terasology.org and getting the word out

[rapodaca]

I remember mention being made of a dedicated domain for Terasology - I think at terasology.org.

There's a thread locked away under the introduction from Mike about what the site could be. It's kind of technical, so I was wondering what thoughts people have on what this site should have at a minimum. Here's my take:

Must have:

• 
  Clear, plainly visible "Download" link
  Download counter
  Clear, plainly visible "Play Online" link (via applet)
  A 1-minute movie showing all of the game's current features
  A "News" sidebar pulling from twitter, Facebook, the blog, new forum posts, and release notes
  A release changelog
  A clear, plainly visible "Developer" link pointing to the github repo
  A link to this forum
  User testimonials
  Press mentions

Most of this could be done with a few static pages generated with a page generator like Octopress:

http://octopress.org/

The rest could be handled by invoking some Web APIs using Javascript on the static pages. The simpler we keep it, the better.

We should also start emailing a limited selection of video gaming bloggers (those who can tell between early-stage efforts like ours and 1.0 releases) and let them know about the site. Getting mentions from them will do more for this project than just about anything else. But it needs to be clear this is work-in-progress, and we should limit the promotion we do.

Thoughts?

 

[Kai Kratz]

I remember mention being made of a dedicated domain for Terasology - I think at terasology.org.

There's a thread locked away under the introduction from Mike about what the site could be. It's kind of technical, so I was wondering what thoughts people have on what this site should have at a minimum. Here's my take:

Must have:

• 
  Clear, plainly visible "Download" link
  Download counter
  Clear, plainly visible "Play Online" link (via applet)
  A 1-minute movie showing all of the game's current features
  A "News" sidebar pulling from twitter, Facebook, the blog, new forum posts, and release notes
  A release changelog
  A clear, plainly visible "Developer" link pointing to the github repo
  A link to this forum
  User testimonials
  Press mentions

Most of this could be done with a few static pages generated with a page generator like Octopress:

http://octopress.org/

The rest could be handled by invoking some Web APIs using Javascript on the static pages. The simpler we keep it, the better.

We should also start emailing a limited selection of video gaming bloggers (those who can tell between early-stage efforts like ours and 1.0 releases) and let them know about the site. Getting mentions from them will do more for this project than just about anything else. But it needs to be clear this is work-in-progress, and we should limit the promotion we do.

Thoughts?

Love your suggestions except the download counter, hate those But that's a personal thing i guess.

 

[Cervator]

I'm not opposed to a download counter or other metrics, but wonder how tricky that'll be to set up at the moment

Other than that, sounds fine. The domains are ready whenever somebody has content to put there

Blogs etc - we've got a couple lined up, but I'm hoping we can just do a tiny bit of unique gameplay first. The railgun that was just added is a nice touch! I'll try to make the portals more functional.

 

[mike]

Ok let's make it an official website topic. So, here is my first attempt (photoshop renders some things quite strange way, when it'll be working, it'll look way better)

 

[begla]

Great work Mike! Looks clean, simplistic and elegant – just how I like it.

 

[mike]

It's extremely nice to hear you like it! Just one thing - is there a possibility to make some cool screenshot for background image which will be wider than 1280px ? I like the current one but it's bit too thin.

We should also consider few words describing what Therasology is (something like 'Open-source minecraft clone' but probably you don't like to call it like that hehe). We should put them instead of blue VOXEL BREAKING THEIR REGULAR GRID (under the logo). This sentence should be short and as much descriptive as possible

 

[Cervator]

Hmm, good question. Like the "bullet list of goals" question that came up on IRC the other day I'm not really sure how to describe Terasology real quick. I prefixed the voxel line with "Open source game project Terasology - " on some of the social outlets, but that doesn't really help a lot.

Also... I know latin *intense Matrix Neo-accent and focused look*

 

[mike]

the best way is to imagine under what keywords you want's terasology to be able to be found in google and then try to connect them in one sentence somehow. However, 'open source minecraft clone' is really common query to google i think so we should put it somewhere. It doesn't need to be visible on website but we can put it for example in page meta description, i'm sure it'll bring you much more visitors

 

[begla]

Thanks to Kai's in-game screenshot utility super-ultra-mega-high-definition screenshots should be no problem. Call the resolution!

 

[mike]

well, i'll need this one bigger than 1280x800, i can't remember the exact size

 

[Cervator]

Yeah I think that would be as simple as just enlarging the game window. That's the quirk and dirty route, anyway, and probably wouldn't work if your monitor isn't running at a high enough res.

 

[mike]

the game is not working on my both PCs so i count on you