Need some help building a website for my server.

[C4L3N]

http://www.metekkit.net/

Hey guys, I've been working on building a custom website for a Mass Effect themed server. So far I have the basic ground work covered but there are some things I could use a little help with.

RSS feeds for the front page.

PHPbb setup that looks modern and pleases the eyes.

Some minor HTML/Java coding for menus/text displays.

Plugin coding for minecraft server status.

User profiles for website tied to Minecraft IGN and server.

etc.

The website is hosted at Hosting24.com and is up 99.9% of the time. Any help would be greatly appreciated and will benefit you should you decide to play on our server once it is up on our chosen hosting service. (Still debating on hosts.)

[Cheap Shot]

This reeks of trying to plug your site and server. And for what it's work, I must have clicked it in the 00.1% of the time it's down.

[Torezu]

This is also most definitely not off-topic. Moved to Server Op Swap Shop. Do not use this as an excuse to advertise further. Also, I recommend a server thread in one of the boards (Open or White List) that you can point people to from this thread.

[C4L3N]

I'm not trying to advertise, I'm genuinely in need of some help. I just thought the hosting service might be important in case someone had a better service to recommend but in this case I now understand it was unnecessary information.

Good thought on the server thread but I feel it might not be a good idea atm since we're unable to actually open a server untill the technical stuff is finished and the website has most of the ground work done (Server plugins and a hosting service for the server that doesnt cost an arm and a leg.) (All pages in the website have a complete template and info properly coded and entered). If this doesnt invalidate the post in one of the server threads I'll post.

Also I wasn't aware Server Op Swap Shop was the section for this particular thread I apologise for that haha I was under the impression it was more for Game Server related things not websites included @.@

Either way thanks for fixing that little mistake.

[C4L3N]

This reeks of trying to plug your site and server. And for what it's work, I must have clicked it in the 00.1% of the time it's down.

Ha I was having some issues. idk what was wrong but when I was entering the base code for the new drop down info sliders it saved and then the site went dark for about 5 minutes. I'll have to ask the host staff what the deal is but chances are they'll respond with dumbfounded faces because they aren't experiencing the same issue from their LAN connection. (Complete and utter exaggeration but you get my point, no strait answers will be had. lord forbid you get to learn how to fix a problem you caused and don't have to bug tech support for free)

Sorry it just earks me how they wont explain how not to screw the server up internally. It'd be nice to actually learn from these mistakes what NOT to do or how to fix them.

Sorry for the rambling I'll shut up now XD.

[C4L3N]

More related to the subject I've been so carelessly leading off of...

What forum software is being used here on the Technic forums? Please tell me it's free haha.

[Djinnii]

Where is your minecraft server hosted?

If you have a decent host (like CreeperHost) that gives you an API you can hook into you don't need a plugin, (I suppose if you were really smart you could also make use of the GameSpy4 Query ) but yeah.

Other notes:

- This forum and lots of other minecraft forums use "Xenforo" which you can see in the bottom left of every page. (No, it's not free, phpBB on the other hand is.)

- How exactly are you editing your site? If your managing to make it go dark side on you your probably doing it wrong.

- If you want everything tied in, it'll be much easier and probably cheaper to run your website from the same machine as your Minecraft server, not to mention a database to store all that info in, I'd probably recommend MySQL.

[UKSp0ng3]

Just a suggestion;

You can try free options like WordPress.

They have a whole database of themes that you can customize to your liking.

For instance, TechnicPack.net is using WordPress.

It's easy to use and it's free too. Just need to install it on your web server.

CPanel should also have Installous or some script like that, which can install WordPress for you easily.

[C4L3N]

- How exactly are you editing your site? If your managing to make it go dark side on you your probably doing it wrong.

Oddly enough I don't see how I was screwing it up. I've added code before and it never went dark after updating, but, I wont dismiss it as a possibility.

As for how I'm editing the site, I'm using an editor provided by the host called RVSiteBuilder, It lets me modify the template without screwing up the template. For example if I had a dual body template (two separate bodies of content side to side) I can modify the source on one side and leave plain text on the other, if I managed to screw the code up it only affects the body of text rather than the whole page.

Also I hardly ever go into the internal server files unless I absolutely need to to install something or make a change or even remove a plugin. I'm not so fond of messing with the root files when I can cause the webserver to stop displaying the page by making a simple mistake.

- If you want everything tied in, it'll be much easier and probably cheaper to run your website from the same machine as your Minecraft server, not to mention a database to store all that info in, I'd probably recommend MySQL.

I would but I don't have the right setup for either a server or webserver. Internet speed (namely upload) doesn't meet the requirements of running even a small scale MC server let alone the addition of a webserver to boot.

You can try free options like WordPress.

Hmm, I'll look into that. As of now I'm just running a bootstrap design I threw together on short notice.

- This forum and lots of other minecraft forums use "Xenforo" which you can see in the bottom left of every page. (No, it's not free, phpBB on the other hand is.)

