Rescuing AC's official website - saved by BUncle

[Buster's Uncle]

...And while I've heard of PHP/ASP, I haven't had the foggiest what they are, so I need Kil's input.

The announcement he ninja'd me on while I was doing a million things at once:

Kilkakon has graciously agreed to take a more direct hand in the project, taking responsibilty for the Advanced and Basic Concepts pages reconstruction, and working on techincal stuff that's way over my self-taught head.  He is now officially the co-webmaster of the Firaxis AC site we host. 

He is also the sweetest person I've ever met online.  Let's hear it for Kil!

[sisko]

Let's hear it for Kil!

Hip hip hooray!

[Buster's Uncle]

Kil - I know you can't get seriously into this until Monday, but I'm going to do a mass upload of everything -edited or not- I have in my tech subfolder for your convenience.  Then I'll proceed as before, uploading edited pages when I'm ready to.

That would also have the benefit of making all the links I've fixed to pages I haven't fixed up yet at least work, and load a lot faster than on the Wayback Machine.

...When this thing is finished, we ought to find somewhere in there to acknowlege and thank the Wayback Machine and its associated humans, without whom the rescue project would have been impossible...

[Buster's Uncle]

As an added benefit, anyone who wants to check my progress so far on the Tech Tree section I'm currently looking through can - just click the OfficialAC button at the top of the page, and go to the Technology page.  You won't have any trouble seeing the difference from the unedited mini pages.  It was 557 files, and took a few minutes to upload.

Of course, I'm going to work through more pages today, and not upload them one-at-a-time as I finish each, so no refunds.

[Buster's Uncle]

I had a RL -not so much a random event, but a chore I'd been putting off caught up with me- and I've been doing some newb care that involved putting together two how-to articles, and haven't made any headway since I last posted here.  Fear not - finishing this thing is my first prioity, but some things are more time-sensitive than a project that's been in the works for getting up on a year now, and I'll be back to this. 

[Kilkakon]

It's no problem. When I get onto this and do some database design/planning I'll let you know.

[Buster's Uncle]

Back on it this morning - realized I hadn't uploaded the Technolgies page with the correction to the tech tree link, so people could look at what I had so far.  This has been rectified, and I'm editing my third tech subpage of the morning.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm 11 more pages along so far --- a big downside of doing a section this long is that I don't get that mini-goal satisfaction of completing a category frequently.  It matters at something this tedious - I'm really easy to sidetrack for the last few days.

I am compiling a list as I go of what icon goes with what tech/SP/whatever - something I've needed for a long time...

[Buster's Uncle]

I haven't gotten a lot done on this today yet because of a big sidetrack preparing graphics tutorials, content which is also important and put off for too long.  I got a lot of organizing -this comes up a lot when you have a lot of files to juggle, especially when many are quite old- out of the way, and ought to be able to settle into some serious grinding for the rest of my day, depending partly on how much the "Activity on the Forum" random event triggers.  But please don't let that stop you from posting - it helps keep me sane.

[Kilkakon]

Yeah when I get my head on this, a lot will change, so yeah... hehe. Don't panic.

[Buster's Uncle]

Kil, am I wasting time and effort, given what-all you're about to do?

[Kilkakon]

To be safe, give me a day or two and then I'll be able to answer that question a bit more confidently. While no work goes to waste, it'll be good to be more efficient with our time.

Are there areas other than these little pages you can work on?

[Buster's Uncle]

On the official site?  No, other than the Links page, it's done, and I've been waiting on sisko for a list of the links for [looks up, counting mentally] eight months.

Believe me, my build queue is full of other projects, but I made a promise that this would come first.  I haven't had AOE2 on at all for a week.

BTW, would it be too impractical to leave the Downloads and Links pages in a state I could edit at will when you SQL the site?  There's a chance it could come up for those two, though it shouldn't ever for the rest.

I take it being a little ill over the weekend has put you a little behind scedule on starting?

[Kilkakon]

I only had the intention to SQLise the tech page areas. The rest should be fine.

Yeah I'd say give it a rest for a day and see what I come up with--I'll try to at least design something today, but I'll need to get serious pretty quickly.

[Buster's Uncle]

Good enough for me.  I'm gonna finish the page I have open and upload everything edited since I last uploaded edits, then I'll lay off for a day.

...I have hit one or two missing weapons pages, so there may be a small issue there, as I was finding out as I fixed technology links and taking care of it piecemeal...