Possible New CUTT Website 2010

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New CUTT Website Project 2011

With his comment about no complaining without helping Drac experimented over Christmas with porting what Zebbie had originally done to the Joomla CMS framework, and how well he could customise a template.

The result is here: http://www.draconas.co.uk/cutt and I have asked the society exec if they would be interested in taking the project any further forward.

This currently has at time of writing:

Thus it is, as far as I can tell, a complete replication of the content on the original site, I have gone through and pruned out the extranious html that were inherited from between 1-3 goes of copy pasting, but the formatting of most sections is basically the same.

Structurally it is a horrible mash of original site and Zebbies.

Things that it still needs to have done before being considered finished

Note many of these are not essential for it replacing the current website, though some of them are.

Images

Artwork has been what zebbie could prune / come up with in MSPaint. This has the problem of the pruned pics not looking wonderful, and the people in them not necessarily wanting their faces plastered all over the internet in makeup.

Thus what I propose / would really like is:

Actual photos of:

Structure

The structure needs to change. This requires probably sitting down around a table with pen and paper and working out what we want.

Thus structural suggestions welcome. The following limits are imposed by the content management system:

Menu links: Can do either to a single article, a "category list" or a "category blog"

A category list lists all the articles in that category, with a link to the sub categories at the bottom. http://www.draconas.co.uk/cutt/index.php/how-to-play is a good example of a category list.

A Category blog is laid out more like a blog, with the articles each showing a small section with a "read more link" to get the full article. http://www.draconas.co.uk/cutt/index.php/how-to-play/character-creation is a good blog example.

The side menu is content sensitive, but the content has to be created manually (the side menu displayed whatever has been assigned as the submenu of the current menu item), so you may notice that the links on the side won't always correspond to the subcategories of each section, more to what I (arbitrarily) decided was important when I created that section, thus the side-menu when you are in the magic skills section has a link to "magic rules" which is in another place entirely. That is why you have a blank side menu on some sections - in the current structure they have no submenus.

Article content / Format

The Bad news: A lot of information is probably out of date and inaccurate. I am porting a combination of the listings from Zebbies site and the website bugs spotted by malselene as a basis and listing them below.

The good news: using a content management system means that it is not required for you to have 1. an SRCF account or 2. Any knowledge of HTML (though it is still helpful!) to edit the site. Joomla has its own user system and creating accounts that can edit the site is very simple, they can create and edit articles, upload images and files all within Joomla itself. It has a WYSIWYG webpage editor for creating the content as well as a html editor for those that want to get deep and dirty under the hood.

Thus more than 1 person can update the site / add content, if you are itnerested in working on any of the sections yell at me and I will set you up an account.

Overall template / look and feel

I am not going to do major work on this at the moment as the template currently is the base release candidate template that I have machetted in situ, as the template has comments like "do not use for production until this is fixed..." all over it I am going to need overwrite it when the patch comes out and start again from scratch.

What (in my current opinion) will be staying:

I personally quite like the orangle titlebar, but more people have commented on that (and possibly how it clashes with the green) than anything else, might try editing the green to soemthing more in keeping with the rest. Suggestions by people who see in more than 16 colours welcome.

Phew... I am rapidly running out of lunch hour so have to go do paid work again, until then

List of what I think are relevant comments from zebbiesite may be missing some

Photos: Most photos to be replaced. Any that are not replaced should have explicit consent sought for.

Player Guides on this example website should NOT in any way be taken as Official Statements of anything, especially not as Refly proclamations, as they were all filled in quickly, by me in my lone capacity as a private individual, merely to pencil in blanks and in order to prune out/precis very old stuff or add in public details like recent temple relocations to the existing guides.

On the other hand, I think that what I have linked to at present would actually be a suitable minimum for publication were we to want to go live on a new website before a full official review of player guides could be completed – on the basis that “some content” is better than a broken link. I have deliberately tried to keep the public guides relatively short and succinct in the expectation that now they can find them, some people might try to sit down and read all of them, and I feel that this process should be made as non-painful as possible (whilst still feeling that wide access to setting info is generally good, and to be preferred over the bulk of it staying private).

