Babble was created to tap into the burgeoning casual gaming market. PHP and MySQL were used to create the entire site. AJAX, JSON and Javascript were also used extensively for the interactive features. The game puzzles are generated automatically and randomly every day. And at the end of every day, players' scores are automatically tallied and the Player Rankings are updated.
A custom chat log was created for Babble called "Chatterbox." Chatterbox relies heavily on AJAX and JSON to communicate between the user and the server. It has three sections: Chatterbox, Who's Online, and My Friends. Chatterbox allows users to chat in real-time with other users. The Who's Online section lists all of the users who are currently on the Babble website, and the My Friends section allows users to see if their Babble friends are on the site.
Babble involves two e-commerce solutions. The first service allows users to upgrade to "Pro" accounts that provide them with extra features. Users can pay using a credit card or PayPal. The second service was designed with a shopping cart system to allow users to purchase Babble-branded t-shirts. The credit card processing for both solutions was done through Authorize.net.
AJAX was relied upon heavily for almost all the communication between the user and the web server. The goal was for the main page of the site to load and never have to refresh. So when users enter words, or chat in the chat log, the page updates via AJAX and does not need to refresh. This cut down on bandwidth overhead immensely, as well as made the game more enjoyable to play for users.
Main page
Player rankings updated daily
Account manager
Player profile
T-shirt order page
