Starefossen

PHP-Fusion MT V7.01 Development Co Ordinator

Starefossen from the PHP-Fusion Development Team has kindly took some time out from the development of PHP-Fusion V7.01 to do this interview with us about PHP-Fusion and the development.

This is a transcript of a chat I held with Starefossen on MSN Messenger.

Fangree_Craig Says: Welcome to the PHP-Fusion Developers Chat with Fangree Productions.

Starefossen says:
Thanks for inviting me here Fangree.

Fangree_Craig says:
What is your name and what country do you come from?

Starefossen says:
My name is Hans Kristian Flaatten, I am 19 years old and come from the country far far north, NORWAY

Fangree_Craig says:
Wow! you are younger than i thought.
Whats your role at PHP-Fusion and what's your duties?

Starefossen says:
Yes, I am quite young compared to the rest of the Crew and Developers
My role at PHP-Fusion, thats a tough one, I do a lot
Currently a member of MT and coodrinating the PHP-Fusion v7.01 development

Fangree_Craig says:
How long have you been part of the PHP-Fusion Development Team?

Starefossen says:
Well, let me see just checking my Developer account now. Dates are not my strong thing... Date Joined - December 26 2007 17:25:46.
Nearly two years now.

Fangree_Craig says:
Nice and how long have you been using php-fusion?

Starefossen? says:
I started using PHP-Fusion when I was 15 years old (about 5 years ago) when I made a community site for my class where we could share photos, homework, cheats etc. etc.

Fangree_Craig says:
What do you like best about PHP-Fusion?

Starefossen says:
The best thing about PHP-Fusion is the simplicity: how easy it is to install, use, maintain and understand the code. I knew nothing about PHP before I started using PHP-Fusion, I lstarted learning PHP by reading and understanding PHP-Fusion's source code.

Fangree_Craig says:
Do you have a personal PHP-Fusion Community Dev/mods site?

Starefossen says:
Not really, I recently changed server from my personal site www.starefossen.com and my development testing site dev.starefossen.com was removed and I hadn't got the time to put it back, not sure if I am going to. But I have a really huge project named Version Server => version.starefossen.com
Some of the reason I no longer have a community dev / mods site is that I have used very much time on starglowone.eu and the Official PHP-Fusion MODs & Infusions site where I was team leader until some months ago when Flyingduck took over, so I never had the time to have my own community site really.

Fangree_Craig says:
What's your preferred development environment? (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Starefossen says:
MAC!

Fangree_Craig says:
What Programme/s do you use for Coding?

Starefossen says:
I use a program named Coda (http://www.panic.com/coda/) very nice which supports all major coding langauages.

Fangree_Craig says:
What Web Browser is your Favourite?

Starefossen says:
I used Firefox until recently but changed to Apples Safari for simplicity reasons because my backup solution is more compatible with safari (http://www.apple.com/mobileme/)

Fangree_Craig says:
The up coming version of PHP-Fusion, 7.01 is nearly upon us, Can you tell us a little about it?

Starefossen says:
Sure I can, we have been rewriting a lot of the core and we are still working on it.

Most users might say it is not big enough to be named v7.01 but the reason for that is because v7.00.xx are service versions which does not add new features.
V7.xx are the versions which includes new features.

Some of the new things we can look forward to is support for sessions, developers functions, avatar resize, new theme improvements for designers, news section has gained more functionality, such as image upload with resize, and a completely rewritten user management system supporting suspensions (bans which will be automatically lifted after set time).

Fangree_Craig says:
Sounds great and will there be any improvements to the forums?

Starefossen says:
yes, at this point there have been only minor enhancements as we take one section at a time but moving posts from one thread to another have been added.

Fangree_Craig says:
Nice.
what about thread merging?

Starefossen says:
It's a nice suggestion and we might include it .

Fangree_Craig says:
Thanks it would be nice to have.

Fangree_Craig says:
Will v7.00.XX themes work with v7.01?

Starefossen says:
yes, all themes and infusions made for v7.00 will work under v7.01
but we will encourage all designers to make use of the new themes features for v7.01

Fangree_Craig says:
yes
So not much change to infusions databases?

Starefossen says:
No, but we are including a set of functions for developers...

Fangree_Craig - says:
oh :)

Starefossen says:
Such as sendpm(), uploadfile() and a new table for infusions settings.

Fangree_Craig says:
Very nice
What does the future hold for PHP-Fusion?

Starefossen says:
Who knows, one thing is certain; we will continue to make PHP-Fusion better and better. In order to achieve this we have formed a new committee which will focus on the next major version of PHP-Fusion.

Fangree_Craig says:
Well Starefossen I would like to thank you on behalf of myself and the PHP-Fusion Community for all the hard work you do and would like to thank you for doing this interview for us.

Do you have any final words for the PHP-Fusion Community?

Starefossen says:
We have some very exciting news coming up very soon and BETA testing of the new version will also begin as soon as we have a stable version of PHP-Fusion v7.01.

Fangree_Craig says:
Nice Thank you we will look forward to it all.

Thanks for the interview.

Starefossen says:
Thanks for inviting me, and for all the work you are putting in to this community.