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How to put WoW Insider on your Guild Launch website
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index.About Guild Launch Guild Launch is a popular site that hosts guild's websites. It's popular because it has advanced forums, integrated wiki's for each guild, easy administration, and lots of space for file storage. It's also not to hard to use, and the free version is pretty good. How to syndicate WoW Insider on your Guild Launch website 1. Log in as an administrator. 2. In the Site Admin area of your sidebar on the left of the webpage, click "Sidebar Widgets". For me, it's the last option. 3. Choose a widget, in this case an "RSS Feed" widget. You can also specify where you want the widget to go. 4. Click the "Add Widget" button. 5. You'll now see that you've added an RSS Feed to your site's layout. Click the little pencil in the RSS Feed box. 6. Fill in the settings as you see above. 7. Click the "Submit" button. 8. You'll see now that the settings reflect the changes you've made, and you're ready to go! You've just added WoW Insider to your Guild Launch site!
How to put WoW Insider on your PHP enabled website
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index.About PHP and RSS PHP is a very fun programming language. Just like World of Warcraft, it is easy to learn, and difficult to master. The idea behind PHP is that you enter a script, located within your webpage, and the server processes the script as it send the webpage to your visitor's web browser. PHP and things like it literally power the web – everything from WoW Insider, to Google, to Amazon. For more information on PHP, I highly recommend O'Reilly's book Learning PHP. How to get syndicate WoW Insider using Magpie RSS The easiest RSS syndication addon for PHP I've found is Magpie RSS. It's quite simple to use, and can easily integrate itself into existing page architecture. A sample Magpie script that would syndicate WoW Insider would look like this: require_once 'rss_fetch.inc'; $url = ' http://wow.joystiq.com/rss.xml; $rss = fetch_rss($url); echo "Site: ", $rss->channel['title'], "<br>"; foreach ($rss->items as $item ) { $title = $item[title]; $url = $item[link]; echo "<a href=$url>$title</a></li><br>"; } Of course, the above is just a rough template and doesn't include any formatting or bulleting or anything like that. Where other sites and tools listed above will provide you with lots of bells and whistles off the bat, PHP is bare bones – you have to make everything from scratch. Luckily there's a lot of great information out there and most of the work has already been done. However, that work is beyond the scope of this guide.
How to put WoW Insider on your Windows Vista Sidebar
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index.About Windows Vista Love it or hate it, eventually you'll probably end up using it. One of the neat features of Vista is the Sidebar, which is a place where you can put widgets that do different things, like tell the time, show what your EVE Online character is training, or tell you what the weather is like outside. How to add WoW Insider to your Windows Vista's Sidebar. 1. Right click on your Sidebar and choose "Add Gadgets..." 2. This will open up the gadgets window. Double click the "Feed Headlines" gadget. 3. Close the gadgets window. 4. You'll now see the new gadget added at the top of your sidebar. 5. Open up Microsoft Internet Explorer and go to http://wow.joystiq.com/rss.xml 6. Click the "Subscribe to this feed" link. 7. A window will open up. The default settings will be fine. Click the "Subscribe" button. 8. Position your mouse over the feed gadget on your side bar and click the little wrench icon. It'll appear towards the upper right hand side of the gadget. 9. A window like the one above will slide out of the gadget, asking you what feed you want to display. 10. Choose to display "WoW Insider", and set the number of headlines to whatever you want. 11. Click the "Ok" button. 12. You're done! Left click on a feed headline to read the WoW Insider article.
How to get WoW Insider on your RSS software
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index.About a generic RSS feed With all of our previous guides, we've basically setup the site using the RSS address for WoW Insider. Getting this address, or any other site's address, is pretty easy – but often not understood. The old adage "If you teach a man to fish, he can eat for his life," comes into play here. If you can get the RSS address for WoW Insider, then you can get it for any page and use the other guides to syndicate any other site. How to get WoW Insider's RSS Feed Address 1. Go to http://wow.joystiq.com/ 2. Click on the little orange RSS icon in the address bar. 3. You'll be taken the RSS feed, and you'll see that the address in the address bar has changed. For WoW Insider, this happens to be http://wow.joystiq.com/rss.xml . Each site will different. Just copy this address – this is the RSS feed address. 4. Use this address in any program or website that can accept it! WoW Insider, or any other site, can easily be syndicated like this.
How to put WoW Insider on your GuildPortal website
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index.About GuildPortal GuildPortal is a very popular WoW guild website, and has been around for a long time. Because of that, it's a very mature piece of software, and has lots of ins and outs. It's not the easiest thing to use, and has some notoriety as being difficult at times. It also costs money to use anything but the most basic free features. In fact, RSS syndication, and thus the ability to get WoW Insider syndicated on a GuildPortal site, is part of the pay only package. Because of this, we can only take you half way – right up to where I get an error saying I need to pay. How to syndicate WoW Insider on your GuildPortal website 1. Login as an administrator.2. Click on the Control Panel link located at the top of the webpage. 3. Click on the "Site Pages" link located on the left hand side of the webpage. 4. Click on a page, such a "Home". 5. