The Resolution Solution

I've made much of screen resolution and viewing the site because The Weirding was designed to be seen as it was... designed. I've made a lot of that, too. As I've said time and again, The Weirding is meant to be actual artwork - a functional piece of art: a print "book" distributed online; in its purest and most successful form, The Weirding is supposed to blend that separation of media and medium. The Web is both media and medium - both the materials with which the project is created and the means by which it is distributed (another concept I've driven into the ground here) - though this duality is all too rarely employed, and almost never for any functional purpose.

On the BBS, a "front-end" program was used to determine if the phonecall was data-based, answer it, and pass it through to the actual BBS software program(s). This, and much more, was accomplished through a huge batch file which was the ultimate control unit. The front-end batch file handled literally everything, from mailruns to maintenance to the aforementioned phone-handling.

One thing I had done was created random welcome pages. Whenever the caller was passed to the BBS, a RND command, a wildcard (welcome*.ans) file call, and several, numbered welcome pages (welcome1.ans, welcome2.ans, etc.), callers were greeted by a random welcome screen everytime they logged-on. I wanted to apply this idea to the website originally for the holidays. I used to change the index page and FAVICON to a seasonal theme, but it was far too much maintenance to continue doing manually, so I wanted to figure out a way to apply the random screen routine to the site for seasonal index page changes; that is, force the site to load the seasonal index page on its own only at the proper time of year. I knew that JavaScript could detect the date, but I honestly had neither time nor patience to fool with such machinations until I started fretting about resolution.

What I am about to undertake will handle all of this:

I am going to use JavaScript to detect both the visitor's screen resolution as well as the date, then continue to the appropriate index page. In this manner, not only will you be seeing seasonal and event-based indeces, but the entire site will be keyed to your screen resolution without forcing you to change anything!

Obviously, this is going to take a lot of time and I'm notorious for fucking shit up and taking forever to figure it out and fix it, so if you can't get to anything or it throws you into loops and so forth, please let me know.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

The Life of a Webmaster

Okay, so I don't really know what the life of any other webmaster is like, and I've made posts like this at least an even dozen times over the last 3-4 years, but the Halloween roll-out was slightly more successful this year than last, and that one was slightly more successful than the one before it, and so on, so I wanted to jaw a bit about the whole thing.

All websites are WIP - Works In Progress. I say that a lot because it bears repeating. I am always learning new tricks and tips, and coming up with new ideas, and I try to implement them as soon as I can. Things like the letter o "bolt" design snafu really slow things down. The reason I actually stop and try to fix these kinds of things is because the details really do count.

I don't know how many of you there are, but I know that I (the website, really) have a handful of fans and followers. You guys know that while things sometimes stall-out for months on-end (while I move, get new computers, etc., etc.), I eventually do come back around and fix them. However, everybody else just sees a lame website with a bunch of funky... nothingness. Not in the Descartes way of, like, promise (even "nothing" has value); just... nothing.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of shitty sites out there - especially in the tabletop RPG arena. I don't want to be another one of those.

Unfortunately, my life's been really... shitty lately. It's because of where I moved; it's a corrupt, horrid, little town of small-minded bigots and outright thieves. Every time you turn around, someone else is either gouging you, threatening you, or slandering you. It takes its toll - emotionally, mentally, physically - it really does take its toll. For these very reasons, I have not had the money I need to actually do this.

Now, one of the fundaments of The Weirding was to create something from nothing; I wanted to prove that "Content is King" and you didn't need millions of dollars and a staff of four to 40 to make a decent website. Though The Weirding is aimed at tabletop roleplaying gamers, it could just as easily have been... I don't know - the cure for the common cold or something. The point is that, with good content and steady work, you could create something for a rock-bottom investment. To some extent, I feel I've been successful.

However, one of the things you absolutely must have to be a decent webmaster is a computer! When you live in a corrupt shithole of a town - an area where power outages are frequent and come without warning... Look, this is my fourth computer in two years! I literally just got finished paying-off the Vista machine when lightning hit it, and it took about six months for me to save the money to get the Win7 laptop... which has no modem card! I'm getting hi-speed soon, but because I'm so far out, it's going to be really tight, financially speaking.

A change in geography will do a world of good, but I just spent my last dime on a new computer that I can't even use!

