MegaGlest Website

[tomreyn]

http://www.megaglest.org/
Hey, it's about time that MegaGlest get's a serious website, maybe something like what's on http://glest.org (aside of the forum). I could do the coding for this, but my web design capabilities are basically not existing. So I'm looking for someone not unlike YOU to help out with this. You'd obviously get credited for your web design works for one of the most popular open source games, making it a good reference.

Who would like to help with this?

[-Archmage-]

We don't need a separate website, we need to add stuff to Glest.org. For GAE and MG.

[Trappin]

Is this how the MG team announces a split from Glest? Will the MG team maintain the current development branch here and at the new site? What will the new website offer that cannot be supported here? What about the wiki?

[ElimiNator]

Is this how the MG team announces a split from Glest? Will the MG team maintain the current development branch here and at the new site? What will the new website offer that cannot be supported here? What about the wiki?

Hold man, just because tomreyn is saying stuff doesn't mean anything. Get info from the top.

[Trappin]

Hold on what? The questions are legitimate.

[John.d.h]

We don't need a separate website, we need to add stuff to Glest.org. For GAE and MG.

I agree.  It seems to me that most of the people we get are coming here for Glest, so that's what they're going to be looking for.  What we need is for them to come to glest.org and find Vanilla, MG, and GAE so they know they have the option to upgrade to one of those.

[titi]

All true but there is no real change on the glest site. I tried to contact marthino but I got no reply .
And if you look at sourceforge glest gets about 1000 downloads a day often and GAE and MG get nearly nothing also they are much better and are more important nowadays than vanilla glest( regarding players) .

A website will hopefully give us more people to play! We need more people who play MG! Thats the only reason.
The new site will not have any big content beside screenshots/videos and version/play time  announcements.
Everything else will be redirected to this forum because I don't see the glest page itself as the basic thing.
The forum is the real community and thats our base ( and the wiki of course :-) ).

Its simply that people expect a website if there is anything worth playing. Players need it simple and they need some eyecandy! Not cryptic sourceforge stuff. Remember, a lot of people are even scared of zip-files! Thats why we need the site with a big button called "DOWNLOAD" .

[John.d.h]

All true but there is no real change on the glest site. I tried to contact marthino but I got no reply .

Jose has been active lately.  Maybe try him?  If you make your own site, I think there could at least be a link to it on the main site.

[Trappin]

I tried to contact marthino but I got no reply /SNIP/ if you look at sourceforge glest gets about 1000 downloads a day.

The old real-estate cliche "location location location" also applies to the web, top of the page search engine links are the equivalent of prime real estate locations within London, Berlin, Moscow and New York. There are thousands of Glest links pointing to Sourceforge/CNET and other high profile download aggregators - many of those same links point to the Glest.org front page. Creating a MG front page won't solve the linkage problems.

What group of people own prime glest real estate locations? Martino/Tucho and Jose. The key to the future rests at the feet of the Glest Team. Better to hang together than hang separately.

--------------

NOTE: google weighs wiki links at a disproportionate rate to all non-wiki web traffics - something like 10-1 on the weighting scale. its crazy but this is how google operates. The best way to route new MG traffic is by creating a MegaGlest gaming wiki. Want proof that this works? First, don't use direct google searches unless you know how to bypass the regional filters.

Code: [Select]

https://ssl.scroogle.org/http://ixquick.com/
http://www.bing-vs-google.com/

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Glest - Search

[code][list]
1. Glest - The Free Real-Time Strategy Game

      "1 Nov 2010 ... Glest is a free 3D real time strategy game, available for several operating systems and that can be modified using XML and a set of tools."
      www.glest.org/

2. Glest - Downloads

      "Glest ports: Several packages are available for Linux and other platforms. ..."
      www.glest.org/en/downloads.php

3. Glest - Screenshots

      "Glest is a free 3D real time strategy game, available for several operating ..."
      www.glest.org/en/gallery-screenshots.php

