Tau_Cetacean
so, I auto-renewed on November 16th, and given the current state of the website, I think we're getting ripped off at $40/year and low-functionality website and tech support going AWOL for months at a time... best case scenario of course is the new "we're getting everything under control" message from Kaleidoscope is legit, but I think one of my New Year's Resolutions is to pack my bags and prepare to bug out
to that end, wanted to sound out what tips people might have for how to do that as painlessly as possible (context: have thousands of wiki pages... also I'm a science geek working for an IT and Engineering-oriented company, so this might be a good excuse as any to accelerate my cross-training and learn some more coding)
worse case scenario: the site goes dark tomorrow because Kaleidoscope Global just ups and pulls the plug on us
recovery option: take the .xml file the current backup feature spits out... parse it back into a thousand text files, copy and paste them into a new platform
current action: making regular backups of my campaigns with the current feature, resolved to bug out if the backup feature becomes yet another broken feature on this site
needs to do: 1) figure out what the best way to approach automating reading the xml file and parsing it into separate text files equivalent to the old wiki pages, 2) figure out another venue which uses textile OR figure out best way to batch convert textile into something more widely used...
status: have tested out desktop wiki software (Zim), it doesn't do textile, tried desktop version of GitHub (which is mainly a software dev collaboration tool, but has a wiki functionality associated with it and speaks textile and has a desktop version... limited luck so far, but better than a GitHub competitor which says it reads textile but when I tested it out, not so much)
medium case scenario: the site continues to have poor functioning by November 2016
desired course of action: find a more civilized way to save and migrate everything... meaning probably learning some client-side scripting and writing my own code to pull every single wiki page off?
fall back method: manually doing this. ugh. like I said: thousands of wiki pages
best case scenario: the site's functionality gets fixed and have confidence is restored
desired course of action: probably still want to learn the right client-side scripting so I can *upload* batch generated pages (from offline Bash scripting) to my wiki, not just download them as described above
Comments
Follow me on Twitter, as that will not go down. @GodRebuilt
Just trying to help out.
Just trying to help out.
I've certainly had my fill of this crap. Even considering contacting Kickstarter about the unfulfilled goals. Maybe even a LAWYER (*GASP*)
Keelah Se'lai,
Keryth
"Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
"2013 Campaign of The Year":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/2013-coty-shadows-over-new-york/
"Campaign of the Month July 2013":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/shadows-over-new-york-julys-campaign-of-the-month/
I simply transferred my stuff to OneNote and granted my players access to edit the document. They work on it online (or offline if they add OneDrive) on their PCs, their tablets, or their phones and it syncs up all the changes. OneNote and OneDrive are free so it was a no risk test for my group.
Basically you create sections based on OP main sections (adventure logs, wiki, characters, etc) and pages within those sections. Within a couple minutes you have an OP Onenote.
Carl
They are among us!
XCom: Defiance - Campaign of the Month November 2016
Thanks. I'll take a look at OneNote.
- Tau
By limiting the resolution of any fancy pictures, I can duplicate my OP wiki's information and stay at the free level.
The sync between my home computer and the web means I only have to type things once.
I would rather use OP for the main campaign (more pictures, customization, forums etc) but Evernote is working spectacularly as a backup site. That I can also access from other devices.
Unconquered Kingdoms, July 2016 CotM
https://preview.onedrive.com/bonus/
You can read about that here
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3014572/cloud-storage/microsoft-apologizes-for-riling-onedrive-users-restores-some-free-storage-space-on-request.html
I do find Evernote is superior to OneNote in clipping stuff from the web, but OneNote is superior when creating content from scratch.
They are among us!
XCom: Defiance - Campaign of the Month November 2016
Evernote is pretty seamless, but I'm not married to it or anything...
Unconquered Kingdoms, July 2016 CotM
I think both are great products.
They are among us!
XCom: Defiance - Campaign of the Month November 2016
Just trying to help out.
They are among us!
