Hello Marines, as you may or may not be aware we are currently working towards the launch of a new website. We've spent the last three months building it and getting things squared away and now comes the most important part : Preserving all the content that the Clan has generated during it's existence.

To do this I need your help, and this is an opportunity for individual Marines to leave a lasting, permanent mark upon the future development of the clan and also to provide content from the clan to the wider internet community.

I need to fill four roles, and to do this effectively I need a total of eight people, and for ease that number rises to ten.

The first roles will be Researcher / Writers. This role will require the collection and collation of information already contained and the creation of Unit Histories from this material. For this role you should be interested in digging out the best and most important information from forums and interviewing relevant individuals regarding the history of a unit. I require five of these. In future you will also be asked to generate further original content for the site.

Sub Editor roles are now filled.The second role is the Sub Editor. Sub Editors will check the material produced by the writers for correct spelling, grammar and structure. These roles require precision and if you don't have an enthusiasm for correcting other people's mistakes to standards (US English) this is not for you. We will need one Sub Editor, but if there are two with one acting as a Junior then that would be even better.

The third role is Designer. This role would suit someone with good graphic design or print design skills. You will be working to brief and generating material based on the requirements of the CoC so this would suit someone that can work at a high level of collaboration, someone that can take direction and criticism with a happy heart and without feeling pressurised. We require one designer but I would ask that if the person taking the role is willing to take on a Deputy that would be better. General duties will include creating and manipulating existing images during the site build and making new images.

The fourth role is Editor / Developer. This role is not so easy to quantify and would ideally suit someone with a little bit of all the skills above but more of a passion in the completed article. I am the Lead Developer and Coder and there is only a requirement for one person in this role, but this person will directly support me. Should I be unable to continue my duties the post holder would be expected to carry on the task. The Editor / Developer will also document the process enabling anyone who comes afterwards to carry it on. You will receive instruction in file transfer between local machines and the website and will also have access to a separate test server upon which to learn how to use PHPBB3 and the underpinning technologies including basic server management, use of an Integrated Development Environment and associated software tools. This role requires a lot of commitment and self study.

To apply for any of these roles simply post in the following format here :

http://www.13thmeu.org/new-website-development-f29/

Username :
Role Applied for :
Personal Statement :

Your personal statement should describe why you are best for the role. If you have no way of showing us what your skills are, or if you have none, please still feel free to apply. We can train you to perform the Writer / Researcher tasks as long as you have the time to commit to this. Everyone will also receive instruction in certain basic web site creation tasks.

This is an ideal way to serve the future of the clan, as well as your own future and for those participating fully I will be happy to write a professional reference for the work undertaken. For static web pages Author / Editor / Designer credits will be included in each page providing useful portfolio material.

If you are unable to commit to such an undertaking but have anything to contribute then please make a thread in this forum : http://www.13thmeu.org/new-website-development-f29/ and we'll discuss your ideas.

Will we need to make a new profile for the new website?

The new website integrates your medals, qualifications and ranks into your account so you will need to make a fresh account for the new site as the ones on this site don't support that kind of detail. Sadly there is no easy way to transfer them across between sites.

Here's a screenshot from the mid stages of development showing a post on the site. You can see the higher level of detail that's visible for everyone.

Take the rank images we have on this site and copy, they look a lot better.

Endrane wrote:

Take the rank images we have on this site and copy, they look a lot better.

Will do.

This may be the wrong place for this comment, but will the author's details actually appear on the right side of the page? This seems unorthodox in the world of internet forums.

SpaminSambi wrote:

This may be the wrong place for this comment, but will the author's details actually appear on the right side of the page? This seems unorthodox in the world of internet forums.

It's the way that PHPBB3 represents the information in it's Prosilver Template and it would be a large job to change including requiring the removal of the 'Online' notification. The codebase modifications we use to represent the Medals, Ribbons & Badges are also bound directly into the template thus requiring a further customisation to change. As PHPBB2 dies (the current board codebase) due to lack of updates the majority of PHPBB boards will migrate to PHPBB3 or to vBulletin. I would estimate the man hours required to implement a left sided template at 100. The board so far has probably taken 180-200.

