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Asherons Call: Interview with Eidola of RedBird Community Project
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| Ellen: | Who is the driving force behind the RedBird Community Builder? |
| Eidola: | The entire RedBird project has been created by myself, from scratch... so I am really creator, mother and slave! |
| Ellen: | For those who are not familiar with the RedBird Community Builder, can you tell us what you offer? |
| Eidola: | The core of the RedBird system is an integrated community, and where possible, game integration as well. Though, with the recent changes to AC my integration plugin has broken and will need to be updated once Decal is re-released. I am also working on some integration for WoW as well. Features currently in development include a fully featured events calendar, spell checker, automatic daylight savings adjustments, more administration features plus various tweaks and enhancements. The calendar will be the next "big feature" to be released. In upcoming patches will be a Wikki system to allow custom page generation, eventually with database templating capabilities as well. We also have plans for a full skinning and theming engine to allow full customization of communities... hopefully by years end. |
| Ellen: | How does someone go about getting their guild site set up in the Community? |
| Eidola: | Come visit us at the RedBird Beta Website and visit the General Chatter forum. There is a "How To Apply..." thread there that details how to apply for your own RedBird Community. As a special bonus for Crossroads of Dereth readers, if you mention this article when you apply we will give you one free month of service! Limited time offer, operators are standing by. |
| Ellen: | How customizable are the individual sites? |
| Eidola: | Unfortunately, the look-and-feel of the communities is static for the time-being. If I had the ability to go back in time I would of added the skinning engine first... but then, I did not anticipate things going as far as they have. I am aiming to have a basic skinning engine out by the end of the year to allow communities to change the look-and-feel of their sites. |
| Ellen: | How did you manage to get a .ac domain name!?!? |
| Eidola: | Anyone can buy a domain at http://nic.ac/ for £60, with renewals being £30 per annum. I bought "dereth.ac" because I thought it was perfect for AC allegiances. |
| Ellen: | Why the name RedBird? |
| Eidola: | The name "RedBird" actually came from a book titled "Sea of Glass" by Canadian author Barry Longyear. The novel is set in the future where the geopolitical landscape of North America is quite different then it is now. Families are only allowed to have one child per household, if they have more then one the government takes the child away. These children are then taken to what amounts to an internment camp, where they gain the self-proclaimed nickname of "redbirds" for the red jumpers they wear. The novel focus around one such child and the acquaintances he makes on his journey though the system and life itself. I don't really want to say more, just in case anyone decides to read the book! |
| Ellen: | What inspired you to build this Community? |
| Eidola: | My inspiration came from when I belonged to The Empyrean Guard allegiance many moons ago... We were using one of the popular board systems, unfortunately, the company that ran the boards decided to go crazy with advertising on the "free" boards and it was driving the allegiance members crazy. I remarked one day that I could write a system that was nicer and more integrated then what we were currently using. I was taken up on that challenge and the RedBird project was born. The members of the EG helped get our first server online actually, and they still remain as one of the oldest communities on the RedBird Network! |
| Ellen: | The majority of the sites you host are for Asheron's Call, on the Leafcull Server, was this the mmorpg that you initially intended for RedBird Community Builder to be utilized for? |
| Eidola: | Indeed it was, originally for The Empyrean Guard, then for another allegiance a friend of mine belonged to, then for the Walkers of Legend allegiance which split off from the EG a while back. As word-of-mouth spread I had more and more requests for allegiances wanting a community. This is what really prompted me to see where I could take RedBird and so started the Open Beta program. We do have a couple allegiances from other servers actually, though I believe a majority are from Leafcull simply because that is where RedBird got its start. We are open to anyone from any server, or even any game for that matter, who would like a community. We even have a community for an offline game actually. Now I am working toward making RedBird into a business to host communities for multiple allegiances, guilds, player associations, etc. |
| Ellen: | What would be your top utilized features? Forums? Who's Online? etc |
| Eidola: | I would have to say the forums are probably the most utilized feature as they are the most central part of the communities themselves. I know the other features are also used, but probably not as much as the forums. |
