I came back to my Lotro guild after a year of absence (lotro.kingsbeyondthewall.com). An additional module on the site needed some work, so I did that (Lotroster). Overall, the site looked in good shape.
I spoke with the guy who was site admin for the year I was gone, and he had a very different take. He was unhappy with eqdkp+, because "half of it doesn't work or doesn't work right."
I asked him what he meant by that - asked him three times in different emails while we were hashing out other topics and possible alternatives - and he never answered.
This has been knocking around in my head some. The main functionality that Kings use the site for - roster, forum and raidplanner - works, yet the perception is that "half of it doesn't work". Yet nothing concrete can be pointed at.
The perception is real, so I took it seriously. This morning, it "clicked" - I think I know what in the 0.6 code causes admins and users to feel that the site is less-than-functional. Two issues:
- Useability. The menus are all over the place. Site use is not intuitive. Things like setting time zones, creating or claiming characters, setting up raids. In fact, hardly anyone ever sets up raids in our guild because they are confused by the interface.
- Integration. eqdkp+ feels like a loosely connected jumble of parts. Mostly because it is. This directly ties into "useability".
The raidplanner has its own settings, separate from the rest of the site.
There are eqdkp and eqdkp+ settings.
The built-in roster cannot pull guild data from the game API, so we have a 2nd roster that can, but that doesn't integrate with the eqdkp+ roster.
The site/forum integration is incomplete, as there's no SSO.
Widget ("plugin") setup is cumbersome, as it is old and hasn't moved to the graphical way that people are used to now.
Multi-game support plain doesn't exist.
As far as I can see, there's no easy way to fix any of this in 0.6 either, as there is no API tying all the parts together.
I know you are directly addressing a lot of this in 0.7. I'd say focus on creating a framework that feels as an integrated whole for 0.7. Focus on useability, both on the user and admin side. Focus on creating a "seamless" experience.
Take a look at guildlaunch.com. They are far from perfect, and they are doing a lot of things right. That's the site my guild wants to move to in 2 years time, when the guild's hosting contract expires. Convince them to stay on your framework.
To compete with guildlaunch, you need to be just as seamlessly integrated, but "open", with a rich community of plugin/widget authors.
Take a look at my.lotro.com to see a good example of intuitive widget placement and addition - there's a "more widgets" bar once you're signed up. If you don't have a lotro account, those are free, so no excuses.
Do this with future multi-game support in mind when you create the APIs and the framework. Just so you don't have hardcoded dependencies in the core for "one game" and plugins (widgets) can choose a game to "belong to" when they are created, and there can be multiple instances of these widgets active at the same time. Just lay the groundwork so that multi-game support can be added in 0.8, with one common forum in the background, but multiple rosters, optionally multiple raidplanners, multiple widgets, and maybe even individual skins.
In 0.9 or 1.0, allow users to place widgets and customize their guild site to their own tastes, like my.lotro.com does. That'd be the pinnacle of cool.
All the best
Thorsten
