Best type of webpage presentation style for our games

[DaFool]

Say I have a game which needs its dedicated webpage. Should I use:

* 1.) Custom html
Pros: Can design site to look EXACTLY how you want it to look
Cons: Very static, and hard to make minor changes.
Conclusion: Best used as a design once then forget website. Perfect for the game you just want to get out there then abandon.

* 2.) Google Sites (formerly Google Pages)
Pros: easy to change, split into subpages
Cons: hard to change the default layouts, couldn't figure out how anonymous posters can comment since it seems that any changes to the website (even for a mere comment post) has to be through a contributing member of the website.
Conclusion: Best when you have lots of information for your product, at the sacrifice of presentation, and also a little bit of interactivity with the audience.

* 3.) Blogspot / wordpress
Pros: Able to archive well since blogs have good tabs on history. The ultimate in interacting with the audience through comments
Cons: The newest posts / pages will push older ones to the background, making management of the most important content a nightmare, unless you tag everything like crazy.
Conclusion: Best if you're already a well-known artist with a following so you can have people to follow your progress during development of the game. However if you're not sure if you'll even complete it or if you're an unknown, it might be better to just surface out of the blue with a publish-and-forget style release.

What I want is the flexibility of all three... does such a thing exist for us who don't want to program scripts from scratch? I want the bold permanence of a static html page that seems to say "I won't disappear or go dormant like blog #1867693", I want the sense of 'customer care' that a webpage with sidebar announcements have, and I definitely want the anonymous commenting capability that a blog has for that instant feedback.

Currently, people with blogs just use their blogs to announce their games, and the comments go there as well. People who don't have blogs use static html or a simple googlepages-like site for the main website, then use LSF for the comments. Those with the most basic games just upload directly to LSF. There are a few people who set up their own dedicated domains complete with forums, but that seems more for commercial or 'epic' (i.e. not-finished) games.

Actually, a blog is most flexible, but I just hate the messy and generic layouts of blogs. Is there a widget that can insert just a tiny comment section?

[sciencewarrior]

Since you are serious about this game, I suggest getting your domain; cheapnames.com is my favorite domain registrar, with good price and great reputation. Paying just a few bucks a month for a blog account, you can, besides using your domain, have many more options to control the layout. This is probably the most cost-effective, elbow-grease-free option.

Even if you decide to buy a shared hosting account, I strongly encourage you to learn how you can use Wordpress as a content management system. You can create standalone pages and add links to them in your navbar, instead of limiting yourself to chronological posts. Search for "wordpress cms" and you'll find all kinds of useful tips.

[Raide]

I don't know much about webpage selection, but I have seen many use of wiki for this purpose. What do you think about it? Have you check its ability yet?

[yummy]

I'd say, put a general website for your circle then open a section there for your game.
It'd look more professional (if you aim at something that looks professional) or at least more organized. Plus, you'd be able to reuse the website for your next games.

It'd be a custom html website, engineered in php-like languages, thus you'd need a database. Once you've cleared the painful database making, making stylesheets is sort of piece of cake (if you're not lazy).
It's better than simple html because you won't have to reedit each entry, so your game won't necessarily rot in a corner.

There's this option to make a blog, but this serves more like a pseudo customized database dump. Because making a database+stylesheet is time consuming, people search for already made solutions and blog engines just happen to be the closest to them.

Customized server side webpage:
- pros: easy to update, database reusable, ability to customize frontend (original styles, third party styles)
- cons: coding required, time consuming

Resources for this:
Wampserver
includes apache server and mysql server.

Css templates
Frontends for your website (most are blog templates but you can customize).

SQL courses
For beginners and advanced coders

XML info
If you want to develop in XML rather than old good html.

CSS tutorials
If you have trouble editing your templates.

I can't find yet solutions which have all this already made. Will post if I find something.

