[Mkguild] Chronological Order

[Kendo Virmir]

On 7/29/07, C. Matthias <jagille3 at vt.edu> wrote:
>
> >Oh, while I've got your attention on the List I wanted to make a
> >suggestion of sorts. It's become kind of awkward to deal with the
> >large number of stories on the Archive. I was wondering if it might
> >make it easier to navigate if we can divide the stories up and put
> >them on separate pages... maybe by date or season, or maybe simply
> >keep it to 25 to 50 story links per page. It can be slightly
> >annoying to have to scroll all the way down that very large list of
> >stories to find the next one I'm on. However, its only a small
> >inconvenience and I'll be happy to deal with it if it proves too
> >difficult to split the stories, or whatever.
> >
> >Just thought I'd mention it.
>
> I think it is important to maintain a full list.  But I think it
> would also be helpful if we split the page up too.  So we could have
> separate story pages, one with the full list, and others with the
> stories broken down into more manageable lists.
>
> Also, I like the idea somebody posted about having specific plot arc
> pages.  There are a bunch of self-contained arcs that would workr
> eally nice if you put all those stories in one place.  While that is
> a significant task, it could be accomplished one at a time.  Plus, if
> any authors who are around want to denote which of their stories fall
> into these arcs, that would make life easier for Virmir. :-)
>

I have sent an email to Dragon de Monsyne asking about getting a MySQL
database set up for us.  Right now all the stories are just listed on
that one static page, which is okay since there's only one page to
update every time there's a new story.  But if we start having
multiple pages with stories on them, things can get ugly really quick
(i.e. the poor archivist has to update five pages to add one story. :)
) But if I have a database to work with, I can do all sorts of nifty
things like:

- Paginated lists (e.g. display 50 stories per page, or even X stories
per page where the reader chooses X)
- Author breakdowns, list all stories by a specific author
- Story arcs:  Each story is part of one or more arc, list all stories
part of arc Y
- Date breakdowns: e.g. list all stories that take place between
December 706 and March 707

Obviously adding all 300+ stories to the database would take some
effort, but it'd be well worth it.  Here's hoping for an affirmative
response from the dragon. :)

-- 
- Virmir
http://virmir.com