Kuulli Access

At this point, Moggle, Sumdood, Sydney, and Sicarii have access to the Kuulli Account, which controls www.desertrealm.com (not forums.desertrealm.com).

Moggle and Sumdood have access to the full site - pages, templates, kblocks, styles, javascripts, web files, etc.

Sydney and Sicarii have access to add/edit pages and add/edit web files. Sorry guys, but I don't know you yet. That'll change over time, I'm sure. (I've known the 2 Rob's for 10 years now).

We had an incident once where a pissed off member went and deleted a TON of stuff, so forever after we've had to become more careful.

The announcements page will become a blog. I'm finishing up the blog module as we speak. Eventually, everybody will be able to have a blog if they wish.

At this point, anything new that becomes "official" needs to be added to a Kuulli page. The days of this forum are limited (we're working on a Kuulli forum module as well), so the less we have to migrate when that time comes, the better. And as people have time, we should start editing the old background information threads into articles and add those to the main site.

In the end, the Desert Realm will be much more organized, more consistent, and easier to roleplay in.

Thank you everybody! And, if anybody else wants to volunteer, let me know and I'll give you access as well.

-Azkul

I suppose my concern is simply where do we start? I would assume the easiest way is to hand out different categories to the people involved and then move the threads as quickly as possible.

Just tell me what to cover and I'll figure out the rest on my own.

I may be missing something, but how do i put a page in a page. I was trying to put reapers into transportation but it just seemed like it edited the main page. OR is that the idea?

Im a little new to page editing. I did some about 6 years ago but i remember nothing.

OK, once you log in, use the menu at the top in the black bar. Go in market place tools, then web content management, then manage web pages.

Select "Desert Realm"

You should now be on "Manage Web Pages".

There are 26 files currently in there... one for each of the main sections in the background area, tutorials, rules, etc.

Lets start off by filling in these pages.

For example, I chose the topic Alchemical Potions. I found this topic: http://forums.desertrealm.com/index.php?showtopic=4087 that gives a good starting point. I copied this post to this page: http://www.desertrealm.com/pages/alchemical-potions.html I did this by clicking on edit to the right of the row labeled "Alchemical Potions" and then copy/pasting it into the content editor. The editor automatically formats stuff... so it really helps. Otherwise, it works a lot like Word.

Since the forum's address has changed, I changed the 2 links from www.desertrealm.com/forum to forums.desertrealm.com with the rest of the link staying the same.

Next step for the Alchemical Potions page would be to add a new page per potion listed... all 37 of them. (make sure to use the same "tag" on all the pages so we can find them easier later on - such as the tag "potion"). Then the last step would be to add a kblock type="module" with the links to each of these potions. This last step requires that you have access to Kblocks... if you don't, skip this step and I'll add it in later.

Give it a try... it's not as scary as you think. Once you edit one of them, you'll be a pro.

You'll probably want to post which page you're currently editing so you both don't do the same page. Or "call" the next few that you want to do.

Oh, and a note...

If you're adding a link to an article that exists on the main website and the forum, link to the main website... its address is permanent, where the forum's addresses are all going to change.

You'll need to understand what Kblocks are to effectively use the template system.

KBlock Explanation

The different types of kblocks that you can use are Global, Module, Toggle, Form, Survey, and Field. Don't use Menu yet as there are a couple of usability issues that we're ironing out.

* Global is intended to show up on all pages using that template.

* Module is intended to show up on a group of pages, but not every page. I've created modules for each group of pages (potions, laws, etc). You choose which modules you want to show up when editing a page. Once pages are made, we'll add those links to the appropriate modules.

* Toggle is for "on/off" type things. The only thing that DR will use this for is "page cannot be found errors" The flash notice displays where there is a one-time message to the user. For example, try going to www.desertrealm.com/djfl - this will redirect to the homepage and display a flash message saying the page can't be found. Now refresh the homepage and you'll notice that the flash message has been removed.

* Form - this is a contact form builder. It will do 2 things when submitted. First, it will add the record to the CRM area of Kuulli, and 2nd it'll send an email to the recipients defined on that page. Currently, the form's layout can't be changed, but we're working on a way to make it possible to build however you want.

* Survey is the same as form, except you can ask questions as well. Both a CRM and email record are created.

* Field is the same as Global or Module, except that the content changes for every page. So, say you have a section in your layout that always has a graphic, but you want it to be different for every page... this is the one you'll use. If you want it to be the same on a bunch of pages, use module instead.

* Menu - don't use. There are some bugs that we're working on fixing.

So I was looking around the new site editor stuff and I a little confused with how this is going to happen. We are actually making new pages with all of the same tags and such in the fields above the actual text box or are we copying and pasting into the already created pages.

For example; am I to copy/paste the Potion of Fael beneath the introductory paragraphs to Alchemical Poitions in DR or am I making an actual page that will be accessible by the menu at a later date?

I'm confused on what we're doing using the Kuulli access too. So I thought I'd take a guess based on the previous question.

Looks to me like we're adding links in to the forum sections in the background areas, and then providing a description of the content that's there, updating things as we go.

I added the Commonality section, once I managed to find my way to it. This worked okay with copy and paste and some re-writing. I probably should have included a link. Since that worked, I went to do the Gods section and ran into problems with the text editor in Kuuli. Man, that text editor is horrible. Every time I hit return, it bounced me around, then I accidentally navigated and lost my work. It was highly irritating. I came to the conclusion that it's best to write in Word and then past into the text editor rather than try and draft in it. Drafting content in that Kuuli text editor is error prone.

Once you get in to Kuuli go to Marketplace Tools > Web Content Management > Manage Web Pages. This opens the full list of Web Pages available for editing in a list.

Click the Edit link to open a page, and there will be a text editor with the content in it. You can edit the text there, or paste text in from Word (advised, since it keeps you from losing your content if the editor pukes).

In the forums (in a separate tab) open the related section. These are usually in the Background section in DR. Copy and Paste the necessary info into Word or Word Pad or whatever you're using, and then edit it as necessary. Once you're done, paste it into the Kuuli editor and click Submit.

Don't forget to add a link in to the related forum sections.

So WHY are we doing this? My assumption is that Azkul would like the new front page to serve as a portal into the forums because it helps with search engine recognition. We're still playing in the forums, but the front page operates as a portal into them. It doesn't replace the forums, but serves as a way to get new users interested and bring them in. As such, the background content doesn't need to contain everything - just an intro into those sections with links to the appropriate forum areas. There's WAY too much content in DR to copy everything over, and there are always changes to content, so what we need to put in the front page needs to be more general and contain things that aren't going to change much in the game. We can add content to the forums without disturbing the front page or needing to change it much. Other people coming in can use it as a jump point. Once they get used to the forums, they'll probably ignore the front page just as we always ignored the old one and came straight to the forums where the action is.

Is this the right idea Azkul?

-Dood!

Yeah, new pages for each entry. Then we'll link to them from the left nav at a later date.

Either keep track of the links on the left or make sure you check the appropriate module, so I can edit the navigation properly and not leave pages out.

We're working on a better menu system, but its about a week out.