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.

[Bernardo dei Medici]

Our website, http://www.silversunrepublic.com is the most current version of the platform.

I'm currently in the middle of moving from California to Wisconsin then out to North Dakota over the series of the next 2 to 3 weeks. Once I get settled in I'll be hitting the development path hardcore once again.

[Bernardo dei Medici]

Currently a work in progress, I'll be updating from here as I go along. Below are the physical products of what I'll be accomplishing.

Temporary Community Site

Login
Secure Login

Account Creation
Auto-generator from forums
Admin created accounts

Profile Listing
By Social Class/Lord
Avatar - by pledge or Coat of Arms

User Profile Editing
Self initiated profile changes
Biography

Admin Panel
Report Generation

[Deran Malath]

Didn't you have something like this up and running at some point?

I think i cracked your login system in that one. :)

[Bernardo dei Medici]

Yeah, that was just the old "for looks" system. The new one is all driven from the same page and the security is driven from a database rather than a few scripts and a cookie. The last revision for wsx was pretty pathetic in the security department.

[Bernardo dei Medici]

I worked on the site a bit more today.

I remade the contracting system to make it much more intuitive and easy to understand. I also integrated a bit more with vBulletin to control usergroup membership from the Soacio control panel. Now when you change someone's position within Soacio, it will change their usergroup to reflect those changes.

My next step, which will be sometime tomorrow, is to add a "pledge" system with which we will be able to move players between lords and "Noble Houses" as the Republic has adopted. Tied in with this pledge system is the ability for the Duke to grant fiefs to lords and then for their coat of arms to be reflected as their profile avatar. A user's home "location" will also be changed to the fief in which their lord resides. Fief's will be tied to the Noble House system and also come with a management window for the lord to list his landed assets such as defensive and industrial structures.

After that its a few cosmetics and updates for the Republic, then I will begin porting everything over of the existing hardcoded features that work specifically for the Republic. I'm trying to make it all dynamic so I can have a database driven system for backgrounds, banners, images, etc.

The last big hurdle will be the integration into existing Duchy assets. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it though.

The final project after all this is done is the Ventrilo account creation system. Each user who registers and is approved as a full member will have a Ventrilo account and password generated for them to use on our server. This will allow us to do away with passworded servers so that we can engage in a "lockdown" should any others attempt to spam attack or harrass us. I hate redistributing passwords, so this way we'll be able to maintain a high level of security with little to no pain.

Once all these things are done ... I'm taking a vacation from the internets :D

[Bernardo dei Medici]

Progress!

Here is what the current implementation of the new contracting system looks like. It is all in one form and helps show the flow of the process. Each new step becomes available to edit as you complete each previous one. It also captures a timestamp for you each time you submit a step.

http://www.silversunrepublic.com/images/Soaciocontracting.jpg

[Coronach]

I notice in there a static contract bid from the buyer. Might it not be more advantageous to an efficient economy to set up a lowest-bid system for sellers which a buyer may then approve?

[Bernardo dei Medici]

This is the record end of the contracting system. Finding a contractor is up to the individual or officer handling the contract.

[Dreign Swift]

Genius... I can't wait to see this system when all the goodies are implemented and synchronized. This kind of thing will place us leagues above the majority of our competition. To understate.
:gds::gds::gds::gds::gds:

[Chrono Veincrusher]

The contract system looks great!
Keep up the good work!

[Dreign Swift]

Could the Soacio platform manage something like an out-of-game alert/alarm system for group-specific in-game emergencies?

Say there is an urgent matter at hand in the outskirts of the Duchy capital, everyone in the "Peer," "Constable," "Forester," and "Ranger" usergroups would be sent an external message/alert informing them of these happenings. Or if our harbor and ships are being attacked, everyone in the higher-up groups and all the garrison and sea-farers would receive a message/alert. Of course the affected groups could be anything, those are just some quick examples.

I was initially thinking something like RSS feeds might be helpful to accomplish this, but I'm sure the Community Site has far better tricks up it's sleeves than that. Maybe there could be an alarm for nation-wide emergencies which all must receive, and anything else beyond that would be voluntary. I don't know.

Anyways, just an idea. I would really love to see a system like this fully implemented by the time DF goes retail. I think if it is feature-packed, it could give us a good edge over our competition and any who just use the built-in clan management tools.

[Deran Malath]

Could the Soacio platform manage something like an out-of-game alert/alarm system for group-specific in-game emergencies?