Moving is foremost on my mind these days, but remember I am disabled: I'm scheduled for major surgery this January, and the doctor has already told me it's bad enough that he thinks two surgeries might be warranted - we won't know until after the first one. It's a bad situation. Unfortunately, I have little control over it at this moment; it's going to be March or so before I'm even back to my normal strength, and may be facing another surgery then... Regardless, I'm stuck here for now, so I'm doing the best I can. Still, having to worry and argue and research legal matters every week or so takes its toll. Especially when you add all of the regular, daily chores and just general life to the mix.

So I do fret over those "minor" details and make them a priority, because those little details matter. Which makes one question the entire "content is king" maxim - to some small degree. I still believe that content is king, but having seen so many shit RPG sites - most of which are little more than a collection of barebones campaign notes or solid text - I've come to think that presentation counts, too! And that's one thing I've got over nearly all the competition - and I say that gently:

There is a lot of good RPG content out there - in groups, on personal sites and free servers, et.al. - but not a lot that looks good. I think The Weirding looks good (on the pages where I got it right, at least), and while others may disagree, no one can say I'm not trying.

The Weirding was always meant to be a work of art: a place where content - real content, in every sense of the word - is king. Design, talent, and effort is poured into every page and I am constantly checking things out and fixing the little problems I find. It really isn't about some obsessive, Mr. Monk-type, "I can control this part of my life" disorder or anything; it's my progress as a webmaster and my attempt at getting things right.

So, things are slow - as always - but I've gradually come to accept that, because when the product turns out right, I think it looks, feels, and reads great. And that's my goal as a webmaster and self-publisher.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009

Threatening to Bolt!

If you are wondering what the hell those little "o"s are at the bottom of each page, it's because I fouled-up. Technically, they are just little design elements; they're meant to look like bolts around the bottom navigational menu. I will one day be able to spend the time necessary to create an image and image map (it isn't that hard and would save tons of time in the long run, it's just a matter of current technical issues), but I went through and fixed this issue about a year ago... on another computer. I did not realize the templates on this computer had not been corrected.

So, yes, those are the letter "o" and, yes, they are supposed to be there, but no, they are not supposed to look the way they do, nor are they supposed to be text on the page. They should be small title pics and I am in the process of finding the pages where I screwed them up and fixing them.

Sorry!

© C Harris Lynn, 2009

Chill: Designer Notes

Almost everything on The Weirding is in the Creative Commons license published across the site (I'll add the link later), which includes everything provided for Chill. I encourage derivative works and try to link liberally to others' throughout the text and by adding specific URLs or entire sites in the Navigation when most appropriate. If you have something you'd like me to note - possibly add to a page, or whatever - or you would like me to remove, just drop me a line in the Comments. I no longer provide the RPG address due to spam, but regular readers know it (and you can probably figure it out).

Anyway, this page provides webmasters and game designers the technical information they need to link to Chill @ The Weirding content, along with my notes. All you need to do to link directly to an anchored section is add a pound sign (#) at the front of the anchor's name, then tack it onto the end of the page link URL.

Example:
[http://www.theweirding.net/RPG/chill/index.html#footnote ]

There are many tutorials online.

Index
Anchors:
#footnote

Faith & Resolve
Anchors:
#faith
#reflective

Skills Advancement
Anchors:
#learn
#vested

Investigation Expansion
Anchors:
#deduction

Vincent Overview (Index)
Anchors:
#today
#frogman
Third-to-last paragraph in the first section, starting: "All of this in-fighting..."
#culture
The sixth paragraph in the Today section, which begins, "The entire city's fashion, culture, and nightlife..."

I know I got carried away with the boxes. I ran out of time! I'll fix the graphic design elements later. Let me know if those boxes look cheap; I kind of like them, but I obviously overdid them here.

Vincent Control

Again, I got carried away with the color-coding (sidebar). I was trying to make it easier to find criterion literally "at a glance." Not all of the boldface is necessary, either; a lot of that is for me. Some of those are links, others are reminders to me, and still others are meant to facilitate reading... that's a lot of text. Boldfacing keywords also helps search engines figure out the subject matter of the content or something (but too much turns them off - SEO shit).

The picture of Eastgate was provided by Jan Kratěna and used with permission. It was modified (C Harris Lynn) for our purposes. She-Hulk 1990s Decade Variant, ©2009, Marvel Characters, Inc.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009