I have recently been hearing rumblings regarding our website. Please know that as the designer and developer of the War Storm site, I take this very seriously and I am a happy to update the site any time. I employ a team of developers and designers that can easily make the changes under my direction.

There are 3 major areas to consider. One is the design and functionality, next is the content and structure of the site, and finally bugs.

The design, color, images can be what ever you wish. Perhaps you want a new header image or vertically shorter header. Or you are simply sick of green and wish a lighter feel to the site. Or maybe a screen shot of us - the team, as the header. All of this I am happy to get done. The site is a standard forum based site developed in Dot.net technology. So other functionality besides forums currently does not exist.

The second area is the content and structure of the site. This is completely customizable by authorized users. Obviously this takes commitment and time but needs no additional development.

The final area are bugs. I am happy to investigate and fix any bug. It just needs to be reported. If you set up a bug reports on the forum and screen shot the bugs I will make every attempt to resolve them. I need to know where this has been posted.

Its important to me that you all feel we have a high quality website. Especially if my signature is on it.

I recommend a guild wide meeting - say 30 minutes to discuss what your priorities are regarding "Design" and "Functionality" and/or create a thread on what everyone would like changed. If we have a meeting, I will take copious notes and if the requests are possible I will have them completed. If your requests are for non-forum custom functionality, that might be a challenge since labor costs could run into literally 10s of thousands of dollars so these requests while possible will need to be addressed by priority and validated as necessary.

Please also note that I have under raps a War Storm Wiki site. I presented it to Blixxus a while ago but the guild was just being reformed and he certainly had his hands full rebuilding War Storm so we really never delved into it. You can have this site if you wish but that will require a huge time commitment regarding content.

Ball is in your court and I stand ready to serve

Zak

Zaknif - ftw

Yeah i guess the banner on the top of the site should say... Blixxus has left =-(

Cheers Blixxus

I really want to help make War Storm's online presence exceptional. I like the great feed back from Anon above as well. I recommend everyone post their wish list where leadership can generate a consolidated "statement of work".

I have already made a request to MouseSports (Nihilum's site) to see if they would license their technology to us. If they do not want my first born - I'll take care of that. It's almost always easier to acquire technology then to start from scratch - if the functionality fits our needs. Note they have a media sponsorship rev model, so they might consider the license - more dollars for them. Though we would have to put up with that.

I estimate building what they have from scratch would cost about $150,000 (believe it or not) in man hours so it would be quite an undertaking and probably 6 month phase one dev cycle. We will need to interface with the WOW data pipe - not difficult.

Note, as the creator or Everlore.com (now offline), it took us about a year to build that site. This was a top EverQuest portal site. Some of you long time gamers will remember this site. I had a nice ad rev model until the rev share model drastically changed in 2002.

Now, the wiki technology I mentioned above can be put up quickly can also handle much of the custom content.

Regarding content listed above - well thats the challenge. That takes a major commitment (time). Some one on our team has to maintain that.

Finally - I would like to address Blixxus's comment.

Blixxus, War Storm was your dream from the beginning and with out you, it would not be what it is today. Your sacrifice truly changed peoples lives including mine. You have shouldered the leadership since its inception and I think it a tribute you that you built a successor model to allow the guild to continue and flourish with the new leadership and talented players.

Always sacrificing for others!

Here's to you Blix, thank you for an incredible experience and cheers!!!

Zaknif - ftw