Web Site Design, Creating web sites for campaigns Options

[Stormdrake]

I had a ST a few years ago who created a website for his Shadowrun campaign that had news articals for the town the game was based out of. The site also had pages for house rules, NPC profiles, maps and other things. I really would like to do this for my game but have no experience with web site design, any one have suggestions for programs that could build such a site? Preferably without the ST (me) getting a degree in website design?

[Dashifen]

You could check out options like Google Sites (sites.google.com) which allow you to create a web page without really knowing code. You can also create web pages with word processors (like MS Word) by simply using the Save As... command and selecting HTML or HTM as the file type. That doesn't help you get them online, though.

Since you don't know code, you could also look at trying to see if you can find a site that will let you create a page using a content management system like Drupal or Joomla. I don't know any free options off the top of my head.

[evilgoattea]

I made a proboard for my shadowrun game which seems to work pretty well, you can check it out at http://rpshadow.proboards.com/ any files i need to host I do so at Mediafire which is awesome!

-Josh

[overchord]

Don't know if installting Drupal is too much for you - but its an excellent content management system once its up and running. It will allow you to create books of heierarchical information, which I find really usefull for e.g. contacts, char sheets etc.
There's of course also forums, galleries etc that can be added as modules.

[Stormdrake]

Drupal sounds interesting. Where does one get it?

[overchord]

Its an open source content management system. You need a webhosting account or a local web server running php and mysql, then you install the download that can get a copy of from http://drupal.org/project/Drupal+project

[Draco18s]

A friend of mine ran a wiki for one of his D&D campaigns. Gawd that was epic.

[tenach]

I was thinking of doing this for my Shadowrunning group, since there are things that we're constantly looking up. It would also give me an opportunity to test out some new things I've been wanting to (I'm a web developer). Do you people, in general, like using such sites? I'm pretty sure that my group would use it, but I'd more like to hear about the pros and cons from others.

[Dumori]

I have a wiki for my PbP game I'm yet to even really touch on its functionality.

[Wesley Street]

Many people have recommended the wiki route and I would second this if you don't want to deal with ridiculous design and hosting fees for a website. Wetpaint.com has a free wiki ap that I've used in the past.

[Bobson]

If you do use a wiki for a game, keep in mind that you are building it for a small group of people. If they're not wiki-savvy already, then odds are you'll be the only one actually doing any updates. Don't expect a community like Wikipedia or WoWwiki or TVTropes where other people will come along and constantly be adding information (such as what got learned on the run) and formatting. Of course, if you have someone who's enthusiastic about the idea and knows what they're doing, that doesn't apply. Likewise if you're expecting to be the only one to update it.

Also, consider whether it's feasible to use the wiki for planning your runs. Wikis are inherently open platforms, and it's going to be hard to put up NPC sheets, floor plans, and the like without exposing them to your players prematurely. Of course, nothing says you need to use a wiki for this, but it does often make it easier to plan runs if you can just link to other pieces of it and to make information available to your players after the fact.

[Draco18s]

Wikis are inherently open platforms, and it's going to be hard to put up NPC sheets, floor plans, and the like without exposing them to your players prematurely.

There are ways around that, if you know them. Just have to mark the pages with certain user clearance and then make it so that general users (and your logged in players) don't have that clearance. That much I've picked up from what Bobson did with his D&D game wiki.

But then, I was so good at keeping secrets he leaked information about the game to me all the time.

Even kept a secret from myself once. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[KitsuneKaze]

I am tentatively constructing a django goon handler on our "under the stairs" home server. Finishing up with the models and logic now. Definitely won't be pretty, I was never good at making "pretty" html.

[overchord]

I was thinking of doing this for my Shadowrunning group, since there are things that we're constantly looking up. It would also give me an opportunity to test out some new things I've been wanting to (I'm a web developer). Do you people, in general, like using such sites? I'm pretty sure that my group would use it, but I'd more like to hear about the pros and cons from others.

I run a PbP SR3 campaign where I use Drupal. There are pro's and cons versus a wiki. One of the advantages is that I can set up the user prfiles to include all character stats, and players just have to fill in the game related information woithout worrying about formatting etc.
I use layered permissions to that we can have both NPC users that can post on forums and shadowrunners that access notebooks, contact lists, maps etc through the site.
A wiki can pretty much do all of the above as well, so I think it comes down to a personal preference. I simply like Drupal because you can seperate the creation of modules/books etc and the creation of content a bit more than on a wiki - but i'd really say that either works (as well as potentially other open source Content management systems out there)

[jklst14]

I'm not particularly computer savvy but I've had good luck with using Wikis and there are a bunch of free ones out there. I personally use a Tiddlywiki which I host at Tiddlyspot.