[Ashen-tan]

I actually use WordPress as a CMS -- it took a little bit of editing, but I got it looking pretty good. Plus, it allows for easy content management. Upgrading is a pain, though. I'm thinking of making something myself eventually, since I do know most everything I need to. But I'm happy with my WP stuff.

And yummy's right: making the site itself about your circle or development persona and then doing a page for the game makes things easier in the long run, since you can add more stuff later. Plus, it allows you to just buy ONE domain and use either folders or subdomains (depending on how good your host is) to make a section for your game, instead of buying a new domain for each game you do. Those costs can really add up. @_@

[monele]

I haven't used them, but from what I've seen, using a blog could work. Just make sure you have a main panel so you can link to fixed posts you can use as menus or content tables, themselves pointing at other posts.
Wiki would allow a more page-based organisation, but customizing them is hard and most websites I see retain too many wiki-specific elements to make them pass as regular websites.

Also, what features do you need exactly? You seem to want comments... what else?

[Nebi]

I would recommend a blog at this time. The simplicity of a blog provides a number of advantages, such as consistency across browsers, loads fast, has few bugs, is efficient and practical. Simplicity also helps because, quite frankly, there are a lot of simple-minded people in cyberspace - most of the time they want information and they want it quick.

A blog, IMHO, does everything an ordinary person that has information to share with others would require. Websites are simply too bothersome these days if you are not a web designer, web programmer, or web guru. You will save yourself a big headache by using a medium that is proven and works well.

Your time is precious. Do you really want to spend hours trying to design a website when you can be working on your visual novel?

Blogs are not born messy. People make them messy. Simplicity is the key here. What is the fastest, easiest, most flexible means to get your information across to others? I would say the blog ranks pretty high. In my eyes there is no competition.

Two cents. :)

[Deji]

I'm a visual person that buy stuff when they're pretty enough, so I demand graphic-intense prettily-designed websites! xD;
You can always have a news component on your main page and have a link to a devblog~

... I just hate generic wordpress/blogs... they go totally agains my design tastes Dx
*clings to flash*

[monele]

Since Deji brings this point forward, a question : couldn't a blog be prettied up? Sure, it will require some extra work, but probably not as much as customizing a wiki (I hope!) and certainly not as much as doing it from scratch. It might just be changing basic colors and adding a picture here of there and maybe some background (texture or not). Most blogs look bland because people just take them as is and never try to customize them.

[N0UGHTS]

It's actually not that hard to deck out your blog if you're going with Blogger. Blogger has a help page on that, you don't have to pay to edit your templates directly, there's a WYSIWYG fonts and colors editor (though you can always edit the templated directly if you want), and a WYSIWYG widgets placement editor where you can drag and rearrange (some, you can't do the header) sections of your blog like About Me, Feeds, slideshows, polls, extra HTML/JavaScript stuff, Videobar, random text sections, etc. OMahGODs that's on blogger?!

And here's a scanlation site whose homepage is hosted on blogger... There's actually more to the top of the webpage/there's actually a header, but I decided to be "decent" and left out the pretty pictures... I probably sound like a Blogger fanatic... But really, I'm not. I'm just poor. XD

So... If you don't want to spend a lot of money on a domain and you don't want to do everything from scratch but still be able to customise it, I suggest blogger.

[sciencewarrior]

Given the enormous quantity of beautiful, 100% free blog templates, many built specifically to look completely unlike blogs, it really pains my heart every time I see a plain Kubrick lookalike.

[Twar3Draconis]

I don't see why you can't go two ways.

For our site, I coded the XHTML/CSS by hand, and made it into a Wordpress theme. Since free Wordpress hosting (blogger too) doesn't really let you set your own custom theme, we got our hands on a domain and hosting.

Coding your own layout is very easy- The graphics are the hard part.

[N0UGHTS]

If you decide to get your own domain, I suggest reading through this site. They've got lots of reviews for lots of providers...

EDIT: Eureka? Maybe. I did random Googling and found b2evolution. Site says it's GPL'd, free, and can be installed onto your website to add blogging capabilities... And it's multilingual.