4. Glest - El juego libre de estrategia en tiempo real

      "Glest no es solo un juego si no también un motor para hacer juegos de ..."
      www.glest.org/es/

5. Glest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

      "Glest is a free and open source real-time strategy computer game developed by a team based in Spain. Contents. 1 Development; 2 Gameplay; 3 Reception ..."
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glest

6. Glest

      "Glest is a community site that anyone can contribute to. Discover, share and add your knowledge!"
      https://docs.megaglest.org

[b]7. Glest Map Compendium Wiki

      "Glest Map Compendium Wiki is a community site that anyone can contribute to ..."
      glestmaps.wikia.com/[/b]

8. Glest | Download Glest software for free at SourceForge.net

      "Get Glest at SourceForge.net. Fast, secure and free downloads from the largest Open Source applications and software directory."
      sourceforge.net/projects/glest/

9. Browse Glest Files on SourceForge.net

      "Get Glest at SourceForge.net. Fast, secure and free downloads from the ..."
      sourceforge.net/projects/glest/files/

10. YouTube - Glest video

      "Glest is a free RTS game that you can download from http://www.glest.org."
      www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fafu0o8bQeo[/li][/list]

 http://ixquick.com/

 

Glest - The Free Real-Time Strategy Game *****
Single player, 3D, realtime strategy for Windows with up to three computer opponents. Free 3d real time strategy project.
www.glest.org - Proxy - Highlight


 
Glest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia *****
Glest is a free and open source real-time strategy computer gamedeveloped by a team based in Spain.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glest - Proxy - Highlight


 
Glest - Download Glest software for free at SourceForge.net *****
Ratings and Reviews. Find and develop open source software. Glest is a 3D real-time strategy game. Fully customizable using XML and a set of tools. Real Time Strategy.
www.sourceforge.net/projects/glest/ - Proxy - Highlight


 
Glest - The Free Real-Time Strategy Game ***
Glest is a free 3D real time strategy game, available for several operating systems and that can be modified using XML and a set of tools.
www.glest.org/en/index.php - Proxy - Highlight


 
Glest
Glest is a community site that anyone can contribute to. Discover, share and add your knowledge! ... invaluable member of the Glest Wiki! Copyright Glest Wiki 2005-2010. Glest is copyright © 2001-2010 The Glest Team.
https://docs.megaglest.org - Proxy - Highlight


 
Glest PC game - Mod DB ***
Glest is a project for making a free 3d real-time customizable strategy game. The game is available for several operating systems and can be completely modified using XML and a set ...
www.moddb.com/games/glest - Proxy - Highlight


 
Glest **
Game details page for Glest on Xfire ... All Xfire Games Videos Screenshots Communities People Forums Files Live Videos Glest Popular Videos ... Popular Tags: glest , lol , wolfblade , fun , mod , zest , battle , seaside , schmalz , sniper
www.xfire.com/games/glest/Glest/ - Proxy - Highlight


 
Glest - Downloads **
Glest is a free 3D real time strategy game, available for several operating systems and that can be modified using XML and a set of tools.
www.glest.org/en/downloads.php - Proxy - Highlight


 
Glest - Kosmix : Reference, Videos, Images, News, Shopping and **
The internet has introduced many free titles into the gaming world, in many different genres. Glest is one of these games. It is a 3D real-time strategy game that has an active ...
www.kosmix.com/topic/Glest - Proxy - Highlight


 
Cider House - Glest 3.2 **
Feb. 12, 2008 Last updated: Apr. 5 2009 Glest is a 3D real time strategy game with beautiful graphics and sounds. Please see glest.org for details. I ported Glest 3.2 to Mac OS X and packed it for ordinary users.
ciderhouse.opal.ne.jp/wp/english/glest - Proxy - Highlight

I'm 100% in favor of the freedom and flexibility of FOSS gaming. Do as you see fit - but - gaming the search engines will produce better results. In less than a year I drove Glestmaps.wiki to first page #7 on english text non-regional goggle search profile. Not bad for a newbie.
[/code]

[ultifd]

Creating a MG page won't solve linkage problems ( ), but it'll improve the number of downloads MG gets a bit, and that bit can help a lot...as titi said.

