Poll

What do you think of the new look of the Guide?

Awesome!
6 (100%)
Not my favorite, but at least Glesty
0 (0%)
Pbbt!
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 5

Voting closed: 23 August 2010, 03:02:37

Author Topic: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc  (Read 55189 times)

Omega

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #150 on: 27 January 2011, 00:01:17 »
The next Glest Guide version is under development as a major change that will completely rewrite everything and will make future updates easier!

So, first of all, I'm rewriting all the pages with valid XHTML and CSS3 (it's very messy, old code, as someone mentioned earlier ;)), with compatibility for IE7+, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera (and if it works on them, it should work on nearly every other browser). The layout is nearly the same, but the content and coding is being rewritten for efficiency.

Now, the first change that will be noticeable besides the content changes will be the drop down menu. This will make navigation far easier because it's no longer based on the front page (which will be changed, as per below), but from every page, and allows more room for expansion, as well as categorization of the pages.

Nextly, as mentioned above, the main page will be changed to a professional style. In fact, that's the biggest change. All the content across all pages will be rewritten, focusing on professionalism, clarity, neutral point of view, and multiple options. I do particularily plan to showcase many different Blender techniques, and hope to get the support of fellow modelers here in explaining in depth and with images their modeling techniques (*cough*john*cough*).

The MDC will become something more akin to download.com's style, rather than be a giant, ever growing list, it will be tabbed based, searchable, and split into pages. Of course, it will still be XML based and you can edit articles like before, but I plan to add the ability to comment in addition to rate, as well as allow images to be uploaded and processed.

Ads will probably make a showcase, because if the site becomes popular enough, it's going to have to be paid for. The ads would be customly as unobtrusive as possible, and just there to support the GG, the same as every other site that has ads.

Now another major change, the way URLs work! This is going to make adding new pages easier, as well as reduce page size. You see, like many sites, such as this forum board, it'll just be the index page and everything else is included via parameters. For example, the home page can be either glestguide.co.cc or glestguide.co.cc/?go=home. The part after the equal sign defines how pages will work. For example, ?go=mdc would be the link to the MDC. This makes the site easier to control because formerly, if I wanted to change the layout of the site, I would have to edit EVERY page. Now, I'd just have to edit the index page. Each individual page only actually contains the content area and a few javascripts to modify the title of the page, etc;

Of course, the site will become a lot more javascript based. I'm adopting the syntax highlighter instead of manually doing it, which will make for neater, easier code there, as well as things like pop up boxes, tooltips, etc will appear to describe how to do things. Lightboxes are moving to the Slimbox script, which is faster, smaller size, and easier to customize, while still doing everything the lightbox can do.

Nextly, the branches of the GG, including the scenario creator, romans, and elves pages will be brought up to date, and the scenario creator will be refactored and fixed (it's currently broken. Notice the stylesheet is not linking correctly due to a change in the page's code).

In short, there's a lot of changes to come, and it will take a while. Finals are just mopping up now (at the time of writing, english final is tomorrow, and is the last one), so I hope to have more time on my hands soon. Please comment or suggest additional things.
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ultifd

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #151 on: 27 January 2011, 02:43:15 »
Good Luck on your Final!
Thanks for the update. I didn't know there was a roman page, cool.

ElimiNator

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #152 on: 27 January 2011, 18:34:36 »
BTW: since archmage is not with romans any more, (See here) And there is basically nothing left in it that archmage did. Can you ether remove the romans page or add my name on it? (Keep his there too if you want)

Quote
Roman Mod Copyright © 2009 Archmage101. Web design Copyright © Omega (Michael Hoffert) 2009.
All images belong to original authors and may not be used without permission.
Web hosting provided by the Glest Guide.
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Omega

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #153 on: 28 January 2011, 04:00:45 »
BTW: since archmage is not with romans any more, (See here) And there is basically nothing left in it that archmage did. Can you ether remove the romans page or add my name on it? (Keep his there too if you want)

Quote
Roman Mod Copyright © 2009 Archmage101. Web design Copyright © Omega (Michael Hoffert) 2009.
All images belong to original authors and may not be used without permission.
Web hosting provided by the Glest Guide.
I'd be interested in updating the page. If you'd like to change any of the site, feel free to send me a PM or email and I'll be sure to include that when I release the next version of the site. As well, up to date pictures would be nice.

