Programming and Long-Term Strategy

[Azrael]

This is where I solicit programmers and people willing to go out and find programmers to assist with the site. I've got one potentiality among my own contacts, but he's taken himself off a similar project previously - I don't think he wants to take this on without help.

If we don't get progress on this front, most likely we wind up just being some random forum without a very cool front page.

Over the long term, this is where we could be headed:

(Reposted from private)

Long term goals:

-Catchy name, URL, and getting off the university server.
-Commercialize the site for sustainability. and profit.
-Front-page content. One area that I think there is GREAT room for improvement upon in the MTG world is information synthesis. There's any number of ways that the current major websites, Ugly Sally, SCG, TCG, Wizards, Channel Fireball, are completely failing at synthesizing the
information that magic players are looking for into a single convenient location.
-Find volunteers and additional personnel to assist with graphic design, coding, and website updating. We're probably thinking teenagers to college age personnel, given MTG's demographics, and they've got plenty of time to toss our way if we give them reason. Wages would be something we want to try to avoid, but tossing them semi-expensive gifts, giving them a voice in management and a personal stake in the site and the venture, possibly some kind of informal ownership stake in any eventual profits. Ugly Sally was built off the backs of volunteer labor investing back into a community they love - no reason we couldn't do the same, while also taking the time to actually say thanks in a meaningful way.

Things we could do better than other people:

Traffic equals potential profit. None of the current major MTG websites are adequately harnessing the traffic that they do have, or making an attempt to understand how to truly
maximize it. (I have a first-hand vantage point on that, having briefly performed some consulting work for TCGplayer's website, aside from writing there)

*Start by bringing all the features that an MTG player is likely to want to use, in a single stop shopping location that makes this the only major website that a MTG player needs to go to, and the most convenient by far. Expand into other games and products as is deemed advantageous.

*Online store would be a no-brainer, after a sufficient level of traffic is produced. Online stores, if they have a sufficiently comprehensive inventory, also draw in substantial traffic in their own right. Physical store partner or branch would likely be necessary, to gain access to the economies of scale that Wizards offers to brick and mortar entities through their distribution model. I may be able to acquire some of the necessary capital to get that launched. Kjin's expertise may be invaluable, if he's interested. Location of a physical store, and trustworthy
personnel interested in running it, are major question marks for me. Personally, I know there are plenty of people who would love to work at magic shops, and could be trusted to do it, but I don't know them, and my physical location is oversaturated with game stores.

*Cull recent T8 results and format them into useful gauntlets for people to look at. Standard Gauntlet - Put a resource like this on the front page of a major site, and it's going to attract traffic. Make one for every single format, and you've got a huge draw. It saves magic players an awful lot of time, compared to going through clicking on each major tournament looking for the latest iterations of any given deck.
Example: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=378941

*Visual spoilers, a la Ugly Sally. There's a single, very simple reason that Ugly Sally gets the traffic it pulls in. It provides visual spoilers in a
prominent location, displays them all on a single page so that you don't have to click through successive pages, and updates it faster than anyone else.

*An event calendar. None of the major sites are using one. http://mtgmom.com/

*Social networking, deck sharing and editting, and trading tie-ins. http://deckbox.org/ For bonus points, tie in the trading aspects of the site into a store-front model, with smart ads that search players' want lists. And a real-time chat system, to facilitate trading.

*Forum pruning. Ugly Sally mods fail in an awful lot of ways, but in terms of having an incredibly active moderation force keeping an eye on the forums and striving to make them legible, they really excel. There's a reason Ugly Sally's forum communities are the most successful and most popular of any MTG website bar none, despite their high level of suck. Balance
that with people who don't have such a hair-trigger on the post infraction button, and you've got a good selling point.

*Electronic Booster drafting. http://draft.bestiaire.org/index.php

*A more effective search engine for MTG cards. Starcity has an excellent design in terms of the fields you can search under - but their database is limited to searching only for the cards that they have in stock as a store, so you can't rely on it fully to view cards. Other databases, such as magiccards.info and gatherer, don't have as many options.

Instead, what would be preferable is a view that requires less scrolling and clicking than the current iterations, but with legible text. You'd also want to keep a MTGS-style view of each edition available for easy access and perusal. For bonus points, add buttons to make each edition organizable/filterable.

*RSS article feeds to leech off the talent and article writing of
other sites. We don't need or want to compete with other websites in a bidding war for pro player writers - we can just copy them when they're published and consolidate the major articles from SCG, Channel Fireball, TCGPlayer, and Wizards, in a single spot.

- Optional - Put some amount of the profits, potentially a very large degree of them, to a worthy cause, if the profit margin grows high enough to cover it while compensating people for their time. It's a lot of work we're talking about, but if it does pay off, I'd feel good knowing that it eventually went towards something meaningful. It also gives people a reason to volunteer their time, here.

