Guildwork - The Future of MMO Guildhosting/Networking

[Cairthenn]

Minor thing:

For the Ventrillo support, the way our Vent is setup is so that each member has their own password to use. If I enter a password into the Ventrillo setup, it'd use that password for all members who wish to log in, which is obviously not what I want. If I leave it blank, it'll still prompt me that it attempts to change the information (replace the password I have saved with no password).

Any way to go about fixing this (ex. making a option for users to specify password themselves)?

[Stanislav]

Still haven't had much time to poke around on it, but a couple quick more-technical errors:

• You're declaring your doctype as XHTML 1.0 Transitional, but it looks more to me like you're writing HTML5, with using "data-" attributes.
• Some of the rewriting is off. http://www.guildwork.com/users/Stanislav/ works, http://www.guildwork.com/users/Stanislav = 404.

1. I had the HTML5 doctype before, but there were some visual querks so I took it off for now till I choose to fix it, I really could care less about being W3C complient heh

2. I will fix this tonight thx =)

Or have data abstraction layers that allows you to degrade the site and still preserve functionality. As said if you intend for functionality on a mobile enviroment you are pretty much screwed from the get go if the site requires you to rely on script functionality just to give basic functionality to start with.

I don't know about you, but the iPhone/WebOS/Android Chrome all run Guildwork better then IE8 on a real computer. We are not aiming for old phones with no JavaScript.

Browsers may come with the option to turn off JavaScript, but they also come with it enabled by default (which for average users means they will not turn it off). The chances of being hacked directly through JS are slim to none because JavaScript is sandboxed in the browser and the hacker is most likely exploiting the browser itself (usually fixed before it can effect you) or more likely importantly Flash (Its okay to disable flash, I agree with this.). Have you tried to turn off JavaScript on Chrome? It is hidden (only way to do it is via command prompt). While it is possible to create a site which degrades without JavaScript and the back end of Guildwork easily supports it, I rather spend the time on functionality for the majority of the user base rather then maintaining almost 2 difference interfaces for a minority.

Let's see Guildwork functionality.

Chat? Not possible to degrade this at all and keep it worth using.
Feed? You can degrade it, but the server load for full refreshes would be horrid.
Schedule? You can degrade this, but it would require a server side processing of the visual, and you loose all the countdowns and alarms on the Agenda, which makes the Schedule less appealing.
Forums? Works completely without JS at the moment except for posting, and I could make it degrade with a few lines of extra code.

I can go on.. So why degrade a site that without JS would not be as impressive/worth using?

I set out with a vision when creating Guildwork, and I do not plan to degrade functionality to support paranoid users which are the minority, and slow down development of features for the rest of the user base.

Have you tried logging into any Google apps (except Gmail) or Facebook without JS? They completely flop, why? Because they have 350+ million users each that are willing to keep JS on, so I am sorry but your argument fails completely.

As for being hacked? Guildwork is not on a LAMP stack and if they somehow manage to get anything into our site, I will be impressed and worried because we have bigger problems going on at that point.

Sorry if I came off aggressive, but it just infuriates me when people hold back the web from continuing to progress.

Minor thing:

For the Ventrillo support, the way our Vent is setup is so that each member has their own password to use. If I enter a password into the Ventrillo setup, it'd use that password for all members who wish to log in, which is obviously not what I want. If I leave it blank, it'll still prompt me that it attempts to change the information (replace the password I have saved with no password).

Any way to go about fixing this (ex. making a option for users to specify password themselves)?

The current Ventrilo support only displays the user list/server status and provides a connection button, we plan to expand this more, but at the moment there is no danger in putting your personal password because no one else will have any extra power with it.

[Cairthenn]

The current Ventrilo support only displays the user list/server status and provides a connection button, we plan to expand this more, but at the moment there is no danger in putting your personal password because no one else will have any extra power with it.

Sounds good. Also, regardless of what I put the password as, it would clear the password I had saved in Ventrillo already (just leave it blank, not even enter the one I had defined in the connection information) if I agree to "Change some of the connection details" as Ventrillo prompts upon opening from the link.

[Gunslinger]

Sorry if I came off aggressive, but it just infuriates me when people hold back the web from continuing to progress.

Most web designers are still taught to degrade sites to IE6 standards since ~10% of users are still browsing with it... trust me, it infuriates me too (and it should piss off any designer), but it's still 10% of 'your' audience. Just an FYI- Facebook runs without scripting enabled (and Gmail, being by far Googles most popular app outside of 'search,' does too, as you pointed out). Certain things shouldn't have scripting taken away (for example, Googles 'office' products can't compete without it in the interface), but Facebook can certainly exist sans scripting, even if it isn't nearly as clean.

