5 years! It's been a long time. Cogsprocket turns 5 years today and to celebrate we're giving you two new Cogsprocket-themed wallpapers!

Tacos Per Second

Tanks are known for their threat generation and damage mitigation skills. One way to measure a good tank is by gauging their TPS. This desktop background celebrates the tank and their delicious skills...

Downloads:

Standard:

1600 x 1200
1280 x 1024
1152 x 864
1024 x 768

Widescreen:

1920 x 1200
1680 x 1050
1440 x 900
1200 x 800

Solving The Cube

I've always found it funny how when most races craft something they look as though they are trying to solve a Rubik's Cube or opening a jar. As such here's a zen-like desktop background showing just that.

Downloads:

Standard:

1600 x 1200
1280 x 1024
1152 x 864
1024 x 768

Widescreen:

1920 x 1200
1680 x 1050
1440 x 900
1200 x 800

The guild roster has now been added to the site and is available via the main menu. The great thing about this feature is that it makes it much easier to identify the hundreds of characters currently in guild.

As I progress into turning that portion of the site into the character claim system and the forum system you will have a better look at who's who within the guild. For now treat the guild roster as a list of people that currently give me headaches and heartburn. I'll even give you a nifty filter. If you don't see their name on the following list then they are detrimental to my health:

• Berlioz
• Etzel
• Padgett
• Round
• Priad
• Laceter
• Veere
• Larrimore

Anyone not on that list is a troublemaker...

I've been working on a new version of armorySponge which is the software I've been developing that retrieves and caches World of Warcraft Armory data. One of the first things I do when developing a new version of the software is to retrieve the guild roster and flag things for their last update to ensure that I can easily cache the data. I've been able to do that here with no trouble and even improved my times quite a bit.

What this means to you is that I will have the guild roster up soon and you will be able to start claiming your characters. What it means for me is a lot of work, but on the lighter side of things I'm considering opening up XML and javascript services to the public. I will provide a URL for this within the coming weeks.

I have recently added some new functionality to the site. The feature publishing system has been implemented and this will be the source for all sanctioned information from the guild. Currently the only content in this section is our about page and FAQ which outlines a few things about us and the basic guild rules.

The future plan for the features section is that as you submit your own content via forums, comments and your own blog if a site curator finds this information thoughtful or informative they can promote it to a feature. It will still appear as normal content as every piece of text on the site is stored in a single table, but will also be featured on the site's main page and in the feature section.

I have also added a new page for our official podcast "Demoralizing Shout" which will begin recording in the coming weeks. The goal is to get an episode or two out before Blizzcon '09. you can visit the "Demoralizing Shout" page by clicking the "Podcast" link in the main menu or by following this link.

I'm currently working on whipping the roster into shape. Once that is done a few lines of code will provide you with the means to start claiming your characters. This is all a part of a grander scheme to allow you to start posting information via your characters by selecting a character "profile". You'll notice if you have signed up for an account that these links appear at the top left-hand corner of every page. They are non-functional at the moment as I'm still conducting testing on these parts of the site but I wanted you to be able to go ahead and start creating your accounts ahead of time.

I am open to any ideas, questions, comments or concerns you may have. You can email me at feedback@cogsprocket.org or you could always grab any one of my characters by the nape of the neck and (once you've recovered your corpse) let me know what's on your mind.

I'm currently making some CSS changes. to facilitate some of the cooler Javascript stuff that will be going into the site and also adding some of the content modules that I'm developing for the CMS. If the site goes wonky for any reason don't panic. I'm just screwing around with things.

Okay. I'll be honest. I'm never happy with what I do. That header up there? I'm slightly more happy with it than I was before. The previous inplementation of the site while it validated was actually kind of crappy in it's layout and CSS. I was never truly happy with it. Not to mention that the initial feature rotator was someone else's work, is commonly referred to as AJAX but its AJAX nature cuts out both A's and an X. It's all Javascript with no service feeding it. So I'm writing my own.

The forums were raped as well... Which serves me right for using phpBB. It's a crappy, insecure system and would have never integrated properly in with the roster, raid signup and auditing and character claim system. In short I guess what I'm saying is that I should have done all of this myself all along.

What I have done:

• Written code to retrieve XML from the Armory and store it in a database.
• Developed a simple roster system and profession lookup system
• Mapped out user account control
• Developed generic style and skin for the site
• Dug up my legacy CMS code and working to revamp it so it's in swoopy OOP PHP

What's left to be done:

• Implementing what I've done so far
• Write the tools that I haven't written yet
• Test EVERYTHING
• Write anything you could think of that might be useful

What I could use from you:

• Input of any kind; feature requests, comments, criticisms (mail it in)
• Testers; anyone willing to try to break things for me
• Artwork; screenshots, fanart, videos, sounds, sculpture, WHATEVER you have
• Patience; this won't happen overnight, I'm doing what most guild masters don't
• Prodding; patience won't be enough, I need you to ask me about this every once in a while

All of this being said. I'm a competent PHP coder. I've been doing this for many, many years now and I've already worked the basic framework that all of this will need to run on in one way or another. The hardest part will be getting it all together into a single system. Bear with me, this will be a long trip but hopefully it'll be worth the wait.