I created the beginnings of a Pathfinder SRD site similar to d20srd.org at http://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/. I give full credit to the folks who already did much of the work by creating pfogc.com. I basically just copied and pasted the text from there to the site I created and am now in the process of cleaning up all of the links etc so they don't reference outside of the site.
Now, the first question someone is likely to ask is, "If pfogc.com already had done all of the work, why are you doing this?"
I have a couple of answers...
1) Unfortunately while the pfogc.com site has most of the open Pathfinder content, the servers it is on are horribly slow. I have already tried to use the site many times in my sessions while I am DM'ing and it is significantly slower than d20srd.org, slow enough to be a pain to use. That's just clicking from page to page. Putting the content into a Google Site ensures more than adequate speed.
2) Searching on pfogc.com is also painfully slow. I mean, *really* slow. By putting all of the same content into a Google Site I get to leverage the world-famous Google Search power. Searching the site I created is many, many times faster, and the search results are both more detailed as well as much more accurate.
3) The basic wiki architecture makes page layout kind of painful. Editing pages involves the archaic wiki tags and making tables is really painful.
4) I found many things missing from the site. I know I could add the things in, and I have even done so, but its just pretty time-consuming given point 3 above.
Finally, not that its absolutely necessary, but Google Sites offers many neat gadgets and extras that the current pfogc.com does not.
Ok, that's about it. If you would like to help me finish editing it (cleaning up links, formatting tables, formatting tables of contents, etc) then please let me know at jreyst@gmail.com.
Regardless of everything else though, I have to say thanks again to everyone who contributed to pfogc.com and I'd also appreciate any comments, suggestions, or even corrections. I have already found very many misspellings, incorrect word-breaks, and other things I need to fix, as well as start the herculean task of internally linking... a big job and I'm open to anyone who wants to assist!
Is this going to be just a Beta site, or are you converting it to the PFRPG in August?
Is this going to be just a Beta site, or are you converting it to the PFRPG in August?
I plan to convert to Final and have this be an ongoing, useful site. I know I plan to use it! Also, I responded to your email and made you a collaborator.
Thanks for the positive comments guys! Don't forget I'm looking for help on formatting and layout etc so if anyone has free time just drop me a note at jreyst@gmail.com and I'll add you as a collaborator.
Beautiful.
Thank you.
There is something I think would make a good link. There is an excellent character generator and spell list manager online.
http://www.chargen.motime.com/
I think it is well worth checking out, and your site and his can cross-link and cross-pollinate in interesting ways.
I will use the hell out of your site in the years to come.
Cool, those are good links.
Great. I will show this to my friends.
All feats at one place, nice. I hope you link the feats in the feat Description (the list of feats) to the actual feat.
TomJohn aka Zark
I plan to do massive cross-linking, such as from the feat table to the individual feat descriptions etc. I just didn't get to it yet. Check back and you should see lots of continual progress.
Also, don't forget everyone, if you would like to help work on it just let me know!
I've spent the morning cleaning up the Feats section, breaking each feat into its own individual page, and then linking the table of feats to each feats page etc. I'm going through and cross-linking every prerequisite feat in the table now <yawn> boy is this fun :(
Reminding everyone as I said before, volunteers sure wouldn't be frowned at! Its a thankless job but once its done I suspect everyone who tries it will appreciate the effort!
Email me at jreyst@gmail.com if you want to spend any time on it!
Looks great!
A little feedback: I don't much care for the artificial divisions between the classes on the "Classes" page.
Please just list them in the actual categories: Classes, Prestige Classes, and NPC classes. What makes a Bard "skilled" and not "Arcane"? What makes a Paladin "Martial" and not "Divine"?
Part of what makes d20srd.org the reigning champion in reference sites is the total lack of editorial injections like this. As a reference, it is better to have the rules and nothing else. I want it totally devoid of all judgments — even if they are widely accepted as your class labels are. In other words: "Just the facts."
This approach makes it a better hyperlink reference, and also encourages players who want more flavor to buy the book or PDF.
