Website Creation

[Joekido]

Hello, my name is Joekido and I'm a fan of Chrono Trigger since 1996. However I have another favorites in my mind and that is One Piece. No, it's not a swimsuit, but a pirate manga created by Eiichiro Oda. The reason I'm here is because this whole website is my ideal inspiration to create my own Wiki-based website about One Piece. I wanted to know is how did you create this website? I really like to know so I can be able to create my own.

I have already e-mail other Wiki-based site like MoinMoin and WikiMedia but got no response yet so trying to find a simple way to create a One Piece Wiki site. I originally wanted to just E-mail Zeality but he hid his E-mail so I decided to post here. Any helpful advice is helpful.

[ZeaLitY]

Ah, Ramsus is the one to ask anyhow. I created the institution, but the website design and functionality are his.

[Joekido]

Where can I find him?

[V_Translanka]

Really? One Piece? Is it that popular or something? I can only imagine it's better in Japanese w/subs, right?

[Joekido]

Really? One Piece? Is it that popular or something? I can only imagine it's better in Japanese w/subs, right?

Are you Ramsus? If you are can you help me create a Wiki-Format site?

[Luminaire85]

If all you want is a wiki and you're not very computer-literate, the best thing is probably to start one on a wiki farm. There are lots to choose from, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. One advantage of this approach is that you can probably start with a free, ad-supported wiki and then, if you maintain interest long enough to build a decent wiki, switch to a paid version to remove the ads. A similar approach can be taken with a forum if you also want one of those, with the disadvantage that the wiki and forum will probably have different URLs.

This is not what the Compendium does, however. If you're sure you want to invest the money and are fairly computer-literate, you would purchase general web space from a web hosting service and a domain name from a registrar. The former will generally have a monthly fee, and the latter an annual fee. Once you have these you would upload wiki software - both Wikipedia and the Compendium use MediaWiki - and optionally forum software to your web space. This approach gives you more control over your web site, but the trade-off is that it is much more involved.

My recommendation is the former.

(Also, I am not Ramsus either.)

[Thought]

Really? One Piece? Is it that popular or something? I can only imagine it's better in Japanese w/subs, right?

To my understanding, V, the following illustrates the process that One Piece went through in its American translation: http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=145

Still... the hero is a pirate version of Mr. Fantastic. I am, at best, dubious.

Note, Joekido: Ramsus is, well, Ramsus. Just like you are Joekido and I am Thought. You should be able to search for his posts using the search function. Could always PM him, I suppose. Or just light the Ramsus Signal.

[MsBlack]

Ironically, Ramsus was last here about a minute before you posted (edit: Ironically he came online while I posted). You can find his forum profile here. From there, you can send him a PM (forum private message) and find his email address and AIM (AOL [America Online] Instant Messenger) screen name.

You may want to learn how to write your own web pages, depending on your needs. Writing on your own can take time to learn and fix errors (and thus effort also), but grants you absolute control over the pages. Running somebody else's software or using a website creator afford you an easy but less customisable solution. The middle ground is modifying already existing software, although many software creators do not permit this.

As far as I know, the Compendium consists of existing software and Ramsus-developed Python scripts. The forum runs SMF (Simple Machines Forum) [link]. The encyclopaedia, as you know runs MediaWiki. The Oekaki runs Wacintaki [link]

If you do decide to go the route of making your own web pages, I'd recommend that you learn the following:

HTML and/or XHTML
CSS
A programming language compatible with your host (PHP, Python, Ruby etc,) if you plan to do anything beyond very simple pages.
If you need to maintain your own databases for the pages you write, how to do so (i.e., knowledge of MySQL/Oracle/PostgreSQL etc.)

Oh, and ZeaLitY; I sent that email about half an hour ago.

[Ramsus]

You haven't even started, and you've already got competition:

http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

If you don't intend to do something different than they are (i.e. start a wiki in another language, like Korean), then you might as well just go and help them out.

Now if you do want to do something different, then you're going to have to clearly think out what that is. Being in the position that you're obviously not too knowledgeable about computers, networking, web design, and programming, and that you obviously don't have someone who is helping you out (or you'd already have a site), you're at a major disadvantage.

Sure, the Compendium runs mostly off-the-shelf components with bits of custom glue code here and there and custom templates, but the reason that we do is that we aren't like most of the other guys who go off and start fansites, and here's how:

• Zeality and I maintain the focus of the site as content and community. Content and Community first means if we have to choose between more functionality and keeping our content, or more functionality and disrupting the community, we'll always choose the content and the community first. It also means that we focus a lot less time on technical issues, because we realize that they're usually trivial in the long run.
• I already have a lot of technical understanding and skill (not just scripting languages and web design, but Linux and BSD system and network administration, low-level system programming, computer science theory, and a lot of familiarity and experience with a variety of open-source development tools and processes -- not the type of stuff you can just pick up in a few months or years), so I don't need to use the site as practice, and I usually have a good idea of what works and what doesn't. This basically means I'm also not intimidated by large amounts of code that I didn't write myself, and that I can take something off the shelf like MediaWiki or SMF, get a good idea of what's going on from looking over the code, then tie it into the rest of the site with some glue code or a few modifications. That allows us to save a lot of time by not writing our own "brand new version" of the site every few years, which also allows us to maintain better continuity with the content. 
• Zeality and I have money. We can afford hosting costs, domain costs, and the cost of acquiring various authentic media for the site, and we're more than willing to pay those costs.
• Zeality is dedicated to putting time into the site. This is what makes the site come alive and attracts people to a site about a game series that realistically died out nearly a decade ago.

With that said, if you want to start your own site now, either find yourself someone who's technically capable and a real friend that you can trust (Zeality and I are high school buddies, otherwise there'd be no Compendium), or use something that provides exactly what you need in a managed setup.

[Thought]

Nerts. I spent too much time looking for a crime boss to use and Ramsus already showed up.

Ah well, until next time...

[Joekido]

Well, I guess I'll stick to Wikispace until someone can help. Anyway, this is not the last you see me, I too a Chrono Trigger fan so I'll be posting somewhere in this board.

Thanks for your advice Ramsus, I had already tried downloading and instelling things from MediaWiki but it appears family computer kept rejecting the files so it'll be a while before I can get my own computer.

[neo-fusion]

Well I may not know much, but unless your really dedicated or have several guys helping and staffing alot, it is hard to upkeep a website.

[Kebrel]

I going though a similar situation, and am making a site. I do have a understanding of html and am working on learning some PHP.

Me and my father are both messing around learning what we can. kbelder.net

[Burning Zeppelin]

I want to start a torrent site, but I have no coding skills. Sigh, I should've done IT instead of Economics.

[Ramsus]

http://pbwiki.com/