Wii Emulation Website

Hey all,

I'm putting this here, becuase I'm not sure if it's considered on topic for anything else.

I've (slowly) been working on a website I'm calling Wiimulation, my intention for it to be a site devoted to JUST emulation on the wii..I mean, i know you can find out everything here...but I wanted to make a site that was focused more on emulation than homebrew in general..and something that would give the newbies more idea of what they can expect thier Wii to do.

i started laying the groundwork out at [pickmy.org] - creating the basic layout...couple of pages. Since I'm not the best webdesigner or coder, I did everything in Seamonkey with tweaks in nano. The entire site doesn't look like much...but my plans are to expand it to covering emulation updates and maybe even hosting a forum dedicated to just emulation discussion.....which a much LARGER dream of maybe getting all the emulator devs together and giving them hosting and forum space.

Basically, I'm gonna need volunteer staff who wants to help update/maintain/create/hustle the thing. I don't know how to get in contact with a lot of the devs and I figure there might be people out there who can...and likewise I don't feel right going out and spamming the site...i'm more of a behind the scenes person.

The site right now is sitting on a VPS that I'm paying for and will hopefully continue to be able to pay for despite my unemployment. I do NOT want any ads of any sort on the site...so no mucking around with Google or other ad programs needed. The server does have a finite amount of disk-space, but I don't see us hosting any massively large files that would require me to buy another 10 gig chunk (I've got 20 right now). The server is running a pretty standard LAMP configuration. I have Unreal IRCD compiled in case there, down the road, was some use for an IRC server. File transfer to the server can be done via the standard FTP/SFTP/SCP methods and I will have a universal login for the site, however shell mode will be disabled. Should anything we do on the site require shell I'll issue it on a per-needed basis. I'm still planning on getting the bulk of the site finished at some point this week and get it going in some form.


I purchased wiimulation.org today as part of that buy.com $1.99 deal at godaddy....so I basically have everything needed except a finished operational site or an installed copy of phpbb or whatever forum software everyone decides to go with.

I suppose you could reply to this thread or contact me at dewdude(at)gmail(dot)com.

Boy, don't get yourself started with those nasty frames! Much better to just use some PHP includes...

How about this: I will code the user interface for you, OK? I know a mountain of HTML, fifty truckloads of CSS, and a world of PHP.

zack: I did frames because it's all I know how to do...i only wanted the require content on the thing to be updated without loading all the menu images all over again.

if you're able to make something using php and css that'll be easy to update and not hog bandwidth, let me get my WIP .zip file uploaded and that'd be great. I knew my code was crap...i basically implmented what i wanted to do the way I knew how.

I also forgot to mention email service will be active on the thing to...so everyone involved will have a wiimulation.org addy with either POP/IMAP/SMTP access or forwarding.

-Jay



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2009 11:47PM by dewdude.

Well, it doesn't load the images all over again, it loads them from a cache on the client computer.

I'll work on it later. zack@podtube.us

that's on *most* browsers...I've seen some erratic behavior from browsers...plus I like the streamlined look of the menu not doing the flashing deal when it's reloading the content from the entire page.

the WIP file (aside from everything already accessable), is [pickmy.org]

whenever you get around to it...no one else has stepped up offering to work on this with me.

-Jay

Quote
dewdude
that's on *most* browsers...I've seen some erratic behavior from browsers...plus I like the streamlined look of the menu not doing the flashing deal when it's reloading the content from the entire page.

the WIP file (aside from everything already accessable), is [pickmy.org]

whenever you get around to it...no one else has stepped up offering to work on this with me.

-Jay

AJAX is your friend.

Doesn't that require server-side stuff? I'm really not wanting to go screwing with my apache configuration because I've got a few other sites I'm hosting on that machine that are working and I don't feel like screwing up...or mostly I don't wanna go through the hassle of installing Ajax just for one site...I believe in keeping things simple....it's a VPS, I've only got so many resources available and the email server eats a larger chunk of that than I'd like.

I don't think you have to do anything to the server. I've only used it a couple of times but it's nice if you're trying to update just a portion of a page. Here's a good tut - [www.w3schools.com]

I don't think it will need AJAX, it's not like the main content will change that frequently...

Slightly Off Topic.

I understand why frames are considered bad, but the W3C still has not abandoned them and I think they can save a lot of bandwidth and are great for menus.

What do you guys think?

They save a negligable amount of bandwidth (think >500kb) and PHP works better for menus.

I thought you wanted a rewrite, sorry. Here's what I got so far (needs PHP.)

[zk.zombiephil.com]

that's not bad...

you're still gonna have the console logos in the menu right? that's kind of a biggie with me since i spent so much freakin time tracking down and in some cases, re-creating the suckers.

Yeah, sure. The pictures can be in the menu.

yeah man....my shopping skills generally suck but the logos came out pretty decent (i can't code either....i spent more time on repair and audio stuff)...and..they kind of grew on me as i was creating them..especially that Odyssey2 logo that took a bit of shopping and digging

why not just use a CMS like Drupal or Wordpress?

OK, your pictures are there, let me know if any tweaks are needed. I also fixed the problem where the content shifted to the middle if it was too short.

[zk.zombiephil.com]

awesome...just a couple questions because, i don't know jack about php and shiz....

does php specify the box around the graphics...becuase i have more i just haven't redrawn yet and will need to add those/reorder....

do i essentially just copy the main php page over and over again filling in with content i want and changing filename links?

i mean, i can hack code together when i want to...pickmy.org before i put it up for sale was like that...just a bunch of code hacked together..i just need to know what to modify to make it usable....but i like it.

i'll dig around the code later...been working on something i hope's gonna give me some cash so i can keep paying for a server...

Well, the images in the sidebar are static PNG images, but I'll include a .psd and a .xcf file for your editing pleasure next revision.

Yes, just copy over the main.php file contents to your new page and fill it out.

No pages outside of the main directory ATM please, the script needs to be tweaked or the pages will break.

I'll upload the next revision soon.

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daniel_c_w
Slightly Off Topic.

I understand why frames are considered bad, but the W3C still has not abandoned them and I think they can save a lot of bandwidth and are great for menus.

What do you guys think?

For the page to validate it needs to be a special frameset dtd (or transitional in the case of iframe). That is good enough of an indication to me that they should be avoided wherever possible, especially if other methods exist. They are very much deprecated.
Again, bandwidth savings are negligible. If you are really concerned about that, gz encoding for the pages, and optimise the images, preferably setting up decent cache settings too.

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musicinstinct
why not just use a CMS like Drupal or Wordpress?

Seconded. Only use bespoke applications where the need is not generic.

Actually, I've heard alot about this new CMS called Concrete5. It's pretty good.