Yeah I just looked it up, 130$ for the license to use xenforo. Horrible price-tag, but, the software indeed works effectively and quite nicely. Maybe I'll upgrade whenever the server increases in size, until then I'll stick to modding out PHPbb.

Hmm, by chance does anyone know of any PHPbb plugins that make the user profiles better? Like maybe bigger profile pictures and sleeker pages that dont look retro?

[Djinnii]

A webserver is much much less intensive than any game server lol...

Your only main upload factors will depend on how many pictures you load, so with a bit of clever CSS your site can easily use next to no bandwidth.

(I run about 20 websites and between them they rarely use more than 10GB a month) and I sure don't do many clever things with CSS.

Try looking up some themes for phpBB, you'd be surprised what you can change with a simple theme.

P.S. I also started using BootStrap, it's pretty darn good :-)

[C4L3N]

Lol I assume you mean the program BootStrap lol I meant bootstrap as in I scrapped together a minimalist design since I needed the site up quickly =P. Although I'm now curious about this BootStrap app XD. I'm going to get an IRC channel installed on the website if ever you'd like to come over and give me a hand. (Or rather I'll set up a stand alone IRC channel hosted by yours truly to make it a little easier to chat.

I'm debating changing the name though since we might end up scrapping together a custom modpack to fit the theme of Mass Effect a little more smoothly. Preferably forge mods but beggars cant be choosers. I'll open another thread for this though since I'd like to focus on website design here and not get everything all confused haha. (On that note I'd imagine I'd post that thread in a mod related section or can I post it here?)

Haha I found a nice theme for PHPbb. I went in and changed the logo as you can see. I think I still have the original .zip containing the theme if you'd like it. I can also photoshop a logo for ya haha.

As for upload speed, I never realised that much heheh. I only have one computer though, my main gaming rig and I'd rather have a dedicated server for the website so I have a good base system for content (I also have a gaming clan website I plan to get running in the future but that's neither here nor there.)

10Gb each or all together? I'm curious as to the traffic they get on average, just seems low but I'm no expert. Hell this is my first time working with a real website editor that goes as far as editing source code. (It's a good trainer though XD)

[Djinnii]

I mean bootstrap the CSS design template:

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

Lots of people I know run IRC and webservers from a old spare laptop, websites are not hardware intensive at all. You've only got to think: How big is my entire website really? 2 maybe 4mb on average. Then add in your images, takes you to what? 20 - 30mb? and half of it is probably never even sent to the end-user. Then most decent sites will compress the stream, so your 15mb becomes more like 10mb, your only actually using for 10mb of bandwidth for each user who actually views your entire site. Not to mention the large delays in sending it in much smaller parts since the user is typically only going to be viewing one page at a time. Really not something anyone needs to worry about even on a home pc/connection.

When you start including web based IRC chat though, thats when your bandwidth usage shoots right up.

[C4L3N]

Yeah I figured as much, IRC is constantly streaming as long as there are connections. As for space, heheh, I'm adding both a photo gallery and a video gallery (videos for tutorials, time-lapses, presentations on new texture packs, etc.). It's not included yet, I'm adding those final features once I get the ground work fixed and the bugs weeded out of the v0.5 website (Im classifying the stages in the website to help keep track of which items go first and what items are added after those aforementioned items get finished.) (v0.5 Setup Phase, v1.0 Cosmetic Phase, v1.5 Debugging Phase, v2.0 (Optional) Upgrade Phase) (Sorry if I ramble, it's a habit online.)

My previous goal was to make a lot of this site flash based, but unfortunately that would take away from some of my initial requirements such as mobile connectivity (I monitor my forums and IRC channels on my phone so moderation is not an impossible task with my schedule.

[Djinnii]

Sure okay, but I'm guessing for the most part most of your videos and stuff will be hosted on youtube... in which case it isn't actually using your bandwidth.

[C4L3N]

Actually I'm having them hosted on the website. I have over 1Tb of disk space available so I figure I might as well take advantage of it with videos, pictures and exclusive downloadable content.

Changes to project:

Website will now be renamed to http://www.wolfpackgaming.net/ the server page for METekkit will be renamed to http://www.wolfpackgaming.net/WPGTekkit

Migration of the pages will take a little while but it'll happen within the week hopefully, actually since my insomnia has gotten worse and I'm out of Advil PM's I'll try to do most of it tonight haha. (It's not serious, I just get too little sleep and my doctor is trying to get me to take heavy duty medication XD) As I mentioned, I ramble.

I'm going to try to work on so choice other things, by chance would you know of any good RSS codes or apps that dont require a whole lot of coding to get working. I'm trying RSStoHTML but the text file packaged with it confuses the hell out of me (Had to reformat the text so it was organized and not two huge lines of text.)

^

I'm trying to get specific forum pages to show as a news feed on my home page for the individual site sections. (WPG forum news shows on WPG home page, WPGTekkit forum news shows on WPGTekkit home page)