Revolutionary Games Website's Thread

Good work, though I have two suggestions:

1. In the "How do I get involved?" faq question, in the end, it is mentioned that people with ideas are also needed. Although I don't want to sound harsh, the reality is we don't really need any more "idea guys" and IMO that part should be removed.

2. A lot of the concept art in the gallery may make people think we actually have some sort of concrete game, with a 3D rendering engine and such, so it should at least be mentioned that those pictures are only concept art.

So I think we need to discuss the potential for a new website server. Sorry for continually going on about this, but I feel it's something that should have been sorted a while ago and will save a lot of effort later.

My main gripe at the moment is that the only person who can do anything to the website directly is me, and in no way am I an expert in web management. The current website is hosted on the same server as several others, which is why I'm unwilling to simply give out the login details. Neither can I move the other domains to another server, because they were the ones it was set up with and consequently are tied to it. The RG domain, however, can be transferred to another server, along with all its assets. Whether this has to be the same hosting service as before I'm unsure.

Obviously the controversial point here is money. Setting up another server will cost more than hosting the domain on an existing one, and that money's got to come from somewhere. I would actually be willing to pay for pretty much all of it, similar to the current domain, but my parents . . . well, let's just say they aren't very supportive of this idea. Thus, it has to be some sort of collaborative effort. Either the major team members all pitch in with something, or we set up a donation service. The latter could potentially clash with the ethos of doing this whole thing for nothing, so I'm interested to hear what everyone else has to say. Nick and Jacob C I know are supportive (Jacob being particularly adamant that it should involve Dogecoin in some way, not necessarily as bad an idea as it sounds). It would also give fans a little hope, because they've been chomping at the bit to give us some form of monetary support for years - I'm confident there'd be no problem with getting enough this way. However, all of this would have to funnel into one person's account, as they'd have to be the one to set up the initial server and the payment system.

The way I see it, there are only advantages to this. Everyone with the login can work on the website, future releases can be hosted there (the major problem with 0.2.2 was that Dropbox was quickly overwhelmed and fans were soon complaining that they couldn't access it or had to pay for a premium account on Mediafire or whatever the other one was), it can be updated more frequently should a new website design be implemented which allows this, said new design can be worked on more easily, and, most importantly, it means I don't have to do anymore work on it. :lol: 

So what are everyone's thoughts?

Great! So will this new upgraded website have accounts like the forums?

As I understand it, there'll only be accounts for mods and team leads to post updates, similar to the devblog but concerning all areas of development through the team leads themselves.

Oliveriver wrote:

...

I think, despite the benefits you mentioned, there are also some drawbacks we need to consider.

What do we do if we receive more money than we require for the servers? Whom to we transfer the money to? In what country?

Principle-wise, it does take away from the game being developed for free and being entirely voluntary, although to be fair it's only to maintain a website server.

It also creates a sense of obligation between us and the donors, which contradicts the voluntary nature of the project. We would be obligated, I believe, to do work for the sake of the people who donated, and that can be both a good and bad thing.

Having said that, I am still tentatively in favour of accepting donations for a website server, but for the above reasons I would advise finding alternative solutions if possible.

Those are all valid arguments, although most of them refer to the use of a donation system. As has been discussed in the Skype chat, a server would in theory not cost enough to justify taking donations, when it wouldn't be difficult to muster the necessary money between us. However, this does still leave these two problems:

NickTheNick wrote:

Whom to we transfer the money to? In what country?

which are probably the main reasons why we're having trouble deciding on anything.

It occurs to me that, since we're an open-source project, and since our project is already on GitHub, GitHub Pages may be exactly what we're looking for. Our assets SVN and releases can go on SourceForge (they have no storage limit), and then someday when we have something like Travis set up for continuous builds, it'll be easy to upload binaries to SourceForge, and update links on our website. All automagically.

It might be a little more complicated, but since there won't be any money issues, we can get started on the move right away.

Interesting. However, there are a few things to consider:

Can domains be transferred between the current host service for the website (Bluehost) and GitHub pages?
Can we upload files in a similar way to the current hosting? The main website itself is an HTML document and the podcast relies on audio files uploaded to the domain.
How much traffic can it cope with, in terms of visits and release downloads?
Is it compatible with website architecture software that may be used in the future (ExpressionEngine was one considered) and HTML scripting of new web pages?

See transferring domain.

A GH Pages website is probably much easier to modify than the current setup -- the way it works is you have a branch on your repo called gh-pages, and github automatically publishes that branch as a website (so yes, we could upload podcasts quite easily).

GitHub itself is pretty darn robust and loads of people are already using gh-pages, so there's nothing to worry about in terms of their capacity. If we use SourceForge for release downloads, well, they've been hosting loads of projects much bigger than ours for many years, so again, nothing to worry about. HTML scripting is going to be a piece of cake, GitHub is designed for code collaboration after all.