Yep, our best bet is Jose.

And if you look at sourceforge glest gets about 1000 downloads a day often and GAE and MG get nearly nothing also they are much better and are more important nowadays than vanilla glest( regarding players) .

Yep...here is how it is currently from Feb 2010
Glest: Hundreds of downloads each day, usually around 600 to 1500 and sometimes, a lot more.

(click to show/hide)

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[img]http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/9471/ss136.png[/img]

MG: Usually around 100 each day, a few days for various reasons there were a lot more, but usually 100ish...

(click to show/hide)

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[img]http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/8346/ss137.png[/img]

GAE: Usually 1 to 20 a day

(click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[img]http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1858/ss139.png[/img]

[Trappin]

The huge download spikes are interesting - the 12 Aug 2010 Slashdot article spiked download traffic for three days.

[ElimiNator]

I could help do the sight, Here is something I made before.

[-Archmage-]

Making a new site will do almost nothing, adding to the Glest site will help tremendously. You gotta put what you want people to see where the most people go. A new site would be like advertising in an alley, an addition to the glest site, would be like advertising on the front of a store on Main st.

[ultifd]

I don't think it'll be nothing, I'm pretty sure it would help a little bit at least.
Something is better than nothing. In this case it's true...and even if it doesn't help a lot, it'll help the developers and others...less people asking obvious questions and such, or other things...so that would better for MG too. 

The huge download spikes are interesting - the 12 Aug 2010 Slashdot article spiked download traffic for three days.

Yep, the spikes are always because of publicity.

[Omega]

My 2 bits:

MG shouldn't have its own site. GAE tried that once... It was never that popular, and eventually went down because the costs weren't payed. I think that the main page should indeed have at least a link on the download page to MG and GAE, and the Glest Team should definitely be contacted about that.

MG should *NOT* have its own wiki... That's not the point, especially when you think of how similar it is to Glest, and having multiple wiki's complicates the issue, just like that Glest Maps wiki (which I probably should try and port over to the main wiki in the future). (By the way, wikia itself does a lot of the hard work for getting it's sites ranked well on google, since it depends on the sites being popular to pay off the costs of hosting said sites (not logged in users see ads on wikia sites)).

As ultifd's example pointed out, the key to getting lots of downloads is PUBLICY. A unique site won't help that, though having a link on the main part of glest will, as will mentioning it on other sites, etc. A few things I learned over the years about making free publicy:

-Appeal to the inner geek: Find programming forums that have a board for announcing your completed project, and do so there.
-Give people the help they need, and you want: Find questions where people are looking for what you have to offer on sites like answers, yahoo answers, wiki answers, etc; I recall one example where a woman made lots of publicy on her article on good sources of smilies by simply finding someone who was asking for good sources of smilies and linking them to her article.
-Forum Power: Got an account on another forum? Post a link to your game in a signature. I've learned of games and videos, among other things, simply from signatures, so it definately works.

[Coldfusionstorm]

MG should *NOT* have its own wiki... That's not the point, especially when you think of how similar it is to Glest, and having multiple wiki's complicates the issue, just like that Glest Maps wiki

The problem, they are NOT similar, perhaps for the first time user, but there are loads of stuff thats better in MG, the Multiplayer fx, we should have a 3 sided download button on the MAIN glest page wich opens up to reveal 3 choices, Vannilla Glest,MG glest, GAE Glest.

there would be a quick and general description of each branch.

fx

glest
basic RTS gameplay, and basic features of damagetypes
development ceased.

megaglest
standard multiplayer options
active development
focus on stable multiplayer

glestadvanced engine
basic multiplayer options
active development
focus on adding new features

Historic explanation
basic - only very basic stuff, like right clicking, minimap, and attacktypes
standard - mordern day technology used for industry gaming applications
advanced - features not seen in standard industry gaming applications.