I suppose the same should be applied to the elves. There's not a lot of changes, but the credits and download links are a definite must.
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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #154 on: 28 January 2011, 14:10:39 »
sounds excellent  :thumbup:
Thanks heaps for spending your time on this man, I really can't wait.  :P
The glest Guide helped me heaps when I first started. (still does)

Omega

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #155 on: 28 January 2011, 18:52:13 »
First screen:

Not a whole lot to see, to be honest, as most changes so far are in how the code works, but the commentary on this image should explain how the pages will look a bit:

The link is just an example on the new link format. It's not online yet, and won't be until it's finished.

« Last Edit: 28 January 2011, 18:56:36 by Omega »
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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #156 on: 3 February 2011, 02:31:18 »
And now a screenshot with content. The main page is fleshing out, and has the nice shiny content now, though it has room for more. Please suggest what you would prefer to see on the main page. Possibilities I've thought of include editorials and featured images (randomly display one of many nice screen shots). Feel free to reply ideas.

« Last Edit: 4 February 2011, 03:47:06 by Omega »
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ElimiNator

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #157 on: 3 February 2011, 06:53:41 »
I think it should say Glest Guide on the top, not just Glest.
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Omega

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #158 on: 4 February 2011, 03:43:58 »
Except that I can't make the text with the same style that looks decent (remember the old megaglest logo with the cheesy "mega" text? I don't want that to happen to the guide).

Updated the previous image to be image shack, now that it's working again.
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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #159 on: 4 February 2011, 05:38:32 »
Why not add the menus bar to the brown bar in the header?

Looks excellent though, very good start. Can't wait to see it done :)

ElimiNator

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #160 on: 19 February 2011, 18:16:03 »
Spam \/ \/ \/    >:(

Edit: Its gone now  :)
« Last Edit: 25 February 2011, 06:47:12 by ElimiNator »
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Omega

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #161 on: 20 February 2011, 03:45:45 »
Seeing how you were so nice to give me a free bump (with questionable ethics), here's a quick update:

-Pages required: 52 (not counting MDC and archives pages, which will about double that or more!)
-Latest addition: Modders Center. This handy box (and separate page) at the bottom of the main page is everything from start to finish on making a glest mod. What kind of Glest mod? Every kind of Glest mod. Factions, techtrees, scenarios, maps, tilesets, it's got it, and it does so by starting with the very basics, on how Glest works, ending with the finalizing and uploading process, and even how to make an MDC page for your new mod ;).
-Total filesize of main page including images and scripts (so far): 129kb
-Latest coding change: Tiny javascript to modify the title of the page dynamically



Now, looking at the modelling pages, any suggestions on how to make them? Obviously I want to give multiple modelling, texturing, and animating options, such as John's animation method, etc, in equal lighting, but where am I going to get this information from? *cough*john*cough* ;)



Edit: And the new biggest change: conversion to MySQL! This will speed things up and reduce clutter, while allowing more functionality. Variables such as the version numbers of MG and GAE on the front page, and entire sections such as the MDC and the Archives will utilize MySQL.
« Last Edit: 20 February 2011, 21:44:22 by Omega »
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ultifd

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #162 on: 20 February 2011, 22:38:38 »
Hmm, you would probably have to change your host too once GAE and MG is merged...(I'm pretty sure the MG site already gets much more than 2,000 views per month)

Omega

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #163 on: 20 February 2011, 23:01:40 »
Hmm, you would probably have to change your host too once GAE and MG is merged...(I'm pretty sure the MG site already gets much more than 2,000 views per month)
Possibly. I hope to have the next version up before Glest 4 hits us though, bringing in a new wave of viewers. Most of the changes will be more accomodating for these extra viewers too, such as the searchable MDC, which will sport individual pages for the mods too, allowing comments, an enhanced rating system, and more. It will allow individual maps to be uploaded too (noting that until I move to a full, commercial server, you still don't upload the actual mod to the site. I hope to change that in the future, should the site become popular enough to allow so).

And of course, suggestions are always accepted.



