Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-961279-20161113063046/@comment-961279-20161115024823

Dessamator, you've got it right. A pseudo-database was really what I was looking for the first time I overhauled the templates. I got most of what I wanted by using a lot of switches, but there was still a lot of manual data entry and manual template creation. I hadn't kept up with the new episodes after I did it, so the editors on the wiki have fallen back to even further manually-specifying things like the previous and next links.

With the capabilities that it sounds like Lua offers, I think I could get this down to where it might be as simple as having one template at the top that just says "Nav" and doesn't have any parameters because it pulls the info out of the pseudo-database and creates the previous and next episode links itself. At the bottom of the page might be a "Season" template, also without any parameters, that auto-builds the list of episodes that were broadcast for that season. And when a new episode comes out or is going to be broadcast in a different order than first announced, there's one place where that needs to be updated.

It's been many years since I've done any actual programming, but I still know how and I can research and learn the specifics of things like Lua so I can get from "here's how I would have done it then" to "here's the new way I have to do it". Sometimes I just need a little help finding the info about what that new way will be, and that's what you've given me.

Thanks. If this works well enough, I can use the concept to automate some things over at Moviepedia for the "coming soon" and "in theaters now" areas on the main page. That's also being done manually right now.