Preferbly this should be setup Horizontally like this: glest______megaglest______glest advaced engine
                                                                     Info here     info here                  info here
                                                                     from above  from above               from above
                                                                     text            text                        text
       

[Trappin]

MG shouldn't have its own site. GAE tried that once... It was never that popular, and eventually went down because the costs weren't payed.

I think titi wll be using a free open source web host.

I think that the main page should indeed have at least a link on the download page to MG and GAE, and the Glest Team should definitely be contacted about that.

Agreed.

MG should *NOT* have its own wiki... That's not the point, especially when you think of how similar it is to Glest

Why not port over Glest Guide, or at least remove the copyright? What's good for the goose is not good for the gander?

and having multiple wiki's complicates the issue, just like that Glest Maps wiki (which I probably should try and port over to the main wiki in the future)

You know what would be nice? A little appreciation for my hard work. Oh sure, the intellectual content is worth porting but apparently thanking me is a step too far. This sort of thing pisses me off to no end. I will redouble efforts to increase page rank and drive traffic to glestmaps.

(By the way, wikia itself does a lot of the hard work for getting it's sites ranked well on google, since it depends on the sites being popular to pay off the costs of hosting said sites (not logged in users see ads on wikia sites)).

Google search ratios favor wikia a by a large margin, claiming otherwise is just plain incorrect ( I did pull the 10-1 figure from thin air though - heh).

All this discussion matters not, MG will have its own front page. I just hope it gets the traffic it deserves.

[tomreyn]

Wow, impressive thread. I hadn't expected to see so many activity on this one, surely not within a bit more than 24 hours. I must have hit some nerve.

Titi already explained what the two of us have discussed so far and I fully agree with what he wrote. I will try to spell things out in more detail (adding my personal point of view which may, in parts, differ from his') how I think this should move forward (and how it should not) in this post.

What said website will not be

First of all, let's not rush it too much. What I asked for here is the help of a web designer to create _a_ MegaGlest website. While, if it turns out to be good enough for this purpose, I would like this website to become what people who are new to MegaGlest get to see first. But...

* this is not at all to be taken as an announcement of MegaGlest moving away or even intending to separate from the Glest + GAE community - this would be a very wrong step to take in my opinion (and I did not indicate such a move with a single word I wrote)

* this doesn't mean that anything which currently exists is going to be moved or removed

* I don't intend/suggest (at least not at this time, maybe much later) to set up a separate knowledge base just for MegaGlest at this time, since I value and do not intend to disrupt the community efforts which currently do make cross-project contributions

So let's not jump to conclusions here.

What the new website will be

For now, all that I want to do is to have a few web pages for MegaGlest which are similar to those there are currently for vanilla Glest at http://glest.org/ - namely an introductory web page, explaining what the game is all about, a few screen shots since they can say more than a 1000 words, a download link, and some latest news/announcements - all of which should be nicely designed so that it is easily readable and comprehensible, possibly in multiple languages. Surely there will be a prominently positioned link there to the existing forum and wiki - I do not suggest or even intend to set up a separate forum or wiki just for MegaGlest (not at this at time - but we can discuss whether this would make sense later).

Why the new website

Why I think it is a good idea to add such a website:

* I think that there is currently no easily communicable central point of entry for MegaGlest

* It feels weird to provide a URL such as https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=4930.msg37225#msg37225 as the main MegaGlest website when addressing the media or adding a web link to a central MegaGlest resource on some other web page

* I remember how it took me a while to learn about MegaGlest and how it is more rich of features and more current than Glest now, I think I only learnt about this because I spent some time on the #glest IRC channel, otherwise I had probably just missed it since there is no such easily findable central location for MegaGlest, yet. I had to spend some efforts on this, and I bet many other people who just want to play this game (which is a totally acceptable approach) should not have to go to length to learn about MegaGlest, and I surely don't want them to miss out on it completely either. Right now, I believe a lot of people who would be interested in it, do.

