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Are you interested in helping on a fan site, learning to code?

    • 844 posts
    February 22, 2020 6:51 AM PST

    I have a complex, large scale, comprehensive fan site in development.

    It's primary goal is to be a guild management and character profile site. But it also incorporates an item DB, zones, factions, Beastiary, Dungeons, and more.

    It is primarily being coded with PHP 7.x, AJAX, JAVASCRIPT, JQUERY, MYSQL, CSS, HTML, APACHE, and more.

    I'm curious if anybody would be interested in getting involved from a learning and helping perspective.

     

    This is basically a hobby for me. My first fansite was for EQ in 2001, when PHP essentially was brand new. I created another site for Vanguard in 2008.

     

    • 291 posts
    February 22, 2020 9:07 AM PST

    Im willing and able to help if your willing and able to help. In truth we are looking for a mentor in this area. Also, it would be nice to make another friend here.... Especially out of you.

     

     

    P.s. what was the site from 01 and 08?

    • 844 posts
    February 22, 2020 12:48 PM PST

    Alyonyah said:

    Im willing and able to help if your willing and able to help. In truth we are looking for a mentor in this area. Also, it would be nice to make another friend here.... Especially out of you.

    P.s. what was the site from 01 and 08?

    I don't recall what my EQ1 site was called. The vanguard site was "vanguardguilds" I think. I moved it to a different domain later on.

    What I'm working on has been in development for about 2+ years. I don't use pre-designed frameworks (like enjin) so it's all custom and written from scratch.

    Here is a grab from a while ago of the guild management section.

    I'm still unsure of how I would incorporate others into the development process(meaning writing/editing code) and still control security.

    What will be useful is to have those that intend on running a guild or being part of one to test that functionality and give feedback on usability.

    • 291 posts
    February 22, 2020 1:16 PM PST

    zewtastic said:

    What will be useful is to have those that intend on running a guild or being part of one to test that functionality and give feedback on usability.

    Can do all that as well (sounds fun), though it takes all the wind out of the coding side of the op. /shrug If you need a hand just let us know. No lessons required.

    • Moderator
    • 9115 posts
    February 22, 2020 4:35 PM PST

    Thread cleaned up, please don't hijack other fansites threads or you risk being moderated and it reflects poorly on your own site.

    • 557 posts
    February 24, 2020 6:51 AM PST

    Sounds like an interesting project, Zew.

    I just have one question for you.   How do you set down any sort of functional requirements doc for the site without knowing what VR plans to release for guild management and character profiling as part of their core systems at launch?   Is this perhaps a bit premature?   I would hate to see you put a lot of energy into something which could be mostly a duplication of effort.

    As far as the logistics of how to handle multiple people working on your codebase, I would suggest GitLab if it's going to be a closed source project.  It essentially gives you the features of GitHub, but in a self-hosted repository which you have total control.

    I'm more of a Python guy, or I'd offer to assist directly.  I stopped using PHP several years ago.  If you need someone to test features from a guild management perspective, as the recruiting officer and resident nerd for Legacy of Ages, I would be happy to provide feedback.  If you need help setting up your SCM, send me a PM.

    • 844 posts
    February 24, 2020 9:46 AM PST

    Celandor said:

    I just have one question for you.   How do you set down any sort of functional requirements doc for the site without knowing what VR plans to release for guild management and character profiling as part of their core systems at launch?   Is this perhaps a bit premature?   I would hate to see you put a lot of energy into something which could be mostly a duplication of effort.

    A very good question.

    Yes it is possible that VR will include some amazing, all-encompassing guild management tool, that will make any 3rd party creation instantly obsolete. And that would be happy days for Guilds. Vanguard almost did it. They started to, had the framework in place for release. But it quickly became a casualty of a tight budget and lofty goals. Their integration of in-game functionality to a web interface caused problems in-game for years.

    I thought about the things you outline before I started two-plus years ago. And based on what I learned from what happened to Vanguard and since it's basically a hobby for me I decided to forge ahead. A huge amount of code and DB design has already been done. I design for maximum flexibility as essentially I'm flying blind on what we really know about how Pantheon will function. Decades of DB and web code work have taught me lessens to help me save my butt from being coded into a box, I hope.

