Hi, everyone. I hope that everyone’s enjoying the new Timelines! This project has been in the works since February, and there’s a lot to it. Permit me to put on my Knight Bus Tours hat for a moment and tell you about some of the great things the new Timelines can do.
First, some statistics:the new Timeline is stored in three SQL database tables. Those tables contain 3258 rows and 46,062 individual pieces of data. Every single timeline entry you see requires 51 fields to be entered, mostly by hand, in order for it to appear!
The code, written in PHP, is able to sort all of these events and put them in their proper order. You can search by any number of tags or icons, and you can narrow your search to only certain years if you wish. And (this is one of my favorite features) you can save searches you’ve done on your own computer so that you can look at them later!
The Timeturner allows you almost total control over the information displayed. You can turn the display of major and minor events – wizarding world, muggle world, or fandom – on and off with the click of a mouse. The Timeturner is a little large, but you can hit “Reducio” to shink it down to a less annoying size for reading.
This has been my first major project for the Lexicon, and I want to say publicly what a treat it is to work with such a dedicated staff. The hours of work that have put in – entiriely on a voluntary basis – by the staff is unbelievable! I hope you all have lots of fun with the new Timelines.