Possible issues and counter measures

When creating this homepage I'll try not to create a technocracy, i.e. make sure that everybody who needs to have access to anything will and can have it. This can be best achieved by means of a content management system or, possibly more easily, a wiki software (which would, surely for now, be only be used to make the web pages easily maintainable, not to provide the main knowledge base), but with mandatory access restriction (i.e. for making changes to this main website you would have to login in). This setup would prevent that if there is a change in who maintains this project later it will be easy to take it over, and there won't be many dependencies on formerly active people).

About publicity, I have tried to get some and believe I have not failed completely, but as I said it always felt weird to provide some forum post URL as the main website. I think that a simple website address will do good to broader publicity and help increase the community, which is the main goal behind all these thoughts. Existing web links can be updated or rerouted, I do not see a problem there. The fact that MG currently has a lack of publicity is not going to be fixed by keeping things as they are now. Our reach will also only change slightly by introducing a new website, so this is in fact a separate issue, which needs to be taken on, and with much efforts, but should be discussed independently.

About search engine optimisation, I am convinced that a website which describes a project in detail, has a fitting URL point to it, contains links to a community area and download links, and (that's my intention) is valid (X)HTML, does get a good rank on search engines (whether or not it is based on a known wiki/blog software). I am happy to discuss this technical detail further, though.

About web design, thanks for your offer Eliminator, maybe we can do this together, but let's also give others a chance to volunteer first (this thread has only been running for a day now). Last but not least, I am in touch with José and he has indicated that he will make the glest.org code/design available to us along the next days (and grant permission to reuse their work), so we will likely have the option to base our site on this nice design (crediting them, too).

[John.d.h]

You know what would be nice? A little appreciation for my hard work. Oh sure, the intellectual content is worth porting but apparently thanking me is a step too far. This sort of thing pisses me off to no end. I will redouble efforts to increase page rank and drive traffic to glestmaps.

Haven't you heard that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?  But seriously, I for one appreciate your contributions.  There are very few people in this community who are qualified mapmakers, and the amount of work you put into this is impressive, as well as the quality of the output.  Whether having two separate wikis is good, bad, or indifference is not really something I want to get into, but my gut feeling says that having the information in one place is more user-friendly.  Either way, I think Trappin is a pretty cool guy.  eh makes maps and doesnt afraid of anything.  We like what you do, even if we sometimes have a funny way of showing it.

Why I think it is a good idea to add such a website:

* I think that there is currently no easily communicable central point of entry for MegaGlest

* It feels weird to provide a URL such as https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=4930.msg37225#msg37225 as the main MegaGlest website when addressing the media or adding a web link to a central MegaGlest resource on some other web page
<snip/>
About publicity, I have tried to get some and believe I have not failed completely, but as I said it always felt weird to provide some forum post URL as the main website. I think that a simple website address will do good to broader publicity and help increase the community, which is the main goal behind all these thoughts. Existing web links can be updated or rerouted, I do not see a problem there. The fact that MG currently has a lack of publicity is not going to be fixed by keeping things as they are now. Our reach will also only change slightly by introducing a new website, so this is in fact a separate issue, which needs to be taken on, and with much efforts, but should be discussed independently.

That's very true.  I've had a few websites with convoluted urls, and as a result I don't remember any of them.  If you just tell somebody "megaglest.org", then it's no problem, but if you tell them some forum post with a long complicated address, then they're lost if they lose that link.  It also looks really bad if somebody asks you for a link and you have to say "Hold on; let me look it up!"

[charlieg]

In my experience (some consider it half decent since I originated the Free Gamer blog) a website is key for a project's profile.

To summarise the problem here; Glest has a large profile online.  MegaGlest and GAE do not, they are embedded in the content of the Glest homepage.