     

    **A small example of keeping my code flexible - The max level has now changed from 45 to 50 over the past year or so of the development process. Since I knew level would be one of those fluid values in an MMO I coded in a master definitions file where I set constants that are used throughout my website.

    //**** CHARACTER SETTINGS***********************
    define("MAX_LEVEL", "50"); // character max level
    define("MAX_CHARACTERS", "10"); // max characters per user
    define("STARTING_NAME", "UNNAMED"); // new character starting name

    Now I just make a simple change in that file and max level in select lists and other forms is changed everywhere.***

     

    My expectation is VR may create some decent in-game tools for guild management. But people like a web-based solution as well. One with LOTs of functionality. Lot's of visuals. I suspect I can do a better job of that than VR as I don't think they'll have a FTE slot to spare for it.

    Of course I could be wrong, and they'll have a wonderful tool for everyone. I'm ok with that. I had fun.


    This post was edited by zewtastic at February 24, 2020 7:55 PM PST
    • 844 posts
    February 24, 2020 9:50 AM PST

    Celandor said:

    As far as the logistics of how to handle multiple people working on your codebase, I would suggest GitLab if it's going to be a closed source project.  It essentially gives you the features of GitHub, but in a self-hosted repository which you have total control.

    I'm more of a Python guy, or I'd offer to assist directly.  I stopped using PHP several years ago.  If you need someone to test features from a guild management perspective, as the recruiting officer and resident nerd for Legacy of Ages, I would be happy to provide feedback.  If you need help setting up your SCM, send me a PM.

    Thank for the tip. I will investigate GitLab. I would love to get people involved that want to learn coding. But I don't want to compromise anything either. Hopefully GitLab gives me that kind of control.

    • 379 posts
    February 24, 2020 7:40 PM PST

    I know nothing about coding, I'm more of an idea/brainstorming guy. I do think this tool you are working on is amazing. Keep it up!

    • 557 posts
    February 25, 2020 7:21 AM PST

    zewtastic said:

    Thank for the tip. I will investigate GitLab. I would love to get people involved that want to learn coding. But I don't want to compromise anything either. Hopefully GitLab gives me that kind of control.

    Most large distributed projects these days use git as their source code management tool.  It gives you great flexibility for managing multiple branches of a code source tree.  GitLab lets you manage community members who want to check out your code and then contribute back.  You have full review capability before anything is merged with your code branch.  Provided you review and understand the submitted code, there are really no security risks to your project.   You don't have to give anyone remote access to your live systems or your personal dev environment.

    Definitely worth checking out.

    • 844 posts
    February 25, 2020 9:34 AM PST

    Celandor said:

    zewtastic said:

    Thank for the tip. I will investigate GitLab. I would love to get people involved that want to learn coding. But I don't want to compromise anything either. Hopefully GitLab gives me that kind of control.

    Most large distributed projects these days use git as their source code management tool.  It gives you great flexibility for managing multiple branches of a code source tree.  GitLab lets you manage community members who want to check out your code and then contribute back.  You have full review capability before anything is merged with your code branch.  Provided you review and understand the submitted code, there are really no security risks to your project.   You don't have to give anyone remote access to your live systems or your personal dev environment.

    Definitely worth checking out.

    The issue I have, and it's not a Git thing, is anyone looking to work on code effectively needs an entire copy of all the site code and the DB. Not really what I'm looking to do.

    • 557 posts
    February 25, 2020 7:20 PM PST

    zewtastic said:

     

    The issue I have, and it's not a Git thing, is anyone looking to work on code effectively needs an entire copy of all the site code and the DB. Not really what I'm looking to do.

    You can create a dummy copy of the database.   The important aspect from a code perspective is the schema.  If you're worried about performance testing, fill it with procedurally generated fake items/data.

    Is there some standalone component that you are asking for help with? 

    Otherwise, I'm at a loss to understand the nature of your request for coding assistance if you don't want your programmers to see the code?   Are you thinking maybe you could get Ben Affleck to reprise his role in Paycheck?  

    Best wishes for your project.  Hope you get it sorted.