State of the Site Update

 

2/4/10

 

Hey everyone, I just wanted to make a clear, concise post that will clear up some confusion and let everyone know what’s in store for the site.

 

This weekend, we will be moving from http://www.annakie.com/me/ to http://www.masseffectsaves.com.  Annakie.com/me will permanently repoint to masseffectsaves.com and should update your bookmarks for you.

 

Alongside this, the site will be undergoing a complete redesign.  An awesome wed designer named Joakim and I have been working together for the past couple of weeks to finalize a design (which I’m sure will undergo more tweaking.)  The site will no longer look like a bunch of Word documents strung together.  (Which is basically what it is now. :) )  I’m hoping it’ll still retain it’s personable charm, though, since it’ll still be just me doing all the front end stuff. 

 

Along with that, the back-end of the site is going to get an overhaul, as well.  A programmer friend, who shall be referred to as The Spork, and I met today at Company Dallas (Thanks for hosting us!) to lay out the new site architecture along with talking about programming databases for all the ME1 and soon to be ME2 saves. 

 

We’re going to try to have the site redesign AND ME1 saves database go-live this weekend.  A couple of volunteers are going to help me get all 106 Shepards we have now into the database over the weekend.  If you have already submitted your Shepard, you DO NOT need to resubmit yourself into the database.  (If anyone else has free time on Saturday and wants to help, though, let me know!) 

 

Doing this has four big benefits:

1) All descriptions will be in a similar format, at least for the important stuff.

2) All future saves will be automatically posted (they will have to be approved by me before actually going live to prevent typical internet jackassery.)  This will save time before new saves are live since I will not longer be doing things manually.

3) The save files will be validated before being posted.

4) Saves will be searchable!

 

 

After the ME1 save database is live, we will then begin accepting ME2 saves, which will have their own, separate upload area.

 

After ME2 saves are up (sometime next week is the timeframe) then we are looking at finding a way that people can post requests for specific saves, as this is a popular feature that has also been requested.

 

Please keep submitting your suggestions, many of the changes and features the site has now are due to suggestions emailed and IM’d in to me.

 

I also sincerely want to thank everyone who’s donated.  All donations thus far have gone completely back into the website.  I’m upgrading my plan with my hosting provider so we’ll have no more bandwidth worries, especially with the new site launching which will have *gasp* graphics.

 

Any questions or comments, please let me know!

 

—Annakie