Gearing up for the new website

[Adanorcil]

Since last night's meeting (minutes forthcoming shortly), everyone is convinced that TR would benefit greatly from having a CMS-based website and that such a thing should be implemented ASAP, especially for the embarrassing front pages of TR's website. This thread is where we get our shit together on all this.


The quick story
For those of you who were not present yesterday, a mockup website was created on Drupal. The main reason for choosing Drupal was that it was open source, considerably mainstream, and highly extensible, which means we should be able to add a lot of functionality (even custom functionality if need be) as we see fit.

A test set-up of this website was uploaded on my personal host. Since I can't just make this publically available, you can PM me for a test account if you absolutely want to try it yourself. Otherwise, be satisfied with some of these screenshots (for a note on lay-out and visuals, see below):

Front page with news

Same basic content page (actual text, other content and sidebar content obviously not filled in)

Gallery overview page

Individual gallery

Lightbox view for screenshots etc.


Currently this CMS allows us to do a bunch of things, including, but not limited to:

• Manage all sorts of content without requiring FTP access, HTML knowledge or people with technical skills. Anyone with the right permissions can create, edit and update site content from within their browser.
• Manage images and image galleries. Automatically create various thumbnails. Display image in a nice gallery where needed. Upload images or reference previous uploaded images. Automatically display recent images on the main page etc.
• Great extensibility: endless custom content types (e.g. "Wanted" ad), custom display modes (e.g. show things of this type with these properties on this page), ...

Look
The focus is on speed here. It's generally agreed that in all the known universes, it's impossible to make something worse than what we have now. Therefore, the primary goal was to simply have something that looks reasonably professional enough to replace the current site, whereas smaller changes can be done later. Things like fonts, backgrounds images and where and how to use them, ... will all be settled in the near future and may be discussed at the next Skype meeting, along with basic content.

Timeline
The ideal moment to get all this working is four years ago. More concretely, we'd all like to have the launch of this site coincide with the release of either the next alpha or the next version of mainland, which we would very much like to do by January next year, so as to create a spirit of "new year, new start".

As it stands, the current website is basically ready to be uploaded. Basically only a database would have to be created and the files uploaded for this to work. For these reasons, it seems logical to get our heads together (specifically people with FTP access and presumably also Garfield) to see what's possible, how and how fast.

[Aeven]

Good work.

I think it shouldn't be too difficult to salvage what we want or need. The forums should be de-linked from the main page, and receive a CSS update and whatever else makes sense to make it stylistically similar.

[Swiftoak]

Also our logotype should be discussed, as that one is currently a placeholder. I have a really unhealthy bias for Magic Cards (not in the way it's currently used in all-caps), only because it sorta has been ouir visual identity for awhile. Adan raises some valuable arguments against, like that we sort of need tog et away from the "Elder Scrolls" trademark and more our own. It's a taste thing, but I'd like to talk about it becasue branding is important. Fonts too a lesser extent, but as Adan mentioned this can be done later. There are a bunch of issues (like thge empty space on the right bar for the other pages that aren't the frontpage), but again we can address those in the next meeting.

Here is a bunch of quick typefaces I threw up.

[Yeti]

Are we going to be able to convert all the old forum threads and posts to the new website? I'd hate to lose all the history and discussions that have taken place here over the years.

Regardless, the new website is looking great!

Edit: I like the second logo.

[Aeven]

My personal favourite is the last one. I also really like the little triangle in the mockup. For a smaller logo, might I suggest the big T & R with a triangle between those?

[Haplo]

To steer the conversation in a different direction for a moment, I think a very important decision needs to be agreed upon here. With this update, are we agreeing that the forum and the website should no longer be tied to the same template and headers?

If we do agree to this, it will mean much simpler jobs of editing the site and/or forum in the future, and it will mean easier jobs of adding new skins to the forum (think great house skins that seem to interest a lot of people).

[Swiftoak]

Yes, I think that was the point. When Adan adn I were fleshing the mainpage, we took into consideration you saying that Massey/her dad were still working on the forum/database stuff so we wanted to make sure that it didn't interfere with that work.

