Due to conflicts with extensions and skins, I am having issues directing users to my correct mobile skins. Pivot is the skin that I have set as my primary and mobile skin but for some reason my mobile skin defaults to another that isn't optimized for sites like mine. When I disable the MobileFrontend extension that causes the skin conflict the mobile site stops working completely. So what I've done is embedded some Mobile Only text that instructs people on how to get an optimized skin. Simply selecting the "Desktop View" will put people back into the Pivot skin. For now, the Vector skin is being forced as the default for Mobile. I may change that to another once I finish building up navigation templates.
This leads me to my next part. My site was not optimized for navigation outside of the sidebar. Some mobile users are unable to use the sidebar effectively, even on the Pivot skin, due to small screen sizes or unusual Viewports. Embedded on most pages will be common navigational menus that will allow people to change between pages on a certain topics. My goal is to make sure people get freely switch between related pages for further reading. This will take time and require transitional menus to be created for each section.
Lastly today, I am announcing the "Recent Pages" section listing articles in the center of the main page. For anyone who has visited lately they may have noticed a section that shows new articles and content. I am able to control what is listed there. I have chosen to include all new pages in this list and I will allow any major changes to existing pages to show there. This is different from the "Recent Changes" section in MediaWiki websites. This does not track revisions or show history, but instead is just a listing of the Page Name including an appended date of update. Due to the frequent tweaks and changes I am making on the site, I have decided to use this method so people can more readily see when changes or inclusions of consequence occur.
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Friday, December 06, 2019
Search Engines
I have tried to optimize my site for search engines. Unfortunately for now, people are still be directed via the indexing to my old directory structure. I've created a system so every edit I do updates my sitemap for Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Hopefully all the 404 errors will disappear before too long for those trying to find me.
I'm doubling my system somewhat by working out new stuff on my Miraheze site and then copying the finished product over. In some ways this slows down the production of material but it also makes sure I have a finished product and will not have to mark things as STUB to latter go back to finish.
There are a couple of projects I'm working on right now. With my new system, I can bounce around and expand or break off areas without disrupting my main site.
I'm doubling my system somewhat by working out new stuff on my Miraheze site and then copying the finished product over. In some ways this slows down the production of material but it also makes sure I have a finished product and will not have to mark things as STUB to latter go back to finish.
There are a couple of projects I'm working on right now. With my new system, I can bounce around and expand or break off areas without disrupting my main site.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Character Class expansion
While updating information and doing crosslinks to other articles, I discovered that I really needed to include the base classes and other common classes into my site. I'd hoped to not have to duplicate the information there but in explaining additional abilities or alternate features it was required that I provide information on the original.
This has made me greatly expand my Character Class page. It is growing quite a bit and still has a lot of information left to go on it. I may have to break the Class section off onto it's own sublisting. I've discovered that a lot of information needs to be crosslinked between classes. I am trying to use category trees but I already see that will not be enough to link similar abilities. This is turning in to an interesting cunundrum but if the control page gets too large my plan is to create a new selection.
This has made me greatly expand my Character Class page. It is growing quite a bit and still has a lot of information left to go on it. I may have to break the Class section off onto it's own sublisting. I've discovered that a lot of information needs to be crosslinked between classes. I am trying to use category trees but I already see that will not be enough to link similar abilities. This is turning in to an interesting cunundrum but if the control page gets too large my plan is to create a new selection.
Friday, November 15, 2019
New Content
My Site is up and working 100%! I have begun to upload new content. Over the last couple of weeks, I've uploaded about 200 new files that weren't available at the old location as well as created over a hundred new articles. I'm still working to figure out everything that I need to get working so expect some new additions and expansions to the site over the next year.
The Maiden of Pain is a new monster, actually she isn't new... she's the servant of Loviatar who has been around for a while but I finally put together her stat block. The Elder Gods have been defined somewhat as well as the ultimate creation myth and Traykon's backstory. There are even a few 3.5 edition articles for continuity reasons including the various Racial Deific Pantheons.
Soon I will be deciding on how best to incorporate random generators. Right now I'm leaning toward simple php scripting off the main wiki unless I can think of a safe way of doing it within the wiki. We will have to see how that works out. With the holidays, I don't think I'll be doing anything major but I find in my free time I can easily add an article or expand a little bit when I go back to the site.
The Maiden of Pain is a new monster, actually she isn't new... she's the servant of Loviatar who has been around for a while but I finally put together her stat block. The Elder Gods have been defined somewhat as well as the ultimate creation myth and Traykon's backstory. There are even a few 3.5 edition articles for continuity reasons including the various Racial Deific Pantheons.
Soon I will be deciding on how best to incorporate random generators. Right now I'm leaning toward simple php scripting off the main wiki unless I can think of a safe way of doing it within the wiki. We will have to see how that works out. With the holidays, I don't think I'll be doing anything major but I find in my free time I can easily add an article or expand a little bit when I go back to the site.
Saturday, November 02, 2019
New site is semi-up
Traykon is now hosted at Interserver and will probably be a MediaWiki site. My plan right now is to just convert the site over to MediaWiki using the Pivot (mobile friendly) skin. I'll host the legacy site as well but right now I'm focusing on getting the server up and running.
