PGD news postings

**WILL** · 06-04-2010, 11:25 AM

Hey whats up with the PGD news posting of late? Or should I say the lack there of. PGD used to post tons of news posts of whats going on around the world even back in it's pioneering days as 'DelphiGamer.com'. Even when I took the reigns and turned it into PGD in it's slow days we at least popped out one a month. I know there is more going on out there in the world of Pascal (I'm Mr. Pascal, right? it's what I do

) Whats going on guys?

**de_jean_7777** · 06-04-2010, 01:02 PM

Yeah. I wish there were more news postings too. This way it seems like nothing is going on in the Pascal world (I hope this is not true).

**Traveler** · 06-04-2010, 07:38 PM

Since I used to post most of the news I probably can take most of the blame.
However, my gamedev activities have been on a standstill for quite some time now. I don't code anymore, I hardly visit any gamedev related websites, even closed my own site and projects. I do still make it a point to visit pgd to quickly check on new members and posts (usually only to see if there's no spam involved) before I get to work, but that's pretty much it nowadays.

To be totally honest, I've lost interest.

**Stoney** · 06-04-2010, 09:45 PM

There are certainly some Pascal-related news out there. For example: A new version of Hedgewars has just been released and personally I would definitely deem projects like BESEN news-worthy.
And if we go back in time a little: Stalker_23b placed 6th out of 121 entries with his Delphi game Dark Fire at Ludum Dare 16. That's impressive.

**WILL** · 07-04-2010, 01:58 AM

I can somewhat relate Alex. Thats sort of why I've started the magazine so I didn't have to struggle with all these new site templates and complicated posting software. I just wanted to have a simple way to gather all that I've discovered and disseminate it as best I could. I also have only myself to answer to in how I go about such a task as it's a self-ran publication. Makes dropping it and picking it back up again later easy.

PGD is not such an easy beast. I recognized this day into the job of making the first site for this all. Truth is you need something that is easy for 'the next guy' to pick up and continue adding and putting the time in. I'm not sure the new PGD is that. Sure people post, but to be honest I think the first one the we(Alex and I) made, though incomplete and buggy as hell had more of that hey come on in and contribute factor that this one seems to miss. Even I have a hard time posting news as someone with an administrator's account.

I dunno, PGD needs to do something to inject a bit more life into it. I'd hate to see things progress to the point where the site turns into a 'ghost town.' There is a lot you guys can do that take little or not time, but alas someone has to action these things, but noone has the time.

Originally Posted by Stoney

There are certainly some Pascal-related news out there. For example: A new version of Hedgewars has just been released and personally I would definitely deem projects like BESEN news-worthy.
And if we go back in time a little: Stalker_23b placed 6th out of 121 entries with his Delphi game Dark Fire at Ludum Dare 16. That's impressive.

All true Stoney and thanks for pointing these out to me, I'll be sure to have some of this in the new issue. I miss seeing these on PGD.

**jdarling** · 07-04-2010, 12:29 PM

Another vote for BESEN as news worthy as well as everything else

. How about a way to suggest news for the sites? Members post an item to the mods so they can approve it and post it to everyone? Then it becomes our responsibility to provide it and yours (PGD mods) responsibility to show it to everyone else

**WILL** · 07-04-2010, 03:45 PM

GameDev.net has this sort of system in place and it seems to work well. I like the idea too. Problems is and I'll be blatantly honest about it, all the CMS software out there suck so bad at ease of implementation that using any one thing and trying to get everything you want out of any of them it like trying to ballroom dance with a mad horny bull. Whatever you try in the end your getting... well you know.

On the other hand doing it from scratch is also a royal pain as the list of features it always longer than the amount of time anyone has available to complete it all. So it's a rock and a hard place. Maybe if the PGD team hired a contractor to do the work, but that would take some serious donation money so...

**AthenaOfDelphi** · 07-04-2010, 07:17 PM

Originally Posted by WILL

GameDev.net has this sort of system in place and it seems to work well. I like the idea too. Problems is and I'll be blatantly honest about it, all the CMS software out there suck so bad at ease of implementation that using any one thing and trying to get everything you want out of any of them it like trying to ballroom dance with a mad horny bull. Whatever you try in the end your getting... well you know.

On the other hand doing it from scratch is also a royal pain as the list of features it always longer than the amount of time anyone has available to complete it all. So it's a rock and a hard place. Maybe if the PGD team hired a contractor to do the work, but that would take some serious donation money so...

Surely, we could get by with a vBulletin installation couple with MediaWiki for the library. No fancy theme customisation as it's a pain in the ass for upgrades. The only problem then is porting content to the library. That way, we would only have to maintain a vBulletin licence.

**Traveler** · 07-04-2010, 07:44 PM

TBH, I don't feel much going through yet another website migration.

Putting news on is not all that much work. Unfortunately its not possible to select a topic in the forum and just 'promote' it to a news item, but a simple copy/paste with some minor moderation does the trick well.

IMO, what we need is a few people willing to help out in this particular area.

**WILL** · 08-04-2010, 05:18 AM

How much would it cost to hire a web design team/professional to make a site that has all the features needed? I'm talking no more pre-made CMS stuff that takes forever to adapt what the community needs into it. I'm talking going to a *professional* web designer and saying I need a very visually exciting site that has X,Y,Z features and will be easy to maintain and add content to. How much?

I can have a Donate button on this site tomorrow and start collecting money to do this. Or even to help out in other ways. We don't always have to do things the hard way you know.