give them full credit when the time is right, but the people who have helped me the most is all of those who kept active in the forums, in the chat, and even those who added me to IM services saying that Jappleng is a great idea and that I need to keep going. Those people helped me the most because without them I would have given up a long time ago.

Jappleng isn't about money, it's about what it represents. I hope that more businesses act more this way but when you're leashed to shareholders (which Jappleng is not) you are stuck making the most profit as possible.

I suspect that within 2-weeks the entire community section will be completed with the exception of various features that I cannot program myself like the IMC, or Nakama Robot. That means that the forums, image-boards, and Blog system will be entirely completed. I hope that JSpot Connect will have a decent interface by then, in fact I haven't even designed that section so it will take some creative thinking from going from paper to computer.

Once those two-weeks have passed, I am looking forward to completing all the other sections on the website, knocking out one at a time. I will likely start with the inJapan section, though I'm not too sure just yet. It will depend on my mood on what I want to work on to be honest but overall, everything needs to be completed before December.

So what happens in December? Stay tuned for my next blog post to find out!