Upgrading the website: Gameplan!

Discussion in 'Empire News' started by Aikar, Apr 9, 2014.

  1. Good news everyone! As it's been mentioned many times, updating the forums to the latest version is going to be a huge task, as many things were done that shouldn't of been done around the supporter system and template modifications.

    Forum upgrade has always been on my to do list after Dragon Tombs.. and most likely Credits.

    However, we have a change of plans! As previously announced, Hatorijr joined the dev team.

    However, his career has been around web-development more so than Java Development, so we are pleased to announce that Hatori will be switching his development role to lead website development instead of working on our game server!

    What does this mean?

    • Wiki Overhaul!
      We will be migrating the wiki off of the forum system, and moving it into the same platform that powers our Blog and Landing Pages (WordPress)

      Why? Because it is better in every way:
      • Cleaner Content Layout: We can use mobile friendly responsive themes
      • SEO: Better system for helping search engines see the content and gets us more new members!
      • Better editor: Easier to write content and display it like we want
      • Better Extendability: we can develop plugins for this much simpler than templates for the wiki...
      • Better Navigation: Categories work much more naturally, letting us have multiple heirarchys and easy to navigate Categories, including tagging.
    • Website improvements
      Misc improvements that are asked can finally be done quicker
    • Website Upgrade!
      Hatori will be investigating and working on upgrading our forums, so that it can be done quicker instead of waiting for me to be free. This means we will receive the latest update and a new theme quicker than expected!
    • Plus more...
      Who knows what ways we can get the site improved, but letting him take the leadership role on this can let things get done quicker on both fronts.
    Thanks Hatori :)
  2. Can't wait for the updates! :)
  3. Sounds great :)
  4. All sounds really awesome Aikar! thanks, and thank you Hatori, bring the magic. :)
  5. Sounds Good! :D
  6. In other news. Just noticed the death messages on your signature are missing "by". Is that fixed lol?
  7. Finally an update forum that is for the website and not in-game!
    Good luck, Hatori!
  8. Great to see all the improvement's keep up the good work, and congrats Hatori I am sure you will do a great job.
  9. Oh yes! I literally cannot wait for this update! I've been wanting this over DT for a long time! For me, a group/companies website has always been very important, so for new players like me this should be good! :D
    Good luck Hatori, I'm sure you'll do a great job!
  10. just tried,
    Unbenannt.png
    looks okay :p
    paddy86788 likes this.
  11. All good news, but I do have my concerns about the wiki part.
    In particular, I find the blog's overall appearance to be pretty 'meh.'
    I mentioned in the rollout thread that it seemed utterly disconnected from the EMC forums, and that it should at least carry over the same aesthetic (dark grays) as these boards. That was largely shut down because you wanted to keep the blog somehow "separate" and distinct from EMC - which I can understand, vaguely, although in practice I'm not seeing it in the content.
    But the wiki is very EMC-specific, what with custom mobs and promo items. There's no way around that. It should not feel disconnected from the forums here, since for all intents and purposes this [is] the EMC website. I feel very strongly that the wiki should reflect that.

    Mind you I'm not saying that the move is bad, just that the aesthetic should remain consistent despite moving to a new platform.

    (And that background is still making me nauseated).
  12. Yay for the site update. But I'm not sure about the wiki. The blog and landing pages are good for having hosted on something other than the main site. But the wiki should, in my opinion, integrate perfectly with the main site.

    I honestly don't see anything wrong with the current wiki system, an it wouldn't be too hard to change it around a bit to suit EMC's needs.
  13. Yay, finally! :D That's great :) Looking forward to it then
  14. What are you all using currently to design the website? HTML5/CSS3?
  15. The new wiki will match the site. This update relates more directly to the layout than the actual design.
    Kephras, 607 and NZScruffy like this.
  16. Well I wouldn't say directly matches site, but we can get close. I did purchase a theme close to the websites now in use at http://starlis.com

    We can temporarily use that, and then when we get the Xenforo 1.3 update out, design a new WordPress theme to match the forum theme, then it will be integrated.

    And we can tweak the theme to bring it closer to the EMC site even during the intermediate phase.
  17. Of course nothing can perfectly match. Especially since we will end up doing some changes to the site theme with the upgrade.
    Point being the wiki will be intended to be more part of the website than the blog. Right?
    607 likes this.
  18. I honestly think this would be a terrible idea. From the thread, I got the idea that the blog was of more general minecraft stuff, but the wiki is specific to EMC. And so, it should really stay on the core EMC site.