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PostPosted: January 8th, 2017, 9:54 pm 
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Duke

Joined: May 30th, 2015, 6:01 pm
Posts: 1336
Location: Michigan, USA
Hey all,

One of my goals as Minister of Hermertian History is to finally get the library back up and running. For those who do not remember, the library was an amazing Wikipedia-esque way for us to share lore and document the history of the empire. One of the major challenges in using the library, however, was the difficulty in adding your own information if you were not HTML savvy. Well I have some good news! I may have found a more user-friendly way to rebuild the library.

Google offers a service called Sites (specifically the Classic version), which allows users to create their own website using existing templates and Office-esque text features. One of the available templates is a wiki template, which will allow us to have a searchable site very similar to the old library. I have taken the liberty of putting together a quick example site to show what it can do: https://sites.google.com/site/hermertiawiki/

None of these styling or structure choices are final, but that should give you all a good idea of what this tool is capable of.

On to the meat of the issue: the pros and cons of moving to this service relative to using the old wiki.

Pros:
More user-friendly
Simple Google Docs-esque permissions
Text and HTML objects from old wiki can be copied and pasted into pages

Cons:
Will need to reskin/restyle
Will need to transfer and potentially reformat old pages

Similarities:
Use of HTML objects
Wiki styling and features (searchable, structure, etc.)
Clunkiness of using certain objects (e.g. floating text boxes, images, etc.)

Those are my thoughts. What do you all think of moving to this new system?

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PostPosted: January 8th, 2017, 9:57 pm 
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Joined: April 28th, 2016, 6:15 pm
Posts: 2001
Location: California
As we discussed yesterday, I love this idea. My only concern is the stability of some of Google's lesser used products, and Google's tendency to nuke them sometimes with very little warning.

How easy is this to export in case of Google deciding to end support for this service?

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PostPosted: January 8th, 2017, 10:02 pm 
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Duke

Joined: August 9th, 2015, 12:19 am
Posts: 388
Location: United Kingdom
I also think this is a fantastic idea and solution to our problem. I share Marks concern that google may drop support for the product at some point, but it seems to tick all the boxes.

If we do move over to this method I don't mind lending a hand with reimporting old pages if its something which has to be done manually

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PostPosted: January 8th, 2017, 11:05 pm 
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Duke

Joined: July 7th, 2015, 9:01 pm
Posts: 596
Location: Maryland
I created a wiki, an actual wiki, maybe a year ago. There are already some posts there and the site never gets nuked. Sam and I went through and start adding some lore but no one else did so it sort of dropped off. Anybody can edit so be wary.

http://projecthermertia.wikia.com/wiki/Hermertia_Wikia

Though looking at your google site, it looks pretty cool, though as Mark brought up, the reliability is a huge factor to consider.

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PostPosted: January 9th, 2017, 12:39 am 
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Duke

Joined: May 30th, 2015, 6:01 pm
Posts: 1336
Location: Michigan, USA
How easy is the wiki you created to edit? I know the old library wiki we had was challenging to edit if you weren't familiar with HTML.

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PostPosted: January 9th, 2017, 1:00 am 
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Duke

Joined: July 7th, 2015, 9:01 pm
Posts: 596
Location: Maryland
Matter of having a wikia account (easy)
Pressing a button
and editing

The interface looks like this:

Image

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PostPosted: January 9th, 2017, 1:28 am 
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Duke

Joined: May 30th, 2015, 6:01 pm
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Location: Michigan, USA
Looks pretty similar to the Sites interface. Could you give me editing privileges so I can do some more investigating?

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PostPosted: January 9th, 2017, 1:36 am 
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Duke

Joined: July 7th, 2015, 9:01 pm
Posts: 596
Location: Maryland
Just make an account with wikia,

then go to a page:

Navigate to contribute on the top of the page:

Image

Image

then 'edit a page' when you click contribute.

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PostPosted: January 9th, 2017, 7:54 am 
Count

Joined: April 13th, 2016, 6:40 pm
Posts: 120
Personally I would like to see the wiki to be built on a dedicated wiki platform (like MediaWiki), so that we can run it on our system independent of Google or wikia.com. I will look into both Google sites and wikia to see if there is a way to host the service on your own system.

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PostPosted: January 9th, 2017, 3:17 pm 
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King

Joined: May 30th, 2015, 10:17 am
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Location: Stirling - Scotland
We would have to figure out what the best option between the multitude of options we seem to have, taking into consideration reliability, and the ability of randoms to edit, and compatibility.

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