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Please just list them in the actual categories: Classes, Prestige Classes, and NPC classes. What makes a Bard "skilled" and not "Arcane"? What makes a Paladin "Martial" and not "Divine"?
mmm the classic convention?
je don't take me wrong toyrobot, you are right SRD should be only the rules part of the game... I just was checked yesterday a few thing on my old 2nd Edition book and re-checked that they divided them in Warrior, Priest, Mage and Rogue classes :P
Please just list them in the actual categories: Classes, Prestige Classes, and NPC classes. What makes a Bard "skilled" and not "Arcane"? What makes a Paladin "Martial" and not "Divine"?mmm the classic convention?
je don't take me wrong toyrobot, you are right SRD should be only the rules part of the game... I just was checked yesterday a few thing on my old 2nd Edition book and re-checked that they divided them in Warrior, Priest, Mage and Rogue classes :P
Of course, look close enough and you'll find a matter of opinion in anything.
As far as I'm concerned, d20srd.org was damn near perfect, and the only real differences introduced should be official changes.
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yes it is... but the SRD supposedly wopuld have enough changfes to merit a book... meaning that you would need to luck in 2 different places...
I understand this would be more work for jreyst to have it all in the same place, but I also believe he does it more for himself and his game than everyone else... just everyone is invited if they want
Beautiful.
Thank you.
There is something I think would make a good link. There is an excellent character generator and spell list manager online.
http://www.chargen.motime.com/
I think it is well worth checking out, and your site and his can cross-link and cross-pollinate in interesting ways.
I will use the hell out of your site in the years to come.
That link has been added to the main page. Good link by the way, thanks!
Looks great!
A little feedback: I don't much care for the artificial divisions between the classes on the "Classes" page.
Please just list them in the actual categories: Classes, Prestige Classes, and NPC classes. What makes a Bard "skilled" and not "Arcane"? What makes a Paladin "Martial" and not "Divine"?
Part of what makes d20srd.org the reigning champion in reference sites is the total lack of editorial injections like this. As a reference, it is better to have the rules and nothing else. I want it totally devoid of all judgments — even if they are widely accepted as your class labels are. In other words: "Just the facts."
This approach makes it a better hyperlink reference, and also encourages players who want more flavor to buy the book or PDF.
At first I was a tad irritated but after re-reading I don't think there was actually any negative tone, it was just that I was reading while riding my bike home from the gym and wasn't paying that close attention. Anyway, I too consider the d20srd.org as the creme de le creme of SRD-type sites, which is why I even purchased a local copy of it. Its awesome and what I wish this site could (but never will) be.
I made your recommended change by the way. I have to agree that I don't really care for, or need, any editorial content on a rules site. I didn't intend it to be any sort of editorial content, just some sort of logical segregation of the classes so visitors don't have to scan through so many links each time they are looking for one class. It has been my experience that smaller chunks are easier to look through quickly, hence the segregation. Either way, I put them all into one section. If a majority of people decide they like it the other way I'm more than happy to put it back... I'm not really "married" to either concept.
-- thanks for the positive comments too!
...I also believe he does it more for himself and his game than everyone else... just everyone is invited if they want
Originally yes, this came up simply because I regularly use a laptop in my sessions when I am DM'ing and while I sincerely tried to use the pfogc.com site, even going so far as to contribute time editing content, the site was just too slow to use in a session. It takes 10's of seconds sometimes for pages to load and searches take even longer. I just figured it wouldn't take too long to copy and paste the content over to a google site and then clean it up. In all reality its pretty time consuming fixing links etc and it makes me appreciate even more all of the time everyone who ever contributed to the pfogc.com site.
Anyway, I originally left out the Pathfinder Traits because initially this was going to be just for my group and we don't use the traits, but since it would only take a few minutes to add them in, and the scope of this site is a bit more open now, I'll add them in.
I'm always open to both more comments and suggestions as well as any offers of assistance!
Montalve - I added Traits in per your request.
I hope you link the feats in the feat Description (the list of feats) to the actual feat.
TomJohn aka Zark
This is done. There's still some work to be done adding links in the prereqs section but the main work is done.
jreyst -
Yeah, sorry I can be a bit terse.
