Community Platform Development

[Bernardo dei Medici]

Its that time once again, for us to hammer out the Community Platform for Wessex.

I have all the planning for the layout of the site finished. I added Fiefs into the mix and now we'll be able to upload avatar pics for any coat of arms. Those with a coat of arms will have theirs at the main avatar, while those pledged to them will have a coat of arms and their primary membership.

Yeoman titles will take precedence over Military titles, unless absolutely necessary that we display both, which can be arranged.

This week I'll start making up a list of required graphics and icons for people to contribute. I still have most, if not all, of Koma's icons, so I'll be using those, but other needs might pop up.

Starting with the basics, my first goal is to get people to be able to create new accounts and log in, change their profile, post journals, etc. Membership management and display will take a bit as will navigation.

I can integrate the exams and new member applications into the system as well.

I can also integrate membership creation with forum registration. One stop account creation ftw, if you want it. All I need is for someone to add one line PHP include script into the Forums script and that will all be taken care of.

Also, if I could get root server and database access that would be awesome and make my life easier.

[Nira Nathair]

Thank you for taking the time to get this started for us, Brando.

Yeoman titles will take precedence over Military titles, unless absolutely necessary that we display both, which can be arranged.

I think it would be beneficial to show both titles. Actual military membership (i.e. training) will be noteworthy as it will require a commitment to achieve; promotion doubly so. How hard would it be? How are titles assigned, is it like a group membership?

I can also integrate membership creation with forum registration. One stop account creation ftw, if you want it. All I need is for someone to add one line PHP include script into the Forums script and that will all be taken care of.

Easy to do. But we don't want to make an account on the community site for every guest or troll who creates an account on our forums. (Can you imagine if an ad-bot managed to get in? :<).
How about I modify our forum admin/mod system to include a button for "Create Portal User" to run that script? That would allow our officers to create those accounts as necessary and with no data entry; this could be done when someone is made a trial member.

Also, if I could get root server and database access that would be awesome and make my life easier.

I will PM you with details.

[Bernardo dei Medici]

Easy to do. But we don't want to make an account on the community site for every guest or troll who creates an account on our forums. (Can you imagine if an ad-bot managed to get in? :<).

The platform can handle access levels to grant access to approved members only, admin, officers, or whatever other grouping you can come up with.

As for the titles, I suppose I could add in two fields, one for military, one for another, perhaps even a third for misc titles and things.

The single title is currently default, but I could add in additional ones.

Right now it functions on a set group of titles from a drop-down menu. Any custom titles display "CUSTOM TITLE -- DO NOT CHANGE" in the admin panel for the middle and lower tier officers to see. Any admins/higher rank officer have access to a text box rather than a drop-down menu.

Basically I made the site idiot friendly to avoid having to train people on how to use it or to prevent simple mistakes. It limits the level of customization for the lower ranks, but the upper ranks should have full access.

Do you want me to take the same approach with the Duchy's rendition or should I just make it open fields for everything?

[Nira Nathair]

What if we had a table of different groups, and a pivot table linking accounts to groups? Instead of choosing the title from a pull-down, the moderator would select all the groups the user was a member of. This is how the vB user management works, and it's very effective. It would allow us to expand on what services groups offer to the application in the future, too. Do you have something like this set up already?

The Groups table could have an integer column named "precedence," which the site would use to decide which group titles are displayed first. (For example, Cabinets and Yeomen would be 1, nobility/fiefdom 2, military positions 3, etc). Only the first one or two would normally be shown, until you look at the member's profile detail where they are all listed out in order.

We could have a button, as above, which assigns the correct group memberships automatically based on what's currently set on the forum. It could copy over any custom user title, as well, which would become the highest precedence title if it was not blank.


While we decide whether to tie it in to account creation or not, I will still add a button to do it, as we will need it for the initial data entry so the clerks don't have to copy and paste everything. That button won't be able to set the correct password because vB encrypts them, but it can generate a random one and display it for the clerk to pass on (or, just have the server send an email to the user).


I know you're looking to take a break soon. I can help make the necessary modifications; I don't have much experience with PHP but I've done a lot of ASP and SQL of this nature, so I can figure it out.

[Chrono Veincrusher]

When it's done, Will all the post be ported over there and this forum abandoned? Or will we have both up and running?

Also will the CRoG members be joining it?

Last, Will our website be changed?

[Nira Nathair]

When it's done, Will all the post be ported over there and this forum abandoned? Or will we have both up and running?

Also will the CRoG members be joining it?

Last, Will our website be changed?

No, it's not a replacement for the forum. It's more of a record-keeping and information system, with pretties.

CRoG has their own version of it, for now.

It's not meant to replace our base web page, at least not for now.

[Bernardo dei Medici]

You're more than welcome to head over to the Republic's site and create an immigrant account to check out how it is integrated into our forums and website as a whole.

Its more an in-game guild management tools replacement as we got sick and tired of relying on crappy tools provided by devs from most games. Its basically the be-all-end-all to guild member managment and includes just about everything you could ever want to run a guild.

[Bernardo dei Medici]

man, I'm not going to lie ... getting into this is proving to be harder than I thought. It feels like such a mountain of a task to undertake. Once I get into it though I'll hit the ground running, but until then it just feels like such a beast.

It looks like I'll have drills put to rest by this weekend, so hopefully after that I'll be able to focus all my energy into getting the platform changeover going.

[Thirlan Tyrandor]

Ha this is exactly what I've been doing in EvE! Except you guys at SSR are like years ahead of me

[Deran Malath]

Do you have a working version of the platform uploaded somewhere, i'd love to take a look and maybe even help with the development if needed.