Hey everyone,

Ever since I put up the current incarnation of http://modhistory.fliggerty.com it has beset me and those who use it with problems. Sometimes people can't upload, sometimes they can't download, and it's always way slow.

So I am doing a complete ground-up rebuild on this, coding it entirely myself. As such, there will be enormous flexibility as far as features go that aren't present with a pre-built script like I was using. Because of this, I am taking suggestions and looking for input.

What type of features are important to you in such a site? Remember that the purpose of MMH is to be a repository for all of those mods out there that don't otherwise have an internet home.

Thanks guys!

--Fligg

Well, this will be an indispensable resource and I commend you for taking it on, but buckle up because you're going to need a couple of things to make it truly useable:

1.) a sophisticated keyword search engine, much like the PES one, so that you can search for all or part of the mod name, an author's name, or a couple of keywords like 'skooma' or 'Dagoth Ur'.
2.) the ability to sort all headers alphabetically (or numerically in the case of dates, etc.)

In short, a mini PES system might be what's demanded because one could also suggest instituting a rating system (which could then be included as another sortable header).
For the sake of simplicity, under the 'Mods' category, you might also want to create two (or more) separate categories - one dealing strictly with categories as found in the game (alchemy, armor, dialogue, ingredients, repair items, etc.) and one or more for categories outside of the game proper (MGE, Modder's Resources, Splash Packs, Total Conversions, etc).

Good luck. It looks like this could be really great.

Some ideas: a decent search is a must. At least searchable by mod name, author and description; ideally also by archive file name.

Ability to flag an entry as being a possible duplicate for the MMH moderators to investigate. When I was uploading a couple of weeks ago I tried to ensure I didn't upload something that was already there, however with the different filenames that sites like Euro-Morrowind forced it's possible there're multiple copies of the same file up there.

When I uploaded files I entered what I thought was the mod's birth date. I thought this was a great thing to have but it's not displayed in the download form, which is a shame.

The ability for people to suggest external mirrors would be good, I'm sure there's some files on MMH that're on PES or on smaller author-owned sites, and I was told about one I'd uploaded.

As to mod categories I think what's there now is good enough. Although from memory there are differences between the categories for "Unprocessed" and "Processed" mods. Just come up with a category set and regardless of how detailed it is there'll always be mods that end up in Miscellaneous. Oh, and as this is about Morrowind mod history how about a category of "Awful Daedric Armor Retextures"? There was a load of those around back in the day...

Getting MMH searchable via ES Search 2 would be wonderful

I like the idea of the moderator's reports (I assume it's not automated) for GMSTs and dirty references that appear at the bottom of each mod's entry. I seem to remember some talk of using tes3cmd, automatically creating a tes3cmd-cleaned version of the mod in the archive (not replacing the original) would be a nice idea.

When opening up a category it should be sortable on each column (currently Name, Author, Date, Filesize, # of Downloads) perhaps also with the ability to apply filters to those columns

Some kind of "mods uploaded" News page would be cool too. Some kind of RSS feed showing new, approved mods and updated mods. I would've thought a once a day script to identify changes in the last 24 hours could be quite doable... And then include the feed in http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1033790-ghf-presents-tesfeed/page__view__findpost__p__14976310__fromsearch__1, of course

Finally, fixing the things I reported http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1119885-khalazzas-mods/page__view__findpost__p__16522089 and in subsequent posts would be great, and you've already mentioned that so I assume that's on the cards.

OK, that's what I've got for now. No idea how possible or feasible any of that is.

I would like to thank you again for hosting MMH. It's an invaluable resource and much appreciated by all who sail in her. And thanks for taking the time to even consider updating it

Oh, btw, Fligg. You should update your Profile here, your website is still shown as "http://www.cody.erekson.org"

Thanks for the suggestions!

These are the things that are important to me with this project, and so will definitely be part of it:

-- Comprehensive search. I will make this is a thorough and complete as possible. I will also ensure it is able to be indexed by ES Search.