List from original website bugs

Initial List Added Dec 2010 by Malselene. I can go through and label myself on all the bits that contain my opinions if people would rather me do that. I’ve flagged up everything I’ve spotted that could be in any way a problem with the website. Possibly I’ve flagged up some things that aren’t problems aswell but I've never claimed to be competent. I’ve also probably missed some so if anyone has any to add please do so.

Society – General

About Treasure Trap

Link is broken (could probably just be removed)
Exists on new site
The Committee
Is out of date
Fixed
The Refs
Is out of date
Fixed
The Armoury
Link broken (Could just link to the corresponding page on the wiki?)
Now has at least one page.

Society – Resources

Galleries

Has an error warning at the top of the first page and no links from it work
No gallery as yet,. Integrate with Gallery or Coppermine

Links

Link broken (could probably just be removed)

Setting - General

Miricals and Gods

Link broken (maybe remove if no content available as most of the relavent stuff is covered under Temples and Faiths and Spirit Rules)
Gone
Mathemagic and Planar Theory
Link broken (could probably just be removed)
Gone

Setting - Grantabrugge

Welcome to Grantabrugge

Weirdly doesn’t work in firefox but is fine in safari
NA
Map of the City
Possibly slightly out of date with all the occasional temple burnings and rebuildings
Temples and Faiths
The main page is out of date with reference to pantheons
Crafter and Vivamort at least are out of date. Many of them contain present tense references to pantheons and while the information is still valid (as I don't think pantheonic opposites are likely to become overnight buddies) it probably wants to slip into the past tense.
The Alchemists Guild
Link broken
Current non-existant, probably should be.
The Seekers
Link broken (can probably be removed if there is no content as it doesn’t seem that vital especially to a new player who might just get put off by dud links)
Removed
The Bard’s Guild
Link broken (as above)
Removed
The City Militia
Link broken
Removed
Elven Unity
Link broken (as The Seekers)
Removed

System – General Rules

Hits System

The link in the heading Dexterity Armour leads nowhere
Removed
The DAC section of this page does not specify that it is only a melee weapon blow that can be dodged. (The DAC descriptions under Warrior, Wilderness and Subterfuge do specify this although they are missing the information that it cannot be used on DROP or SLAY calls)
Note added it is melee only.
The section on healing people up from bleeding currently says.
The first HALF point of curing applied to a bleeding location stops the bleeding and has no other effect. (This will frequently result in half a point of curing being wasted, but does allow you to (usually) stop two locations bleeding with a CURE 1 and all 6 with a CURE 3). Further hits to an already bleeding location have no effect. In addition, bleeding can be stopped by use of bandaging as part of the First Aid skill. Note that halves round up after healing as long as you aren't actively in combat at the time.
It has been indicated to me a couple of times that this may not match what most people are using in play and it seems to be a point of confusion as to what exactly the rules are and hence may need clarifying.

System - Skill Trees

General Skills

Under Background Skills
Common background skills have a player guide that you will be provided with on purchasing the skill, which will provide information about the area of expertise of the skill (for example, Alchemy Guild Lore might provide you with a sheet defining the size and location of the Guild, the names of major members and their basic personalities, the organisational structure etc).
I think this wants looking at as I believe most player guides are handed out on organizational membership without requiring background skills.

Racial Packages

This page states that Kender can not be priests which I believe is no longer the case.
The formatting for Skaven is out of line with the rest of the page
Fixed
Skaven probably also wants the following to be added to it’s list of stuff to bring them in line with what is on the list for humans
• May learn Magical or Spiritual skills, or worship a god as a lay follower.
• Take normal effect from all spells, miracles, damage and other abilities.

