Sites Mod adjustment

Ok Y'all. I know some of you are just chomping at the bit to help me with this issue.

I need to find a way for the site mod to WAIT until the thumbnail is generated before opening the page to enter the details. I'm getting tired of hitting the F5 key repeatedly with each submission.

If you know where to put it you can delay the page processing.

<?php

//your code up here

sleep(2); //sleep for 2 seconds

//your code down here

?>

If you want to completely stop all processing you can do this

<?php

die();

?>

The above makes some assumptions but it's easy to implement. If you want something more targetted and exact the you'll need to do some calculations and blah blah blah.

WHOOSH! Boy I felt that one going over my head in a hurry!

I don't think that will work. Making it sleep won't guarante it's finished. Sometimes it completes in ten seconds, other times, I've seen it take longer than a minute

hmmm...the sleep() function won't work. To do this right, a counter or function that keeps track of the thumbnail is needed. A web search will find something. The code is out there.

Do you really think your members will want to stare at nothing happening for a minute, while the thumbnail providers site works on the request?

No but it's better than the alternative failure of the image to load.... It would at least work. I could post a comment that the page thumbnail creation could take a couple minutes to complete so just be patient.

Does the thumbnail never get created, or displayed when this happens? I don't use the module.... it's just another way to drive traffic away from your site, in my opinon.

Man I hate this fish forum. Had it all typed out and lost it.

Essentially the mod goes to an outside website to obtain a thumbnail image of the sites homepage that you are trying to post. Dolphin, in it's infinite wisdom, does NOT wait for this image to be created and takes you to the details page with or without it. Hitting F5 repeatedly from this page will eventually get you the image but that can take forever and if you are a user, you do not know that it even creates an image or that you have to fuck with it to get it to work.

I just want the mod to wait until the image is ready before moving on to the details screen.

I'll rephrase the question.  If you complete the details screen, and finish the process of adding a site, before the external site furnishes the thumbnail, is the site listing forever without a thumbnail.... or does the thumbnail appear once the external site completes the request?

Putting unconditional waits in a script is not a good thing - if the operation never completes - for example when there is an issue with the external service - the page will simply lock up. If you have to add conditions to wait for the action to complete, it also needs to have a timeout should the condition never be made

Adding a time delay is also bad practice, as you are not guaranteeing that the process has completed, normally this ends up getting increased to suit all situations and then all you have is a slow script.

Not being 100% sure what you see when the image is not created, or how this works - I assume that if the thumbnail has not been created, the alt text is displayed??

I think that better solution is to either change the alt text for the image to 'processing thumbnail' or if a generic thumbnail is displayed instead - add text to this image so that it relays something more meaningful to the user.

HTH

/DM

badump

The site listing is forever without a thumbnail....