By jluster on

I'll have to explain this one. A few months ago I set out, with a friend, to write a guild management solution. Since he was to do most of the coding, we settled on my third choice - Ruby and Rails. The site came along nicely, integrating Blizzard's "Armory" (a player database which returns XML so it can be easily parsed) a raid (10 and more player quests and dungeon crawls) planner, and much more, like a recipe database, etc.

My friend got called to serve in the heat of Iraq and is on his third stop-loss extension, so the project kind of simmered. A few weeks ago, I spent a few days talking about game design and game theory at a conference, and one participant in the audience asks "so, what would YOU use for a Guild Website?". "Why, Drupal of course," I answered. He called me out on that one, praised other solutions I found less than suitable, and it soon turned out he was, in fact, trying not to find a solution but to shill his, built on a $140 forum backend and adding his $99 "guild" pack on top.

Nothing gets my ire up more, and so I decided to rewrite the code we'd done in Ruby and C into PHP and make the site myself.

The first results are visible at http://rhi.pwnstyle.com - the Armory module and some other goodies are unfortunately not available as a demo until I clear this part with my guild mates (if they want non-members to be able to see that data), but you should get an idea of what we were shooting for, and a clear proof that a guild site can be made and managed perfectly with all Open Source and especially with Drupal.

The site is on 5.x at the moment, for ACL and some other things that I'll have to either wait out or write myself (but why re-invent the wheel?), and based on the Deco theme with slight modifications. If there's enough interest, I'll take some screenshots of the guild member management, guild bank management, and recipe/skill management modules as well as the event/signup stuff that powers our (usually nefarious) plans.

Oh, and if you're looking for a guild in which more than half of the members speak code - there's an Application form on the site :)

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

CelebrateMediocrity’s picture

CelebrateMediocrity commented

It looks good man. Nice work!

illepic’s picture

illepic commented

I can't believe I didn't find this post earlier. Very well done site. You, like us, went for that wonderful Deco theme: www.downfallguild.org. We're still in the process of modifying the theme to suit our tastes. I'm dying for some better WoW integration than just the Itemstats rollovers. I'll be apping to your site to poke around a little. Well done, sir, I salute. EVEN if you're horde ;)

illepic’s picture

illepic commented

And, er, just so it's out there, I just moved away from some $140 forum software to Drupal just this month. I've never been happier.

iMountain’s picture

iMountain commented

That's some great stuff you're doing with your site. One of our clients runs another WoW site www.ArenaJunkies.com and I think they run some $140 forum software :) What is it with Warfcraft players and being adept at writing up code?

Great job on the site and I liked your "Sexism in Warcraft" article.

saitanay’s picture

saitanay commented

nice site :-)

Lios’s picture

Lios commented

I'm also hosting a WoW site on Drupal (http://www.chaos-inc.eu) and i'm looking for a raidtracker. We're going to use PHPRaider to subscribe to raids, but you can't add notes on players in there and what i really want is to register if they were on time, prepared, on standby, etc. as well, not just have them subscribe.

Do you have a module like that? And if not, any chance you, or someone else, could help make one?

daizy’s picture

daizy commented

Awesome looking site!

sjonkel’s picture

sjonkel commented

I am looking into setting up a guild site using Drupal and would really love to see some more of this! Please post screenshots of the other stuff!

gtaniko’s picture

gtaniko commented

Not a fan of WOW myself BUT I really like the site, Big banners that stretch across the page just look great very well done

Grebog’s picture

Grebog commented

The site looks real nice. If you decide to release your modules you created to handle some of the guild items, I am sure I am not the only one that would be interested.

pnts’s picture

pnts commented

I really like what you've done with your site, and the MacoDB is a great idea. I'd *love* to see what you've done with the armory if your guildies ever approve. Ditto for the other mods you have, GB, recipe/skills, and event sign-ups. Our guild could *really* use such things.

For the Horde!