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.
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Down again
This is sad. My host has disabled my site again for excessive traffic. It seems I'm having burst traffic and that's what is freaking them out. My real numbers seem to be 70+\- users a day but with page views being anywhere from 1 to 60. So much for me trying to go with a free host believing my site traffic was down. For some reason, it seems to have been suppressed over this last year. I think GoDaddy was blocking my tracking code.
When I made my backup, I found they had deleted some of my files without explanation. Going back through the emails, it seems they warned me of possible viruses on my site but when I would examine the file there would be nothing. For example, they said one of my php files was holding a virus but it was actually just a simple text file without any script text or anything that can be activated. I'm not sure what was going on with the host.
I am currently looking at both Interserver and Hostinger to be my new site. I've contacted both of them to verify their MYSql and PHP versions. The cost is cheaper for Hostinger to get started but long term Interserver will be cheaper. I'm leaning toward Interserver too because their architecture seems to allow for the one CMS system I've been hoping to use as it is part of their "one click install" package. If I go with them, it looks like I'll be able to reconstitute my entire site package into one host.
After checking Google Analytics, my site traffic did increase over 500% since October 18th, when I transferred my domain to the new host. I'm not sure what to think of that or how to read it. I can't think of any reason my site views would have been suppressed with my old host but it is hard to argue with two different traffic monitors.
For now, I am redirecting my domain back to my GoDaddy site. It will go down on 11/4/2019. I have until then to secure a hosting package on another site. Please bear with me during this time. I've never had such frustration over hosting before.
When I made my backup, I found they had deleted some of my files without explanation. Going back through the emails, it seems they warned me of possible viruses on my site but when I would examine the file there would be nothing. For example, they said one of my php files was holding a virus but it was actually just a simple text file without any script text or anything that can be activated. I'm not sure what was going on with the host.
I am currently looking at both Interserver and Hostinger to be my new site. I've contacted both of them to verify their MYSql and PHP versions. The cost is cheaper for Hostinger to get started but long term Interserver will be cheaper. I'm leaning toward Interserver too because their architecture seems to allow for the one CMS system I've been hoping to use as it is part of their "one click install" package. If I go with them, it looks like I'll be able to reconstitute my entire site package into one host.
After checking Google Analytics, my site traffic did increase over 500% since October 18th, when I transferred my domain to the new host. I'm not sure what to think of that or how to read it. I can't think of any reason my site views would have been suppressed with my old host but it is hard to argue with two different traffic monitors.
For now, I am redirecting my domain back to my GoDaddy site. It will go down on 11/4/2019. I have until then to secure a hosting package on another site. Please bear with me during this time. I've never had such frustration over hosting before.
Back UP!
Website back up! I heard back from them as to why my site was taken down. It seemed I stressed their server with over 500 unique viewers in just a few hours. I hit their hard limit of 60k page views per day and it triggered my site being taken down. This was the reason in their email to me bringing my site back up. They urged me to move to their paid hosting plan to remove this restriction.
I just checked with my statcounter account and it seems they were right. For some reason my web views and site traffic increased dramatically when I moved to the new server. On my first day at the new server, I garnered over 354 new visitors in the span of what looks like 4 hours. Considering I normally would only get about 500 visitors a month before the server change this is quite shocking. I'll be coming through the stat logs as well as checking with google analystics to see if I can see what's driving the extra traffic. If it turns out my traffic is organically that high, I will return to a paid hosting package as soon a possible.
I just checked with my statcounter account and it seems they were right. For some reason my web views and site traffic increased dramatically when I moved to the new server. On my first day at the new server, I garnered over 354 new visitors in the span of what looks like 4 hours. Considering I normally would only get about 500 visitors a month before the server change this is quite shocking. I'll be coming through the stat logs as well as checking with google analystics to see if I can see what's driving the extra traffic. If it turns out my traffic is organically that high, I will return to a paid hosting package as soon a possible.
Monday, October 21, 2019
First major obstacle
Traykon.com was redirected sucessfully after a 24 hour nameserver delay. However, shortly after the domain redirected the host has suspended my site for an unknown reason. I am checking their support site and it seems that this hit a lot of accounts about 5 to 10 hours ago. I'm not sure when mine went down yet as I haven't checked the monitor. Right now I'm going on the assumption that this is a system error. I have to email them to see what is going on. I should have a resolution soon. If not, I will redirect Traykon.com here temporarily until I figure out what's happening.