HEY GUYS!! Remember me? Im back fellas. I took a long break for school and Work =)

Legendary Wingz wrote:

HEY GUYS!! Remember me? Im back fellas. I took a long break for school and Work =)

who are you? XD jk

Hey man, Sorry I left in a hurry.

Welcome back

Glad to have you back Wingz.

I actually really liked the color and overall design of this website, we could fix a few issues, but I actually liked this design. Who agrees?

Partially off-topic but just an add-on, we should space out each forum box like we have (in Index), unlike crammed like on the current test site.

Cmdr. Michael wrote:

I actually really liked the color and overall design of this website, we could fix a few issues, but I actually liked this design. Who agrees?

Moi!

We should fix a few things here and there instead of making a complete new layout.

Just my opinion though, will respect anything that comes out of the website

SuperShocky wrote:

Cmdr. Michael wrote:

I actually really liked the color and overall design of this website, we could fix a few issues, but I actually liked this design. Who agrees?

Moi!

We should fix a few things here and there instead of making a complete new layout.

Just my opinion though, will respect anything that comes out of the website

I'll explain the constraints we're under and hopefully that should help you understand our decision making :

This board is built on an out of date codebase (PHPBB2) so we need to build a PHPBB3 based board. Bronx came up with a list of criteria (Medals, Rosters, Information) and we tried a few tools out until we settled on the new site.

We're now at the stage where we can start to style the new site, but you need to be aware that things won't really be moving round from where they are, only changing colour or getting new skins. This is a constraint of having moved to the new forum system and it's one we can't change that much.

To give you an idea of what major things we've added to the default PHPBB3 install :

Multiple Ranks - We have added the code to store and display multiple ranks for each user allowing the inclusion of Squad Patches, Rank Badges and Staff Badges

Medals System - Everyone's profile now includes the medals they have been awarded with a Citation as to why they were awarded and a collection of medal images put together by Brushfire. This system alone took two months of man hours to implement.

Minor upgrades include Country Flags, Header Changes, Tabbed pages, Increased hooks in the code, some new CSS & HTML code for linking and all together there around a thousand lines of new code to make a 13th MEU specific install.

The big updates I'm focussing on now are to the content, with Axx, Spino & Shocky focussing on the Style of the site and I would ask that if any of you have content that you would like to see preserved from this site or new content that you would like to see generated then let us know in this forum.

.....

Thanks for explaining more in-depth Souljah.

Me and Spino are working on the style on Friday and Saturday. We'll hopefully come up with a few good ones

Axx Bytehoven wrote:

It's all looking great. Thank you Souljah

Thanks

Axx Bytehoven wrote:

Also thanks to FTM and others working behind the scenes to get the new website up and running.

This is where the real work has been done, without the stalwart work of many we wouldn't be where we are today. I would just like to thank you too Axx for taking on a lot of tasks yourself.

Axx Bytehoven wrote:

How hard is it to increase the number of Ranks beyond (4) and is there a limit? I ask because I can see a reason to possibly expand the number, limiting some of them to just text entries, which we could control true MANAGE RANKS.

I can add in more and more ranks if you like. We could get some 'undocumented' consequences as normally even the custom version only supports 3 (up from the 1 of the original codebase) and I've already upgraded it to 4 so we might as well go onwards and upwards. I estimate a day - two days to make changes.

Axx Bytehoven wrote:

I did not see a way to display a rank image without it's associated text. I assume it's not possible.

I do not know, there is no option to do it so I'd have to figure out how to change the code and that might be fun, but I can look at it once we've done everything else if you like ?

Don't change ranks yet. Let me think it thru and come up with a change only if it will really serve a purpose.

The interest in rank images with out a text title would for the use of ranks images which included a title, like our Command Element Staff badge, where the text is redundant and takes up space unnecessarily.

Axx Bytehoven wrote:

Don't change ranks yet. Let me think it thru and come up with a change only if it will really serve a purpose.

It's about 20 lines of code across four files to create plus a database addition so it's a fairly structural change (affects templates, web pages & database).

Axx Bytehoven wrote:

The interest in rank images with out a text title would for the use of ranks images which included a title, like our Command Element Staff badge, where the text is redundant and takes up space unnecessarily.

Yep, it would definately be an awesome upgrade. I think it can be done but it means building a copy of the site and trying it out (lest I break the live site) which is a task I want to do anyways but only after I've got this one sorted.