Site rewrite status

Current status

Up to date information can ge obtained from the ChangeLog.

Future

I plan to add the following things as soon as possible:

set up a search engine for the english part (done!)
set up an announce mailing list (done!)
release prehtml sources and documentation (partly done!)
add explanations on how to translate the site in another language (done!)
add a way to retrieve mailing list archive via a html form (done!)
rebuild the character description part (started)
build a style sheets based version of the site

Last steps

November 1998

Changing the entire look of the site (i.e., the new navigation bar) was very easy thanks to htmlpp: I only had to modify a macro file and to let the computer recompute all the pages. Moreover, thanks to htmlpp, it was possible to include an automatically generated list of translation of each page. The rewrite of the site was a long and technical work but I'm rather proud of the result!

The poll section has been completely rewritten in order to simplify the operations needed to start a new poll.

The translation of the new site in Portuguese and German has just started (don't except results before several weeks). Moreover, there is now a page on how to translate the site.

Thanks to Marcos Silva, the site has a new name: www.darkover.org.

October 1998

The work on the character section is progressing. I've added some new descriptions.

I've added archives of the darkover-announce mailing list and a description of the future darkover-studies mailing list.

September 1998

I've started to work on the character section. I'm currently building a preliminary database and cleaning up the prehtml sources of the site to ease up the links with the database. Character pages are back, but they are far from being as complete as in the old version.

August 1998

In a first step to enhance interactivity with visitors, I've added a poll section. The first poll is about prefered Darkover novels.

June 1998

I've added a small tutorial about htmlpp which explains how to modify easily a page for my site and I've also added a link to every page that allows to get the corresponding prehtml source.

May 1998

I've finally managed to translate in prehtml all the novel related english pages (summary, character lists, etc.) and also the short story part! In fact, the english pages have been almost completely translated from html to prehtml. The only remaining part is the character description part of the encyclopedia.

I've set up a search engine on the english part of the site.

I've set up an announce mailing list.

April 1998

The foreign edition pages are ready!

March 1998

I finally managed to handle the novel description part. It is not completely finished but it is ready enough for a preliminary release.

February 1998

The french pages have been almost completely translated from html to prehtml. The only remaining part is the character description part of the encyclopedia, which is not a current target: I need first to decide how to store information about characters so as to separate them from the presentation style. I will perhaps use a database engine.

English pages are under work. I'm currently focusing on the novel description part, which is likely to be completed next month. I'll switch then to the short stories part, which won't take long as the Perl scripts are almost done (they worked for the french part). My next move will be to both french and english character descriptions.

Meanwhile, I'm working on a description of the new layout and organization of the site, so as to be able to release prehtml sources for contributors.

source file (Last modification: Wed Apr 21 17:21:45 1999)