I have a customers site I’m working on now - and it’s supprisingly popular, given that it hasn’t been updated for years now. It deals with trees, and gets all it’s hits from Google searches (and that’s split between image searches and normal searches). Given that it gets no incomming traffic from other web sites whatsoever, it’s very popular indeed - and with some work to get more inbound links to rival Yahoo within a few months 
I am in the process of giving the entire site a face-lift, and transferring it from a FrontPage system (Euch!!) to a database-driven programmed environment. Because Google favours it so, I don’t want to just replace the site with a new one with no consideration for legacy support. Google has tons of details on this site with plenty of addresses that it likes - why lose all that during the redesign?
So - I’m building the system with that in mind, and am working on a URL transplantation system - all the old addresses with be silently mapped to the new site whilst gently moving Google over to the new way of organising systems. Google’s a big, slow monster; we have to be considerate not to scare her away!!
I’ll let you know the results when the site’s up; if (after a couple of weeks) Google is still sending plenty of traffic our way, it’s worked. If not, there’s a lot of work and time wasted. One shot to get it right, fear not I will! 
Recently I’ve been using WordPress pretty extensively - after all, I’ve set up (between me and my partner) 4 ‘Blogs in the past week, plus a few more that never made it to go live.
But that’s never been the way I work - I have created a system that enables me to create web sites with relative (expert) ease. It’s got no WYSIWYG editor, although I’d love to have that. It’s not got a control panel - I edit files and page lists manually. In fact it’s a very raw system designed for one person in mind; me!
But it works - and it’s so much easier to just crack it open and start fiddling with things than work on various ‘hacks’ and ‘edits’ to the WordPress system that isn’t geared up towards people who know what they are doing but just want a system to save them reinventing the wheel numerous times. My system isn’t quite a CMS, but that is the closest you could describe it as.
I’m just working on a customers web site again now - and it’s made using pure Mark Code. It’s rough, but it works and it’s supprisingly effective and efficient.
That’s what I’ve decided to do; or more, that’s what I’ve been recommended to do by Kate! And it’s a good idea.
Many people find projects start and do not ever get to completion - and I’m certainly one that’s experienced that a few hundred times. So, little and often is the key for Zelborg. If you leave it a week, you can’t be bothered to ‘get back in to it’ - and then a week becomes a month, and the next time you look at it you spend a good couple of hours just understanding the overall structure - let alone the specifics - of how you put the game together. Does that suggest bad coding style? I don’t think so - I’ve actually maintained a very similar coding style for a while now and believe it works well, but that’s not to say that code that’s older than a couple of months doesn’t become hard to understand on first glance.
It doesn’t start tonight though. No - I started a couple of weeks ago, so there’s already something to see on Zelborg.com. Although, I’m actually torn between two methods of doing things:
- Do things using PHP’s GD libraries - it’s flexible, pretty fast, capable of quite a lot, and more importantly - I know how to use it, and can whip up a game quicker with it
- or -
- Write the game using Flash. As I don’t know Flash, nor ActionScript, this is a venture into the unknown - but the result would obviously be smoother and probably more engaging. And since this is the new Web, are people going to be so interested in a game that has to reload a new page everytime you scroll the page along? Methinks not so much. A fluid game written in Flash would also provide the framework that could be used for dozens of other games in the future. So Flash = Good. GD also is good, but I’m starting to believe that it’s had it’s day for the online browser-based gaming market.
The game is currently planned to be Isometric - and that’s what the game is so far that’s written using PHP’s GD library. As the mathematics (relatively easy - once you’ve got the pixel-precision sorted out!) is pretty much the same, it’s not wasted time having devised and written a PHP class to do Isometric maps in GD!
Today’s half-an-hour - learning some of the basics of Flash. I’ve actually done a bit before using Flash, but in reality I’m a complete novice - and given my usual ability to pick up a programming language in no time, it’s quite a deviation from the standard forms a language takes. I did dabble with ActionScript a few days ago - and failed - due to not fully understanding the entry points for the ActionScript (as in - which frame it should be on, how you handle multiple scenes, etc). I know there’s power in them there Flash … This ‘blog will probably be me documenting my discovery of Flash, ActionScript, Isometric maps in Flash, and (argh!!) Flash Internet programming to begin with - before we even get into the real meaty parts of Zelborg. But that’s all part of the ride!!
Thank you for visiting my new blog!
I will be sharing the various things I encounter with my job - as a computer engineer - and as a programmer working on websites and blogs.
I will also be detailing my progress as I attempt to build - for the second time - an MMORPG. I built one a couple of years ago - called Universal Wars - that went up, and was popular for a short while, but sadly - a victim of it’s own popularity - had to be closed when things slowed down to a halt under the new pressure. My intention was always to recreate the game with a new system, capable of handling thousands of users at once, but alas life got in the way and it never made it to the end…
So here we are now - starting out a new journey to write a new game entirely. I welcome you to follow the progress - the successes and the failures - as I create “Zelborg”. I believe fully that we’ll all see this through to it’s launch and I hope you’ll all be there!
- Mark
- Site Admin & Zelborg Programmer
Thank you for visiting my new blog!
I will be sharing the various things I encounter with my job - as a computer engineer - and as a programmer working on websites and blogs.
I will also be detailing my progress as I attempt to build - for the second time - an MMORPG. I built one a couple of years ago - called Universal Wars - that went up, and was popular for a short while, but sadly - a victim of it’s own popularity - had to be closed when things slowed down to a halt under the new pressure. My intention was always to recreate the game with a new system, capable of handling thousands of users at once, but alas life got in the way and it never made it to the end…
So here we are now - starting out a new journey to write a new game entirely. I welcome you to follow the progress - the successes and the failures - as I create “Zelborg”. I believe fully that we’ll all see this through to it’s launch and I hope you’ll all be there!
- Mark
- Site Admin & Zelborg Programmer