As for ExpressionEngine and ilk, I'm not too sure we'll really need those if we're using gh-pages, but it should be possible with some fiddling (I'm not too sure how EE for example generates pages, so I can't say anything definitive).

Edit: Oh wait -- since with gh-pages you can keep a working copy of the site on your computer, you can use whatever page-generation tools you want on your home machine, and then just push to GitHub when ready. So yes, it integrates well with EE and so on, at least, if all they do is generate pages that can then function as a standalone website.

So Moopli's put the current website files on GitHub pages at this URL - http://revolutionary-games.github.io/Thrive/website/ , for the moment just a temporary version. The actual domain transfer will have to be worked out between Moopli and I, but should be possible. There are, then, just a couple of points to work on:

Firstly, the podcasts aren't yet hosted there due to their size. I'm pretty sure this shouldn't be a problem, as the XML file iTunes is directed to for the podcast information can have the links changed, but that still leaves the question of where exactly they should be hosted. The same goes for the images.

Secondly, it's been the aim for a while to get a more dynamic website up to take the place of the current static HTML files. I won't go over the reasons for this again as they've been explained in detail a page or two back on this thread, but instead we need to work out exactly how we'd go about this. By dynamic website structure, I mean something like Wordpress, which uses a blog form along with static but editable pages to host content which multiple people could theoretically contribute to. Wordpress is a definite option, although it doesn't allow for total visual customisation (even with the Weaver 2 plugin). ExpressionEngine is the alternative, although we'd have to be using the core version, unless we found a way to raise a few hundred dollars between us for the full version. It would require HTML scripting skills, unlike the majority of Wordpress, but allows for greater control of appearence and structure. So the decision comes down to which should be chosen, and then how to work with it to recreate the current website or even create an entirely new design.

EDIT: Also, it's just occured to me - what are we going to do about the Thrive email, currently processed through the server and connected to a Gmail account?

Oliveriver wrote:

more dynamic website up to take the place of the current static HTML files.

We could use Jekyll

I took a look at getting our layouts working with jekyll, and it does seem quite workable. Good idea.

We could host the website images on imgur.

Big post, I may be getting ahead of myself a bit here

Hey all, I'm new here and was told the website could use some management. I'd love to be that guy, and have some ideas that could bring a lot more traffic to the website and these forums. And keep that traffic here! I make websites for a living, so this is right down my alley. Here's some of my work from the past few months so you can get an idea of what I'm capable of:

(My account being less then 7 days stops me from posting external links. I will update this as soon as that restriction is lifted)

http://micrometalsarnoldpowdercores.com (Symfony2, custom everything)
http://femolution.com (WordPress)
http://christiecbs.com (WordPress)
http://snyderlangston.com (CMS Made Simple)

First off, I want to distill the features of the website I found while reading through this thread down to a discreet list. Please let me know if I'm missing something:

• Podcasts
  
• Translations
  
• Responsiveness (i.e. works and looks good on phones, tablets, etc.)
  
• Release listings
  
• Dynamic content (i.e. a blog)
  

Hosting

It also seems like you guys are looking for hosting. I can handle that with my DigitalOcean account. I can give all people who need it FTP/SSH access which should allow them to do anything even if I go awol. But unless there's a pressing reason for the site to be moved, like someone is losing money, I say just keep it where it is for now.

Oh, and hosting will only cost me a few dollars a month. Like, less than $5. No sweat, and I need the server for my own work anyway, so its closer to free then anything.

Design

Back on topic, what I plan on doing if all this seems good to you guys is mock up a new design for the site in Photoshop that takes the current site's aesthetic and making it look new and work better. I imagine this will be an iterative process and I'll be relying on you guys for input!

Technology

For a technical perspective, here's what I plan to use:

• WordPress as a CMS/Framework, you just can't beat it at the moment and it's where my expertise lies (I can do practically anything with it, just a function of time and effort).
  
• Blog users. WordPress supports any number of users so each of the members that could be blogging can have their own identity under the Thrive/Revolutionary logo.
  
• Responsive design. I can design the site so as you move to smaller resolutions the site will reformat itself to best use up the available space.
  
• Code status, releases, bug lists, etc. I can use the GitHub API (developer[dot]github[dot]com/v3/) to pull data from our repository.
  
• Podcasting. There are services out there that will host and maintain the RSS feed for us or we can do it ourselves if the bandwidth isn't too bad. WordPress can handing podcasting out of the box (i.e. it generates the RSS/ATOM feed of each episode that your users can consume with iTunes or whatever).
  

Well that's all for now! I gotta get back to work.

Sounds amazing! Thanks for taking this up!