-- Community input. Any users will have the ability to upload screenshots, add comments, suggest details to add to the description, etc. I will NOT add a ratings system. Users will also be able to upload mods easily.

-- Simple and informative interface; beautiful design (I think I got that one nailed already. )


The fantastic thing here is that I am building it entirely from scratch. So I can add anything that I wish. I love of an RSS feed with recent changes, that will be a must. One of the things that I never liked but also never resolved with the current MMH is the fact that it doesn't have any way inbuilt for me to put out announcements or other information. So I will certainly include an announcement center on the front page.

I also got permission from redwoodtreesprite some time ago to duplicate her modder permission database, but make it dynamic and have the ability for anyone to add to it. I was going to add it as part of GHF, but I think it fits better with the concept of MMH. So that will integrated, so that you will be able to see any given permissions for authors when viewing their mods that we have.

The GMST/dirty ref comments on a mod now are a combination of manual effort and automation. I used tes3cmd and tes3lint to process through all of the mods looking for common problems. I haven't yet decided if I feel it's acceptable to offer "cleaned" versions of the mods or not. I feel my role is caretaker of these mods, to preserve and distribute these mods, but not necessarily change. I could decide to offer clean copies as well, but I just haven't decided yet.

(And thanks for the note about the profile link...honestly never even thought about it. :hehe: )

Just a point on the Search thing, I like what's there at the moment as it's possible to enter a search word and it, I believe, searches across all fields (i.e. author, mod name, description). Having that would be a nice idea and then the ability to drill down into just searching specific fields. Kind of like ES Search2 and its Simple and Advanced interfaces.

Yes, I completely agree. As on GHF, I fully intend to have just a simple search that will go through all applicable fields. Then there will also be an advanced search. How advanced, I'm not entirely sure just yet. At a minimum it will have the option to search specific fields.

I agree a search is a must!

Also would there be a way for screenshots to be uplaoded too?

:ahhh: Necromany



If you do rebuilt it, I would like:
A list of recently added mods. Preferably in a defined time period (So that for example I know that the list has all mods added in the last two days, if I parse it once a day I will get all the mods). The RSS style "Last 20" mods isn't that foolproof if 21 mods are added.

Either an interface to access the mods in a defined format or fairly consistent html. (If you for example had the element that the mod name was held in with a id of 'mod_name' and din't change the id if you altered the html it would be great).

Any chance you can add a script library?

Sometimes modders have offered great scripts which are not part of a known or released mod - such a shame to have those go to waste

There are a number of mods that are only available from elricm - which I'm never sure is going to collapse or not - is there anyway you could mirror those ones?

Since you're undecided about to offer a cleaned mod or not. I've a suggestion that should provide a download for Yacoby's http://yacoby.silgrad.com/MW/Mods/escog.htm, which I find extremely easy to use with an effective result of wiping out any dirty GMST's in a mod.

That download could be placed in the download area so that everyone sees it and can do the GMST cleaning for them self.

It would be imho better to have a wiki for that :shrug:

Good morning.

First off, let me thank you for providing this great service. It's a wonderful resource for those of us late to the party, who might otherwise miss out on some of the early work. Yes, some of the first attempts can be sub-par by current standards, but there are quite a few gems there, and often a lot of instructive and interesting work to study.

I think that the previous discussion in this thread is on the money, but I'd like to add a couple of possibilities and see what you think.

1. Relationships - many mods have (effectively) familial relationships, such as specific ancestor/successor mods. A way of linking these mods together would be very useful for historical/research purposes, as well as for relating mods and patches together.

2. Multiple categories - Some mods fall neatly into one category, but many others do not, making categorization harder, and searching less effective. Allowing mods to be assigned to more than one category, possibly with a hierarchy (1. City expansion > 2. Weapons > 3. Clothing) could be very useful.

3. Integrated wiki - With some of these very old mods, collecting the wisdom of the community together would be the best way to get the complete picture. Adding a (potential) wiki link to each mod could offer a way to accumulate this collective knowledge and experience, without relying on the poster and/or admins to be omniscient and do so themselves.

