D minus two days and counting...
First, let's get this out of the way: Yes, I did modify the code for the blog to use the short names of the blog entries for the default URLs instead of the date-based keys they were using, so they have slightly more descriptive URLs now. (You can still get to a blog post by the old date-based keys, though, to avoid breaking old links.) This was about as simple as I expected it to be, fortunately, and it didn't take me long. There was also one programming task I had to complete regarding my new Subspace Tabs extension; I hadn't remarked before that the current page was also appearing in a duplicate tab among the other extra tabs to the right. Fortunately, almost as soon as I noticed this was happening, I realized why it was happening, and once I knew why it was happening I knew pretty much immediately how to fix it, so this didn't take long to resolve. And that's it! I am done with programming for now! (Well, except maybe for a bit of Javascript and PHP when and if I get around to updating the site layout.) There are, as I've mentioned in the previous posts, still a lot of other things I want to implement and details I want to fix, but that can all wait till after the hard launch. I have closed VS Code, and will not reopen it until January.
Oh, wait, no, never mind; I'll want to use VS Code for the site layout, too. Okay, never mind; I probably will reopen it before January, but I won't work on any more extensions before then.
Aside from that, most of what I've been doing on the Wongery since the last post has been writing articles. Not articles in the mainspace of the Central Wongery; I certainly do need more of those, and do intend to write more, and have a number of articles partially written that I need to finish and upload, but right now with the hard launch less than two days away, I think it's more urgent to get articles up in the Metawongery and the Gamespace, since those are new and were until recently empty, and they form important parts of the intended functionality of the site. So that's where I've been focusing my attention.
I did make some additions to articles to the Central Wongery mainspace, though, and they're something that it's long been missing. Namely, I finally added maps to the articles on a few of the worlds. Only three so far—Dadauar, Vlastach, and Ym—and they're not very good maps, so they're really more of a token pointing toward later improvements than they are a serious improvement in their own right, but, well, they're something. I didn't spend a lot of time on them (I don't have a lot of time); these were maps I already had on my computer; I just did a bit of minor cleanup and exported them as images. (For the Grandmaster Wongers' reference, the original files these maps came from also have layers for features like average temperature, prevailing wind direction, and the amount of light different regions receive, but I hid those layers before exporting; maybe later I'll put up more maps that show some of these things). I'll work on making better maps to replace these with later, but in the meantime I figured these rough maps were perhaps marginally better than nothing.
These aren't the only worlds I have maps of, of course. I also have maps on my computer of B'gor, Curcalen, Gala, Jhembaz, and Ranthis, and I have maps on paper of Arianiga, Diddu, Ijian, Ufmarkt, and possibly others I'm forgetting right now. (Although I'm not sure where all those paper maps are offhand.) But those maps are even rougher and even less fit for public consumption. Someday, of course, I'll get them cleaned up and add them to the appropriate articles, as well as making maps for the worlds I don't have maps for, and of course making smaller-scale maps for individual continents, nations, regions, and cities. (And perhaps larger-scale maps for entities encompassing multiple worlds, like the Second Konabian Empire, the Empire of Norg, and the known space of Icathiria.) But that's all in the future; I just wanted to get some maps up before the hard launch, if nothing else just as an implicit promise that more will be coming later.
I've always had a fondness for maps; I'm not sure why, but I've always enjoyed just looking at maps, both of real places and of imaginary worlds. And of course having maps of the Wongery worlds will be useful for those who want to use them in RPG campaigns, or for other purposes. I'd definitely always intended for the Wongery to have maps of the worlds and places it describes; I just hadn't got around to putting them up. As I've mentioned in previous blog entries, ultimately I hope to have a whole additional namespace for maps, which in previous posts I've referred to as the "Atlasspace", but I think I've settled on the substantially less unprepossessing "Mapspace instead. (Well... the namespace exists now; there's just nothing there yet.) The pages in this namespace will include interactive maps using a custom extension that will allow users to zoom in and out, turn on and off different layers, and otherwise manipulate what the maps show, and export images of their views. But writing that extension is going to take a lot of time (and certainly more programming knowledge than I currently possess, though I'm still working my way through those Unity classes—well, I haven't been working through them in the last week or so, since I've been scrambling to get as much done on the Wongery as possible before the hard launch, but in January I'll resume them), and that's probably far in the future. In the meantime, though, the Central Wongery still ought have maps of its worlds and settings, even if they're not the fancier interactive maps I ultimately envision. And it will, eventually, but for now at least those three rough maps are a rudimentary start.
Oh, yes. One other thing I did for the Wongery since the hard launch is... well, in preparation for the hard launch, I took a bit of time looking up standard industry rates for illustrations, and figuring out where I'd try to reach out to artists to create illustrations for the Wongery. I'd said before that part of my plans for the hard launch included soliciting art for Wongery articles; not only did I want to have art anyway, but the very fact of posting about my seeking artists would help spread the word about the Wongery. I eventually decided, though, that I'm not going to do this as part of the hard launch anyway, for three main reasons:
- Eh... I dunno; it strikes me as a little skeezy to solicit art as part of a publicity campaign. I mean, yeah, it's not really dishonest; I really do want to pay artists to make illustrations for me; but still, thinking that my solicitations for art will double as promotion doesn't necessarily seem entirely ingenuous, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with it.