I'll take this time to add that it really does look good other than my nitpicking, and it's an extremely valuable thing you're doing. I don't want to seem ungrateful.
Thank you for making the change. I think most will agree, the core classes are so well known that it is easier to find the right one in an alphabetized list than to scan four lists, no matter how logical the subdivisions. Perhaps, as more basic classes are added to the game a different organization will be desired (although perhaps not!)
I will give you more feedback as I continue to use this site — I definitely support what you're doing.
Awesome! There more of these types of sites, the better.
jreyst -
Yeah, sorry I can be a bit terse.
I'll take this time to add that it really does look good other than my nitpicking, and it's an extremely valuable thing you're doing. I don't want to seem ungrateful.
Thank you for making the change. I think most will agree, the core classes are so well known that it is easier to find the right one in an alphabetized list than to scan four lists, no matter how logical the subdivisions. Perhaps, as more basic classes are added to the game a different organization will be desired (although perhaps not!)
I will give you more feedback as I continue to use this site — I definitely support what you're doing.
Not a problem. I'll be looking forward to more input as I go along. If anyone notices any misspellings or incorrect punctuation or copy and paste oops's please let me know.
Are you committed to the sidebar on the left? Or is googlesites not offering other options? I'd like to suss this out with the other forumites as to the best way to handle navigation...
One of the things that is nice about d20srd.org is the simple, standard directory path at the top of the screen that shows you where you are. Everything is so thoroughly cross-referenced that you don't typically need a sidebar to jump from, say, Trolls to Regeneration.
That said, I can definitely see the utility of this new sidebar. I'm wondering what everyone else thinks about it!
Are you committed to the sidebar on the left?
I'm not committed to it but I do find a constant, high-level sidebar of most common links, to be a positive thing. That way no matter what page I am on I can always click "Classes" on the left without always having to shoot back to a main menu type of page. I'm certainly open to other ideas though.
Or is googlesites not offering other options?
You get the following options:
- Sidebar
- No Sidebar
- Sidebar on the left
- Sidebar on the right
- Change width of sidebar
I'd like to suss this out with the other forumites as to the best way to handle navigation...
One of the things that is nice about d20srd.org is the simple, standard directory path at the top of the screen that shows you where you are. Everything is so thoroughly cross-referenced that you don't typically need a sidebar to jump from, say, Trolls to Regeneration.
That said, I can definitely see the utility of this new sidebar. I'm wondering what everyone else thinks about it!
As I said above, in general I think a "most common links" sidebar is a good idea, though as I said, I am open to different opinions or even different layouts.
If you look at the far left column on the main page of d20srd.org I tried to use basically the same layout.
Invitation sent Owen!
I added http://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/Home/magic/spell-list this morning. There were many other tweaks and clean-ups since last night. If you like this site and have some time to kill, feel free to contact me. I could definitely use the help. Email me at jreyst@gmail.com to get added to the editors list.
Oh bother.
I wonder if there is some way we can fix the URLs to be more friendly. The pathname to a given spell is kind of messy, I'm guessing it's Google's doing.
Yet another virtue of d20srd.org that I have yet to see replaced is the fact that the URLs for spells were all standardized and in plain English, so you never needed to look up the link. The spell you wanted could always be found at "http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/(theSpellsName).htm"
This little bit of functionality allowed me to generate links in Maptool from the name of the spell. Any chance we can implement something similar without a pile of tedious work?
Oh bother.
I wonder if there is some way we can fix the URLs to be more friendly. The pathname to a given spell is kind of messy, I'm guessing it's Google's doing.
It wouldn't be so bad if every spell had its own page (like in d20srd.org).
It wouldn't be so bad if every spell had its own page (like in d20srd.org).Oh bother.
I wonder if there is some way we can fix the URLs to be more friendly. The pathname to a given spell is kind of messy, I'm guessing it's Google's doing.