What is the end result of this?

New player arrives at the website, thinks Glest looks interesting, and downloads and plays it.  Maybe they like it enough to get involved a bit more, to look a the forums or wiki, and only then do they first encounter MegaGlest or GAE.  The exposure for the new player is to the worst of the 3 branches of Glest development.  It is far more likely a player sticks around if they find out the extra features of MG or GAE but they are not likely to see these projects.

Is the solution to put MG and GAE prominently on the Glest web presence?  Perhaps.  Will martino or others do it?  Probably not; they are not very active any more.

Now you think you have a chicken and egg scenario - you want a popular web presence for MegaGlest but creating a new website won't drive traffic to it... initially.  The reality is that a website is a base for attracting interest.  You then submit updates to Freshmeat, Happypenguin, ModDB, etc etc and over time the website will become better linked and easier to encounter.  If you never create a separate website, you'll be in the same place next year, the year after, the year after that - still a second class citizen of the Glest project.

Forks can be friendly.  MG and GAE are forks.  There is nothing wrong with having separate websites, especially if they all still share a forum.  That's actually a strength, because overall it gives Glest (as a community) an even larger presence online and thus will attract even more players.

Also, I disagree with Omega's "we tried it with GAE and it failed" assessment.  Sorry Omega, you are flat out missing the mark with this one.  At that time, GAE was not particularly stable, the website was never particularly good or useful (I'd describe most of it as "placeholder"), and you were not submitting GAE release announcements anywhere prominent.  MegaGlest (and lately GAE) is playable, stable, a marked improvement on Glest, and needs it's own "first class citizen" place on the Internet where it can be showcased independently of Glest - because it is a different project.

/2c

[Omega]

At that time, GAE was not particularly stable, the website was never particularly good or useful (I'd describe most of it as "placeholder"), and you were not submitting GAE release announcements anywhere prominent.

Hmm, that is true...

At any rate, I volunteer my services in web design shall you decide to carry through with this idea. However, there are a few things to note:
-You want a new website? You gotta cover the costs of hosting and the domain registration, though usually most hosts bundle both together. Assuming that all downloads are on sourceforge itself, not the hosting server (highly recommended, since sourceforge would be able to deliver more speed and reliability), then a hosting plan would be relatively inexpensive, and after uncloaking the trials and "first x month" prices, you can get a decent host for ~$10 a month (american).
-Regardless of who designs said web pages, you need to plan out a good concept for how it will look, how the information will be stored, and the specific pages and layout. "Surprise me" generally doesn't match the results of proper planning.
-I wouldn't recommend copying Glest's main site too much. You'll want to display an original site, not something that looks copy-pasted from glest's site. See the example below, noting how it looks very similar and would just serve to make it appear to be the same site.

(click to show/hide)

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[img]http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/5480/snipf.jpg[/img]

[titi]

We already have webspace and a domain ( www.megaglest.org ), so thats not the problem.

For webspace we have two free possibilities! Either the site at sourceforge http://megaglest.sourceforge.net/ or http://megaglest.pepper.freeit.org/
which I think has more possibilities at the moment. So costs are not a problem at the moment.

(... and by the way thanks a lot for your good maps/tilesets and wikiworks Trappin! ( I know what you are talking about ... ) )

[tomreyn]

I agree with what charlieg said above, I could just not have put it into better words.

I also second what titi writes about availability of domain + hosting: we do have a domain name and we have two possible locations for web hosting (sf.net and freeit.org), and one for mail hosting and possibly more (both freeit.org).

About the webdesign, we now have two volunteers, namely ElimiNator and Omega - great! As Omega notes, we need to enter the conception phase now. This means we need to get an idea of which content is to be available on this website and which structure it should have. We also need some design and implementation principles.

So let's go for it.