- I don't really have the money for it. As I've mentioned before, the industry that I work in went through some tough times this last year, and work was very slow for me, and I'm... not financially where I hoped I'd be by now. I do have a little money to spare, and I could maybe afford to pay fair rates for one or two illustrations now, but... I don't know; it seems like it might be better to wait until I have enough money to pay for more art. Especially in conjunction with the previous point; one or two illustrations won't make that much difference to the Central Wongery, and if I post somewhere saying I'm looking for artists, but can only pay for one or two illustrations right now, that seems all the more like it's really more about the publicity than the art.
- All that aside, even if I had the money and wanted to pay artists right now, I'm not sure how I could. Not without revealing my real identity, anyway, which, again, is something that I'm still trying to avoid revealing for no particularly good reason. All my bank accounts and credit cards are of course in my real, legal name, and I'm not sure I could actually send money to someone without revealing who I am. I do plan to register the Wongery as a private limited company, and I suppose once I do that I'll be able to create company bank accounts that I can use without revealing my legal name... but I haven't done that yet, and right now I'm not sure I have a way to pay anyone without my real name being attached to the payment.
So, all that being said, I still definitely do want eventually to get illustrations for the Wongery, and I intend to pay artists a fair market rate for them—but that won't be part of the hard launch. That'll be farther down the line, after I'm in a little better financial shape, and after I've made the necessary legal arrangements. (Which I ought to do soon, and maybe I'll try to get that done, or at least started, in January. I can't really set up a Patreon or Ko-fi until I get that done either, and that's something else I hope to do at some point.)
(What am I going to do for the hard launch, then? Well... not much, as it turns out, especially compared to my more ambitious earlier plans. I'm still going to make a blazed Tumblr post. Two of the biggest role-playing game websites, RPGnet and EN World, both have fora specifically for promotional posts, so I guess I can post there; I've just created accounts on both those sites. (As I've said before, the Wongery isn't just for role-playing games... but that is one of its major purposes, and that was basically the original purpose of much of what became its content.) Maybe I'll think of something else I can do, but with only two days left, more likely I won't. Still, if I manage to attract any visitors, maybe it'll be a start and word will spread over time. Or maybe the whole thing will never be anything more than a massive flop. We'll see.)
So anyway, what's left to do at this point before the hard launch? Well, I said I'd modified the code for the blog to use the short names instead of the numerical keys, but I haven't implemented that modification on the production version of the Wongery yet, and the reason for that is because as I was testing it on my local copy of the site I was reminded that the older blog posts don't have short names I can use as keys, and so this won't work for them until they do. So I intend over the next day to go through and add short keys to all the old blog posts—and do some light editing as I do so, not making any drastic changes but mostly fixing typos and broken links. Aside from that, mostly I'll be working on articles in the Metawongery and the new namespaces, and if I get time editing some of the older articles in the Central Wongery mainspace... oh, and, as I mentioned before, I still do hope to update the layout of the Wongery site. Oh... and I probably ought to test the Public Wongery to make sure people can actually post there, maybe making a dummy non-admin account I can use to make sure everything's working. Yesterday when I looked at the LocalSettings.php file for the Public Wongery it seemed to me that it wasn't set up for non-sysops to post, so I think I've fixed that, but I haven't actually tested it. Speaking of the Public Wongery, there's a lot of work I need to get done on that, too, adding templates and help pages and making it more user-friendly.
Oh, and one thing I'm definitely going to do is to finally migrate the Wongery to a different hosting plan. Again, right now the Wongery shares a hosting plan with a whole bunch of other sites I own, which means they also share an IP address, which means it's easy for anyone to tell they're owned by the same person if they just compare the IP addresses on the sites. Now, it's extremely unlikely that this is going to happen, both because I doubt anyone is going to care enough about discovering my identity to bother looking into it, and because even if they did it's doubtful they'd think to check it against any of my other websites, none of which are well known or get many (or perhaps any) visitors. Furthermore, even if it did happen, there wouldn't be any major consequences; I'm concealing my real identity not because I really have anything to lose by revealing it but only because I guess of some thoroughly irrational compulsion. Still, I'd feel more comfortable if there weren't such a simple and obvious way I was aware of by which somebody could figure out who I am, so I'm still going to go through with this. And if I'm going to do it (which I am), I shouldn't wait till the last minute, because if something goes wrong and the migration takes longer than I expect, I obviously don't want the Wongery to be down during the hard launch. So yeah, this is probably what I should do first, soon after posting this blog entry, in fact. Which means the Wongery may briefly be down sometime within the next day, but hopefully not for very long.
(Side note: I'd been stymied in previous blog posts by how I could say something like "post this blog post" without, well, awkwardly repeating the word "post". And I just figured it out. I can say "post this blog entry". Why didn't I come up with this perfectly obvious solution before? Because I am not very bright.)
Will I get all that done before the hard launch? I honestly don't know. There are only two days left, after all, and that's not a lot of time. I need to prioritize; I'll get the migration done, and should be able to handle updating the old blog posts, and testing the Public Wongery, but I'm not sure how many articles I'll get written or edited. I guess I'll just do as many as I can.
D minus two days and counting...