4. Conflict information - If specific known conflicts exist for a mod, including that information (with linkage) in the listing would be invaluable, especially if suggestions for dealing with the problem(s) were also included.

Regarding the issue of offering cleaned mods for download, I would err on the side of caution AND historical accuracy, and leave that up to the user. Provide access to the necessary tools and instructions, and by all means offer (if known) information/warnings on the mod listing about any potential issues/errors, but have the end user do any actual cleaning. Not all "bugs" are created equal after all.

Rochndil, who (hopefully) got the last bugs hammered out of his massively-modded Morrowind install last night...

Just my 2c. Screenshots are very useful. What I would find valuable is knowing if the mod needs prior releases of itself (in which case those need to be available) and/or other mods or is the release complete all by itself. How compatible is the mod with the patch mods that are recommended these days? What other mods is it not compatible with, if that info is available.

It would also be nice if the mods could be packaged for consistency in where they're decompressed.

As an infrequent mod player, the suggestion to provide "clean" mods sounds nice if feasible. I'm not arguing against archiving for "historical accuracy", just that the audience of the project probably will narrow the more effort a less than savvy (infrequent) player has to go through in order just to try the mod, much less decide if they want to continue using it.

As I said, just my 2c.

John

Yacoby, I've given quite a bit of thought about how it can best be crawled. The new site is very heavy on ajax; category displays and mod lists are generated and displayed on the fly. So I think the best way to have it search-indexable is with the good old-fashioned xml sitemap. I can certainly generate specific sitemaps for you, such as those for newly added mods. It really would be quite simple, and we wouldn't have to fret about messing up your crawl template if the site gets a facelift at any point in time.

To be perfectly honest, I already scrapped the idea of multiple categories. At least for now. It's been hard enough getting and keeping people to work on putting the mods we have now into single categories. There are still 4000+ mods that need to be categorized. My priority right now is to simply make the site clean, fast, and useable.

I do love the idea of having a wiki though. I've not worked extensively with the code for any major wikis, but I'll certainly look into it. I can't imagine it would be hard to have a dynamic page creation system.

For all of the mods that we have labeled as dirty or having other errors, there will be a tooltip popup thing that will direct to the tools and/or tutorials to clean. I am not going to modify the mods.

And yes, a detailed search system is a major priority.

I would also like to say "thanks, Fliggerty!"

I think the "related mods" idea is important. Whether a requirement, an acknowledgement, or an advertisemant, it's good to see how some mods connect to each other.

When I saw "relationships" suggested, I was going to mention "conflicts" as a type of them. Another relationship is "needs a patch to run with", for when two mods come out and then someone releases a compatibility fix as yet a third mod, rather than including it with one of the two. It would be possible to download the mods, not know about the patch, and have to delete one. A field that points that out would be handy.

Search should allow things like:
-"bitter coast" -ashlands (Showing everything else in the category/categories. Would be useful for texture replacers if you want to go region by region.)
robes -neoliv (Which only works if related mods (including resources) are searchable this way.)
"tel mora" (As opposed to the same words without quotes, this should not bring up a mod connecting Sadrith Mora to Tel Aruhn.)
I feel like I'm stating the obvious, but I remember a huge time sink once when I tried to search somewhere for mods and it ignored what I was telling it to do. I don't remember which site that was, but I remember having to look through pages of barely-related results and maybe even some entire categories.

Also, the ability to search multiple specific categories at once. PES and the Nexus both use drop-down boxes for categories, I'm pretty sure. It means having to redo my search a few times with a different category, or get lots of junk results by searching all categories at once. A list where you can select multiple things with ctrl is better (and could be seen as an easier alternative to putting mods in multiple categories).

I'm pretty sure no one will object if you start uploading cleaned mods, especially if the dirty originals are also available.

Other suggestions are hard to come up with because I'm one of the people that can't download from the site right now. It makes me sad. I am looking forward to the new version.