Website Sneak Peak

[Elvano]

Hey all,

Some of you might have already noticed, but the website has underwent some drastic changes.
No need for alarm, I am currently working on the new website and SF has proven to be a real minefield compared to my safe testing environement.
So eventhough no imediate changes might appear, I am activly working on it.

Still I would like to ask of you to report any weird behavior of the webpage to me.
Also, I try to keep the website running and have added, what seemed to be to me, the most important links in the navigation.
Would it be that I have forgotten any, please also report this to me.

Of the contributors I would like to ask by what username they want to be mentioned in our list (this will also be your username on the webpage).(Please let me know by PM, or feel free to see if I'm around on IRC)
Of the users and supporters I would like to ask some patience. We do not yet know if we will accept user registrations, and I do not have the time to manage any of them at this point.


I thank you all for your cooperation and your patience.
Kind regards,

[Bertram]

Thanks for working on this, Elvano.

Personally, I would change files to downloads as it is more what's users expect.
Once the website will be more stable, what about some news about what happens the last month?

Best regards,

[Elvano]

Once the website will be more stable, what about some news about what happens the last month?

Our new system allows contributors to post news, about their specific contributions, themselves.
This is not only useful for us, but also visitors who, for example, might specificly be intrested in our technical progress.
(Hence I asked you what display-/username you'd all like)
In the near future we might be working with leads, who'd naturally get to manage their team's content and such, but might also be in charge of posting news concerning their general progress.

[Skorpio]

You can simply add my forum name.

[Elvano]

I have fixed the error in our temporarly theme, thus if you happen to see it again, or another, please notify me.

Other than that, I would like to have the prefered usernames of our contributors (and possible the e-mail you'd like to be registered with) by Friday 14th March 2014 at 10:00 AM CET. If I don't have your requests by then I'm just going to assume you'd like me to copy your forum name.

[Bertram]

Ah, btw, could you readd a link to the wiki?

Eager to see the new website in action.

[Danimal]

"Danimal" is fine for me

[Elvano]

Ah, btw, could you readd a link to the wiki?

Before the remake of the website we were actually porting the wiki to Daemon's server.
Due to unforseen circumstances his server is temporarly down, but it should be back up somewhere soon.

One of the reasons for this port was that the old wiki pages contained quite some outdated, incorrect or simply inconsistant information.
On top of that was part of the content that wasn't questionable , I do not want to say poorly, but it was far from optimal written, ordened or formatted.

However, I myself am in favor of linking to the wiki as soon as it can be done, without causing any confusion.
If you know of any pages that are important to be displayed asap, please tell me and I'll see if I can temporarly port their data to the website.

[Bertram]

Oh, I see.
Well, if only one, the code conventions page was very cleverly done and is still needed.

[paul424]

Dude , what you are doing is a mess , take the adivce for the future ; if you are fixing something big in IT , just don't stripe down it to pieces. Just make your local copy and there try to do updates . You could have install locally Apache and the WolfCMS and there experiment with the new site first ...

[Elvano]

Dude, first and all if you want to comment on my work, make sure it's actual constructive.

Secondly, Don't go judging things you're not knowleggable about. What you call a mess is no worse at all than what I found to begin with. It even offers us far greater possibilities.
Sure, we have no decent pages yet.
But guess what! During these last months I've been asking about pages or things that should be on the website, and nobody gave me any clues as to which ones they'd want.
Most information was being ported/rewritten to the new wiki, which is temporarly down, and don't bother, there is really nobody you can blame about that.
I suppose you wouldn't expect me to add some links into the void of cyberspace, as there is nothing to link to.

Basicly, at this point the website is up and running, with a temporarly theme that is stupidly simple and still looks better than the old one.

What was a real mess is to use a clearly unfinished CMS of which nobody in the entire project seems to be knowledgable about.
We're using a complete and far more powerful CMS now, which provides better tools like an actual wysiwyg editor and plenty more.
And yes, that takes up a little more time configuring, but it will and already is worth it.

I've also asked contributors for their username, as in our new system they will be the ones to do the little updates on their tasks. I didn't see you reply to that either.

And thirdly, read everything before complaining about rubbish.
Like I said, I have a local testing environement.

