Help / ideas wanted

Hellscrag · Post **Posted:** 28 Jan 2009, 23:06

Hello all

It can't have escaped your notice that I have been giving UnrealSP.Org a pretty poor standard of management for some time now (it's probably been some years since I stopped running this site really enthusiastically). Examples would be my complete failure to maintain the Upcoming Maps page properly; my slowness in updating the review of WTF Series 1; and my extreme slowness in editing and publishing large-scale content submissions like UBerserker's Beta Guide (I have had the content for Foundry and Toxic waiting to be done for months now). I don't even post news as often and reliably as I might.

This is simply because Unreal doesn't motivate me like it used to, and I have other activities / projects that I'd rather be focusing on. I still enjoy the game itself and being around this community... but, these days, I hold my position in the community more or less by default - simply through never having sought out somebody to take over. I'm certain that I am no longer the best person to run this site, and I think it likely that my own lack of motivation contributes to the sense of lethargy / decline that sometimes permeates this community.

In a nutshell: the site could continue for a long time as it is, but I don't think you can expect the standard of maintenance to IMPROVE while I am still in charge. In the longer term, it is only likely to decline.

I'm NOT saying that I want to leave the community completely, and I'm NOT saying that I am no longer willing to pay for the site to keep operating. However, I AM saying that somebody else could probably do a better job of running the site itself than I can.

I would like to use this thread to test the waters and see if there is anybody here who would be willing, in principle, to take a more active role in running the site. There are a number of different levels at which somebody could conceivably get involved, for example:

- Taking over as the main news editor (low involvement);
- Taking over as news editor AND taking on responsibility for the Upcoming Maps page* (medium involvement); or
- Taking over as news editor AND taking on full content editing / webmastering duties for the site as a whole* (very high involvement).

* There's no sophisticated content management system for the main page; it's all still done using basic HTML/PHP and FTP . I believe I have the capability on the site's current web hosting to set up a number of different FTP accounts with different levels of access appropriate to whatever level of help might be offered.

I am also open to other imaginative offers of help. The more involved somebody was prepared to get, the more freedom they would have to change the way the site is structured / designed and the way it operates, although I think I would have to retain a power of veto as long as the web site continued to be registered in my name and funded personally by me.

I now throw this thread open to any offers of help OR ideas that might help me manage the site more efficiently. You don't necessarily need to be offering actual help with the running of the site to put forward a useful idea, so don't be shy.

Please note, however, that I don't want anybody to volunteer solely out of a sense of obligation, as that would be unlikely to generate a better level of maintenance than I myself am currently offering.

Thanks all!

Frieza · Post **Posted:** 28 Jan 2009, 23:42

Not me in any case

One big concern I would have with someone taking over the site would be quality control of the content that gets posted, something which you've always done admirably. I'm thinking the right to veto stuff wouldn't actually help you much in terms of spending less time on the site than you currently are, as you still have to go through all the content before allowing it to appear on the site.

What you should ask yourself though, do you want the standard of maintenance to improve to get more people involved with the site and the forums, or purely for the people already part of the community? Because I don't think a lot of us mind that updates on the mainpage are slow as we already know about them from the forums.

Buff Skeleton · Post **Posted:** 29 Jan 2009, 00:10

It might require a fairly large up-front time investment, but I would definitely recommend setting up some kind of content management system like Joomla or similar. There are plenty of good free things out there. While setting it up, you can test it on a free webhost rather than take this site down. Then, once it's ready to go, you just make a backup of this site, shut it down, install the program again on this server, and then start putting content back where it goes. This could mean lots of copy/pasting, but you could even set up a dummy temporary account and get volunteers from the forums to help with that.

Once all the old content is back in place and you have the theme and stuff all set up as you like (shouldn't be hard; this site has a very simple theme, which is good), you pretty much can let the site run on auto-pilot, and making new articles and front page updates would be incredibly easy (just like making forum posts).

Stakhanov · Post **Posted:** 29 Jan 2009, 00:15

Whoa there , don't beat yourself up over such concerns , it's normal that things are slow for a 99 game community. release TCO already !

But I guess it wouldn't hurt to have several admins to distribute tasks to.

jackrabbit · Post **Posted:** 29 Jan 2009, 02:27

whatever spreads news faster goes good in my book. I think its more important that people hear news regardless if its 100% accurate rather than not hearing it at all (or over a long delay). Same goes with the upcoming maps/projects section (which I would definitely like to see more content in there)

Post **Posted:** 29 Jan 2009, 13:12

I wouldn't mind taking over as the news editor. And while I'd also accept full site maintaining duties, I fear that I lack the experience to handle major technical difficulties and negotiate with the webhost in such cases. I don't mind the lack of a content generation system at all, because I have never worked with these anyway and I'm more accustomed to directly add content via HTML as well.

