Wk 1 – Update 1

It spins. That’s a start.

The first version of Wheel of Questions 2.0 is working. I have something to show the class, although I’m keeping my hand down for now.

My first goal was to replace the old site without losing what people had already created. Existing accounts, saved wheels, questions, and shared links needed to survive. Starting over is considerably less impressive when everyone else has to start over too.

That part worked. The site still runs on PHP and MySQL, using the existing database, but the experience around it has been rebuilt.

The biggest change is the wheel itself. We replaced Winwheel.js, the third-party library I used in my original attempt, with our own wheel renderer. That also removed the supporting animation library and other JavaScript dependencies. I can now ask for the wheel to behave differently without first negotiating with someone else’s code.

And we finally got the damn text to stop overflowing the wheel. Long questions don’t politely shorten themselves to fit inside a slice of someone else’s code. The new renderer shortens labels or uses numbers when things get crowded, then shows the full question when it’s selected. You can actually read it without watching half a sentence escape over the edge.

Digging through the original version also uncovered a bug where I was asking PHP to clean up the text of a database query instead of its results. Apparently, those are different things. PHP had strong feelings about it.

There’s another useful change: visitors can create questions and spin without making an account first. Registration can wait until they have something worth saving.

But getting the site working hasn’t solved the whole problem. Question management still needs attention. Entering, changing, and organizing a list should feel effortless, especially for a teacher getting ready for class or someone preparing a team meeting.

That was part of what sent CeeCee back to Wheel of Names the first time. A new wheel won’t fix a frustrating workflow.

So, the first pass got the site running and cut the cord to the old library. Next comes making it something people actually enjoy using.

The wheel spins. Now I need to make the rest of it worth the trip.