Idea: SoD-DB.com aka SoD's "WoWhead.com"

This has been tried, attempted, redone, and failed more times than I can count. Not that I'm trying to discourage you, but I've personally looked at the idea a few times.

One issue always comes up.

How do you get the content? Players themselves aren't going to put much time and effort into a 3rd party website (again) to only see it die and fade away without much reason.

A database driven website like wowhead or any of the curse sites are a HUGE time sink. I've personally worked on them a few times, albeit minor things, I've seen first hand how many hours it can take.

Now if your willing to take that on, and are looking long term as far as finances for hosting, the passion for creativity and patience to collect the data. Then I'm sure others would follow suite and begin to help. The one major thing you should look at, taking on a project of this size. Is how to get the content updated easily and accurately. Because I can tell you now, the notion of hooking into the SoD database to get the data dumps you would need aren't going to happen.

Other than the above, I wish you the best of luck and I truly hope you succeed if you take on something like this.
 
First, let me say that what you're wanting to do isn't something that would be supported by our wiki software. (*Edit:* You can search for individual items that have been added, and we're trying to add more methods for viewing them, see below.) And it's something that has come up in the past and has been rejected, because the spirit of the wiki is to have the community add things (which has been happening more-so recently, yay!) It would obviously put me in tears or the loony-bin if a project like this became a crutch that prevented that from happening.

As for aesthetics, the term "working my ass off" barely covers the amount of time and effort that has gone into the continuing efforts to reform the wiki's appearance. If anyone has more ideas, or would like to see something done differently, they're always invited to help. Every registered user has the ability to make "mock-ups" like I do. For instance, this is what I've been working on, on my own sandbox page, to replace the current format for viewing items by slot that I introduced a few months back. This method can only be used with the new items template (see the "changes" link in the site notice on the top of any page on the wiki), and there are only two editors (myself included) currently working full time on implementing this, so it's a slow process. We're looking forward to a new web-based tool for easily converting fomelo data into the template, but no new news on that yet.

Spells are another thing - a slightly updated version of the spells template went live about 2 weeks ago, but the existing pages are still being "gone through," slowly, because my parser breaks itself every week or so. Cyzaine put up information on how to make a new parser, but I'm not familiar enough with java to do much with it myself at the moment.

As for skins, well, I'll talk to Miitru and see if we can test a few - I'm not sure how well they'll work with our current formatting but everything can always be changed. I'm obviously a big believer in that at least, so we'll see!

Also, Bud called me a fine gentleman and a guy. Oh dear.
 
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I see no need for a third party resource. The wiki meets all my needs. I don't care about making the wiki more aesthetically pleasing. I am ready to lose the moosehead, but others probably dig it.
 
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What about mining fomelo for items? and/or making items searchable or orderable by stats? or maybe even making items from fomelo linkable to the wiki?
 
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I just thought that my idea could potentially bring more good players into our community, but that sentiment isn't shared seemingly by anyone, which is why I asked :)

Thanks for the responses.
 
I just thought that my idea could potentially bring more good players into our community, but that sentiment isn't shared seemingly by anyone, which is why I asked :)

Thanks for the responses.

I'm sure everyone would love a fancy database that gives them infinite one-click information about SoD, myself included. The sentiment being shared in this thread is that it's just not very feasible, but you're welcome at the attempt; or, at the very least, work with Rari|Wiki to cosmetically enhance the current wiki.
 
I just thought that my idea could potentially bring more good players into our community

I totally understand that sentiment and it's a great one! Just not sure you're recognizing the size of the project you're looking to undertake here. I feel the same way, which is why the wiki has had so much effort put into it. And it can always use more.

What about mining fomelo for items?
I'm not going to address the feasibility of this. The wiki tool we were using allowed editors to download items from player's fomelos based on toon name and slot, however as I said in my previous post, we do not have a new tool that supports the new template yet. The obvious issue with this is that fomelo lacks certain vital information pertaining to items: source location, recommended/required level, as well as will only help with equipment (though that is obviously a big deal and yes, does account for many important items!)

making items searchable by stats?
I don't know how this could be done with our wiki software. If you have any ideas on the matter, feel free to share them.

making items orderable by stats?
To repeat myself, this is being worked on. (see how that text is a different color? That means it's a link, relevant to what the text is saying. if you click it, you'll see pretty pictures.)
 
Yeah thanks a lot for all the time you spend on the wiki.
Bellabrie's idea would be good if it didn't imply so much work. I'd much rather see the existing tool improved rather than restart from scratch with an empty database.
 
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I looked at it, once upon a time, many years ago, and came up with something along the lines of:

allakhazamv2bo4.jpg


You're free to use it, if you wish, but it might be pretty outdated, and I can't guarentee you that it's the latest version I made, since I frankly don't know.
 
wowhead works because it can get the information directly from the game and organize it automatically. eq doesn't have that functionality, so a "sod wowhead" would in effect be the exact same thing as what the wiki is or could be :<
 
The wiki is much better then it use to be. The only downside is those blowheads that delete information off of it because they want it to remain a secret.
 