However, since you're catering to "MMO" players, chances are they're going to have up-to-date PCs, be enthusiasts, etc. I don't think you need to scrap anything you've done, but it doesn't hurt to consider a 'watered down' site for browsers without scripting enabled, even if it's in the long term. This is a forum for feedback (and a time for you to practice your PR, should this take off!). A simple "it will be considered, thanks for your feedback" is all it takes, even if you don't plan on considering it at this time. That said, it's not a bad idea to consider should you get 'free time,' but that's why you're the boss! Don't take it personally!

Don't get too caught up in the passion of the project, I'm sure you've seen by now how much the project changes as it goes on... it will keep changing. I can't tell you the number of times I've 'completed' something only to have a client redefine what they wanted (even though I make them sign a project plan)... it just kind of comes with the territory. It doesn't mean you have bend over backwards for every request, but as soon as you start dismissing people just because you don't agree with them you're going to shoehorn yourself into something you don't want.

A site like this starts out as a project for yourself (your vision)- it becomes a site for and by the users, that's what "social media" is all about. Anyway, I'll stop ranting, just remember to not take it personally and put on the "PR" face- you have to be a salesman if you're going to sell this to users, even if you don't agree with all of them!

I think it looks incredibly slick so far and will be following it to see how it develops.

[Liquidedust]

Chat? Not possible to degrade this at all and keep it worth using.
Feed? You can degrade it, but the server load for full refreshes would be horrid.
Schedule? You can degrade this, but it would require a server side processing of the visual, and you loose all the countdowns and alarms on the Agenda, which makes the Schedule less appealing.
Forums? Works completely without JS at the moment except for posting, and I could make it degrade with a few lines of extra code.

I can go on.. So why degrade a site that without JS would not be as impressive/worth using?

I set out with a vision when creating Guildwork, and I do not plan to degrade functionality to support paranoid users which are the minority, and slow down development of features for the rest of the user base.

Have you tried logging into any Google apps (except Gmail) or Facebook without JS? They completely flop, why? Because they have 350+ million users each that are willing to keep JS on, so I am sorry but your argument fails completely.

Chat is an interactive enviroment and also the bane of degrading functionality, but as far as feed/schedule and generated data and visuals goes you can and should cache that server-side anyhows to reduce data generation loads (and increase/decrease the cache stack based on the load of the server anyhows).

As much as a good interface does help, you are essentially relying on client-side to do what is basic functionality. I am not telling you to not have your vision of a website the way you would like it to have, but you should at least make it possible for it to degrade in an unobstructive way.

I mean if you had created it as an application with a custom front-end where you had 100% control of what and how it works it would be one thing, but where you work in an enviroment where you rely on the user to run what essentially is basic functionality.

I couldn't even create an account without javascript turn on I mean; that is borderline silly.

I personally find your enthusiasm and the project itself interesting I just do not agree with your approach on no degradability in the front-end.

[Stanislav]

Just an FYI- Facebook runs without scripting enabled

I don't know if your using the old Facebook layout or if I am doing something wrong, but Facebook is 50% unusable for me with scripting off. You can still browse it, but most things don't work, same as at Guildwork.

Chat is an interactive enviroment and also the bane of degrading functionality, but as far as feed/schedule and generated data and visuals goes you can and should cache that server-side anyhows to reduce data generation loads (and increase/decrease the cache stack based on the load of the server anyhows).

As much as a good interface does help, you are essentially relying on client-side to do what is basic functionality. I am not telling you to not have your vision of a website the way you would like it to have, but you should at least make it possible for it to degrade in an unobstructive way.

I mean if you had created it as an application with a custom front-end where you had 100% control of what and how it works it would be one thing, but where you work in an enviroment where you rely on the user to run what essentially is basic functionality.

I couldn't even create an account without javascript turn on I mean; that is borderline silly.

I personally find your enthusiasm and the project itself interesting I just do not agree with your approach on no degradability in the front-end.

The registration/login will not degrade, but on the final version it will explain why you are having trouble, as stated before the amount of people who do not have Javascript is a major minority. Guildwork is built to scale and degrading to full reloads is not okay and caching most of what you mentioned is not possible due to the social aspects and the constantly changing data (there is a reason we are not on a LAMP stack). I am no longer going to continue this argument, and let's less get back on track.

When you decide to try Guildwork you will see why no matter what it will be worth it.

Sorry everyone for the detail.

[Liquidedust]

I don't know if your using the old Facebook layout or if I am doing something wrong, but Facebook is 50% unusable for me with scripting off. You can still browse it, but most things don't work, same as at Guildwork.

If you log in with it without scripts turned on it degrades perfectly for me. Just removes some of the functionality, but you can still access all the content as far as I can see.

[vagus]

Soudns neat, i'll sign up

[Cairthenn]

If he wants to use it, let him. Most people should be running javascript now-a-days.

Also, I keep getting a notification pop up only be be told "No notifications."

[Shamaya]

I definitely agree with Stan, but Gunslinger is right--can't make everyone happy. It is very fortunate though as he pointed out, that the target audience is MMO nerds who're likely to be higher up the technological ladder, and not your chain-letter sending, IE6 mum.

