Please List Your Website

[Andrew Armstrong]

Hey all,

At the very least I want to keep up on what sites are being created.
Please post here your site name, description, aims and URL. There being
more then one "The Home of the Underdogs" branded site will get
confusing but I'd not mind knowing them all.

Also, some people have been having issues with places like wikipedia
listing only one site, and people reverting any changes made. I'm not
going to delve into the depths of Wikipedia politics, but if you are
doing this please stop. All the sites should be listed as rebuilding
efforts - in perhaps a year it might be more wise to clean it up, but at
the moment I have seen no complete working site with all the
functionality working and download links available, so why is it that
some people think one is more valid then another? It's petty and wrong,
and not at all in the spirit of this revival group.

At some point I'd like to sort some sort of snapshot of non-game files
(so, more complete zips of game covers, gamebooks, site art and HTML)
that people have collected if at all possible. Please put down if you
are able to help with this - I might as well not bother scraping mirrors
and now-partially-completed sites for the same material. If anyone wants
to export a SQL database (with whatever alterations they've made
documented) for this too, that'd be useful. While it will be good if
sites are updated in the future, getting the raw data saved at the
Internet Archive is a priority for me.

Andrew

[Acharis]

http://HomeOfTheUnderdogs.net/

Goals: to preserve the look, feel, spirit and functionality of the old
HotU without preserving its disavantages. Maybe more later, but first
all basic functionality must be restored.

Help: I can provide database in a simple format (no alterations made
at the moment, so it is the original data). I think I might be able to
provide future updates as well, since I can easily convert the data
back to a format very similar to the original .xls file, so it should
be easy to integrate into other projects/frontends. I'm also
organising some community based "fixing" of the game data, but it will
take a while.

[Andrew Armstrong]

SQL might be more appropriate for a database export, XLS is pretty horrible (proprietary etc.), and usually needs converting at least to a CSV file first. :) Thanks for the offer, noted.

Andrew

[Acharis]

I meant that I can export database in a similar way the original .xls
file was stored. There are 48 fields in the games table for all the
fields in the original file (stored in the same order), and 2
additional fields for rating & vote count (once these are retrieved),
so the export to any other project should be easy (since all projects/
sites had to retrieved the data in a similar style at least once from
the original file anyway).

[Walter]

http://hotu.pratyeka.org/

Description:
 - multilingualised backend
 - fast platform (lighttpd/memcached)
 - web-based translation platform available
 - not hung up on the 'home of the
   underdogs' name

Aims:
 - to produce the best archive of historical games
   on the internet
 - to provide a space for a community to re-form
   arond the project
 - to decentralise new content management
   (either through wikis, through peer-approval of
   submissions, or some similar mechanism)
 - hopefully to extend the platform to include
   additional, 'DOS-era' nostalgia such as
   documentary materials, surveys + interviews
 - to provide useful 'how to run' information
   against modern machines, for example DOSBox
   configurations and/or linux distribution-specific
   packages.

Regarding non-game files, I am happy to share
everything I've found, which is simply the complete
rip of the itarium.ch mirror and the boxshots/
gamebooks archive on the files section of this group.

I'm happy to export my version of the SQL DB but
it's still got issues at the moment, it'd probably be
best to wait awhile until these are resolved.

PS: I agree that Wikipedia should be left alone
      for now.

- Walter

[Lord_Pall]

Http://www.hotud.org
Http:///www.home-of-the-underdogs.net
Http:///www.home-of-the-underdogs.com
Http:///www.home-of-the-underdogs.org

Description:
-User expandable dataset for Home of the Underdogs
- Downloads and Uploads added (partial download set)
- User reviews, comments, forums and submissions
- Scalable and distributed to work with bandwidth load.

Aims:
- To provide acccess to the database of games from the original site
- To allow near infinite expansion by the community in a simple and
understandable fashion
- to grow far beyond the static dataset represented by earlier
versions of the site.