There *are* ways we can integrate the forums back into the drupal page, but that's something that hasn't been discussed and is sorta moot at this stage of the game. I would love great House skins, but also a default skin that puts the current forums inside a container that is similar to the mainpage would be nice, and wouldn't require too much CSS/header editing.

[Haplo]

but also a default skin that puts the current forums inside a container that is similar to the mainpage would be nice, and wouldn't require too much CSS/header editing.

phpBB forums use themes which include a lot of "this box should be this color" settings. So we shouldn't have too much trouble accomplishing this. There might even be themes out there that are similar enough.

[Adanorcil]

To steer the conversation in a different direction for a moment, I think a very important decision needs to be agreed upon here. With this update, are we agreeing that the forum and the website should no longer be tied to the same template and headers?

If we do agree to this, it will mean much simpler jobs of editing the site and/or forum in the future, and it will mean easier jobs of adding new skins to the forum (think great house skins that seem to interest a lot of people).

In an ideal world, the forum, website and everything else would be managed by the same software. This would have many advantages. Unfortunately, this would mean transferring the old forum content to a new system, reliably integrating the old PHPBB forums in to the new system or setting up a whole new forum and carrying across relevant content. Each of these solutions is more or less possible and worth considering, but they would all take quite a bit of effort and time.

Given the urgency of having a new website, I think we'll all agree that we shouldn't let this slow us down. De facto this means that we'll be disconnecting the forum and the rest of the website for the time being, which does indeed have some advantages of its own. So to answer Yeti's question: for the immediate future nothing will happen to the forum at all.

Giving the forum a new lick of paint to make it fit better with the new website is of course possible and not hard at all.



Some thoughts on logos:

I personally think we have a little more creative potential than basically writing out our name in one or another font. Not that we'd have to particularly much more than that, because it's easy to overdo it, but little details can go a long way.

If we want to emulate Morrowind's style at all, it would be obvious to emulate the same style of aligning the letters at the top with larger initial and final letters extending down. Since these letters in our case both happen to be Ts, which naturally do a bit of 'framing' by virtue of their vertical bar, I think this is a visual element not to be disparaged.

In the quick placeholder logo I had there, I included a little triangle for two reasons. The first is basically what I said two triangles above. The second is that TR's name is in fact completely wrong, since we only deal with Morrowind and I felt it was fitting to somehow include a small reference to Morrowind to offset the name.

[Aeven]

I actually really like your placeholder logo

[Lady Nerevar]

I really, really like the mockup Ada. This all gets a go-ahead as far as my non-voting ass is concerned.

[immortal_pigs]

Here are some ideas on salvaging posts from the forum for the new site. It's just a suggestion.

[Yeti]

I just want to make myself clear that I don't want to see any posts deleted during this process. It's not really their modding value that I care about, but the memories and history of Tamreil Rebuilt they preserve.

With that said, I completely support increasing the visibility of more productive posts, which I believe is the main point that IP is suggesting:

Nothing needs to be permanently deleted. It’s about finding what you need to find more quickly. Some threads may no longer be relevant in 2013-2014,they don’t have to be deleted, but they shouldn’t be in your face either.

[immortal_pigs]

I just found out that if you click on your own profile there's a link called "user attachment control panel", which lists every single thing you've ever uploaded to the forums. So, in line with salvaging the forums and reorganizing resources (pdf's, screenshots, documents), people can just click on their own "user attachment control panel" and use their own discretion to see which files are worth salvaging.

[Haplo]

imm_pigs, the new site is just a new site, not a new forum. We will continue to use this forum until such time as our phpBB3 version is ready, at which point we will roll the entire database over to it, losing zero posts. It's not possible/feasible to do what you are suggesting and just pick and choose various posts/threads/even forums, anyway.

[Adanorcil]

Alright people, this old body of ours is wearing a bit thin. Clock's ticking.

This show is ready to go on the road. The site is basically waiting to be uploaded. A couple of throwaway lines for a couple of pages obviously still have to be written, but the technical setup of a new site is a far more urgent and time consuming task than any of that. We shouldn't be dilly-dallying any longer than strictly necessary.

