A Land Far Away's Website, 2015-2016

[FoamBats4All]

Could hear them out now.

No update on the new website front. I've been too busy with actual work to give much time to it.

[FoamBats4All]

Our main blocker on website work is a lack of tool to convert from phpBB 3.0 to IPS 4.1 (as mentioned above). One was released for phpBB 3.1 to IPS 4.1 on Thursday (hence the reason for the forums going down yesterday to update to 3.1), and I've been working with it. Unfortunately it has some bugs in it that prevent us from using it right away, but it allows me to continue work in other areas and shows that we can finally get started soon. Invision has been dragging their feet about this for quite a while, but now that I have code to work on I've been fixing their bugs and sending in bug reports, which should hopefully encourage fixes.

Anyway, some progress updates.

Staff Directory: IPS 4.1 brings us a staff directory. Nothing fancy but it lets us list out different groups, such as who DMs what server, who our admins are, etc. I have some feature requests sent in here, as it's nearly great for us, but isn't 100% ideal as-is.


Theme: You see part of the theme in the image above (not just the "staff directory" post above, but in an earlier post) too. The background image won't be that purple thing it is right now, but instead will be based on the forum you are viewing -- art or screenshots of in-game content. When you are browsing the BG forums, you might see the city peeking through the headers, or maybe an Underdark passage. When viewing the TSM forums you will instead get wintery mountains, or the city itself, or maybe the dirty surrounds of Rivermoot. When not on a specific forum you'll instead be able to choose between 6 or so mixed or unrelated backgrounds, or can choose one of the servers as your main theme. There will also be other minor edits, such as the "A Land Far Away" text in the upper left corner being replaced with our logo. Anyway, some small work done there.

Bug Tracker: We are moving away from Drupal (and possibly the wiki) when we switch, so I've been working to getting some of our Drupal modules mirrored in those systems. A list of systems to complete will be listed at the end of this post (and I encourage requests). Anyway, I spent an hour or so doing the bug tracker last night. We have categories for the different servers, plus a sections for ACR/ABR and the website.

Users can follow different sections or specific issues, issues can be assigned to people, featured, labeled as feature pending/requests or bugs/closed/complete, etc. You can filter as pictured above to only look for certain things. There I have a filter saved to not show closed/complete bugs. I'd like to be able to filter to tasks assigned to you and some other filters, but that would require actual scripting.

Some replacements are still needed. These are my notes, and

Critical replacements (required before conversion):

• Application module. Allow people to send in requests to become a player/DM.
• Log query/viewer. Tools for DMs.
• Server tools. Allow rebooting the server/disconnecting players/purging vaults remotely and the like.

Minor replacements (can be done after):

• News/article system (may just use system default one with some tweaks).
• Library module for character journals, etc. May or may not just keep this as a forum. Content in IPS searches across different applications fairly easily, but people may still prefer forums.
• Database for skills/classes/feats to replace wiki content.
• Pages to replace some wiki articles (player manual, etc.).
• Online viewer count widget.
• Voting module. See Gonz.0's post above.
• NPC/area resource databases. Public ones and DM ones. Wiki-style interface. Lets people see content like our Cloak Wood area, while BG DMs have an additional section to put in DM notes that the public can't see.

TL;DR: Things are progressing again.

[HEEGZ]

Very cool. Thanks for the update. I was wondering what happened to my age old tan theme but can put up with this generic one until things wrap up.

[FoamBats4All]

Very cool. Thanks for the update. I was wondering what happened to my age old tan theme but can put up with this generic one until things wrap up.

Unfortunately 3.0 themes aren't working with 3.1. It wouldn't be hard to redo the tan theme, I'd just rather spend my time working on the new site.

If you or anyone else wants to do the (likely not hard) CSS edits to bring back the tan theme, let me know.

[HEEGZ]

I'm not stuck on the old tan one, though it would be nice to have something not white and blue to use. Is there a setting somewhere I missed maybe? Or are there some pre-made templates we can throw in to choose from? I haven't messed with BB code in ages, so my memory is foggy.

I'm definitely with you on the work on new content stuff. Just wondering if there was something quick and dirty we could plug in besides the default view.

[FoamBats4All]

If you find a good one in the phpBB styles database I'll install it.

[Zelknolf]

I think Latte is the closest to our old board styles?

Coffee banner is a little weird, I guess, though this is a temporary thing, and it's indeed "not blue".

[FoamBats4All]

Worked with the IPS guys lately and quite a few things are fixed. The only thing left, I think, is a bug in the core product that won't be fixed for some weeks. It's a minor issue though with linking back to quoted posts (in IPS you can click a button that takes you to the post that was quoted).

This weekend I'll be doing some more testing, development, and work to get us transitioned. We'll be missing some minor features at the start (seeing who is online from the website, for example) but those can come up soon after the transition.

[FoamBats4All]

I think Latte is the closest to our old board styles?

Coffee banner is a little weird, I guess, though this is a temporary thing, and it's indeed "not blue".

I installed that one and gave it a try. Unfortunately it had some broken parts and I don't think it's worth fixing it.