Alpha Release: Discussion, Feature Requests, etc

[Jubal]

The current live alpha is here:
http://www.exilian.co.uk/academy/cpp/index.php

Do say what extra you'd like to see done and discuss how you're finding the system so far by posting here

[Glaurung]

I've had a quick play with the search form; here are some thoughts.

Firstly, it seems quite robust I tried various combinations of characteristics and it always behaved cleanly - there were no pages with obscure SQL errors.

I suggest splitting the search characteristics into groups:
- nationality / ethnicity (Georgian, Armenian, byzantine etc.)
- role or rank (ruler, general, bishop etc.)
- religion
- pronouns / gender
This would make it more obvious why "Armenian" appears twice.
Also, it's not obvious why "Georgian Royalty" is a distinct characteristic - would this not be "Georgian" and "ruler"? Or should there be a general role of "royalty" that could be used for the members of royal families of any political/ethnic entity?

I tried searching with nothing ticked, and got no results back. I was more than half-expecting this, but I wondered whether it would give me all records instead of none. I presume there is no means of requesting all the records at the moment.

I tried searching with all the ethnicity characteristics ticked, and still got nothing. I was a bit more surprised by this - I thought it more likely that I would get all the records this way. I assume the underlying code is using AND to join each of the ticked characteristics for the search, even when they are in the same group. I suspect OR for joins within a group, and AND for joins between groups, is likely to be more intuitive.

[Jubal]

Unpinned as actually this alpha hasn't had a database behind it for probably multiple years now!