Darkon · Post **Posted:** 29 Jan 2009, 15:28

Wow Scrag.. what kind of blasphemy is that?!

ok.. just kidding.... I totally understand.

Will you still do your duties as Admin of the forums? I surely hope so, because I simply don't know anyone who's as good with words as you... Just the way you handle things with words is something I truely enjoy here.

But then I get the idea that you just want to give work to others maintaining the other part of the site, which is a good idea. It might be a good idea tho to have something in place that would make it foolproof to an editor.... (Dunno if it would also be good to do a WHOLE overhaul of the site, if that would include the forums.....)

Hellscrag · Post **Posted:** 29 Jan 2009, 19:11

Thanks for the thoughts / offers so far, everyone:

Darkon, I did kinda skate over the forum issue in my original post. I'd still be happy to do that, if the site staff were still happy for me to be in overall control of the forums.

Frieza, thanks for the kind words about my quality control. It has always been something that I felt was important to give the site credibility. Your point about the importance of the main page vs the forums is well-made, but I bet there are plenty of casual readers out there who don't actually make it onto the forums (news comments are one good way of bringing these people into the forum community).

Waff, your content management system idea is probably a good one in principle, but would probably take me a very long time to get round to implementing.

sana, thank you for your kind offer of taking over as news editor. I may well take you up on it. The forum-based news system that I implemented some time ago was designed specifically for the purpose of making posting news as easy as possible, and no knowledge of HTML is required for that role.

...In fact, if I worked a bit of PHP mojo, a forum-based Upcoming Maps page would not be out of the question, and there would be various ways of doing it. It would be a system that could be maintained either by a selected team of Upcoming Maps moderators or even by the mappers themselves (as long as clear ground rules were set). That along with the news system would take care of the areas of the site most in need of regular updates.

Raven · Post **Posted:** 29 Jan 2009, 19:39

As for forum-based upcoming maps I've done that form my site so I can give the sources (as it's based on phpBB 2.x). You can also modify news system you have right now

. I can help in php-related stuff but that after I finish all exams.

Hellscrag · Post **Posted:** 29 Jan 2009, 19:48

Raven wrote:As for forum-based upcoming maps I've done that form my site so I can give the sources (as it's based on phpBB 2.x). You can also modify news system you have right now . I can help in php-related stuff but that after I finish all exams.

Generous as ever, Raven, thank you.

I think I would enjoy the challenge of attempting this myself (and I would, indeed, base it on the news script) but thank you for the offer, which I will bear in mind.

jackrabbit · Post **Posted:** 29 Jan 2009, 23:39

...In fact, if I worked a bit of PHP mojo, a forum-based Upcoming Maps page would not be out of the question, and there would be various ways of doing it. It would be a system that could be maintained either by a selected team of Upcoming Maps moderators or even by the mappers themselves (as long as clear ground rules were set). That along with the news system would take care of the areas of the site most in need of regular updates.

holy crap.. I would totally become one of those "mapper" guys who updates their own section. I think this is a very healthy idea for the community or people who want to get their project out there. If you establish those "groud rules" you speak of for the mappers, i'm sure you would get good response.

Buff Skeleton · Post **Posted:** 30 Jan 2009, 00:27

This would indeed be good, so long as you had to pre-approve people for them to be able to post in the Upcoming Maps forum. You don't want just anyone to register and fill it up with a project about Goatse :p

zYnthetic · Post **Posted:** 30 Jan 2009, 04:40

Just establish a template for posting Upcoming Maps to be used in the first post. This gets posted (or edited in) in Projects by anyone and then a mod moves it to the (users:post new topic disabled) Upcoming Maps forum. Much like news the info in the first post gets parsed to display on the main Upcoming Maps page and ppl can still leave comments.
Wouldn't it be nice if writing a script for this was a simple as it sounds :p

Raven · Post **Posted:** 30 Jan 2009, 13:51

In this case... it is

. Well maybe adding prefixes for projects (like [UT1], [U1], etc) and filtering will few minutes, but using current news script as a base this update will be fairly easy to achieve. But what about featured/recently completed projects ? Will it be done with another forum or just by prefixes (even in topic title will be enough, then just parse it).

kea · Post **Posted:** 30 Jan 2009, 14:46

Website really needs some CMS, even very simple one working through integration with forums.

Help / ideas wanted

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