I would like to explain a few things about how the new web site is built. It should answer some of Gambit's questions and be helpful to further discuss about the web site.
First, I confirm that I will not import user/passwords from this forum, although it should be technically possible (most applications store passwords as MD5 hashes in their database).
The web site is based on a Content Management System called
Drupal.
In Drupal, each piece of content is called a "node".
Each node has a type called a "content type".
Drupal has some built-in content types. One of them is "book page". This content type is used for most pages on my site.
Additional Drupal modules can define new content types. For example, I use the "weblink" module which allows me to create nodes of type "weblink". Useful to enter URLs with name and description and make references to them in other pages.
I also use the "flexinode" module that allows me to easily create my own content types. These are based on simple forms. I used it to create the two content types "Custom Dungeon" and "Custom Dungeon Review".
About books
As I said, most pages on the site are of type "book page". The Drupal book module allows me to create a hierarchy of "book pages". Each book page can have child pages. Book pages that don't have a parent book page are "top level".
For example, the "Encyclopaedia" book page is top level. The "Dungeon Master" book page is a child of the "Encyclopaedia" book page.
When you display a book page, you get the content of the page itself and below there is also the list of child book pages. By default, child book pages are listed alphabetically but this has been changed with the last update I made.
The "Encyclopaedia" book page currently is empty, that is why when you open it you only see the list of child book pages (including "Dungeon Master", "Chaos Strikes Back", etc).
Before the last site update, there was also a "book navigation" section at the bottom of each page that included three links: "previous", "up" and "next".
Previous/next would go to the previous/next page in the book, and up would go one level up in the hierarchy of pages. I agree this was not very intuitive and useful and removed it.
Breadcrumb
The breadcrumb is displayed on the very first line of each page. It shows your location in the site. When you are on a book page, it shows the hierarchy above the page you are currently viewing. Each part in the hierarchy path is a link to the corresponding page.
Categories
Gambit, what you are calling "related links" are in fact Categories.
Drupal includes a powerful "taxonomy" sytem that allows categorization of content. Each node (each piece of content) can be categorized, independently of its type or location in the book hierarchy.
I have defined a simple, non hierarchical list of categories for my site. Each node can be included in any number of these categories.
For example, every page on my site that has a file attached for download is in the "Download" category.
If a visitor wants to download every possible file from the site, he need to browse that category, and it will build a listing of all the nodes in that category.
If you want to see only to the downloads related to Dungeon Master II, you can do it by browsing all the nodes that are part of
both categories "Download" and "Dungeon Master II".
If you want to see all the manuals and hint books on the site, you can browse all the nodes that are part of
any of the categories "Manual" and "Hint Book".
That is the purpose of the "Category browser" option available in the left menu. This Drupal module allows you to build such category based requests.
It can also limit the results to a single content type, that is why the list of content types defined on the web site is displayed.
I cannot change the way this module displays things unless I change the code of this module. But this can be done.
About the "printer-friendly" link on book pages
Gambit, I agree it is better to have a dedicated CSS style sheet for printing. That is what I have on the old static site.
But this option has one more thing: when you use it on a page, it will produce a web page suitable for printing but it will also include the whole hierarchy of child book pages in the process. I thought it was a nice feature.
However, it does not work at the highest level ("Encyclopaedia") because of memory limitation on the web server
Links to external web sites
I agree that the current situation is not good: you need two clicks to go to an external web site. This will be changed soon so that links will directly bring you to the destination web sites.
As you have seen, links management is not finished at all on the site, I also have to implement a nice page to list all the links in a readable and categorized way.
Links with Custom Dungeons
Beowuuf, I'll see what I can do to manage links between custom dungeon pages, review pages and discussion thread pages.
Archives format
I have used .RAR files on my web site for a long time now. I agree WinRAR is not freeware, but there are freeware archivers able to uncompress .rar files (like the unrar.exe command utility or 7-Zip for example).
However, I agree that for custom dungeons, the zip format should be more appropriate. I'll put a notice to encourage users to bundle csbwin with their dungeon to ensure version compatibility.
I hope all these explanations make things clearer. I realize I should probably post some of these explanations on the web site itself for visitors.
There are things I probably cannot change easily, but I am still open to any feedback in order to improve the web site to have the best user experience possible.
. I'd been wondering about them.