(click to show/hide)

Design principles:
* should fit on 1024x600 screen (netbooks), less important elements may be available on larger screens only
* It would be nice if colors somewhat match the in-game colors (green, shades of grey, brown, gold, white, ...)
* All pages should bear:
 * the MG logo in the same spot
 * a language selection UI
 * a footer line containing links to CONTACT + PRIVACY pages
 * OSI + GPL logos linking to LICENSE page
* does not require flash
* does not require javascript
* uses current web standards (XHTML + CSS)
* validates per http://validator.w3.org
* optionally have all below pages shown in a frameset and load and autoplay game music in a tiny frame (with start/stop button), possibly also make the web chat always visible this way (but it would be good if it was also resizable then)

Structure and content:

MAIN MENU: links to all pages mentioned below
 |
MAIN PAGE: announcements/news area, community area featuring hot forum threads with direct links and link to MG main forum, large screen shot (the best one we come up with), short (one-sentence) textual description of the game pointing to ABOUT page, area listing the latest game version (pointing to DOWNLOAD page), area listing currently running games, newsletter signup area for subscribing to the announcement mailing list, social web area allowing for integrating with social network sites etc.
 |
ABOUT: longer textual game description/feature overview/requirements (can be based on previous descriptions of MG, as well as descriptions of Glest and GAE, as well as third party reviews of MG, Glest, GAE) incl. due credits to vanilla glest developers, screen shots and/or embedded video (use HTML 5 video tag if possible, downgrade as neccessary); introduction (images and possibly text) into the default factions (cf.

Code: [Select]

http://glest.org/en/techtree.php); press reviews (possibly just google news/search link/embedded results) / testimonials
 |
DOWNLOAD: automatic detection of downloads matching the user agents' OS (and, if possible, architecture) by javascript or server side branching code (see https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/firefox/ for example), complete overview on all available downolads if detection fails and as opt-out of branching
 |
MODS: illustrated list of (and web links to) existing (and compatible to MG) modifications, based on existing MOD thread on the forums, manually maintained at the start, community maintained later
 |
SUPPORT: links to / embedding of (possibly just hottest topics of) FAQ/knowledge base/wiki; integration of webchat.freenode.net (pointing to #glest), explanation of IRC (recommended clients)
 |
DEVELOPMENT: web links to most relevant sf.net features, SCM, revision history
 |
CONTACT: Contacts for project lead, mailing lists (posting addresses, archives)
 |
LINKS: web links to Glest + GAE and related resources,

PRIVACY (separate page, not contained in main menu): privacy policy / TOS etc.

LICENSE: page detailing the game licenses (code, graphics, add-ons etc.)

Implementation principles:
* Since this is game and thus the website is and will always remain an hobby, we need to keep the website as easily manageable as possible, with as little outdating content as possible
  * This may require a future-proof but simple CMS, and one which has a flat learning curve, rich text editor or the like (such as a wiki), but is still able to match the design principles
  * Alternatively, custom code (based on a PHP framework?) can be used, but keep it simple and document it so others can take over maintenance

I am sure there is much people reading this thread would like to discuss about this. And you are welcome to add to this, and to criticise what you consider to be catastrophic mistakes. But please limit your suggested improvements to a certain degree, since we will not be able to find a solution which works perfect for everybody, and on the way to it we would burn too much energy. So when you make any comments, please remember to always keep this question in mind: "I want this change, so what can I do to make it happen?"

This exempts titi + softcoder, of course, you are welcome to ask for any changes or to rewrite this from scratch.

Omega, thanks for making this slightly modified design preview of glest.org to demonstrate how we may need a unique design. I am quite sure that the modified structure alone but also the design principles I listed above would already make the web page look much different, let alone the very different page contents. So the basic design could still be reused - but not necessarily, I'm not opposed to us having a very different design.

Now what needs to happen next is that we need some design drafts. Omega and ElimiNator, can the two of you please provide one or two sketches of what the main page would look like based on what's written above, with your suggested design(s)? I think the web design can ultimatively only be made by one person, so we will need to decide, and this should help us with this. But, more importantly, this will provide us with an idea of what the site may be looking like when it's done!