The reason I am probably going to just be using a MediaWiki site is due to the nature of the information. I've tried out Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, and Tiki CMS, they all have features I don't really need and their interface makes it difficult to highlight my content. Although I have issues with MediaWiki, I'll be using it to host my content since I can edit it on the fly and control how that information is displayed best. Since I have no desire to host a "blog" as my main site, a few of the main CMS options become obsolete as the typical article posting just doesn't work. That doesn't mean I won't be using those systems in the future, it just means I won't be using them now.
Feel free to email me with any suggestions or feedback. Hopefully I'll get this up and running in a timely manner but I have to do a clean install, upload all the extensions, configure the database to work with the new extensions, and then import all the data. I'll admit that importing the data will be the most difficult thing to do simply because of the amount of data I have. There is a hardcoded 2MB file limit in php and my data is more than that. I'll have to decide how best to proceed or if I should edit the php.ini to increase the limit which can cause other issues.
The reason I am probably going to just be using a MediaWiki site is due to the nature of the information. I've tried out Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, and Tiki CMS, they all have features I don't really need and their interface makes it difficult to highlight my content. Although I have issues with MediaWiki, I'll be using it to host my content since I can edit it on the fly and control how that information is displayed best. Since I have no desire to host a "blog" as my main site, a few of the main CMS options become obsolete as the typical article posting just doesn't work. That doesn't mean I won't be using those systems in the future, it just means I won't be using them now.
Feel free to email me with any suggestions or feedback. Hopefully I'll get this up and running in a timely manner but I have to do a clean install, upload all the extensions, configure the database to work with the new extensions, and then import all the data. I'll admit that importing the data will be the most difficult thing to do simply because of the amount of data I have. There is a hardcoded 2MB file limit in php and my data is more than that. I'll have to decide how best to proceed or if I should edit the php.ini to increase the limit which can cause other issues.
Thursday, October 31, 2019
New Host (redux)
I have a new host at Interserver. After comparing features I found them to be my best choice. I'm probably going to try to switch over to a central CMS system like Tiki CMS Group. For now though I've got to wait on the DNS servers to update. Once they update, it will take me a few hours to get around to updating the new host with information so it will be pretty bare.
If I am able to utilize the Tiki system I'll be converted over with most of my information in a few days. If not, I will upload my old site and build a secondary CMS later so the data is available while I'm building. Either way I expect to have some downtime lasting about a day or two.
In the meantime, I'm still building up the information held in the Wiki. Feel free to probe around there. It doesn't have any 2nd Edition D&D information at all. Mostly what is there is generic information that can be used for any d20 system. It is directly compatible with D&D 3e and Pathfinder. Most of it is compatible with 5th edition D&D with just a little tweaking.
If I am able to utilize the Tiki system I'll be converted over with most of my information in a few days. If not, I will upload my old site and build a secondary CMS later so the data is available while I'm building. Either way I expect to have some downtime lasting about a day or two.
In the meantime, I'm still building up the information held in the Wiki. Feel free to probe around there. It doesn't have any 2nd Edition D&D information at all. Mostly what is there is generic information that can be used for any d20 system. It is directly compatible with D&D 3e and Pathfinder. Most of it is compatible with 5th edition D&D with just a little tweaking.
Friday, October 25, 2019
Confirmation of Host problems
I redirected Traykon back to my Godaddy site a couple days back. Today I checked my access logs on the server and compared them to my site traffic. In the first day it was online, I had 9264 pages accessed from the server, some of them were from bots that won't show up on analytics. The vast majority of the traffic were recorded through my wiki. Statcounter logged 385 viewers on that day and could account for just over 5k page views. Google Analytics only tracks the traffic on my legacy site and ignores the wiki but they listed the total at only 23 users for my legacy site on that day. I last checked GoDaddy's bandwidth usage and they have me using 0.00mb of traffic over that time.
Further, at approximately 9:01 pm EST all traffic from the access log, statcounter, and google analytics suddenly stopped. Siteuptime shows my site was active, but for some reason no traffic was logged to my site after 9pm. I don't know what could be causing these issues except network problems. How the Siteuptime site still shows my website as active when no traffic is being monitored, I don't know. None of this is making sense.
On the bright side, I have been adding content to the wiki. Since I don't know the final architecture of my new host, I have found it best to post to the wiki. Hopefully I'll be able to utilize a CMS system that I can take full advantage of. I hope to soon be able to return to a regular content schedule even if the content must conform to current internet trends of being specific articles instead of batch uploads. What can I say, I'm still a dinosaur trying to evolve.
Further, at approximately 9:01 pm EST all traffic from the access log, statcounter, and google analytics suddenly stopped. Siteuptime shows my site was active, but for some reason no traffic was logged to my site after 9pm. I don't know what could be causing these issues except network problems. How the Siteuptime site still shows my website as active when no traffic is being monitored, I don't know. None of this is making sense.
On the bright side, I have been adding content to the wiki. Since I don't know the final architecture of my new host, I have found it best to post to the wiki. Hopefully I'll be able to utilize a CMS system that I can take full advantage of. I hope to soon be able to return to a regular content schedule even if the content must conform to current internet trends of being specific articles instead of batch uploads. What can I say, I'm still a dinosaur trying to evolve.
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