Thanks Winter I'm looking forward to see all these changes you've been busy on. As discussed in the forums something has gone wrong between sf & github as when mike did the update some changes went on to the live site but some didn't. > - www.freecol.org/bugtracker contains broken remains not inside git, > maybe same for www.freecol.org/featuretracker or other directories. > Needs checking with ftp access? > - Some older news items (I think 0.9.4 and older) contain broken > bugtracker and featuretracker links, I do not have a replacement for. > Are these still accessible somewhere in bugtracker or as changelogs? > - Maybe fix the stuff in cv3-discoverer-english to be an actual, > accessible html page?> - Maybe look through docs, templates, images and >create-new-article > directories for things to update or delete?> - [Maybe convert the xhtml1.0 >transitional to html5?]
Unfortunately I'm no help to you with these ones as they are beyond my skill sets and/or they require intimate knowledge of the sites workings and history. But I'm guessing you were more after feedback from Mike and the others on these anyway. > - [Maybe clean up the div-soup and table-soup everywhere?] > - [Maybe make the website prettier somehow?] These ones I may be able to help you with, but with help and guidance. Eg you guys overhaul one section, show it to me and then I attempt to replicate the improvements across other sections.And yes even with notepadd++ I struggled in that endless sea of broken divs and tables. It's a such a mess you just get lost in it all! > - Maybe update some pages with warnings about the being outdated or > move or delete? There's already a couple of outdated content warnings in yellow boxes on some old pages of the site so just tell me which pages need the out of date disclaimer and I'll just copy and paste a similar yellow box msg into them all if you guys don't wish to delete. Easy! :) > - Maybe add some new content? > - When all is done, add news about website update. Now these I can be a BIG help to you guys on and I've got a few ideas I've probably already mentioned before. Best of all I can pretty much do some of them myself without bothering you guys every 5 minutes. The current screenshots section is DISMAL.. the newest pics are from version 7.0 for christ sake lol, it really undersells your game as you've made numerous engine and terrain improvements since those pics. So I'm thinking I can update more-screenshots.html with some of those HD pictures I made and showed you guys before at imgur.com/a/lBEsMJB (I'm thinking I might take a new HD screenshot with the classic wooden mod interface turned on just for people who like the old one too) and put them above the old 7.0 pics in a new 12.0 pre-release test images section. Then update the main screenshots.html file to use some of these new pics too. I'm guessing you'd rather onsite hosting instead of offsite so I can upload my pngs to your github website images folder for usage. I also want to add a new videos.html page that its laid out similar to the screenshots page and lists all found videos and mentions the version number used for the recording. There's a whole bunch of videos on youtube from people made over the years can can be used to show off your game and of course I've got my much newer HD freecol tour video currently sitting on ice on my computer ready to be uploaded to youtube once I've made some final changes and fixes to it. I was originally thinking that we rename screenshots in the main menu to 'media' but realised that your main menu code is duplicates across every single page on the site which would be not so much fun to change lol. So I'm thinking I simply add the new videos page as a subsection of the current screenshots section and then all I have to do is change the menu in all the screenshot subsection html pages (more-screenshots, ar-units, art-icons, art-colonies) to include the videos page. Then I can also change the main screenshots.html page to talk about the videos section so that the moment anyone anywhere on the site clicks on screenshots they'll be taken to that page and see very quickly that there is a videos subsection just like there is currently a more screenshots subsection. "new HD videos and screenshots added to site" can even be a separate news item to winters suggested website update news post as the more news we can think of (to make the place look more active) the better lol! Winter I'm guessing you're going with the onsite simplified news plan? Despite the recent live site updating issues I can see you've changed a number of news items have "read more" button which is cool. Although I'd strongly recommend we change the title of the article to be a link as as well since that's how the vast majority of blog & news sites work. You can either hit a read more button or click on the main heading itself to load the full article. eg "Nightly Releases Now Online!" just above the date published takes you to the article as well as the read more. Only problem with this strategy is that you're still going to pages and pages of news. eg its currently 13 pages so even with truncated articles