Most of it seems pretty much correct, and your portfolio shows exactly the sort of thing we want (and, not to mention, they all look awesome).

dontpanic wrote:

It also seems like you guys are looking for hosting. I can handle that with my DigitalOcean account. I can give all people who need it FTP/SSH access which should allow them to do anything even if I go awol. But unless there's a pressing reason for the site to be moved, like someone is losing money, I say just keep it where it is for now.

The reason we need the site moved is that it's currently on a server with some other unrelated stuff and I'd prefer it if it can be separated from it. I'm also the only one who can access it at the moment, which is probably the biggest problem of all. We're intending to use GitHub pages for hosting, which is a free addon to the GitHub repository we already have - it should work adequately with Wordpress I expect. The actual domain is the only thing left to transfer, but that'll require me to work alongside someone (probably you or Moopli) during the process.

WordPress does not work with GitHub pages (no database). And I've use it before and... well... its not great. You only get static pages, which is fine for some basic information, but not for a full-fledged dynamic website.

Just my 2c. We don't have to use WordPress, but I think the extra capabilities could be a great asset. Again, I'm new here so its really hard for me to guess what we need heh. If a static site is good enough, I can whip up a design for that no problem.

Settled then, so we'll move away from gh-pages. That was always a temporary fix (and it was never actually live, the revolutionarygamesstudio domain still points to Oliver's server). Your ideas all sound great, go ahead :D!

More thoughts:

1. The wiki is pretty much abandoned. Part of the reason is that it deosn't really fit into anyone's workflow, and the other part is that it was a victim of its early success, and now kinda just holds old stuff we don't wanna bother with.
   
2. The devblog on this forum is nowadays pretty much an admin announcements system.
   
3. I, and possibly others, would like a soapbox where we can talk about interesting development-related things.
   
4. As my several failed blog attempts can attest, WordPress is very good for not only blogging, per se, but writing up articles on things.
   
5. So that pretty much clinches it, and adds another feature to account for. So, not only small blog snippets, but long articles.
   

Great! I'll get started with a preliminary design. It will probably take me a few days, maybe a week depending on my RL work load. I've only got a few hours in the evenings to work on it.

If the current wiki is abandoned, then this is a great opportunity to roll our own. I have no issues with using free services (like this forum and the wiki) but why not host our own when we can. Its also an easy way to start clean!

Today I'll get the current site transferred to my server (I think I can grab the files from GitHub... haven't checked...) so we can at least switch over the hosting soon. I'll also get a vanilla WP install going for testing.

I'm back from my campin' trip! I'll be getting the test site up soon!

---

Alright I've got a vanilla WordPress setup going. The only way to browse to it for now is to add the following entry to your hosts file:

Code:

104.131.153.179      dev.revolutionarygamesstudio.com

Whoever owns/manages the domain can add an A-Record that points the dev subdomain to the IP shown above. If you need help with this just lemme know!

There's nothing special about the site yet, but it's a good place to get familiar with what WordPress can do on a general level. I'll also be building out a custom theme in the coming weeks using this dev site.

PM me for admin credentials. I have no issue with giving them out to anyone that wants to fool around with it, but once we get serious I'll be changing the password =).

A quick search for managing A-Records suggest they shouldn't be too difficult to set up (after creating the new subdomain), but it'll have to wait until tomorrow right now. We do actually have an abandoned subdomain, beta.revolutionarygamesstudio.com (originally used for another test website), but I'd have no problem with pointing it to your version instead if that's easier.

Well, Jetpack needs the site to be publically accessible, no pressure though :p

dontpanic wrote:

I think I can grab the files from GitHub

That you can.

A-Record created successfully: http://dev.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/

Just checkin in, sorry for the absence.

Works been busy and my dang car got broken into, wallet stolen, lots of hassle heh. That's neither here no there. Tomorrow I'll take some time and get back up to speed, and maybe even get some work done!

dontpanic wrote:

Just checkin in, sorry for the absence.

Works been busy and my dang car got broken into, wallet stolen, lots of hassle heh. That's neither here no there. Tomorrow I'll take some time and get back up to speed, and maybe even get some work done!

Nobody seems to be around to say hello, so, hi! Sorry to hear about your predicament. People some times... Anyway, those windows fixable? Hopefully, your new wallet'll be nice, but what can you do about those credit cards, if there were any? Employment not too taxing on your person?

Good luck on things!

Welcome back! We were beginning to get a little worried that you might have disappeared for good without working on much of the website, but if it's real life problems that have kept you away then we can't really blame you. Looking forward to seeing the development of the new website!

You may not be aware of this, but after the next update (0.2.4), we're planning to start "promoting" the game a little more, and the website should hopefully be many people's first impression of it, which explains why we're in such dire need of someone with the necessary skills to work on it.