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.

Aside from the fact that it looks like I’m going to need to upgrade apache to a version that’s not packaged for my OS (2.2, because I need a mod that’s only available in that version) there are a couple of other things that I’m planning on finishing before migrating the site. After that, I’ve got a few ideas for incremental addons.

Releases section

includes ability to attach files to a release (reduction of administrative hassels)

Jon wants me to take the opportunity to rename off “releases” … although I tend to prefer that name over alternatives, and it has initertia

For official products, I think there needs to be some kind of signoff system, so we know that a product has been reviewed by at least two overcouncil members before going live. May sound like bueocracy, but I think it’s needed to avoid inadvertant gaffes.

Articles Section

Need to migrate the various works of fiction into the articles.

A lot of this is done already

I want articles to take a much higher stage than they do currently — probably involves granting them more prominence.

News

Keep a good, clean CRUD system for news up.

Staff

Update the authentication system, adding roles

Generate the staff page off the roles in the system — so Templars and such are updated automatically.

I’ve already got a fair bit of this done, but need to work out the attachments still. That’s the most complicated bit of all this.

Eventually, I’d like to encourage a bit more community participation — let community members submit links, news postings, files … all requires approval before going live, to hopefully keep the spammers out of the loop. Errata lists for every release, with a nice, convenient submission method.

If you’ve got thoughts and suggestions, comments here would be a good place.

I owe Brax a thanks for looking over the article for me, doing a bit of editing, and shaving off about 250 words, all on short notice.

In the last two months at work, I’d have to guess that I’ve picked up a pretty strong working knowledge of Rails … still have hiccups, of course, but I’ve gotten a rather snazzy javascripty app put together for doing “news” page layout. It’ll never see the light of the ‘net, since the thing is intended to live on a private network, but it’s been a good workout, both of my Javascript skills, and my developing ruby muscles. So, yeah, really should be talking more about my experiences picking up that new langauge and platform. Whole thing is due for a set of demos over the next couple of weeks. The low pressure, “determine if we’re gonna keep funding the project” type of demo.

As for side projects, I’ve got a rewrite of athas.org in the works, which is going to be rails based. Really, I just need a couple of days without distraction. Once I get the “releases” section worked out and done, the rest is a cakewalk. Of course, those distraction free days have been kind of mythical. I’ll have a couple of days for it next week, I suppose — my girlfriend is getting knee surgury, and I’m taking some time off work (wonderful timing with the demos and all, but it’s been scheduled for a while).

And on the same lines, I’ve got an article due for Dragon magazine at the end of the month that I’m struggling with. It’s taking shape, but the constraints aren’t exactly what I’d call natural for the setting.

Other than that, my time has been tied up with the usual “summer” things — weddings, weekend trips, a bbq or two at the park … not much time for keeping up a blog. On the plus side, it also means that I havn’t had much time for keeping up with World of Warcraft … I think it might be safe to say that that particular distraction has finally let me go.