Subterfuge Skills, Warrior Skills and Wilderness Skills

Some skills are currently written as
Conceal Item (5xp) [Requires Subterfuge 2n-1] or Fitness (6xp)[Warrior n]
I think it would be clearer written as
Conceal Item 1,2,3,4 (5xp) [requires subterfuge I,III,V,VII] or Fitness 1-8 (6xp)[Warrior of equal level]
as the lack of an n on the left side of the equation is displeasing to my mathematics and might lead to confusion but your milage may vary.
The DAC descriptions on these pages don’t include the fact that DAC cannot be used on DROP or SLAY calls.
Fixed by removing DAC descriptions and pointing at the Combat rules page so DAC is described in exactly 1 place. Skill description now covers the rules for how it gives you DAC.
Warrior Skils
Armour has may be purchased multiple times multiple times (twice) it it's description.

Magic Rules

Learning spells may want looking at as I think references to cost for learning library spells is now out of date
The creation of scroll section needs looking at

Magic Skills

The Formular for XP costing of spells could do with a "rounding up" added.

Spirit Rules

The stuff on pantheons is now out of date.
Spirit Skills
The stuff under power meld still has references to pantheons and probably needs correcting.
The Pantheon
The pages for individual gods that link from this still have old miricle trees including Blessing as well as references to pantheonic opposites. Equally the page itself lists the pantheons as they were rather than as they are.

Alchemy Rules

The Alchemy Basics link that leads off from Alchemy rules goes nowhere which probably doesn’t help put the complexity of the alchemy system in a good light.

Non Page Specific Stuff

The descriptions for how many times skills can be bought is decidedly unclear. Many skills state that they can be bought multiple times while others which should be able to do do not. (In subterfuge hide tracks can be bought multiple times, alias doesn't say it can an even though it's implicit in the description. In warrior armour can be bought multiple times but dueling can not). The wordings used are inconsistent across the site Elemental Skill, Power and Might on the magic skills page have "This skill may be bought more than once." rather than "This skill can be bought multiple times.". Skills that can't be bought at every level but only at some generally have no indication for this beyond multiple numbers in the [requires ext] box. This is slightly unclear to someone not used to the system. (Extra rage being the one that very much confused me on first learning the rules)

And I still have no idea whether it would be allowed to buy subterfuge 9 (through double buying) merely for the bragging rights of being the best theif in the entire world or not

My proposed solution for this would be to include a list of how many levels a skill can be bought for in the title. i.e. Elemental Skill 1-8, Blindfighting 1-3 or Berserk. Of course this possibly fails when you consider skills like armour that can technically be bought up to level 8 but cease to have descernable effect after level 5)

Rules that appear to be missing/rules calls it would probably be a good idea to have on the website

I've listed what I can think of but please add more.

Original doc for me to steal relevant notes from:

Dear Society,

It has come to my attention that there are some issues with the current CUTT website. Whilst it is full of many, many thousand words of useful content, it has been mentioned that is also arranged in a non-intuitive way, there are broken links, some topics are spread across several areas or repeated, and the general look is starting to date (it also needs an info update before the new year, but that is a known issue). It is occasionally mentioned as putting people off the society.

Therefore, I have written a proposed new CUTT website.

You can find it [here]

I am still in the process of moving content across, however I feel I have done enough already to give a clear idea of my aim and intentions.

Sadly I only have a 1xp Background Skill in Web Design and so there are a few things which I have not been able to implement as I would like. These are listed below for your attention – were this outline or something like it to be used as the main site, someone with actual web skills would need to volunteer to take this on, in particular creating a css stylesheet for the entire site. I feel that I have now done everything which I am able to do towards this project in bringing it this far.

Please also be aware that this is a draft outline intended to give a useful impression of my ideas – I have also included a ‘stuff you are probably already thinking’ section below, intended to pre-empt some of the more obvious Fail points this raises.

You will also notice as you go through that the draft website has a minor case of Oni poisoning in places – these MS Paint icons denote places where content does not actually seem to exist, eg: we have no photos of a dwarf with the new physrepping, for example. Should anyone wish to gather a party of brave administrators to clear out all the Taintbeasts from the website, that would be excellent – mostly they are used to denote short mini-projects to fill in specific pages.

I would love to hear any other comments or suggestions, and especially offers to help make this into something actually useable over the next few weeks to get a more accessible website up and running, ideally in time for the new academic year.

