User blog:GolgothaKinslayer/Rebuilding

As has been stated before, this is not our first rebuild. We have seen many changes to the various sites, with features and bugs that come and go.

I'll admit, I'm lazy. I would have been content to find a host where I could--at the very least--just drop the old html and image files into a directory somewhere and call it a day. The Battlescars (and forums) were lost forever, unfortunately. However, I like most of the features here. Or at least, I'm making myself adjust to them, learn them, and find the best. It's quite a bit of work, but I think that the end result will be worth it. There's some neat things we can do with a good CMS, one that's well managed and used appropriately.

For example, by making stub pages of each skill, we can easily reduce a large webpage (or dozens in print) down to one list. Skills are then searchable--and listable--by any number of criteria. This also allows us to both put all of the skills together for ease of online character creation, as well as keep them separate for later print runs, all without having to have multiple copies needing multiple edits to correct or alter something. All of that means, unfortunately, that I cannot simply copy/paste the original text and call it done. I had to enter each skill separately in its own page. The real work--and what makes this all come together--is in categorising everything well. As it stands now, each skill has tags for martial, apprentice, horsemanship, psionic, lore, etc. categories. I'm still needing to add Codex tags to everything before I start shoving skills from the Books of the Apocalypse into the mix. Then whatever fan creations we can scavange from notes from the old Battlescars... then start adding new stuff from my notes here...

Lots of work, but lots of fun when the work is done.