So, I finally pulled the trigger this weekend: Athas.org is no longer written in PHP.
I’ve been working on a Rails based re-write on-and-off for the last few months, and we’ve been using the new site internally, as I work through various different approaches to the project.
By far, one of the trickiest things was figuring out how to deal with file distribution and versioning. Shipping out files, PDFs primarily, is the entire reason for the site[0]. We tend to do multiple releases of the same product — beta/playtesting releases, followed by revisions, followed eventually by a “final” release. (I put final in quotes, because we can always go back and revisit a product) …
I wrestled for a long time with how to manage this versioning issue; I’m still not necessarily satisified with the current solution. Which is: A product (which contains multiple files) is what holds the current status — Internal, Beta, Final, Under Review. Files are associated with the product, but aren’t really tracked themselves. They’re either public or private (for purely internal development files) and can be archived. Basically, the product is a big bucket for all of the associated files, but the file records themselves are “dumb”.
It seems to work out well enough. Time, I suppose, will tell.
[0] For the moment; I do plan on making a much more web-based interface for distributing 4e material in development.
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