Guilds - Info & Questions

[Melooon]

Greetings  I hope you are having a nice day! I am here to talk to you about the Guilds feature!

What is a Guilds?? 
Aha you've come to the correct subheading to answer that question  (omg why am I writing like this today)

ANYWAY, here's a back story. When the Everyone Site was first setup I'd planned to allow people to create their own mini-everyone sites. However an everyone site with only one person is a bit of an oxymoron, so really it needed to be mini-everyones sites that people could invite others to collaborate on!

That was always a sticking point though; coding a whole collaboration management system just to add a small feature to one of the lesser known projects here was not really worth the time. BUT a few months ago I spotted this video on Neopets Guilds by harke ~ it made me realise that creating groups didn't just have to be a hidden setting somewhere, it could be a really fun and memorable addition while also solving the everyone site issue  So I got to work 

Where are they? 
At the top of the site you'll see a new Guilds tab next to the Art tab, click it and you'll find yourself in the Guilds Hub, a new section of the forum dedicated to guilds! Here you can see your guilds, find new guilds find guild related features!

What do they do?
Anyone with Full Member status or higher can create guilds, and any forum member can join a guild. Guilds offer these features:

• A customisable page on the forum, with full profile-style CSS + HTML modding.
• A dedicated mini-everyone site that only members of the guild can edit, but anyone can view.
• A fully automated webring for guild members with an onionring-style widget.
• A discussion/notes thread for each guild.
• Guild members can create events that are aggregated into a forum-wide events feed, with RSS support! (coming soon)
• Guilds can be public for anyone to join, or guild managers can approve all members joining their guild.

In the future my plan is to offer guild tie-ins to many other ML features, including things like creating dedicated guild banners 

Wawawaa
Thats not a real subheading!!!

Ooph, if you have questions, feature requests, ideas, bug reports or other THOUGHTS, trap them here and I will consume them with my mind 

[larvapuppy]

I can't wait for this to be released. I think it will be a great way to make friends on here. I love the collaborative and fun direction the forum has been heading in; thank you Melon!   

Can the guild threads also have css customization for members? I think that would make it extra fun...... 

[Melooon]

can't wait for this to be released

Ooph, it'll get there, I was hoping to get it out today, but there's been a heat wave here and I've had a horrible headache because of it I suspect there's a high chance it'll sneak in Monday at the latest

Can the guild threads also have css customization for members?

Every aspect of a guilds page uses the same CSS+HTML mods, including threads and events

[xandra]

this is so cool, melon!!! i admire your innovation! hope you feel better! <3

[Malice]

Harke is an awesome channel and that video got me back into Neopets

The webring is a neat touch! What features are you thinking about in the future? I suggest ranks and polls if those aren't already implemented.

EDIT: Is anyone else having trouble with CSS pages? I have to do everything inline or else it won't work and I can't style the webring widget because of it. I'm not sure if it's a bug or just my lack of knowledge on how to use MeloPad

[loren]

hello i have made a guilds! everyone who enjoys spending time outdoors should check out    Nature Camp

also, a feature request! the first thing i thought to add to the mini-site was the webring widget, but i got the "This site is not listed in the webring!" error. could you make it so the widget can display on guild eSite homepages?

[Melooon]

could you make it so the widget can display on guild eSite homepages?

Added I found some other widget related bugs too and fixed them; the widget is still very unstyled, let me know if you see any other issues related to it! For example on your page I can see it's not centred now, maybe that could be a default style added.

can't style the webring widget because of it

Looking at your CSS, you're using "#ring" as your selector. Thats not a guild ring id! Each guild ring widget uses "#melonGuild-{Your guild Id}" as its root CSS id, so in your case you need to replace "#ring" with "#melonGuild-6"; also if your trying to style your non-guild webring widget, the CSS page for the guild ring will have no effect on it, and you just style that like you would on any other webpage.

What features are you thinking about in the future? I suggest ranks and polls if those aren't already implemented.

@loren actualy almost described word for word one of the features I've planned here The first things to work on will be the obvious stuff like adding you guilds to your profile and linking them better around the forum. Poll's sound like a fun idea and so do ranks! I like the idea of using guild to create features. people can add too their own sites (as apposed to in-forum features) too.

@dream also PM'd me with a cool idea for a MelonLand map page linking all projects (sorry im super slow getting back around this one) - I really like that idea and I'd like to link it into the guild regions along with the worldbuilding and 3d projects around the forum.

[Malice]

in your case you need to replace "#ring" with "#melonGuild-6"

Thank you! I'm still having issues with it, but that's one less thing for me to fix now

EDIT: Found my other issue, I forgot to close an h2 tag. Rookie mistake, apologies :p

[Melooon]

Thank you! I'm still having issues with it, but that's one less thing for me to fix now

Im just in the middle of patching in an external webring option in your guild settings. If you set it to a URL it will disable the guild webring and let you link an existing webring homepage (for people who already have external webrings and dont want to have a separate guild webring) 

[Malice]

Oh, awesome, thank you!

[loren]

@loren actualy almost described word for word one of the features I've planned here

hehehe yay! i was a little worried i was getting carried away with the feature requests. thank you so much for all the work you've put into this! i'm having a lot of fun 


another question about the webrings: would it be possible to let members set a specific URL for their webring link? i keep my rings on a page that isn't my homepage, so i just changed the link on my forum profile to that URL. but maybe asking members which page they want included in the webring will encourage them to keep the ring unbroken?

[Melooon]

i keep my rings on a page that isn't my homepage, so i just changed the link on my forum profile to that URL

There is a philosophical angle here that I think you already guessed, but that's that webring pages are essentially link-to-me landing pages, and if you've got one of those I'd suggest it should actually be the page you have linked on the forum (which is the one that will appear in guild rings)

On a technical level, this is a good idea someday! However since its all SurfClub under the hood, the way I'd do it is by having people add a custom meta tag to their index page that informs the surf club indexer where the webring page is located. That can happen, but its a whole other project

[AY38910]

"Visit eSite homepage" and "Delete guild" are way too close. Source: I deleted mine trying to access its page and had to remake it. MULTIPLE TIMES.

also Join mine now sadfjlkklkjfsads DO IT

[loren]

webring pages are essentially link-to-me landing pages, and if you've got one of those I'd suggest it should actually be the page you have linked on the forum

i agree with you here! i think it was the right choice for me to change it. right now i'm wondering how to get more people to do the same, because i'm sad about how broken my guild's webring is (edit to clarify what i mean by 'broken': it's broken socially, because no one has the links up, so you can't surf it. on the technical side, it's working just fine!)


unrelated, a few more more reports/requests...

• could we have guild css apply to the members page?
• everyone.melonland.net/~nature (no trailing slash) and everyone.melonland.net/~nature/ (with trailing slash) are styled differently even though they are connected to the same pad page. could we have the eSite homepage link on guild pages go to the URL with the trailing slash? and/or have the non-trailing slash url redirect to the trailing slash url?

[Melooon]

a few more more reports/requests...

Fixed both! That trailing / issue was super weird! I think it was messing with the root of the css file you had linked, so that was a great bug report to find!

i agree with you here!

Apologies if I sounded grumpy on my last reply here As for broken sites, I can automate checking for the webring widget on member sites (along with adding the webring page meta tag) and add a setting to only include sites that actually have the widget Prob wont be this week though!

Visit eSite homepage" and "Delete guild" are way too close

Ooph sorry about that! I moved the delete button to the bottom of the guild settings page so it's very hard to accidentally press now!