README

 _  ___ _   _          _  ___ _   _        
| |/ (_) |_| |_ ___   | |/ (_) |_| |_ ___  
| ' /| | __| __/ _ \  | ' /| | __| __/ _ \ 
| . \| | |_| || (_) | | . \| | |_| || (_) |
|_|\_\_|\__|\__\___/  |_|\_\_|\__|\__\___/ 
              _  ___ _   _        
             | |/ (_) |_| |_ ___  
             | ' /| | __| __/ _ \ 
             | . \| | |_| || (_) |
             |_|\_\_|\__|\__\___/ 
=================================================

Welcome to KittoKittoKitto, a completely free virtual pet game framework for you 
to build upon.

== Installation ==
See the Kitto documentation for installation instructions:
    
    <http://kitto.yasashiisyndicate.org/docs/kitto/install.html>

== Post-Installation ==
My tips to you at this point:
    
    * Read through the code. Learn where things go in the directory tree. There
      really isn't that much code to look at - most of the work is being done
      by ActiveTable automagically.

    * __LEARN HOW TO USE ACTIVETABLE__. Docs can be found on the Kitto website, 
      and there's pretty good in-line documentation that can be compiled into 
      HTML with phpdocumentor. ActiveTable is a *SERIOUS* timesaver. Without it, 
      I would not have been able to write the first iteration of Kitto in 
      (literally) five days. 

      <http://kitto.yasashiisyndicate.org/documentation.html>
      
      Writing and debugging SQL is a bitch. It's error-prone. It's a timesink. 
      Why not have most of your SQL written for you by ActiveTable? ;-)

      Furthermore, ActiveTable uses PEAR::DB#prepare()/PEAR::DB#execute() for
      all of its operations, so you're absolutely safe from SQL injection,
      even if you don't use stripinput() in whatever you're passing it. How
      can you pass that up?

   * Use Smarty templates. As you can see, they keep all of your script files
     very small, clean, and easy-to-read. Plus, Smarty has a kickass caching
     engine, so when you realize the boards are causing high server loads, you
     can have Smarty cache the HTML it generates with a few extra lines. 
     
     No SQL/HTML generation = less load. You can even have Smarty expire a 
     cached template whenever someone makes a new post. Believe me - Smarty
     has a lot of features that make it worth learning.
     
     The Smarty manual is available at <http://smarty.php.net>. Give it a once-
     over, at the very least!

Nick 'Owl' Evans, 2007-09-22
Last Updated on 2009-07-14.

KittoKittoKitto has been brought to you by the Yasashii Syndicate. 
<http://yasashiisyndicate.org>