- Business formation - As a lawyer, I have a limited amount of experience with putting together a business and running it, and I can take point on handling management, formation, taxation, accounting, and legal issues generally. The critical need that's holding me back is finding enough technical personnel I can trust to implement the above and get the
concept rolling.

[jonnyjonski]

I think the way TCGPlayer does their cards sales is probably the best direction to strive for. They don't have a store, real or online, but they do show what proven reliable sellers are offering. This would be the best way to get the ball rolling on that front. I think Thrillo has the most respect when it comes to fronting the online sales. We could also provide links to sellers that aren't specifically site affiliated. Not sure how that will work, but it's a step I guess.

[ein]

Az, this is a great vision list! Sadly, I don't know anyone who can program.

Also, one this that has plagued every magic forum I've ever been a part of (MT, MTGS, GG, MTGR) is that the front page starts out interesting, but rapidly dies off as people come just to post on the forums. We need to devise a better way to make the information that is available on the front page as obvious (though unobtrusive) as possible on the forum side. MTGS has that wimpy bar where everything is listed, but who uses that except to click on the spoiler?

Maybe a taller bar like that with 'ads' for the front page content? Something, anything that will draw the eye to the additional content that we provide over and above that found on other sites. Devoting some screen real estate to tying in the 'repository' aspect of the site will be important in *not* becoming
another dead front page with active forums.

[admin]

Good.

These last days have been hectic for me. I've been trying to do my best and improve what people see as not well executed.

Insofar I think the biggest achievements are:

- A decent number of diverse and cool looking forum skins
- A mobile skin that automatically switches on when a mobile device is used (this is big)
- A decent smiley list (Lord that took forever)
- Fixing some stuff like opening links in a new page, some quick reply fixes, removing defaulr Re: in title replyes, removing the reirect pages, additional BBCode.

So, what are the showstoppers I have to take care of? There is some urgency because once this site is known we risk a large influx of people. We need to have something that interests them and encourages them to stay.

[imopen2]

i know a couple guys who are rather good at programming but neither play magic and they would probably want to be compensated. if it comes to it i can ask them if they are interested.


great list btw, AZ. i love the idea of electronic drafting as well as the event calendar and article leeching. the latter two are rather simple and could be very useful

[Yannaria]

Maybe we could have a real time post updater on the front page on the Right. That way people could read articles or data content and still be in touch with various forums. Like you could select "view posts from Mafia" and it would show the most recent post in the mafia subforum, and update when another one is posted.

Is this doable?

[Azrael]

i know a couple guys who are rather good at programming but neither play magic and they would probably want to be compensated. if it comes to it i can ask them if they are interested.


great list btw, AZ. i love the idea of electronic drafting as well as the event calendar and article leeching. the latter two are rather simple and could be very useful

I'd like to see what other people are able to bring to the table, but can you pick their brains on what programming languages they're fluent with, which they would tend to use, rate of compensation, and get some ballpark estimates on difficulty, and time to complete each of the features we're talking about?

I've also dropped a line to Paz over at GG, to see if he has any interest or
recommendations.

[Zionite]

i know a couple guys who are rather good at programming but neither play magic and they would probably want to be compensated. if it comes to it i can ask them if they are interested.


great list btw, AZ. i love the idea of electronic drafting as well as the event calendar and article leeching. the latter two are rather simple and could be very useful

I'd like to see what other people are able to bring to the table, but can you pick their brains on what programming languages they're fluent with, which they would tend to use, rate of compensation, and get some ballpark
estimates on difficulty, and time to complete each of the features we're talking about?

I've also dropped a line to Paz over at GG, to see if he has any interest or recommendations.

Unfortunately I gave up my programmer hat for a multimedia one. Videos, images, and writing.

[Manders]

I think atlseal, Ecophagy, E_P, and Seppel are all pretty knowledgeable with programming as well.

[Glimyrpost]

Maybe we could have a real time post updater on the front page on the Right. That way people could read articles or data content and still be in touch with various forums. Like you could select "view posts from Mafia" and it would show the most recent post in the mafia subforum, and update when another one is posted.

Is this doable?

If possible, its rather hard, and requires some very low level access to databases for the necessary ajax stuff.

If needed, I have html, css, and php capabilities, but they are basic at best. In short, I won't screw anything up, but I won't make anything beautiful either, I guess I could be an interim tech if needed. (especially since this skin is awful >.<)

[admin]

Hello Glimyrpost and welcome to our forums!

We made quite some efforts regarding the skins. If you go to your user control panel -> board preferences you can try some other ones.

If you have improvements you would like to bring to the skins, we are happy to accept your help. Azrael has a solid roadmap delineated, so he would be the go-to guy for this.