I managed to half the number of images by converting to CSS sprites. The main page has gone from 10 background images to 5 background images used! This will cut loading times, as there's much less requests per page. This is not the only optimization though, as I am trying to adopt many of Yahoo's recommendations for speeding up webpages. Of course, some, like the CDN (Content Delivery Network) are far far too impractical for this site, but many of the others are applicable, and at the moment, it is scoring an A in the small website category at 95/100 points, maxing in all categories except the gzip compression, as my testing server does not have that module installed (but I expect any decent commercial host to have it installed).

But, the kingpin, I have the main page uploaded online (I used the SpriteMe service to make CSS sprites, and for that, it had to be online), and can be viewed at:
http://glestguide.co.cc/~miasma

There is only one page, and all other redirects will give either a dummy page or a 404 every time. It's just to give a quick view of the site. Also, the database function that gets the version numbers has been temporarily replaced with static text in this example for reasons explained below.
 
However, one issues was discovered: the Databases are not connecting. Running my tests locally, they work fine, but when replicating the same online, the server always returns an error... I can only hope there's a delay in updating this, in the same manner my initial uploading of the site. However, should it not be working by tomorrow, I'll ignore that and continue working in a standardized way. I plan to move to a commercial host soon anyway, and never a better time than now (too bad that mod downloader idea had died off... I really wanted to tailor the MDC around it to make it the center of mod downloads).

How will we know if the host is a go? Well, we just need one of my tests to pass. Once we can see green at http://glestguide.co.cc/~miasma/test.php we'll know we have achieved connection to the data base. It should look like this:


Enjoy the preview, and be sure to let me know of your thoughts.
« Last Edit: 21 February 2011, 03:25:39 by Omega »
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ultifd

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #164 on: 29 March 2011, 01:32:52 »
Progress report?  :) Maybe you can update it after both of the final forks are released.

Omega

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #165 on: 29 March 2011, 01:43:33 »
Catching news that a Mod Download Center is in development, and it's not the Glest Guide's MDC, I ponder the reasons to keep this project alive. Development is going slowly, due to less time available, but the main issue is the use of it. The MDC was really the core feature of the Glest Guide, and if it becomes obsolete, that really just leaves the documentation, which I propose we instead start redoing in the Wiki, which has the advantage of easy editing and that everyone can edit. While that does have downsides, I think it would better the Glest community. Sure, some things would not be able to adapt well, but for the most part, I am able to add Javascript to the wiki (since my account is an auto-confirmed bureaucrat), though am reluctant about going overboard with it, and don't want to make it a necessity to view content (currently, I have added javascript to aid in sorting, the navboxes, collapsing boxes, etc. The full script can be seen here).

Too long; Didn't read version: Considering phasing out the Glest Guide with some degree of merging into the Wiki.
« Last Edit: 18 June 2016, 13:45:32 by filux »
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ultifd

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #166 on: 29 March 2011, 05:20:41 »
:-\ But you knew that someday there would be a Mod Download Center...why the sudden change?

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #167 on: 19 April 2011, 02:02:51 »
Sorry for the DP as always.
You should probably remove your Firefox promo thing. Or update it.

Omega

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #168 on: 19 April 2011, 04:31:54 »
The guide is dead. The code I used for the firefox ad was bugged anyway. I'm slowly trying to move the guide's contents to the wiki, but no work will be done to the guide, besides its sub domains such as http://military.glestguide.co.cc/
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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #169 on: 19 April 2011, 04:44:02 »
What's the exact or real reason that you're choosing to abandon the guide? Please remove the outdated firefox ad code.

Omega

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Re: Glest Guide -- New domain: glestguide.co.cc
« Reply #170 on: 19 April 2011, 04:57:28 »
What's the exact or real reason that you're choosing to abandon the guide? Please remove the outdated firefox ad code.
The reason it's abandoned is because the wiki has every advantage over it. It's easier to edit, can be edited by anyone, it's an easier platform to edit because of the clear set policies, it is ranked well in google, and it is easier to maintain.

I suppose I can try and remove the firefox code, but that will be a pain in the arse due to the foolish way I implimented it. Ironically, the revamp I planned would have made such things easier to add and remove, but meh.
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anything