only showing the first couple of sentences you're still going to have 5 or 6 pages or 2 or so mega long ones and still have all the annoying problems of having to bump articles back between pages every time you add a new one. Thats why I was thinking either switching to a blog service that does all the list page organising for you (eg https://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-install-wordpress-manually-web-hosting.html ) or using a very simple one page list of news title only links similar to what the openra guys did (eg https://www.openra.net/news/ ) although they're using 3 lines = 1-title 2-author & date 3-comments which we wouldn't need, we could easily do bolded title with small - author & date after it on 1 line (eg see below) and squish them all on to one giant list page. Then you never have to worry about managing news pages again lol! Nightly Releases Now Online! - By David 2017-09-16 FreeCol 0.11.6 released! - By FreeCol Team 2015-10-17 FreeCol 0.11.5 released! - By FreeCol Team 2015-08-03 Anyway as much as I'd love to start on some of these ideas (eg the screenshots & vids thing) I'm busy until after Christmas plus I don't dare work on the website when I know the current github master copy doesn't have all the recent changes made by winter and I. Once that is sorted by someone I can then clone it and have a play. Speaking of news Marcin suggested I add a news link to my sticky WELCOME post however I'm hesitant to do so when currently the news makes the project look abandoned lol! Once we've sorted out some of the above stuff I'll stick a news link to the welcome post too. I've done another pass on my proposed feature list to put on the front page with the new summary text & links. I've done a quick test on my Babylon 5 Civ4 mod sourceforge page and there was no character limit on the feature boxes stopping me from using the longer features which is good news. This is the current list (very open to suggestions/additions/corrections): - Play classic Colonization games - Play new expanded Colonization games - Huge 8 player games (plus even more players with mods) - Multiplayer support - Huge maps of America, Africa, Australia, and more! - Map Editor to create your own maps - Easy fan mods support David recently posted here that he's setup some stuff on github for modders:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/e78a6df83d/?limit=25#5ae5 This reminded me of something else I wanted to help setup which is making the FreeCol forum more mod friendly. Eg have a sticky thread in this FreeCol forum that gives important information and links on how to mod the game, how to lodge a mod request (using the info dave posted), lists the mods currently included with freecol, lists other mods and custom maps (with links) found in the depths of the forums here that are not included but are worth mentioning and an ideas dream wishlist for what people would like to see in a mod if they can't make one themselves (this would sort of share ideas with the ideas for Freecol 2 forum).I could put something like that together in the forums when I have some time. :) And then put link to it in the welcome thread too as I think it is really important 'advertise' an friendly easy well structured modding scene for your game as that attracts fans and talented people big time, it keeps fan projects alive for years even after the main engine isn't worked on anymore (eg Star Trek Armada 2 Fleet Ops is the most recent example of that I've seen). "Want to make your dream colonization game experience from an existing engine? You’ve come to the right place!" lol. Anyway I think that's all the ideas i had rolling around in my head. I look forward to getting started on some of them around the end of the week. Have a good christmas guys! Blake On Monday, 16 December 2019, 04:04:40 am ACDT, <win...@genial.ms> wrote: Hi, I fixed most remaining broken things on the website now, but removed some broken stuff, like rss feeds. There is still a few problems remaining: - www.freecol.org/bugtracker contains broken remains not inside git, maybe same for www.freecol.org/featuretracker or other directories. Needs checking with ftp access? - Some older news items (I think 0.9.4 and older) contain broken bugtracker and featuretracker links, I do not have a replacement for. Are these still accessible somewhere in bugtracker or as changelogs? - Maybe fix the stuff in cv3-discoverer-english to be an actual, accessible html page? - Maybe look through docs, templates, images and create-new-article directories for things to update or delete? - Maybe update some pages with warnings about the being outdated or move or delete? - Maybe add some new content? - [Maybe convert the xhtml1.0 transitional to html5?] - [Maybe clean up the div-soup and table-soup everywhere?] - [Maybe make the website prettier somehow?] - When all is done, add news about website update. If you have time and comments on above questions, please do! Greetings, wintertime _______________________________________________ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
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