| Ellen: | Have you ever had to remove a site for misconduct? |
| Eidola: | We have never had to remove a site for misconduct! Typically we leave communities to monitor their own members, though we would step in if the community was being used for blatantly illegal things. |
| Ellen: | I see you've just gone into an open beta, what new features does that bring to the sites? |
| Eidola: | Actually, we've been in Open Beta for a while now. My personal life has been in a bit of a turmoil the past couple years, including a cross-continent move, which has hindered development a bit. The good news is that development has continued, albeit slowly, and the new events calendar is undergoing final bug fixes and testing pending a release to the live sites. |
| Ellen: | Now without giving away any secrets, do you have plans to add new features to the sites beyond the beta? |
| Eidola: | Oh yes, even once we reach the "final version" and officially leave beta and launch the RedBird Community Network we will continue to add features, fix any known issues and strive to make the system the best it can be. |
| Ellen: | Has the RedBird Community Builder Fund Raiser really helped to alleviate the costs of bandwidth and server space? |
| Eidola: | Oh yes, the fund-raiser really did help out the RedBird project at a time when it really did need some assistance. The fund-raiser will be ending with the next update as it has served its purpose for now. |
| Ellen: | You obviously have quite a bit of talent when it comes to pulling people together, as well as coding, is this something you do for a living as well? |
| Eidola: | Thank you for the compliment! I have been programming computers since I was a child actually, as the Internet became the "next big thing" I went along for the ride and have had various jobs in various capacities from coder to manager over the years. For now I am trying to turn RedBird into a business so I can eventually work for myself doing something I really enjoy doing. |
| Ellen: | What was the most difficult part of coding this community site? |
| Eidola: | Well that is a tough question... the next prop features automagic daylight savings time adjustment code, which I would have to say has probably been the most troublesome feature to implement thus far. Of course, no sooner do I get the code done then the USA decides to change their daylight savings time... good thing the daylight savings start and end times are in a database table! |
| Ellen: | Where do you see the RedBird Community Builder this time next year? |
| Eidola: | I would like to see the RedBird project up and running as its own business with a network of gaming communities using it. For now, however, we are just trying to get the "core" features coded, tested and online before we can launch anything officially. |
| Ellen: | When you conceived the RedBird Community Builder, did you have any concept of how far it would come? |
| Eidola: | Not even a clue... to be honest I am still amazed at the number of guilds using RedBird, thought I do look forward to future expansion now. |
| Ellen: | Do you think the Asheron's Call Expansion, Throne of Destiny, will bring new interest to the RedBird Community Builder? |
| Eidola: | I do not honestly know, I would hope it would but I guess we will have to wait and see. |
| Ellen: | Would you like to see more sites from other MMORPG's join the community, beyond the many you have listed? |
| Eidola: | Definitely... we are not limiting ourselves to the few we do currently have. Anyone from any game can request a site. We may need to work with a community of a game we don't currently have to make up a nice image for the top of the site, or other integration issues, but we are always more then willing to do this. |
| Ellen: | Now the rumour mill has it, that you've left the land of Dereth. Is this true and what can we do to change your mind? |
| Eidola: | Yes, it is true... one cold morning in Dereth I found a portal to Azeroth and jumped in! I had been playing AC for just over 5 years... I reached level 132 with Solandra, my main, and just didn't see anything exciting in Throne of Destiny to keep me in AC. So I decided it was time to try something new and bought World of Warcraft. It has its own share of bugs, game balance issues and end-game problems. However, I am enjoying the game, which is what matters most I believe. Sadly I doubt you will be able to change my mind about returning to Dereth any time soon, I really think it has run it's course with me... I leave with happy memories of the fun I have had, but all good things must come to an end sometime. |
| And with that, Eidola and I parted, a smile on my face for I had enjoyed our time together and it's always wonderful to see what one person, regardless of the game, can do for members of a community that we all share and love. So I hope you'll take a moment to visit the RedBird Community Builderand start your guild website today! |
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