[Bertram]

Hi Elvano,

@Elvano:
Sorry, I didn't answer as for the username, but I don't know whether you wanted mine to be part of it. Anyway, you can go with 'Bertram' if you want to.

@Paul: Yes, please, try to be constructive. I know you can. And sorry, but the way you're using 'Dude' looks condescending to me.

Best regards,

[Elvano]

Oh, I see.
Well, if only one, the code conventions page was very cleverly done and is still needed.

Could it be that you mean the "Code Style Guidelines" page?
There is no "code conventions" page as far as I can see.
I can be overlooking it, in that case I'll take a look at it again, but you'll have to excuse the delay. For some reason OD had already 3 different wikis <.<

[Bertram]

Yes, I meant the code style guidelines.
Sorry, the exact name started to get blurry in my poor mind.

[Elvano]

The page is now accesable from the website, bertram
http://opendungeons.sourceforge.net/?q=node/7

[Bertram]

Thanks Elvano for porting the page.

It will need prettifying but I guess we can do that later on.

[charlie]

Y'know, I'm not a huge fan of how Paul communicates - blunt is understating it.

However.... man does he have a point here. You should DEFINITELY NOT have updated the website until you had a working replacement. What is there now is worthless. It may be better in the future, but it looks a long way from that currently. You should have waited until you had something that was more appropriate.

That you have a local sandbox of your own makes it an even worse judgement to have uploaded it in its current state. You should be posting screenshots of your local version with descriptions for critique, not putting up something live that basically may as well be an "under construction" sign - except even that would be an aesthetic improvement.

I'm not trying to belittle your work but I struggle to see how you felt it it was a good idea to be uploading the current version of your site over a site that, whilst a bit crappy, actually was a half-useful website.

I hope you see it through. If you were to abandon it now you'd actually have damaged the project.

[Bertram]

If we look at it globally, we're not far from having something usable though. Same goes for the code, eh.

Lessons learned from what Charlie, Paul and Elvano said, both on the website and on the project, I hope the team (including myself) will be able to do more prototyping together before uploading stuff.
After all, Open source is also a great place to learn from one's or other's mistakes, right?

I'd say, let's stop arguing there and move on, I think Elvano can already feel the pressure:
@Elvano, you're not far from the end of the upgrade, right?

As for Paul way of writing. I'd say Paul is capable of being mannered, as I could witness on IRC and on most of his answers to me, so I know he is working on that. Again, let's move on.

[charlie]

Good mediating, Bertram!

[Bertram]

Thanks Charlie,

I won't spoil this topic more than necessary, but I must say I've learned a bit of those from you and qubodup.
But it's no politicking, I do think what I wrote.
</off-topic>

[Bertram]

@Elvano

If you need contrustive criticism, here is some, only takes this as possible advice:
- I'd put back the Original logo in the top-center of the page, do you need the file, maybe?
- I'd put the contributors part in the 'About us' page. And in the about us, page, maybe you'd want to add the credits?
- I'd add the favicon back while I see that.
- Maybe you could port the FAQ in the website? https://github.com/Bertram25/OpenDungeo ... nt/FAQ.txt
- The user login password should be placed under the title and be smaller. Ok, it is obvious.
- Do you need a new website background ?

Keep it up!

Best regards,

[Bertram]

Hi again Elvano,

The win32 link given in the Champagne! news has always been wrong. Could you replace it with this one?
(This will be more relevant, and avoid a few possible frustration, I guess)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/opendun ... p/download

I've also seen you've worked on the Downloads page content, it's cool.
There is a typo to 'dependencies', btw.

Thanks!

[Elvano]

The win32 link given in the Champagne! news has always been wrong.

Fixed.
Thanks for pointing that out.

[Danimal]

Elvano, you should also add Paul to the collaborator page, he may be a dick sometimes (dont take it the wrong way) but he has done a lot for the project

[Elvano]

Danimal,
At this point only (some of) the people who already have given me their prefered nickname are already mentioned.
Tomorrow after the deadline I shall add those who didn't give me any preferences by their forum/SF/IRC name and will give everyone their account info.

If, after tomorrow, there are contributors that aren't added, please notify me of this and I'll add them asap. (I didn't get an actual list of all contributors but I'd hate to skip anyone)