Good Site Managing

[Knyfe]

There are so many things that go into making awesome websites. This tutorial is basically for beginners, but maybe, just maybe, someone else might be able to learn from it.

Introduction

Three very important things go into making a website:

• Coding
• Members
• Community

They are all equally important and essential to any successful website. And so, unless you want one without the maximum amount of features, you MUST have something GOOD of all of these. Otherwise you won't really be doing all that you COULD do for your website. There are many other steps, smaller, less important ones, but steps all the same that you can probably figure out yourself, from experience, and from instinct. (Well, maybe not instinct. Instincts don't work with computers. But I can't find any other way to put it.)

Coding

No one's going to code your site for you (unless you pay them, usually). If you have zero experience with PHP (or HTML), you might want to try MyAdopts before tackling the actual script. MyAdopts is a good adoptables site host and uses the old Rusnak Adoptables script, but you can't edit the script with MyAdopts. Once you get good at MyAdopts; get the feel of the script and blah blah blah, then move on to Mysidia coding.

Kaeliah's Basic PHP & MySQL Tutorial is very informative and a lot of people learned a lot from it. Skim it, read a paragraph, or read it top to bottom, I don't care. Just try it out a little.

I hardly know ANYTHING about PHP, but I can still figure out the script. (And it has those little tips and bits hidden throughout the code.) Honestly, I bet if you just knew basic HTML you could make a site from the script. Experiment! Don't be afraid to mess up! Don't be afraid of a huge mass of coding. We all were, once or twice in our lives. Good sites take DETERMINATION and LOTS OF TIME to finish. You can't do it in one afternoon, and you can't do it without muttering "%*#$@!" once or twice. At least, I can't.

Members

Get members, control your members, like your members. Simple as that. But it's not that simple.
You must have basic skills, rules, etc., to control your members. You can't be too harsh, and DEFINITELY not too soft. You have to be friendly and welcoming to your members, but you can't tell them to "read the rules or face a ban." You'll get members staying for your game, not you, on your site.

Okay, that sounds kind of weird. But you don't want members staying just for the sake of playing on your website. You want them to talk to you and like you. It sounds like a lot of haves and don'ts and musts, but really, it's not that hard. You don't have to be a born leader to be a good leader. Don't let members mess you up. Your site, your decisions. Members can help, but they can't control your site. Don't let that happen.

Community

I shall now use a somewhat stupid example.
You know on CreatureBreeder? It's kind of boring, right, if you don't talk to people and stuff (it's boring on your site too without a good community and members).
Well, that's why you need a community. For FUN! Add a forum! (A website's not a website without a forum.) Add a role-play site! (Role-play is really popular this time period :P) Add whatever you can, and always be open to suggestions.

So make sure you have some of these very basic things for your website. Seriously. This stuff is essential, and I wouldn't post this tutorial if I hadn't spent a half hour making it because a lot of this stuff is pretty obvious. But I don't feel like erasing this topic because I worked so hard on it so yeah . . .

[Hall of Famer]

A very helpful guide Knyfe. With Kaeliah possibly adding her stuff to Mys v1.2.0 this or next week, I will be writing a few tutorials for PHP coding. They aint really hard to learn though, the difficulty is how to make good use of what you learn.

Upcoming PHP Tutorials:
1. Basic PHP: Variables/Constants, Operators, Logic and Other basic syntax.
2. Conditional Branches: If...else, Switch...case and more.
3. Loops: While loop, Do...while loop and for loop(the foreach loop will be introduced in array section).
4. Functions: Global functions and create/call user defined functions.
5. Arrays: Number-indexed arrays, Associative arrays and Array loops.

[Knyfe]

Thanks! I could learn a lot from a lot of tutorials, especially PHP.

[shiann]

If it's an adoptable's site, a few more things go into it than that- Good art, explore pages, blah blah blah, etc, etc,- But for just any site in general, great tutorial, Knyfe. :)

[Hall of Famer]

Well yeah, thats so true Shiann. Still, the problem is that it is rather hard for a site owner to be able to do everything, programming features, spriting/styling and designing explore pages. A script like this is can definitely help aspiring adoptables site builders who are more of artists to overcome their difficulties in coding. Dont you think so?

[Knyfe]

Yesh, those in my opinion are very important but somewhat less important details. I've owned many forums and other sites so I'm not as good as making adoptables sites, mostly because I sort of fail at art. :| Also I hate putting the work and stuff into the explore pages, etc.

[shiann]

Agreed, that's why I'm using the script. Because I want to get better at coding, and maybe the new site would help me with my art as well. My art definitely has some room for improvement... LOL. Anyways, it's still a great tutorial, defineately will help some people.

[Hall of Famer]

Well yeah, I dont understand why someone rated it as one star(horrible), a little bit rude I have to say.

I hope you gals both get better at PHP programming. I will continue to write PHP tutorials(the next one will introduce PHP functions) and post them in this subforum, hope it helps more and more people here.

[Knyfe]

Thanks, and I'm sure it will because your tutorials help me. :)

[shiann]

Thank you HoF! :3 Your tutorials are AMAZING.