Since some of you are interested:
http://test.hordedefenseleague.org/
is where I test new versions and alternate forum platforms. It's currently running PHPBB3.
Currently disabled - I will reenable later.
What do we want from the guild web site?
• Ajax shoutbox seems to be important for people. For the non-techies, this means a shoutbox that will reload "live" without requiring a reload of the page.
• It would be nice to have an XML feed into a web-based calendar from the in-game calendar. I would like for guildies to be able to see the event for that night without looking it up on wowarmory.com.
• A guild roster would be great. I haven't been keeping mine current. It should be easy enough - dump the XML, feed it into the database, parse and present.
• Forums. Lots of forums and granular forum permission control.
What else? James and I were bouncing around the idea of doing this ourselves (Palyth Mark, too, perhaps?) or farming it out to one of the guild hosting companies. The latter costs money but makes things easier; the former allows us to retain full control and, to be honest, gives James and I a sandbox.
These are just a few things to start with:
AJAX enabled site - There are alot more options out there for the usage of AJAX if we are going to be redesigning the site backend altogether.
Guild Member Management - Expanding on Pat's mentioning of the "Guild Roster" concept, I would like to see a Member Management system which can be utilized by both Guild Members and Leaders alike. Similarly to how we do it now, once a member creates a Site Account they can link their toons to it. From there, we should be able to pull all sorts of information from the WoW Armory and make it available for usage by the site. This same information can be utilized by the Leaders for a variety of things.
One of the things I would like this system to also be able to do is to track the history of the member. Everything from promotion dates and discussions to raid attendance and loot awarded. Yes, the latter will require some interaction on our part since there's no one simple add-on that will do it all for us. However, if the folks leading the raid had either an agreed upon current add-on (or I wouldn't be against drafting up one for our use) we could use it to export the data and then the site just imports the exported data for later use.
User input Mark-up - This is merely a preference here but toss our BBCode for Textile (http://textile.thresholdstate.com/), or something similar.
m.hordedefenseleague.org - Accessing the HDL site from your favorite mobile device? Just point the browser to the "mobile" (m.site_name) URL and get a 'light' version designed for mobile browsing. Finger size buttons for quick access with access to the commonly used features such as the Shoutbox (or whatever we go with instead) and the Forum.
Widgets - The capability to utilize and customize small chunks of content through-out the site layout, depending on what we decide to go with. It would also be nice to allow for the option whether or not to display them on a per user basis.
Vent Status - Are you a logged in member with a "rank" higher than a "recruit"? You should have the option to be able to display who is on our vent at whim!
Ranks and Permissions - Speaking of "ranks", I would like to see a diverse permission based system which would allow for us to define "Ranks" (which I was thinking would just match the Guild in-game ranks) and based on your rank you would have a set of permissions assigned to your account. That being said, Ranks and Permissions would be separate though so that we could go in and give certain folks other permissions as needed.
Guild Applications - In this day and age we should be able to provide an application process via the website where users don't need to worry about creating a new post, copying the template, pasting the template and then beginning to fill in the information. We could easily provide a more automated presentation for the Application itself.
Beyond looking like a better polished product, it could also allow us to do some checking while they're putting their application together. Specifically, I'm thinking about the application being able to verify the toons they are applying for. If the toon dosn't exist on the WowArmory, it's not likely the right name and we would have to ask for them to provide their right name. This wouldn't stop them from submitting the application but would ask them to verify it (this way, if the WoW Armory was down they could still apply).
Quote from: Vitandus on Fri, 2010-10-08 : 12:23
... James and I were bouncing around the idea of doing this ourselves (Palyth Mark, too, perhaps?) or farming it out to one of the guild hosting companies. The latter costs money but makes things easier; the former allows us to retain full control and, to be honest, gives James and I a sandbox.
So, here's my take on it. I know I talked with Pat some in regards to this topic last night but I thought I would just jot down the short version here for everyone.
Developing our own back-end. Whether it's taking an already established back-end such as phpBB or something similar, if we want to make things work the way we want it's going to take a good bit of time and effort. Yes, it will provide us with the highly desired freedom to do with it (and the data) what we please but it will require a good bit of work to get everything to an ideal state.
Using a Guild site hosting option. There are a handful of options when it comes to these. My personal preference, from testing what they offer and comparing between the groups would be MMO Guild Sites (http://www.mmoguildsites.com/). They provide a lot of what I think we would be looking for functionality wise from our "dream" Guild Site. On the downside, though, we will likely be looking at a loss of freedom with the data. I doubt we would get the desired direct database access (for security and performance reasons). The benefits though would be the minimal setup required and the peace of mind knowing that if we don't have the time to dedicate to the development and maintenance of the site, that the folks providing the service (http://8tasp.com/) have us covered. Design wise, I think we would be good using them - they give "pro" members alot of freedom over the code and CSS of the site layout.
Putting together our own back-end would be ideal in a perfect world, I just don't know how feasible it would be based on the fact that it would wind up being a side-project at best for a fully functional Guild that likely desires to have their services available to them "now" vice "later."
I've been doing quite a bit of PHP lately, as much as I hate it....
I'd probably be able to make such a backend, if someone else feels up to making the majority of the front end (ie: CSS and graphics mostly). But honestly, I don't have alot of time right now and probably wont until first quarter of next year. I'd be more than happy to attempt to throw together something to get it all started and have someone else refine it.
Perhaps there are other guilds who might have members with the proper expertise and time. I feel like if we were to make such a site with the features we want, other guilds would be interested as well. Perhaps interested enough that it could be a joint project.
Quote from: Kotodama on Sat, 2010-10-09 : 00:54
I've been doing quite a bit of PHP lately, as much as I hate it....
Personally, I actually like PHP as compared to some of the other back-end processing languages: such as ASP/ASP.NET (this may be related to my despise of all Microsoft [wd?]). My only hit here is it has been a few years since I've worked on any sort of a major project, like this one would easily become.
Quote from: Kotodama on Sat, 2010-10-09 : 00:54
I'd probably be able to make such a backend, if someone else feels up to making the majority of the front end (ie: CSS and graphics mostly). But honestly, I don't have alot of time right now and probably wont until first quarter of next year. I'd be more than happy to attempt to throw together something to get it all started and have someone else refine it.
Perhaps there are other guilds who might have members with the proper expertise and time. I feel like if we were to make such a site with the features we want, other guilds would be interested as well. Perhaps interested enough that it could be a joint project.
Yeah, I don't know about opening it up to other guilds - this may be an option, but it sounds like we would have a handful of folks here in the Guild with some experience or an interest to participate in the development. Again, though, it also sounds like the issue of a lack of available timing will be present through-out the development. This goes back to my main concern that the Guild would only half a half-available product during the development phase(s) unless we keep our current site or shift to a hosted one. Hell, I wouldn't mind shifting to a capable platform while we take a stab at developing the ideal Guild back-end. We just have to keep the Guild's interest first in mind, IMO.