Over at Absit Omen RPG, our biggest challenge has been how to wrangle all the interwoven plots that span a year and a half of writing, nine months of in-character role-play, ninety writers, and two hundred and fifty characters. Without reading all the threads ever, how can members stay up to date on all the things going on? The solution we’re trying to implement is a story wiki, where all members can contribute information to articles that summarize and detail the stories happening.
Nothing’s like… officially implemented or anything. But the Curators have been experimenting. Sometime last year, a dancer friend of mine (Ben C.) helped me configure a mediawiki to share the same member database as our Simple Machines Forum where Absit Omen resides. However, none of the Curators had ever really worked with a wiki before, let alone backstage with all the .php’s and .css’s. And then, when we upgraded to SMF 2, it like… broke it or something.
Long story short, we had to start over. Luckily it was just an experiment so the information lost wasn’t really lost.
So I dove in again, in the same sort of intense trial-and-error, tutorial-hunting, dead-end, do-it-yourself, fifteen hour chaos train that I’d used to learn Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash. And how my husband Tim learned to change the alternator and water pump in our first Chevy Lumina. It’s a long process, but the amount of work that goes into every little success makes those little success worthy of shouting out loud in elation.
“Yes! Ha ha, yes!”
Friends: “Hey Sarah, what’s up?”
“I finally figured out how to change the background image…”
I installed it, configured it to a database, and then manipulated a bunch of files in order to make it look and work in a way that would benefit the members. And because I knew nothing, each task began at square one. Anyway, here is a preview of the fruits of my labor.
Amazing job as always, Sarah! I love what you’ve done with the background and the text. I think we’re going to make it work this time! :)