Say there is an urgent matter at hand in the outskirts of the Duchy capital, everyone in the "Peer," "Constable," "Forester," and "Ranger" usergroups would be sent an external message/alert informing them of these happenings. Or if our harbor and ships are being attacked, everyone in the higher-up groups and all the garrison and sea-farers would receive a message/alert. Of course the affected groups could be anything, those are just some quick examples.

I was initially thinking something like RSS feeds might be helpful to accomplish this, but I'm sure the Community Site has far better tricks up it's sleeves than that. Maybe there could be an alarm for nation-wide emergencies which all must receive, and anything else beyond that would be voluntary. I don't know.

Anyways, just an idea. I would really love to see a system like this fully implemented by the time DF goes retail. I think if it is feature-packed, it could give us a good edge over our competition and any who just use the built-in clan management tools.

One way to accomplish this would be to implement IRC bot that would send the alarms. Of course possible receivers would have to put it in highlight preferably with sound which in turn would mean that anyone who wants to get the alarm would have to be in IRC.
There are other ways to do this like e-mail but they are usually slower depending on your "e-mail system".

[Deran Malath]

I was bored and poked a few holes to the platform, nothing serious just some functional bugs.
"Details" are on the bug thread in soacio.

[Bernardo dei Medici]

I was bored and poked a few holes to the platform, nothing serious just some functional bugs.
"Details" are on the bug thread in soacio.

Thanks for pointing out some of the major flaws that were still floating out there. They were still around due to the fact that the site was 'half-way' between two major upgrades.

I finally sat down tonight and fixed the cookie and security measures that I was avoiding for so long. Each page will now check against the cookie on your machine and match it up with your account in the database. That way no one should be able to "forge" an identity anymore. When your Session Key doesn't match what is in the database for your login, then it'll kick you back to the login.

I'm working on a function that will get called each time you do an action that requires a username tied to it. That should alleviate the editing and peeking issues that I've come across as well.

The new system also allows more dynamic content and a lot fewer hardcoded features.

[Dreign Swift]

Might I get an answer now, Your Grace?

[Manus Dei]

About out of game alarms? Yes, Darkfall will already have that.

[Dreign Swift]

About out of game alarms? Yes, Darkfall will already have that.

To what extent can you control who gets them? I haven't read anything from the devs on this beyond the most basic mention. I was mostly asking Brando if his platform could put something out there which would do a lot more than any generic DF clan tool could.

[Surly von Fishbarrel]

There were going to be SMS messages at some point, back when SMS was free. I don't know what they're planning now.

[Chrono Veincrusher]

To what extent can you control who gets them? I haven't read anything from the devs on this beyond the most basic mention. I was mostly asking Brando if his platform could put something out there which would do a lot more than any generic DF clan tool could.
Even if they drop SMS notification, they said the will have multiple ways to contact ppl in case of a raid etc. It's in some DF journal somewhere.

[Orishas Morgan]

This is the record end of the contracting system. Finding a contractor is up to the individual or officer handling the contract.


I notice in there a static contract bid from the buyer. Might it not be more advantageous to an efficient economy to set up a lowest-bid system for sellers which a buyer may then approve?

I think the contract system does look great. I think another feature that would add a lot of depth to the economy would be the implementation of Blind Buy and Sell orders.

I'm sure there will be some sort of ingame trade system, but this could be used to enhance that and allow for items not yet created to be bought and sold. It could be implemented with the contract system

Something like:

Sell Order:

Item Name: Sword of *Doom*
Lowest Sell Price: 500g
Turnaround time: 3 days
Location: Duchy of Wessex Town Hall

Buy Order:

Item Name: Sword of *Doom*
Maximum Bid: 700g
Maximum Wait Time: 5 days
Location: Noob Clan Building 5

Now With a blind system - preference would go to the person who posted their order first. So in this case if the Sell order was placed first, the Sword of *Doom* would be sold for 700g, or if the buy order was placed first the Sword of *Doom* would be sold for 500g.

The system would check for matches as soon as the orders were placed, and a contract would be created if there was a matchup. I figured it would be best to put a location field, but it would hard to automatically have those match. (like the seller could say Im willing to travel a maximum of 1 mile, with the same for the buyer - but how do you judge that? I guess with an in-game coordinates system it could work) So I guess before the contract is finalized, both parties would have to agree on a meet location.

I no longer code, so I dont know the difficulty of the implementation of this, so it could not be practical at all.