World of Khoras - Website Conversion

[avisarr]

For the last 10 years or so, I've been building the Khoras site with Microsoft Frontpage... an HTML editor which is fairly outdated and, as far as I know, not even supported by Microsoft anymore. I've been planning on switching over to Adobe Dreamweaver for a long time now. (I've chosen Dreamweaver for several reasons - it's supposed to be a very good HTML editor and I can get it at a very low price). It's a big project though and I've been putting it off.

Well, recently I've been encountering some glitches on the site and also encountering various technical hurdles that I believe are related to Frontpage. So, I think it's time for me to take the plunge. This month, in addition to the regular spotlight, I'm going to be converting the entire site over to Dreamweaver CS4. The process may not go smoothly and there could be any number of problems along the way. So, if you see any weird problems on the site over the next few weeks - missing pages, broken links, messed up graphics, whatever - don't panic. Hopefully those problems will be temporary and solved quickly. I'm hoping that this transition will run its course during July and be completed before August arrives.

This conversion to Dreamweaver will lay the foundation for other changes too. Countless times I've been told that Khoras should abandon frames and should invoke CSS and other modern technologies. Well, this conversion to Dreamweaver will be the first step. I've decided not to do it all at once though. I'm going to take it one step at a time. First, I want to get it up and running with Dreamweaver as the primary editor. Then, later, I'll work on possibly dropping the frames and going CSS all the way. Hopefully that will then open up the door to many improvements. Most of this is going to happen behind the scenes and won't really affect the front end that much. The overall look and feel of the site will not change significantly and all the content will stay.

So, that's it. Just wanted to give you a heads up. Things might get bumpy for a couple of weeks, but this is necessary and I'm confident it will, in the long run, benefit Khoras and lead to some big improvements later on.

[Golanthius]

I really don't have any idea what this means nor do I know what CSS or a HTML Editor is, but if it makes it easier in the long run to update the site or to add things, good luck with the conversion.

[avisarr]

Well, the main point I wanted to get across was that the web site might have a few bumps over the next few weeks, but it's nothing to worry about.

[Golanthius]

Will the appearance of the site change? What about page layout?

[avisarr]

I'm going to do my best to keep the layout and appearance of the site the same. If it does change, it'll be as minor as possible. Khoras has had the exact same look for a decade. It might be time for a minor facelift. We'll see... but again, I'm going to try to keep it as similar as possible.

I've had several people complain about the frames, so one of my goals is to eliminate the frames layout and replace it with something else that will mimic the layout, but do it in a better way. So, the menus will still be on the left and they will be the same choices. And the buttons on the top will remain. Content will still be in one big central window... just as it is now. However, one of the advantages of getting rid of the frames is that you'll be able to bookmark individual pages now. I know several people have requested that.

[avisarr]

Just a quick update... the conversion process has begun. Broken links and other weird problems are bound to crop up over the next week. Let the fun begin!

Also, since I'm focused fully on this conversion process, this month's spotlight is going to have to be pushed back a month. I was going to be uploading all data on "the Borderlands". However, it's got to be pushed back. Sorry about that. Someone had requested that and, whoever that was, I promise that I will get to the Borderlands. It's the very first order of business as soon as this website programming is finished.

Thanks for your patience.

[avisarr]

Another short update... this conversion process is taking MUCH longer than expected. This website coding stuff is way more complicated than it needs to be. Suffice to say, all "creative" work on Khoras is suspended until this coding mess is sorted out. Likely to be several more weeks before I get back to a normal routine of updates. Very frustrating...

[Vertrax]

Question. Is the sudden loss of color (in the background accept for around the titles) and the font change part of this conversion itself or an unexpected glitch?

[avisarr]

Yes, it is. Some of you may notice a few odd things going on with the site which include background colors, fonts, bold text and so on. This is all part of the conversion process. Basically, I'm getting rid of some bad code and fixing things from the bottom up.

Today, August 30th, I uploaded a mass of corrected pages. As a side effect, there's a lot of formatting issues. I'll be going through all the pages and cleaning them up. So, don't worry if text looks a little "ugly" in certain areas. It will all be cleaned up. And this process really IS worth it, in the long run.

Things should be getting back to normal very soon...

[avisarr]

I've got an update on the Khoras website conversion. I just spent 3 days working on code and trying to find a replacement for the frames. For those of you who know about website mechanics, you'll notice that Khoras is a frames site. I personally rather like frames. There are a lot of webmasters and web gurus out there who look down their nose at frames sites. I've been investigating options to convert Khoras from a frames site into a more traditional site.

Supposedly they are a list of disadvantages associated with frames. However, I can only think of two. The first is that you can't bookmark a specific page. For instance, if you wanted to bookmark the nation of Arkalia, you can't do it. You can only bookmark the main site - www.khoras.net. And yes, that is a drawback, but it's a minor one.

The other disadvantage I had heard was that it was difficult for search engines to index pages that were inside frames sites. Although that doesn't appear to be true (or maybe the search engines have just gotten better). Google and Bing both have indexed the Khoras website thoroughly so this is no longer a concern.

I've looked into rebuilding the site with other techniques (Server Side Includes), iframes and so on, but I want a static header and menu bar, which is something those other techniques can't offer. It is possible to use some complex CSS code to replicate the look and feel of frames, but it would require adding and debugging a lot of code to every single page throughout the site.

The bottom line is that nothing provides the functionality and ease that frames offers. So, although there are lots of webmasters out there who think frames are bad, bottom line is that I don't care. I love frames. They make sense. They are organized and efficient. If there was any other easy way to get static header, menu and so on, I'd jump on it. But so far the only method I've seen that comes close is CSS and that's WAY more work than I'm willing to do. Especially for something that fundamentally won't change the experience for the user. I know that frames won't be supported in HTML 5, but that's still a long ways off. Hopefully by that time there'll be some other option which can give the same functionality of frames. For now, I'm sticking with frames. It's just not worth it to try to rebuild the website.

And for those of you who don't know anything about CSS or HTML... here's the bottom line: Khoras is staying the way it is. No new menus or anything else. Khoras is staying put, as is... at least for the next few years.

[tanis]

That sounds fine to me. I like the static header and menu too. The change doesn't necessitate immediate action, so why not wait. At least it'll save you time now to work on other things.