There have been several members messaging me, posting to the BB, or asking on the Help Desk, about minor glitches on DSiPaint, 3DSPaint, and WiiOperaSDK, lately. I'm going to explain a little about what is causing this:

When I first started making the websites, they were small-scale projects. I used them as testing grounds for new coding techniques. If a PHP programmer was to look over the websites, he/she would easily notice how my style has evolved as I have learned these past 4 or so years (including HB Online code). Old code looks like a tornado attacked my living room. The new code looks like I bought a bookshelf from Lowe's to get the stacks of DVDs put up that are piled all around the TV. (I'm sure in a few years, this analogy will apply the tornado to the current code.)

Now that these projects have grown vastly beyond the original scope, I need to put some more solid infrastructure in place to account for bugs, security hacks, inefficiencies, etc.

Many of the sections across DSiPaint, WiiOperaSDK, and 3DSPaint, are identical - aside from some appearance changes. Yet, the code has diverged to the point of major inconsistencies. I have been working on rewriting much of the backend code so that all 3 websites can be upgraded with a single upload of new code and that the code is testable an reusable.

Every core feature in the database is stored as a single record: members, blogs, BB posts, Help Desk questions, paintings, mail, etc. Since the websites have evolved, the way these are interfaced is all over the place, depending on which page is loaded. I am merging this functionality to inherit from a single interface. For non-programmers, let's usage the analogy of LEGO blocks: a standard 4x2 brick always looks the same shape, no matter the color. The brick molds are made to be identical so that pieces are interchangeable when building a dinosaur, for instance. That is similar to the massive clean-up on these websites.

During this clean-up process, there will inevitably be bugs. Suffering for a little while through minor bugs seems like a fair trade-off when considering that the end-result will be much faster website updates that have less bugs themselves.

The first noticeable change that would not have been possible without this upgrade is that disable member profiles are now visible. The signatures, bio, blogs, and comments, are removed, but anyone can see that the account did exist before the perma-ban.

I will probably continue working on these changes for the next week or two.