The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: IshmaylAnd as far as hacking something together goes, that's well beyond my capabilities

hosts asking me to join their great server[/quote]
Hmm, maybe you should find out if one of them can beat $10/month ;)

One alternative would be to completely remove scripting permissions for users. This would pretty much remove the bulk of security issues in one go. However, this would force all users to learn (X)HTML and CSS to make menus and stuff, something which is a bad thing regarding usability.

A wiki sounds like a very good idea, however. :) Wikis are quite easy to set up and populate with content, even without knowing a single thing about HTML and other web technologies. Perhaps you could get in touch with the guys from D&DWiki for some kind of cooperation, perhaps?

Another idea would be a content management system. However, I have little experience in that department, so I can give very little advice on it.

Quote from: http://dandwiki.comD&DWiki[/url] for some kind of cooperation, perhaps?

If you use a Wiki could you still create the cool formatting you can with CSS (for example, I've spent a lot of time formatting my Kishar site)?

@Phoenix Knight: I'm not sure about wikis being able to deal with custom CSS stylesheets. Afaik there's some sort of general layout and style options for the whole site. But I've never dealt with wikis in detail, so I could be very wrong. :-/

Quote from: IshmaylAlso, just so you guys know, there is the possibility we can still have hosted campaign sites, but it would be very restricted and supervised.  One method we have discussed is allowing the current sites (those who are already up and running) to be transferred, and then any new editions, edits, uploads, etc would have to be done through us.  Basically, you would submit the changes, and we would do the uploads.  There are several reasons for this, but the #1 reason is, this way, if something happened (even accidentally), whichever of us was there doing the uploading would also immediately be able to fix the problem.  This could be a way to allow other people to create sites as well, but it would have to be something that the creator was willing to prove he was going to follow through with.  Anyway, that's just something up on the table for you guys to think about.

Speaking as one of the people who would benefit from this suggestion of "grandfathering in" existing sites into the new system, I don't think that idea would be our best bet. I foresee it discouraging new people from trying to use the hosting capabilities, because of the tests that must be passed to gain that privilege. If one of our concerns is getting more people to take advantage of this wonderful hosting ability (and it should be one of our concerns, I think), playing favorites with the people who are already using it seems counterproductive.

That said, security is an absolute must, and our lack of a techie-on-staff complicates matters considerably. I have trouble imagining the CBG as a priority target for malicious mischief, but if even a simple coding error can cause such catastrophic consequences, something certainly needs to be done to safeguard the site-- even if that means sacrificing the Hosting section entirely.

Of course, I hope it doesn't come to that. Selfishly, I even hope we don't have to give up our CSS and PHP luxuries. (I use both for the Jade Stage site, and I guess I've gotten a bit spoiled by how much wonderful power they give me to shape the pages.) Then again, if we had to get rid of them, it would not be too hard to do without. It would take a little work to get everything running again (as Sparkletwist alluded to, every link on the Jade Stage site (and possibly others) relies on PHP), but that's nothing an afternoon of dedicated copy/paste work can't deal with.

A Wiki format does not particularly thrill me, and neither does a limited HTML-only Hosting section. But either one is preferable to an unsafe system that will crash the site, or to lack of any sort of Hosting function at all.

In short, Ishy-- do whatever needs to be done for the good of the site, and I will happily adjust to whatever changes need to be made to the Hosting section. I'm sure many others will say the same. But if the fix can be accomplished without making it difficult for new people to begin using the Hosting system, that would be ideal.

LC,
I can always count on you for a well thought out response that covers all the options in much more eloquent and articulate words than I could ever utter :)

Just an update for you guys, we're working on a few things behind that scenes that will hopefully give us a few good options, and you guys will hear an announcement on it as soon as a decision is made.

I asked a question about the Wiki for Westhaven in this thread and Naryt said that he set that one up. It is a very nice wiki. He (or she) may be a resource we can tap.

I don't have much to add to what LC said. I've got backups for all of the material I have up, but even if the Hosting option goes down, I'd hope I could keep what I've put there.

Then again, you should do what's best for the site.

Túrin

I had to remove the login for the hosting. (the uploader we used has never, ever been secure.) If anybody's worried about not being able to download what they put up there, i'll try to get a fix up sometime soon.

Okay, a couple options have become available.  First things first though, anyone on this site that has material that you need to keep (and I'm definitely assuming Turin, LC, and PK's sites are included in that) needs to send me a PM with a link to the material.  Once I hear from people, I will discuss a few of the options we have.

What are you including when you say "material?" Content of pages, actual code, CSS templates? Can someone just say "I'd like to keep this entire folder and all it's contents?" and if so, how would you like that linked?

I'm pretty sure I have backups of everything on the site (except perhaps the most recently updated stuff, if you can really call that "recent"), or can go through and save all the individual pages this afternoon.

well, by material, I really just meant "your site."  So if you want all the stuff on "your site" saved, just send me the link (ala www.thecbg.org/settings/13/jade )

material is just my "cover-all" word for "stuff that you've written in Your Site"

Excellent. The PM is in the mail!

I have all the files from my site saved on my hard drive, so you don't need to worry about me as far as that goes. I wrote it locally, then copy/pasted it up.

Okay guys, I'm bumping this because it's pretty important.  We've come to a decision on the hosting subject, and the plan is basically to save whatever you guys need saved (dump it into a zip file), and anything else gets thrown out.  I will probably send out a mass email as well, but if you read this and you have something in the hosting section that needs saving, you need to PM me right now.  So far I only have 4 people who have anything to save, but looking over the settings, I see about 30 "sites" with information on them.

Expect a hosting announcement in the very near future.