*sigh* I wish there was a good way to get an RPG known. I know that I usually don't have time to play any of the other titles out there because I spend my free time working on my game. If only the Forge was around when I was in high school and had time to burn . . . (that was 12 years ago yikes!)

You know what? That's not a bad idea! I think I'll do it. RPG game portal, here I we come. I wouldn't want to do anything fancy and complicated like the forge, Just a place you can post a website that you can get to your game and probably a rating system for players to rank the game. No memberships, no preferential treatment. Sort by category, sort by age of posting, sort by rank etc.

hey, rpgportal.com isn't taken, that's easy.

If anyone is interested in working on a website that would benefit the RPG community like that, let me know, I can set the site up and get it started, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

The above was split from Web promotion, a thread from 2001.

Emmett, don't post to older threads. Review the site rules in the Site Discussion forum, about various things like that.

We can discuss the new topic right here, though; that's perfectly OK.

Best,
Ron

Sorry, actually I think I've done this before, so I really should have known better. My brain keeps dumping data it hasn't used in a month.

Okay, so now you know I'm an idiot, you can see why I need help.

This is the plan. . .

1. set up the website
2. set up a forum as a temporary solution
3. look for existing solutions and test
4. If 3 fails, build a custom solution.

I hope it doesn't come down to 4, that will take longer than I want to take.

Emmett wrote:
hey, rpgportal.com isn't taken, that's easy.

This sound like an interesting idea. Could you explain some more about what you want with it?

I recently came across an open source cms called bitweaver  http://www.bitweaver.org/ which seems like a great tool to building a community around a project. It is a combination of a wiki and a cms, and it has a build in forum. It may be something you can use to your portal.

- Anders

Well that was easier than I expected. It's not pretty yet, but it's functional. www.indie-portal.com I'm really just roughing it in right now but if anyone wants to register and stick their link on the page, go ahead.

Basically the purpose is to get word out about your website/project. It's a place to generate a little buzz about your game. I want to have a little bit of community so that the average Joe will have some interest in poking around and maybe look into a category that they wouldn't have. I'm open for suggestions.

BTW I figured more traffic might generate more cross traffic, so instead of just RPGs I expanded it to several different kinds of independent developers but that's a little beside the point.

What about an art category?

- Anders

That might be a little off topic for the Forge, if you want, register and post non-rpg suggestions there.

(I already got yelled at by Ron this thread, I need to keep my nose clean).

Any RPG Category's you would like to see added?

That might be a little off topic for the Forge

Good point. I'll use those. The one problem is that you can only select one category If you have a diceless mystery system then which one do you choose? I guess that's up to the poster.

Mybe you could allow cross-posting into mulitple categories? That might get messy, though, and might provide an excuse for less honest users to spam.
Maybe you could split the RPG heading into a "By Genre" (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Adevnture) and a "By Style/Mechanic" (Live-Action, Diceless, D20)?
Whatever you decide to do about that, an "Other" category would help designers working in less popular genres.

There are two problems with posting a link to multiple categories. One as you said, spamming the other is that the solution I used to set the site up doesn't allow it. So, without re-coding the site, it may not be an option.

I guess I would say, put your game in the category that you want to advertise. If you want to be known as a mystery game, then put it there, if you want to be known as a D20 system, put it there. I'll try and work out a better compromise as I go. Actually the best option may be to see who bites and what they want to post as then trim off the excess categories.

But yeah, I suppose "Other" would be needed given that you have a whole community trying to make a game that nobody else has before.

I think you want tagging by arbitrary keywords rather than a bunch of defined categories and "other". Forcing things into predefined buckets leads to awkward fits, and 'other' is the bucket that nobody really wants to be filed in.

Would _The Doom that Came to Metropolis_  (the nonexistent game of Lovecraftean horror in a supers universe) get filed under supers or horror? Either way, part of its potential audience isn't going to see it. With keyword tagging, it'd come up under 'supers', 'horror', 'cthulhu', or 'lovecraft'.

You also get natural emergence of new categories.

Spamming can be restricted by limiting how many keywords can be given.

If the tools you're using won't let you do things like this, I suggest seriously looking at using new tools, before you've invested too much effort into doing things in the current ones. If you're already running into the tools' limitations, odds are pretty good you're in for more problems later.

Are you aware of a solution that allows keywords? I'm not really invested in anything right now, but theres no way that any one solution would satisfy everyone. I'm ready to be open minded, but I prefer action to inaction because I'm looking for the perfect fit. I already rejected four different "portal" systems because they did not have (or i could not determine that they had) useful link management. If you know of one you like, let me know.

The tagging makes me think of building a simple front-end to del.icio.us. Make up a user for the portal, and use the del.icio.us RSS feeds, tag rolls, what not to display links. Then set up a simple forwarding thing so that submitting a link to the portal posts it on del.icio.us as that user.

Really, so far, the portal software that I picked seems to be the only one that allows ranking links. I personally think that link ranks, while they could be abused, are important for casual visitors to be able to find good content quickly. Otherwise if there were ever a lot of links, you could hit several dozen poor quality sites before getting one that was any good. It is my feeling that having some way of managing that is very important.

The other nice thing about the xoops portal is that it allows you to put links as the main page, none of the other portals I've run across allow that.

The del.icio.us website is nice, but I'm not sure how to make that work well for a community site.

There is one way to make Keywords work. There is a search option, and if you put the keyword in your description of the site, it will find it. That's not a perfect solution I know, but it is functional.

I agree, being able to assign keywords to a link would be ideal but I do not know a simple way of doing it where it is intrinsic to the nature of the site. I would like to be able to fulfil everyones desires, but the best I can do is fill a need.

Well I've done a few minor adjustments but what the site really needs now is people trying to use it and telling me what's broken or missing. So if you want a way to get eyeballs and googlebots scanning your website, come sign up and we'll do what we can.

I added a link to your site.  My opinion only here, but I think there needs to be a category for games with universal settings.

Please visit my site and add your link there or you can post what you want me to add.  (I am using a ugly free site...I can't complain about the price.)

Thanks for letting me add my link,

Sean

Hey no problem! What does a "Universal" setting mean? Is that something like GURPS?

Sorry for the belated reply.

GURPs is a good example, a set of rules that can be used for various setting...
I also look at the HERO system as an example of what that can look like.

Oh, I see you have added this.

Cool site!  I'm planning on making some extended use of it.