[titi]

This is what I expect from the site:
- Cool screenshots
- Easy to find download button
- An ingame movie, or a trailer showing lots of ingame action
- Very short description whats the game about ( RTS ... )
- An announcement line.

The nexuiz page shows a lot of the things I expect from a game site!
http://alientrap.org/nexuiz/

But thats only what I like! These are the things that let ME quickly get into a game!
What else do you expect?

[Omega]

First of all, a big N-O to music in sites. That is the *fastest* way to make everyone hate your product (well, second fastest after full sized flash ads that include music). Music in sites is amateurish, annoying, and fraught with incompatibilities.

In my opinion, image scrollers (the things that have a few images, automatically scrolling between them to show the "headlines") looks very professional, and can be done with javascript for compatibility and ease of use.

Trailers work, provided the trailer themselves look good, and preferably match the design of the website at least a little (ie: if the website is darker colours, like this one, the video would be too). Also a good idea to use a custom video player (like how nexiuz does) instead of a youtube video, since that looks better, and generally, one wants to present an aura of cleaness, professionalism, and ability.

* does not require flash
* does not require javascript

I think that, as always, they should be there to ENHANCE the user's experience, though not at all required to use the site. It's like HTML5  border radius. If the browser can't support it, it simply downgrades to corners, letting those with supportive browsers see it better, while those with unsupported browsers aren't penalized for that.

* optionally have all below pages shown in a frameset and load and autoplay game music in a tiny frame (with start/stop button), possibly also make the web chat always visible this way (but it would be good if it was also resizable then)

I immensely loath frames, and recommend not to use them. Even google has ditched them for good, and they aren't even supported in strict XHTML...

DOWNLOAD: automatic detection of downloads matching the user agents' OS (and, if possible, architecture) by javascript or server side branching code (see https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/firefox/ for example), complete overview on all available downolads if detection fails and as opt-out of branching

Hmm, I once tried to experiment with different user agents... I know of no way to detect architecture, but browsers and operating systems are easy to detect. Except, of course, the browsers that lie... Unfortunately, I never got to test my script, since I only had windows available on hand... Of course, this might violate your earlier rule of non dependancy on JS, but it is possible to have it list "everything" with a <noscript> tag for browsers with javascript off. Won't solve very old browsers that don't have JS at all, but I've never seen any said browsers ever, and even the oldest library computers had at least IE5...

Implementation principles:
* Since this is game and thus the website is and will always remain an hobby, we need to keep the website as easily manageable as possible, with as little outdating content as possible
  * This may require a future-proof but simple CMS, and one which has a flat learning curve, rich text editor or the like (such as a wiki), but is still able to match the design principles
  * Alternatively, custom code (based on a PHP framework?) can be used, but keep it simple and document it so others can take over maintenance

Possible idea: Text areas are created from txt files and included with PHP's include function. Sort of similar to how the Glest Guide's archives work, but for text files that will fill in the text on a page instead of the whole page itself. A bit messy, but simple and easy to do, abet, since it will contain HTML code, I'd recommend password protecting it and only sharing the password with people you trust. Besides, only the MG team should have to edit the pages, right?

Omega, thanks for making this slightly modified design preview of glest.org to demonstrate how we may need a unique design.

That? = 2 seconds in firebug just to prove a point (a small point, but one all the same).

Now what needs to happen next is that we need some design drafts. Omega and ElimiNator, can the two of you please provide one or two sketches of what the main page would look like based on what's written above, with your suggested design(s)? I think the web design can ultimatively only be made by one person, so we will need to decide, and this should help us with this. But, more importantly, this will provide us with an idea of what the site may be looking like when it's done!

Eh? I'm no good for ideas themselves. I can make what is given to me, but for the most part, you're welcome to go grab a piece of paper and sketch out how you think the layout should look... I am merely offering my services and web prowess to make this for you. The actual planning rests in your hands.