I'm not sure if the Wiki is capable of supporting Ajax "search as you type" functionality that is so popular these days, as well as relational database queries and things like that.
You can add ajax or rather javascript to anything, its more client restriction then server restrictions, but most people have javascript enabled

Simplified down.. all it is is doing is making the server return results as if the page was reloaded continously, except you instead insert these results into the current page without reloading.

This can be down by the server either returning the complete html code needed to display the results or perhaps an xml data sheet with the information in it which you in javascript then use to create the html to display.

To repeat myself, this is being worked on. (see how that text is a different color? That means it's a link, relevant to what the text is saying. if you click it, you'll see pretty pictures.)
If it is desirable I can help with adding the javascript to that for making it continously updated when searching. Im decent at php / javascript, and have made a few such things. It is however usually a better idea to get it working as intended with regular searching and then expand from that.
 
Ajax is way more than just return search as you type, basically its asynchronous calls back to the server to retrieve/update information w/ out refreshing the page.

I am actually looking into coding a plugin for our wiki that will utilize mediawiki's api. Basically it will retrieve page content in json format that will be request by a javascript call when you mouse over an item link. The data it retrieve will then be displayed in a tooltip shoewing you item stats/etc. It will require a special tag be added to the wiki but it I'm still modifying the necessary code.
 
I am actually looking into coding a plugin for our wiki that will utilize mediawiki's api
If it is some sort of more advanced item search interface i really welcome that :)

Basically it will retrieve page content in json format that will be request by a javascript call when you mouse over an item link.
That sounds slow if the current wiki is any indication of the loading times.
Might be a better idea to have the data embedded in the page to begin with, hidden, and only displayed on mouse over?
But I think I would prefeer just seeing the stats of the items listed beside each other in the same page for easier comparison
Rather then, mouse over, wait.. wait.. wait.. *pop* o thas nice., next, wait... wait..wait.. *pop* oo thats nice.

Out of curiocity, is there a way to get every player usable/equippable item in the wiki displayed on one page, without sub-groups.. or rather a link to everyusable/equippable in the wiki on one page?
 
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That sounds slow if the current wiki is any indication of the loading times.
Might be a better idea to have the data embedded in the page to begin with, hidden, and only displayed on mouse over?
But I think I would prefeer just seeing the stats of the items listed beside each other in the same page for easier comparison
Rather then, mouse over, wait.. wait.. wait.. *pop* o thas nice., next, wait... wait..wait.. *pop* oo thats nice.

Wait, so your suggesting that instead of loading on demand I preload EVERYTHING and hide it?

:|

But really the request is only the items content page, its very small compared to loading a search of all 1hs weapons...


Tyrsell, JSON is the future - when are you going to realize this? Its like Web 4.0 ok? THIS STUFF IS NO JOKE!



edit: just need to add this necessary lil note: FU XML
 
Wait, so your suggesting that instead of loading on demand I preload EVERYTHING and hide it?

:|
I though you might be making some sort of search function where you could put in
ex: 1hs, minimum dex 5.
and it would return results, maybe 20 per page.
If you then also had to wait for each of the stats of found items to load that might be slow.
But i really have no idea what your doing, so was really a loose though =P

As to:
edit: just need to add this necessary lil note: FU XML
"XML is just like JSON except with the former we use angle brackets and in the latter we use curly braces + square brackets. Thus they are “Turing” equivalent." -David Megginson

Json ex:
{
"firstName": "John",
"lastName": "Smith",
"address": {
"streetAddress": "21 2nd Street",
"city": "New York",
"state": "NY",
"postalCode": "10021"
},
"phoneNumbers": [
{ "type": "home", "number": "212 555-1234" },
{ "type": "fax", "number": "646 555-4567" }
]
}

equivalent for the above in XML could be:
XML ex:

<Person firstName="John" lastName="Smith">
<address>
<streetAddress>21 2nd Street</streetAddress>
<city>New York</city>
<state>NY</state>
<postalCode>10021</postalCode>
</address>
<phoneNumber type="home">212 555-1234</phoneNumber>
<phoneNumber type="fax">646 555-4567</phoneNumber>
</Person>

I say FU to anyone who beleives one is much greater than the other. =P
Both pretty much have the same problems and benefits, although JSON is a little easier to interpret with javascript.
Although not much as there are many great additions that make both ajax and xml easier to do (http://jquery.com/)

Bring the nerd war Dynak!

P.S. using jquery for fomelolizer, really makes ajax a snap i.e. http://anguish.mine.nu/fomelolizer/js/search.js
 
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