Cheers,

Zebbie

I like the general look and feel of what is there so far, subject to many of the suggestions below (particularly the one about sliding/expanding menu items). Are we going to try to roll this out for the new year? Are there any tasks that those in charge of hosting etc. can open for work by other members of the society, eg. wrt. writing text or creating images? --Chevron

Aquarion has also been working on an improved TT website and will be producing a public draft soon, once it contains some content - there can then be discussion of what features people actually want to see/what style we should use etc, in view to trying to get it sorted over the next month or so ready for the new year.

Entimix has already volunteered to start looking at the technical implementation of the site! :D The front page of this site contains this, using a seperate menu file that can be included from any page: http://entimix.aqxs.net/tt/

Currently only the front page has the new work on it; the rest is just a straight copy of Zebbie's version. --Entimix
I hate to be critical of something I am not helping with, but I think that the overall bounce out style of menu is actually quite bad from a user experience POV - especially for things like the guides which are 4 levels deep of nesting. Would much prefer a menu where clicking on the heading expands that sections sub-links and so on. If you look at websites that use them (www.ebuyer.com is quite a good expample) the temporary section is usually only 1 level of nesting which covers a broad category, then sub sections work as a persistant menu to make navigating around the little section you are in easier. --Drac

That is a good thought - I have found that I sometimes 'slip off' the menu when navigating to the bottom of a long list in the guides and have it all close, if they can be made persistant whilst using them this would be eliminated. --Zebbie
Aye, I also had similar thoughts, but hadn't got round to playing with different implementations. Deferring to Aquarion's work for now, though. --Entimix

At risk of being burned alive: would it be worth making use of a CMS system such as Mambo/Joomla?/Drupal?/Another? of the implementers choice? You have to do a bit of sitting down and thinking up front but afterwards maintenance is easier and you have things like a WYSIWYG interface for creating/updating the pages.--Drac

Stuff I didn’t have the 1337 skillz to implement.

Stuff you are probably already thinking

Player Guides on this example website should NOT in any way be taken as Official Statements of anything, especially not as Refly proclamations, as they were all filled in quickly, by me in my lone capacity as a private individual, merely to pencil in blanks and in order to prune out/precis very old stuff or add in public details like recent temple relocations to the existing guides.

On the other hand, I think that what I have linked to at present would actually be a suitable minimum for publication were we to want to go live on a new website before a full official review of player guides could be completed – on the basis that “some content” is better than a broken link. I have deliberately tried to keep the public guides relatively short and succinct in the expectation that now they can find them, some people might try to sit down and read all of them, and I feel that this process should be made as non-painful as possible (whilst still feeling that wide access to setting info is generally good, and to be preferred over the bulk of it staying private).

Content Changes Needed

(my plan had been to use 'any random human pc not wearing anything too distinctive' for a grey man photo, but then Ariane came into that category and it seemed appropriate to use that as the image, the idea was to emphasise how they look like pcs ---Zebbie)

I'd prefer it if you used someone who isn't in play any more, as that could cause some awkward questions when she comes back into play next year... --Pufferfish

I've been explicitly told several times that they *dont* exist by previous refteams. Is this incorrect? --Ahdok
and this is what we call Incomplete Transmission Of Information... I can say for sure that they have existed and been relevant in play before, and as far as I'm concerned they probably still exist... --ChessyPig
Aye, I've been told the planes exist, but the elementals probably don't. That anyone has seen... --Pufferfish
At some point I believe the non-existence of paraelementals (and possibly paraelemental planes, although I'm not sure) was a plot point. On the other hand, weren't Sparky and Twinkles' children para-elementals? I reckon it's best to put this one in the box marked "Don't Poke", make a ruling and stick with it until it's forgotten and we have the whole discussion over again in a few year's time. --Jacob
Sparky and Twinkles' children were specifically *not* paraelementals, but were unstable because of their "interesting" "parentage" --Pufferfish
[Ah, Sparky and Twinkles. And now I don't believe there's anyone left in system who ever met them. Ah well.]
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