Hi Guys,
I've now started development on a new (non-profit, ad-free) site to support the community. This site will have the following features:
MOD, Map, Textures Archives - These can be rated, updated by author, etc. You can view most popular, most downloaded, etc. What I'm not sure of is if it should also have replays and/or screenshot gallery.
Various interactive reference pages... like reference trees with tooltips for example. It won't be a fullblown wiki, just more like reference / cheat sheets and maybe some strategy guides eventually.
Based on some good feedback from a few I've PM'd for initial feedback here, the site will not have it's own forums. That is so this site remains the main/single place for community discussions.
I was also considering running tournaments through the site, but that becomes a logistical time-consumer. It also doesn't align with the theme of a reference website. For this, I started a group on challonge and you've probably seen the thread about the first test tournament for that.
I expect the site to be up within a couple weeks to start holding files in the archives, but the reference pages will come onboard as they are ready. I'll post the URL when the site is live.
If anyone would like to be part of this project then please PM me.
A few questions for the community:
Do you think the site should have replays?
Should the site have a screenshot gallery as well?
Each of the archives can have custom fields, so it would be good to get some ideas around that. For example, for Replays we could have the sub-factions involved specified.
Also, any ideas around how to categorize the various archives would be good as well.
Or any other ideas/comments are welcome as well. I'm sure there's probably other useful things that a resource site like this could do for the community.
I was surprised a site like this didn't already exist and that people are using random third party sites to host independent files and reference material is embedded in posts that are hard to find. As someone newish to the game it didn't help to not have a site like this with a game with a steep learning curve. I hope you agree that it should be a good resource for the community. Again, this is my gift to the community (and helps me work on my web development skills) and am paying any costs out of my own pocket.
Thanks.
-slowreflex