Oh I agree, but that's a mass-tacular amount of work. There are a ton of spells. Are you volunteering then? ;)
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If I could figure out how much bandwidth would be necessary to do this, I might be interested in writing up code for a new SRD. I've done some freelance web design and know my way around xhtml, css, and javascript fairly well, and the old SRD is mostly just text and links, which doesn't seem difficult.
I can't imagine the bandwidth would be that huge either as it's all just text, but not sure.
If I could figure out how much bandwidth would be necessary to do this, I might be interested in writing up code for a new SRD. I've done some freelance web design and know my way around xhtml, css, and javascript fairly well, and the old SRD is mostly just text and links, which doesn't seem difficult.
I can't imagine the bandwidth would be that huge either as it's all just text, but not sure.
or...
you could help with this one? :)
Feasibly, though I'm not familiar with google sites. I've always just snagged my own domain, used my servers, written up code, and bam.
Certainly all of that is an option, except for the costs associated with registering the domain name, paying for monthly hosting, spending time writing and bug-fixing code, etc. I've done web design and arranged hosting and domain name registration etc many times but for something like this, there are no costs associated whatsoever. No worries of exceeding monthly bandwidth limits, no worries of the site being slow because of crappy servers, no worries of someone forgetting to pay the domain name re-registration etc. This just works and requires virtually no costs other than time. If the downside is that the URL is long, well for me that's not really an issue because I know how to bookmark a site. I suppose if people are hand-typing the URL everytime they go to the site then that would be an issue, but really, who does that?
It sounds like an issue is the links on google are just very long as well. Is there a way to fix that while keeping it on google, or no?
I think you can actually point the site to any domain name you own, I just didn't really investigate that. If you want to look into it and let me know what's involved I'd be more than happy to consider it. I just don't know that its really necessary at the moment.
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I'll look into a few things. I already have my own space rented monthly tied to one domain, so if it's possible to just tie another domain to it then that may be the best way to go. My roommate is another web dev guy too, so I can talk to him about it later on.
We'll see what happens. :D It'd be cool to have a site almost entirely like the d20srd in terms of setup, links, etc. for Pathfinder. And I have been wanting to write another site recently...
I looked into it and yes, you can easily point an existing domain name at a Google Site. If you already have a domain name in mind then you just need to update the DNS records to point to the site.
If you are dead-set on completely creating a new SRD from scratch though, more power to you. That's a massive amount of work, even if it IS just text. There's so much cross-linking its insane.
If however, you decide that's too much work, I'm always eager to add new editors! Just let me know :)
If the downside is that the URL is long, well for me that's not really an issue because I know how to bookmark a site. I suppose if people are hand-typing the URL everytime they go to the site then that would be an issue, but really, who does that?
I don't, but there are other issues.
For example, I use a function to dynamically build the link to a spells URL within Maptool whenever someone casts that spell. That is extremely useful, but it is only possible if the URLs are standardized enough for me to do this.
It's a small thing, but it's enough to keep me using d20srd.org for the time being, because I don't want to part with automatic spell referencing!
I don't, but there are other issues.
For example, I use a function to dynamically build the link to a spells URL within Maptool whenever someone casts that spell. That is extremely useful, but it is only possible if the URLs are standardized enough for me to do this.
It's a small thing, but it's enough to keep me using d20srd.org for the time being, because I don't want to part with automatic spell referencing!
Exactly. As technology progesses, people find new ways to use such an online site.
For example, I use a function to dynamically build the link to a spells URL within Maptool whenever someone casts that spell. That is extremely useful, but it is only possible if the URLs are standardized enough for me to do this.
It's a small thing, but it's enough to keep me using d20srd.org for the time being, because I don't want to part with automatic spell referencing!
Is that not possible with the site as it is now?
Wouldn't it simply be a task of replacing your current base url of
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/
with
http://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/Home/magic/spells/spell-descript ions/
Right now it wouldn't work because I have all spells on one page and each one is an anchor instead of each spell being on their own pages, but if and when I get the spells onto their own individual pages it seems like it should work. Now I'll grant you that domain name and URL are long, but I'm not planning to register a domain name myself as I just don't plan to invest anything more than labor into this. If someone else wants to they are more than welcome to and then we can configure the DNS records to point to this etc, its just more than I wanted to do right now... not that it wouldn't be cool, it certainly would.
