Michael Dawson

It’s been a while since my last blog post. A lot of things have changed since then. If you haven’t read the previous post, the entire system revamp was completed and that allowed me to completely focus on adding new features as well as polishing current areas of the website. I aim to create FitIgniter a very user friendly and seamless experience for its users because that is my main goal and that is what sets it aside from other websites such as bodybuilding.com.

FitIgniter now supports US and UK regions. There really isn’t that much difference between the two sites other than the supplement price comparison section which grabs data from different locations. For example, the US site grabs data from amazon.com where as the UK site grabs data from amazon.co.uk. Besides that, the other differences are minimal. The UK site can be accessed by either adding a UK prefix on the website URL (such as https://uk.FitIgniter.com) or by changing the region on the top menu.

Another great feature now is that the approval system is in complete working order. Users can now submit edit requests on exercises, and supplements if they feel the information is incorrect. The data then get submitted to an administrator who then reviews the request and either approves or denies it. This allows the content to be regulated to prevent incorrect information and/or spam.

All of the images are now hosted on FitIgniter. I have worked hard on the system so that the images can be uploaded safely and securely to the server without anything malicious passing through its safety checks. This is a great stride forward towards a more user friendly experience because previously, images could only be hot linked on image hosting sites such as imgur.com.

Users can now admire each other. I want FitIgniter to have a friendly community within the fitness industry and to help with that, I want to create as much user interactivity as possible. Initially I planned to create a friend system but I thought that was too generic so I decided to give a “fitness twist” to it. Basically, if you feel like you enjoy a specific users content or just simply see them as a friend, you can “admire” them and you will be added on their admiration list. You can admire other users without them admiring you back which tackles the need of having a mutual agreement.  I understand that may cause some problems with some users who feel that they want to remain private and keep their account hidden and away from any user interactivity and because of this, in the near future, privacy settings will be implemented so that the user can adjust their privacy to their needs. (for example, they could disable people admiring them).

One pretty cool feature I have implemented is a notification list. If you have any interactions with any other user, you will receive a notification to alert you of it. The notification is non obtrusive and can only be accessed by the navigation bar along the top. This is great if you want to find out if anyone has replied to your forum topics or if anybody has admired you.

Here is a little sneak peak –

FitIgniter is hopefully starting a closed BETA test within the next coming weeks and we are hoping we can gather a few people who are interested in participating. By participating in the BETA test, if you make any feedback on the website, we will add your name to the credits page we plan to make on FitIgniter . You can chose to opt out of being credited if you do not want your name to be listed. The credits page will be available to access on the websites footer and will be view-able by all. If you make an account on the system, your account will also be granted “Pioneer” status and that will be shown on your profile account page for everyone to see.

If you are interested in participating in the BETA, please don’t hesitate to contact us via twitter over at @TheFitIgniter and send us a mention or a DM. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

https://fitigniter.com

https://blog.fitigniter.com

Significant strides have been made in development over the past few days. The revamp of the old system has been complete. Over the past four weeks we have been reviewing every single bit of code and replacing it with a more effective and efficient system that we now have in place.

What does this mean? This means now that we have finished going over the old system and updating it, now we can focus on finishing up and polishing the website before release.

At this rate, FitIgniter should hopefully be launched publicly before August. Don’t forget to register your email up at http://fitigniter.com to be notified of the launch and follow us on twitter at @TheFitIgniter to get the latest news.

I’ve been hard at work trying to bring you FitIgniter to you as soon as possible. During our revamp, I have made a few changes to FitIgniter to bring a more pleasant experience.

First off, I have removed the food section. If you didn’t know already, this section basically was a database of normal foods such as nuts, fruits and so forth… but I felt that this area wasn’t really a priority and could be expanded on at a later date. Because of this, I have decided that it was best for the food section to be temporarily removed because I would rather provide features that have been worked on with full dedication rather than something that has been made with minimal effort.