XCom: Defiance - Campaign of the Month November 2016
If the site REALLY did come to an end, I'd just start again.
twiggyleaf
CURRENT CAMPAIGN: "Mysteria":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/mysteria - set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.
Previous CotM Aug 2012: "Shimring":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shimring
"I met a traveller from an antique land....."
CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.
Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign
Inner Council Member
twigs
"I met a traveller from an antique land....."
CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.
Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign
Inner Council Member
Keelah Se'lai,
Keryth
"Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
"2013 Campaign of The Year":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/2013-coty-shadows-over-new-york/
"Campaign of the Month July 2013":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/shadows-over-new-york-julys-campaign-of-the-month/
In any case I found a tool that will let you download your entire site - layout and everything. It can't get the images for some reason because they are 'rehosted' away from the 'portal domain name' (as best as I understand it). Since I am most concerned about my data (text) that is what I care the most about. The images I can redo. And the funny thing it wasn't all the images that caused this issue.
It took me about an hour to download my campaign (16 mb) - which includes install time, figuring out how it works, and trying it a few times.
"Free Download Manager":http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/
I, killervp, personally have not tried it yet due to the craziness of the holidays, but trust the person who sent it to me.
Just trying to help out.
http://www.epicwords.com/ - Seems to be in a better but worse shape than here. It works, which is a plus. But the last time the dev posted was towards the beginning of the year. But you can see that he is active, so not really sure there.
https://www.tavern-keeper.com/ - not as feature filled as OP, and it's having problems too. It's supposed to be going OS and the site going on maintenance, but why get on a ship with an uncertain future?
https://www.cityofbrass.io/ - seems the closest to OP, and they've been pretty consistent in updates and functionality. Thread on coming from OP is located at https://symposium.cityofbrass.io/t/coming-from-obsidian-portal/470
http://roleplayingtips.com/gmm-tools2/ - it's not really the same, though it is pretty cool. It's a Campaign Logger to be used during play, rather than a site for your campaign.
http://www.scabard.com/ - Admin has been plugging along for a while now, and is very involved in the development of the tool. Very bare bones - text based for the most part. But it's easy to put in your details because of the interface lack, and it is under constant development.
I've also always used PmWiki on my local server, but haven't really wanted to keep up with the admin to that extent and customizations. I do it for others, but found when I was doing it for myself, I spent more time on it than I probably should. So having others deal with that aspect is worth money to me. But not when they're not responsive to even simple tickets.
If anyone else has any other hosted alternatives, let me know!
for actual games... like my D&D campaign that's showing signs of life... need to look at all the places you've listed (thanks!!!) and get something set up before advertising to players (I've yet to have a player-ready site on OP, and I'm assuming players would encounter the same constant 500-errors problem we do, so have little motivation to set up a wiki for them to not be able to navigate through)
Just trying to help out.
_~Mae_
~Mae
CotM Selection Committee
Those that are using Evernote, there is another alternative for you to make publishing a bit easier -
http://postach.io/
See http://help.postach.io/ for information as to how it's done, and what it entails.
And the limits on evernote are based on how much you're paying.
Basic (Free) - 60MB/mo
Plus (2.99/mo or 24.99/year) 1TB/mo
Premium (5.99/mo or 49.99/year) 10 TB/mo.
Note that is only upload per month. You don't have a storage limit- you have an upload limit/month.
If you are involved in using Evernote, I recommend Johnn Four's excellent class on Evernote for RPGs. It changed my paradigm for using Evernote.
https://roleplayingtips.com/evernote-mini-course/
Evernote seems to be the way for me (as a backup, not my main site) and any hints are helpful.
Since at the beginning, all I am doing is saving all my hard work in text, I never run into the upload limit.
Unconquered Kingdoms, July 2016 CotM
Unconquered Kingdoms, July 2016 CotM
If you're using Chrome, click the little shield in the address bar, and click allow. Not sure how to do the same in other browsers, but there should be something obvious that allows the same.