Friday, October 18, 2019
Crude site transfer
I have the main Traykon repository up at https://traykon.000webhostapp.com/ for now. It's crude and needs some work but the data is fairly safe for now. I've also split my WIKI into it's own site hosted at https://traykon.miraheze.org/
I'm not sure who I will redirect my domain name to at this point. I may redirect to the wiki but reformat the legacy site some. I'm leaning toward just pointing toward the normal site at 000webhostapp and linking the wiki better. This is something I'll have to think about and see.
I'm not sure who I will redirect my domain name to at this point. I may redirect to the wiki but reformat the legacy site some. I'm leaning toward just pointing toward the normal site at 000webhostapp and linking the wiki better. This is something I'll have to think about and see.
Godaddy No More
Last month I took a good hard look at my godaddy.com website, the main host for Traykon.com. I was behind several versions on a few of my applications. I tried to update my mediawiki extension but quickly discovered that both the MYSql version and the PHP version were far below the minimum requirements. In order to upgrade my Sql for security, I was going to have to either buy a much more expensive package or move to a new host. The same story applied for upgrading PHP for stability.
To give an example, I needed to have at least MYSql version 5.5.8 but the highest godaddy had available was 5.5.6, which I had upgraded to just a few months ago. For PHP, I needed at least version 7.0.13 but the highest Godaddy would allow me to go was 5.6 of which I had long ago upgraded.
To me this was unacceptable. My image database (Coppermine) was supported but I had to remove it to a free service (irony) because of server load a year ago. MediaWiki was no longer supported and I had an version that was not only no longer supported but one that wasn't compatible with mobile viewing. Also a horrendous hit was that Wordpress now required PHP 7.3 for the necessary security upgrades. I was unable to export the Wordpress postings to preserve that information over the last 2+ years. There was nothing I could do to upgrade the application to continue using it either.
Faced with these facts (and a few other things I was unable to do with the website due to outdated architecture) I decided to remove my Traykon.com website from Godaddy.com. This was not an easy decision. I have had that site hosted with them since spring of 2006. Aside from the Traykon site, there were also 3 other websites that piggybacked off of my main host package. I was using only about 6% of my available resources but I was unable to get the full use of the site. Facing reality, I could no longer justify the $150 a year for hosting when the website was not capable of meeting my needs.
So here I am today. I have decided to split my site over a few free hosts for the time being. I am looking at two different host sites to see which one offers the reliability and features I need while remaining affordable. I am keeping my domain registered at Godaddy this year (I have to renew in 2 weeks) but the site itself has to move on.
More information as it comes available.
To give an example, I needed to have at least MYSql version 5.5.8 but the highest godaddy had available was 5.5.6, which I had upgraded to just a few months ago. For PHP, I needed at least version 7.0.13 but the highest Godaddy would allow me to go was 5.6 of which I had long ago upgraded.
To me this was unacceptable. My image database (Coppermine) was supported but I had to remove it to a free service (irony) because of server load a year ago. MediaWiki was no longer supported and I had an version that was not only no longer supported but one that wasn't compatible with mobile viewing. Also a horrendous hit was that Wordpress now required PHP 7.3 for the necessary security upgrades. I was unable to export the Wordpress postings to preserve that information over the last 2+ years. There was nothing I could do to upgrade the application to continue using it either.
Faced with these facts (and a few other things I was unable to do with the website due to outdated architecture) I decided to remove my Traykon.com website from Godaddy.com. This was not an easy decision. I have had that site hosted with them since spring of 2006. Aside from the Traykon site, there were also 3 other websites that piggybacked off of my main host package. I was using only about 6% of my available resources but I was unable to get the full use of the site. Facing reality, I could no longer justify the $150 a year for hosting when the website was not capable of meeting my needs.
So here I am today. I have decided to split my site over a few free hosts for the time being. I am looking at two different host sites to see which one offers the reliability and features I need while remaining affordable. I am keeping my domain registered at Godaddy this year (I have to renew in 2 weeks) but the site itself has to move on.
More information as it comes available.
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