Since I was the one who primarily built the test set-up of the new site and have set up a couple of Drupal platforms in the past, I'm willing to do the work, but I'll need help from a few other people. Either I'm gonna need FTP access or I'm gonna have to be able to cooperate closely for an extended period of time (probably a day or two) with someone who does. Preferably both.

I am on vacation from now until the 1st. In that time, I will try to dedicate my every waking hour (flexible concept) to being available for this. Therefore, please respond ASAP.

Concrete tasks that need to be done:

One or several backups need to be made of the current site and its databases. Normally speaking none of this should be touched in the switch, but "normally speaking" is asking for it. We take no chances.

Setting up a way to completely close off/redirect the current site for the duration of the switch. A fake index page or redirect would probably suffice.

Uploading files and directories. Creating a new database for the front page site (if need be) or importing a small MySQL database that is still mostly empty, but saves some time on recreating a bunch of configuration stuff (preferred).

Testing, testing, testing.

[Thrignar Fraxix]

If you are ready to get the ball rolling on the front, then more power to you. The only one I can think of that is capable of helping though is Haplo, unless we want to just give you FTP access and trust your skills (which frankly I'm fine with)

Do we actually have content though? (lol jk. If we have a shiny new webpage, then a simple call for content from modders will have us swamped in no time flat)

[Swiftoak]

You have my vote Adan. There should probably be a news post forewarning potential downtime as we iron out the kinks.

A new year is approaching, let's kick this pig.

[Sload]

It seems a lot more convenient to just give Adanorcil FTP access rather than having to have multiple people across oceans from each other coordinating on this. It's not like he's going to turn our website into goatse or anything.

[Haplo]

I had hoped to spend a lot more time on this post than I have atm (it's 4AM thanks to an awful time updating TR_Data tonight), but luckily I already talked with TF recently about a lot of this, so forgive the conversational tone of a lot of these things that needed to be added to the list of "Concrete Things" we need to take care of before implementation.

First, Adan can you post the link to your website here (I missed it while skimming for it just now, if it is already posted somewhere)? I want to begin by saying I disagree with (my interpretation of) your order in the broadest of terms: you put "test, test, test" at the end, and I think we should test things in the mockup and through conjecture first before implementation. I'd rather do some work now and switch over to a more complete/functional website than switch over now and spend another however many months fixing/testing.

I'm not talking about things like FAQ or pretty screenshots here; those are easy enough to procure in a short time regardless of where we are with the new site. Instead, I'm talking specifically about some of the following:

How are we going to actually do the switch (read: logistics)?
Will we be renaming the current website directory from public_html to public_html.old and starting over with a new public_html folder with a fresh drupal install?
How will we handle things where the forum and the website are linked? Such as galleries, screenshots, claims maps, the claims browser (which relies on claims maps being at specific URLs, though we can change the URLs in the code probably, but does drupal have unique URLs for different pages or does it handle it all within single pages? You know how some websites have tons of different pages but they're all on "main page.com" sometimes. If that's the case then we would need to either remove the entire claims browser or rewrite that part)

Precisely which FAQs and tutorials should we keep? What new ones do we need, precisely?
Are we going to keep our various galleries (I think yes)? How will we implement them in the new website? Will we merge screenshots and Concept Art galleries into one large Galleria where people can choose different albums to view?

How will we implement that galleria at all? Is there a drupal module that comes with the standard package? Do we need an extension? etc.

What about the header of the forum that mimics the header of the website? Will we just remove the forum skin and use subsilver2 again? Will that even work with our claims browsers? This hasn't been discussed or tested at all before, I don't think. At least not in the past 10 years since we made the forums, anyway. Or will we just leave the old header and just have it link to the old site? On that subject, if we do that, we'd have to leave the old site in tact and just have (maybe just the main page? while other "old" pages stay fully operational) the old site redirect to the new one, but that means the new site won't be tamriel-rebuilt.org/ but some alteration of it. Some integral claims functions rely on various parts of the website remaining, such as claims maps and possibly the accurate map. Less integral things where the forums and website are merged include the screenshots gallery, the FAQs, the concept art galleries, and web-based tutorials.