Secondly, the websites region can be changed by editing the websites URL. No longer do you have to manually select the region if you wish to browse it, now you can just simply add the region code at the beginning of the domain and it will automatically navigate to its region. (eg http://uk.fitigniter.com). The current regions supported so far is UK and US.

Users cannot now submit exercises and supplements until I feel that FitMonstr has evolved to the point where it is essentially “self-sustaining”. Because so much data needs to be added before/during the launch, I believe its best that I disable users from submitting their own data until the database is at a relatively stable state. This is because it will be too much work to moderate each individual submission at the beginning. However, users can still edit current information on the data.

Blog: http://blog.fitigniter.com

Website: http://fitigniter.com

So the revamp of FitIgniter had started a couple days ago and some solid progress has been made. If you haven’t read the previous post, basically what is happening is that we are going through the entire system and updating it with new programming concepts and techniques. The reason that we are doing this is because, ultimately, this leads to not only a more dynamic and secure system, but it also makes the back end code much more readable. This, in turn, allows us to make changes to the system more efficiently and without the risk of breaking anything.

So first off, we had to change the very foundations of the system. FitIgniter used to use MySQL_Connect to connect to the database, but if you know anything about PHP, you will also know that MYSQL_Connect is deprecated. This means it is no longer supported as there are new, more secure and efficient methods to connect to the database such as PDO (PHP Data Objects) and MySQLi. PDO is what we are going to be replacing everything with. Not only does PDO implement the use of objects to connect to the database, it also allows for the use of prepared statements which helps against SQL Injection attacks. Pretty much every single query that is used on the system will have to be replaced with its PDO counterpart.

Once we had changed the foundations, we had to revamp the user system. This includes the login and register. The user system  used to work by creating users in a procedural method. This means that the system went down the code and just completed everything in turn. Now we have implemented a user class into the mix so now users can be created as objects on the fly without having to do much at all. This is especially useful but we can also use this object on other areas of the website if need be (e.g creating a user via the admin area). This also allows us to change the users settings without needing to change it’s associated pages.

For the first stage of the revamp, we have made some pretty good progress transitioning the system to more efficient and stable methods but we still have a long way to go.

Blog: http://blog.fitigniter.com

Website: http://fitigniter.com

This first post will give an overview on what FitIgniter  actually is, what this blog will be used for and the stage FitIgniter it is currently at.

So first things first, FitIgniter is a health and fitness database that provides easy access to information on exercises, workouts, supplements and more. It also contains price comparison for supplements so you can find the best deals for your favorite products.

What makes FitIgniter different to other websites such as BodyBuilding.com and Muscleandstrength.com is how the information is presented to the user. I wanted to make FitIgniter have a very seamless user experience so that the information can be accessed quickly and efficiently without much thought or navigation. The information can also be added and updated by the community.

This blog basically keeps you updated on the stage FitIgniter is at during it’s development. It allows you to be in the loop on all things around the development side.

At the moment, FitIgniter is in a relatively stable condition at the moment, however, everything in the backend is a complete and utter mess. I started this project last year around June to help work on my PHP development skills I learned during uni but I didn’t really have a grasp on how big this project actually was. Because of this, the entire website is built with procedural code which essentially means that the code is everywhere and extremely hard to read. It also uses a lot of deprecated functions such as mysql_connect() and I aim to change that by doing a complete code overhaul and implementing object oriented principles.

As most of the code is still there but just needs updated, hopefully it won’t take a long time to complete the overhaul. I’m hoping that it will be released in the latter part of July.

Thanks for reading and I’m looking forward to blogging the development stages of FitIgniter over at http://blog.fitigniter.com.

Website: http://fitigniter.com

Introducing Astrodoge.com

Now what makes this website different from t he other sites that offer free doge for doing tasks? Well its simple. On other sites you gain doge by doing tasks such as filling out surveys. On astrodoge, you get doge by simply watchi videos, interacting with the community, submitting content and more!

Soon I will be explaining the process of how I created the website as the entire site was built from the ground up (besides the layout and a few javascript/jquery functions).


Astrodoge.com