[Liquidedust]

I definitely agree with Stan, but Gunslinger is right--can't make everyone happy. It is very fortunate though as he pointed out, that the target audience is MMO nerds who're likely to be higher up the technological ladder, and not your chain-letter sending, IE6 mum.

If anything its the technerds I know that shuts everything down though and doesn't trust anyone, and the average user that has everything on accept and allow.

[Tagus]

practice your PR

or you could just copy/paste this image and use it indefinitely. Remember, your customer base has already been trained to accept this response!

http://www.batmancomic.info/gen/2010...0d90f56092.jpg

[Gwynplaine]

Seems like you've done a good job. I hope you've considered tactics or taken steps to account for your innovations being ripped off a la Wikia. But I think ultimately if you're innovative and keep in touch with the players they will support something like this.

[Cleverness]

Registered to take a look around, definitely like having everything integrated. Even for a simple shell it'd be nice. I'll throw any suggestions down in the guildworks forum.

[Deimos]

I would say for a site like Guildwork, graceful degradation isn't as important as for a "standard" site. One of the major reasons to have have the site degrade gracefully is for blind users, since screen-readers don't deal well at all with content being dynamic due to javascript. However, I'd imagine that playing an MMORPG is totally impossible for a blind person, so they're really not the intended audience of the site.

I haven't been as heavily involved in web-development as I used to be lately, so I'm not sure if search-engine crawlers have advanced well enough to scrape pages with a lot of dynamically-loaded content. That may or may not be a concern for Guildwork, but there's always the option to detect the crawlers and feed them static content.

[bungiefan]

Not sure if this is an issue with your site yet, but I notice on several sites I use, they don't play nice with my high-contrast color scheme. I have my web browser set to override web site colors to make everything more easily readable to me, green text on a black background. Images still load normally in most cases, but some buttons and all background images don't appear. Penny-Arcade's site redesign made their navigation buttons invisible to me unless I turn off my color settings, and then I'm trying to read text off a lit lightbulb and get migraines.

I'm still trying to figure out the comparison to FaceBook. It's a site I never really understood the purpose for, and it seems to be an annoyance to use with everyone spamming me with ap invites when I don't want any aps on my account. It only seems to do what my email and IM programs do, except I have to use my web browser, and there's so much more spam going along with it. All I've ever seen MySpace and FaceBook used for that I can even comprehend is a bunch of my classmates used them for booty calls and somehow got girls to drive 120 miles to the small town our school was in. That kind of worries me to find out my mom and sister are using it. I created an account on each and they just seem to try to crash my web browser or have me install lots of things to my page unless I turn off scripting on those sites with NoScript. I maybe log into them once every few months to try to get them to stop emailing me reminders to log in and message someone.

EDIT: Tried to register and it is just refreshing the page trying to log in. No errors shown, just displays the login box again.

[Stanislav]

I honestly do not know what is causing your issue, sorry =(

However we compare to Facebook because some of Facebook's concepts are just perfect for an MMO social network, aka feed, chat system, and more.

I would say for a site like Guildwork, graceful degradation isn't as important as for a "standard" site. One of the major reasons to have have the site degrade gracefully is for blind users, since screen-readers don't deal well at all with content being dynamic due to javascript. However, I'd imagine that playing an MMORPG is totally impossible for a blind person, so they're really not the intended audience of the site.

I haven't been as heavily involved in web-development as I used to be lately, so I'm not sure if search-engine crawlers have advanced well enough to scrape pages with a lot of dynamically-loaded content. That may or may not be a concern for Guildwork, but there's always the option to detect the crawlers and feed them static content.

Everything that we want indexed does degrade so that a search engine can browse the site. Both the Forums and Blog use no AJAX while browsing, only when adding/editing/etc..

[Celeras]

Trying to understand what this does that places like Guildportal doesn't already, aside from ripping off the facebook layout.

Not trolling, seriously. Just an alternative? Only asking because the OP seems to regard it as something different.

[Gargoyle]

Not gonna bother reading 4 more pages, but hot damn this thing is pretty fucking awesome. Will PM my notes from ~30 minutes dicking around there.

[StopTheLight]

As a web developer, it hurts when I have to write a page compliant with IE6.

Seriously, the internet needs to move on, already.

Instead of offering degrading content, you could detect for old browsers or missing functionality and tell them to upgrade to Chrome/Firefox/IE8 and so on. I'm sure you've already thought of this. And I'm sure the seasoned developer knows that even some very popular sites refuse to work without the proper browser (I'm looking at you, microsoft.com).

Perhaps all the developers demanding graceful degradation can offer some support and assist Stanislav in writing the properly formatted code.


*EDIT:
Bug: Added a character, then went to Guild. Still said I needed to add a character. Had to refresh for it to recognize I made a character. I'm running Chrome.
Bug: Guild Members section not working with 1 member (me) in guild. Not working as Normal or Admin.