Oolite Bulletins

I've just been handed the reins of Oosat again while Murgh goes on a short peregrination.

I've been thinking about Oosat a while because the other game I like with a rich mod system is Racer, and I'm particularly envious of their satellite site here:

http://www.racer-xtreme.com/

I've mooted the possibility of using a CMS to manage the mods before, and now I'm looking pointedly in the direction of Drupal, which seems quite simple to install and use (most importantly in allowing uploads of oxp.zip files and images).

What do folk think - and where might I easily host such a beasty?

You could ask me very nicely and I can put it on a dedicated server of mine I have the bandwidth. In any case I'm very happy to host a mirror for Oosat if you prefer to put the main server elsewhere.

One thing to watch out with CMS like Drupal et al. is to keep the application up to date - watch the mailing lists/websites/bugtraq etc. like a hawk. CMS systems are the number one method of getting your server hacked - unpatched security vulns get picked up very quickly by skript kiddies. Before choosing a CMS, search carefully for security issues, how timely they have been handled, and the developer's overall attitude to security bugs.

Phishers, scammers, spammers, skript kiddies etc. target things like phpnuke, phpbb (as you have experienced). I've not heard much about Drupal's reputation in particular so I can't comment on its particular case, but PHP projects especially seem to be security abortions - part of the problem is that you must be fastidious in your coding if you use PHP - it's very easy to write insecure PHP apps.

Agreed, and the main reason I like PHP based systems is their ease of use (which translates directly into ease of cracking).

I don't need to go down the PHP/MySQL road. Here's what I need:-

A CMS that:

• Allow anyone/everyone to download from an illustrated/annotated/categorised/commented/rated list of expansion packs served as blah.oxp.zip files.
• Allow anonymous uploading of expansion packs, with descriptions and screenshots.
• Allow registered users with admin rights to approve uploaded expansions so they appear in the correct categories and on a main page (and to RSS/Atom feeds).
• Allow admins to create new categories as necessary.
• Allow registered users (not admins) to comment and rate the various expansions.
• Looks pretty and is easy to use.

Virtually any CMS is going to want to do MySQL (or PostgreSQL), I don't think you're going to be able to escape that!

Pretty much most of the web stuff that comes with Mac OS X (Apache, PHP, perl etc.) is the type of thing you'll find on common hosting services, so what I'd do is set one up locally and play with it. I've had a look at the Drupal website and it looks pretty comprehensive, but whether it'll work for Oosat is, well, you just have to suck it and see really.

My main site, my Elite site and my wife's site are CMS based using ASP and MS Access databases.

The CMS is called Nukedit. The home page is http://www.nukedit.com.

It allows registration of users with specified access levels and group membership. It has a dedicated documents repository and I have made a few bolt-ons for it (including a news / blog poster, an admin tool (in developments) and a page-by-page comments tool. The last thing mentioned there would be useful if each utility was given itsown information page.

If you need someone to host it and build it for you, I'd be proud to do it. At least I would be able to contribute some sort of coding expertise!! I'd also be happy to devote some time to developing the site, especially with regards to creating a really cool front page. I imagine a front page with a featured 'product' and some other info, maybe including hints and tips for OXP developers.

Anyway. Just a thought.

Take a look at my sites to see the sort of stuff it can do:

http://hughesd.co.uk (this is the most up-to-date).
http://elite.hughesd.co.uk
http://hughesd.co.uk/warhammer/crusader ... efault.asp

Other highlights of slightly separate developments within the sites are
http://www.hughesd.co.uk/content/files/ ... efault.asp
http://www.hughesd.co.uk/content/files/misc/list.asp

The latter is a simple file uploader, which could easily be modified to perform a similar upload function to the current OoSat. It currently is not DB driven, but a simple DB back end and a bit of extra code would make it work in a very similar way to OoSat.

The former, DMDB, is something I never got round to finishing, but it also does a very similar thing to OoSat, and already has the 'featured item' thing I was talking about. It has a login system that permits addition of items and the graphics that go alongside them. This would be useful for developers that want to add a screenshot with thier upload.

Anyway. Let me know what you think. I can also set up a subdomain for it (oosat.hughesd.co.uk) or something.

winston wrote:

You could ask me very nicely and I can put it on a dedicated server of mine I have the bandwidth. In any case I'm very happy to host a mirror for Oosat if you prefer to put the main server elsewhere.

Right then. I've been trying out Drupal on my home machine, and with a few tweaks (adding bbcode style text filtering, locking down posting rights to users authenticated by an admin, much customising of themes) it seems ideal - and relatively security scare free.

So I'm asking nicely. Please.

There a number of configuration hoops to go through - I'd ideally like shell access but some sort of webadmin system for MySQL would do. Apache would need mod_rewrite working ideally, and PHP would need the GD2 graphics stuff (for captchas and the like), and sendmail.

Also there'd need to be at least 100Mb storage available (Oosat currently weighs in at 74Mb), and a fair bit of bandwidth for those downloads.

I wouldn't expect to have this up and running immediately - I prefer to get things working well before I go public with them - but it'd be an interesting project to get going!

If anyone wants to try out this system go to http://unas.acedragon.co.uk/~giles/drupal and use the username 'demo' and the password 'demo' to log in.

There's an introduction to what this is about here:

http://unas.acedragon.co.uk/~giles/drupal/?q=node/8

UPDATE: These links are now out-of-date.

You can look at the putative Oosat Two (or should that be Oosat Too?) at http://oosat.alioth.net

Very nice. It's clean, simple and easy to use... and who could ask for more that that?

RSS feeds would be nice, but only because I'm really lazy.

None of those is a problem I think (all users get shell access by default on my systems, but I am picky about who gets to use the systems ) I'll email you with the details. I run Exim rather than Sendmail (sendmail is just too awful to contemplate) but it is a drop-in replacement for Sendmail. Bandwidth allowance is something on the order of a terabyte a month so it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Spooky wrote:

RSS feeds would be nice, but only because I'm really lazy.

They're there - click the ubiquitous XML icons.

Yep. Concur. Simple, clean lines, intuitive to use. Everything a Mac user asks for.

They're there - click the ubiquitous XML icons.

...of course the really impressive thing would be explaining how the hell I missed that

Verry, verrry nice!

I particularly like the possibilities to add more info to the OXP's (and comments)
But it looks great, too!

BTW: "Drupal" is the English pronunciation of the Dutch word "druppel" which means (rain)drop in, the author being from The Netherlands.

hi all.
peregrination is fun but can only last so long. and the hide can only be scorched so much.

what's been written above looks promising, but the links are no longer current? is new technology in place and working, and OoSat ready to move to the next level?

Yes, I've emailed you with the address of the site.