06/205
CURRENT STATE: Currently flat content HTML 5/Jquery Mobile based site using only javascript/Ajax, and SSI and a single content editor
NEW STATE Proposal: In order to scale, we need to move to a real CMS system. This is 100% content driven, we don’t need a “web app” (ASP/JSP/PHP. etc.) – we need a solid content management system (CMS). WordPress offers portability, scalability, and a good level of support for all things we want to do through a massive user community and plugins galore. We should examine moving in this direction – a large portion of the web runs on WordPress now, that speaks to its versatility and capability. It may nominally be a “blog” engine, but people use it as a full-fledged CMS solution.
Change IIS to port 81; Map the DMZ port 80 on the router to port 81 of the server machine; Can it be done? Port forwarding vs. port mapping; Install ServerPress on port 80 + Configure Incarna site + Preview with friends + Sign up WPEngine + Export / Import + DNS change + Registrar Update + Live + Create Accounts + Ask for help
Export to WPEngine: https://serverpress.com/tag/export/
Desired Outcome = Support for the following:
Single publishing site under 1 domain; eventually about 2-4,000 assets (images, pages, etc.)
Eventually integrate maps, discussion threads, and other social aspects
3-4 content creators/editors
Integrate HTML5 Boilerplate
https://wordpress.org/plugins/html5-boilerplate/
google analytics
https://wordpress.org/plugins/googleanalytics/
Custom WP Theme “my-site-theme”
http://cooltemplate.com OR http://www.wpthemegenerator.com/ (pay for to download)
create/manage Child Theme with advanced page templates using custom fields to structure data (inerits from
“my-site-theme”) (https://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes); https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-page-template/
Recommended: Post Types
Post (Post Type: ‘post’)
Page (Post Type: ‘page’)
Attachment (Post Type: ‘attachment’)
Revision (Post Type: ‘revision’)
Navigation menu (Post Type: ‘nav_menu_item’)
Categories: Only posts can use categories; Will we even have posts besides page?
Facebook is where all post/blog type activity will go.
Custom Post Types > Item, Character v 1, Character v 2, etc., NPC
Beast Creature > Creature Template
Undead Creature > creature Template
Spark Creature > Creature Template
Mote, Shade, Elemental > Creature template
Setting Locale > Place template
Settlement Locale > Place Templte
Setting Characters
Adventure
Force post types to use specific page template
Titles: Page titles must be customized
Tags: Matching popular social tags with Page and Post content tags increases search relevancy; i.e. having a “Elric” tag on the world of the Young Kingdoms made for Incarna would increase cross site linking in terms of google’s search results.
> Not part of launch
Recommended: Taxonomy – classifying content (not tags/tag cloud) using plugin
Top Level = (each has a slug/friendly url for showing all related pages)
Rules/Resolving
Rules/Character Facets
World/Place
Adventure
Item/Equipment/Gear
Set canonical reference, SEO, RSS, Meta tags: https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
https://wordpress.org/plugins/global-content-blocks/
User Community + Content Protection – full page and partial in-page based on membership (not initially charging, but want to offer premium content based on users getting a free account integrated with OAUTH based logins for FB, G+, etc.); premium content behind a pay-wall may be a thing of the future – monetizing the content means a lot more content creation at a higher level of quality to provide appropriate value-for-product. Tying catalog/product purchase to a user account would be far down the road – 2 yrs?
https://wordpress.org/plugins/users-ultra/ (preferred?)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/login-page-styler/
Easy Webhook integration – like Slack, etc.
Need to run under IP/edit mode only for a couple months while content is built before moving DNS name
Ability to integrate ads in the future: https://wordpress.org/plugins/adrotate/
Ability to integrate ecommerce in the future: https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/woocommerce
Ability to integrate better mobile experience in the future: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wptouch/
Easy upgrade to newer version of WordPress
Ensure the latest patches are always applied
I’m totally new to WordPress, so i’m fumbling around in the dark a bit with the recommendations i have made. I have had unpleasant experiences with nearly every hosting solutions I have dealt with – hidden fees, no access to backups, poor turnaround on support, exposure to malware/hacks, etc. – i want no surprises, and good access to support. Over the years we went from server side logic (ASP) to flat html with Ajax. Control is nice, but i want to focus on content and not coding and technology – a platform i can get some of the old functionality back without having to write a bunch of code is a great idea.
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/bluehost-2
WPEngine looks to be the best. Its about $30/month – but there’s NOTHING hidden in that. They seem to guarantee nearly every aspect of their service and have an AMAZING stable to companies using their hosted solutions which include a staging version to test upgrades, etc.. They have great information on their site, no broken links or dead ends that i could find (unlike Bluehost, Hostgator, and others) – seems to be the best out there at what they do.
Logo: http://cooltext.com/