It's not the same.
Right now: no scrolling, no clicking.
The link appears in the chat window when you cast the spell, and anyone who likes can click it and the spell description (and nothing else) opens in their browser.
Can't be done with the Pathfinder one currently.
It's not the same.
Right now: no scrolling, no clicking.
The link appears in the chat window when you cast the spell, and anyone who likes can click it and the spell description (and nothing else) opens in their browser.
Can't be done with the Pathfinder one currently.
Hmm. I'm not sure I'm following, but I believe you that it is an issue. I'm not sure at this moment how to address that though. Do you (or anyone) have any ideas? Is anyone out there more familiar with a way to make Google Sites do what toyrobots is talking about?
By the way, I made a bunch of appearance changes tonight... I suspect you might recognize the look and feel a bit :) I just hope Jans doesn't get upset!
Hmm. I'm not sure I'm following, but I believe you that it is an issue. I'm not sure at this moment how to address that though. Do you (or anyone) have any ideas? Is anyone out there more familiar with a way to make Google Sites do what toyrobots is talking about?By the way, I made a bunch of appearance changes tonight... I suspect you might recognize the look and feel a bit :) I just hope Jans doesn't get upset!
Just to clarify,
I'm talking about MapTool. You can create HTML links in the chat window while you're playing, so I've automated it so that caster characters use a macro to cast. That macro says: "[token.name] casts [spellname HTML link]" where the HTML link parses the spell name and sends them to the appropriate page on d20srd.org.
Of all the new Pathfinder OGC sites, the one that lets me do that will win my campaign file's hand in marriage... until then I have to stick with the older spell texts. :(
EDIT: Love the new background... I'm sure Jans won't mind a little homage.
Just to clarify,
I'm talking about MapTool. You can create HTML links in the chat window while you're playing, so I've automated it so that caster characters use a macro to cast. That macro says: "[token.name] casts [spellname HTML link]" where the HTML link parses the spell name and sends them to the appropriate page on d20srd.org.
Do you have a Yahoo or GTalk ID so we can take this discussion off-line? I get what you are saying but don't want to bury this thread with discussions about technical stuff. I'd seriously like a chance to win the hand of your campaign in marriage :)
EDIT: Love the new background... I'm sure Jans won't mind a little homage.
Cool :) I also created a credits page to make sure I showed due respect and gratitude.
By the way everyone, I created a Downloads page and put a bunch of Pathfinder wallpapers on it. If anyone has other things to add just let me know. I want to set it so others can add files but not sure how yet.
Will you be making the web pages available as a download, similar to what Jans did for d20srd.org?
I am away from the net just often enough that it is very useful to have a local copy and I like the way that you have formatted the site.
Also, I want to keep the Beta stuff, since I am not 100% sure that I will pick up all the "final" changes, depending on what does get changed in August.
-- david
Papa.DRB
Will you be making the web pages available as a download, similar to what Jans did for d20srd.org?
I am away from the net just often enough that it is very useful to have a local copy and I like the way that you have formatted the site.
Also, I want to keep the Beta stuff, since I am not 100% sure that I will pick up all the "final" changes, depending on what does get changed in August.
-- david
Papa.DRB
I might try, but in all honesty, with the amount of work yet to be done (formatting, cross-linking etc) that would be pretty low on the prority list.
Lot's of updates folks. I'm up to 5 collaborators (plus myself) now but would sure love more help. Anyway, here's an update:
- Began linking ability scores as well as many other pages
- Added Community Creations page (posted traps from Kobold Quarterly as well as a few of my own creations)
- Edited the Special Abilities page (added links)
- Created a Tools page (with a dice roller Google Gadget)
- Created a Talk page (with a ShoutBox chat Google Gadget)
- Added a Downloads page (and added multiple pdf character sheets to it)
- Added an Area Effects Templates page (with diagrams of spell area effects)
The site is at http://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/
Email me at jreyst@gmail.com if you care to help!
The site is now available at http://www.d20pfsrd.com/