Adan mentioned in his post (I saw briefly while skimming) databases more than once. How are we going to reconcile the phpbb2/3 database that we have now with a drupal database for the website? Is it possible? Even as admins we don't have real/functional access to the main/actual database our forum uses; that's still somehow garfield

I think this isn't as big an issue as I figured during my mad spree of responses to TF via IRC. I think we can just maybe import a database like you mentioned into phpMyAdmin or something to save a lot of tedious time/work. At this point I'm thinking we will just have two separate databases; one for the forum and one for the website. This is the quickest method for successfully changing to a new site, I think.


Again, forgive me if this is piecemeal and/or scattered and/or woefully incomplete; it's most likely all three and then some, but it's now 4:30AM :-/

Regarding whenever we actually get to the point of implementation, we can probably get you access to the FTP without too much difficulty and then you and I (and possibly garfield for reference if need be) can set up a day or time to work in tandem to do all the moving and uploading and setting up. And yes we will of course announce this beforehand, Swiftoak. Won't want people to freak out too much

[Adanorcil]

I want to begin by saying I disagree with (my interpretation of) your order in the broadest of terms: you put "test, test, test" at the end, and I think we should test things in the mockup and through conjecture first before implementation.

Well, obviously by "testing" I mean testing the site as it runs on our server. Naturally we can't assume that just because it runs smoothly in one place it does so in another. (Though unless this server runs on stone age technology, that shouldn't be too hard.)

The testing of functionality itself is why I made the test site weeks ago. It's all been checked pretty rigorously and in fact you were there at the Skype meeting when everyone was editing pages and uploading pictures and TF was posting Les Miserables. Any functionality we might wish for in the future can be added modularly later on and can be tested at that time on the development site or elsewhere.

Will we be renaming the current website directory from public_html to public_html.old and starting over with a new public_html folder with a fresh drupal install?

To get a definitive answer on this, I'd need to look at the file structure we got going. This is basically the preparatory stage I mentioned.

However, if there's no significant problems, we should just be able to install the CMS in the same folder. Unless there's some really unfortunate coincidence where there's two files under the same path with the same name (unlikely), the two should just be able to sit next to each other. Drupal has its codebase and its database and the old stuff does too. Normally speaking, the two should just be able to go their own merry ways in isolation. Eventually we'd just have to tell the domain to point to the Drupal index page instead of to the old one.

How will we handle things where the forum and the website are linked?

In the scenario described above, if someone still tries to edit the old site through the forum, that change will go through, but since the site isn't publicly accessible anymore, that's kind of a non-issue.

Such as galleries, screenshots

The new website has functionality for all that and functionality which is significantly more advanced than what we have now. Picture uploading, browsing in a library of uploaded pictures, choosing how to display them, grouping them in various galleries etc.

claims maps, the claims browser (which relies on claims maps being at specific URLs, though we can change the URLs in the code probably,

If we leave the old site (under which I'm also counting the forum and the claims browser) intact, its functionality should remain the same.

but does drupal have unique URLs for different pages or does it handle it all within single pages? You know how some websites have tons of different pages but they're all on "main page.com" sometimes. If that's the case then we would need to either remove the entire claims browser or rewrite that part)

Every page in Drupal has a unique (and furthermore customizable) path. However, these are sorta virtual paths, there's no actual html file or something sitting under that folder.

How will we implement that galleria at all? Is there a drupal module that comes with the standard package? Do we need an extension? etc.

The test website already has all this functionality. In this case, it's a combination of a couple of Drupal modules.

[Sload]

The website that Ada made is clearly functional. Those of us who were present at the beginning of the skype meeting all agreed that it should be uploaded immediately. We can add in the extraneous content pages like the tutorials and utilities (we could even make a better namegen) as soon as the website is functional. Drupal even makes it so that a lot more people can participate in that, making it go a lot faster. None of us today felt that it was necessary to have things like which tutorials we are going to transfer over figured out before Ada uploads the website to TR's serve.

[Adanorcil]

New thread coming up in a sec.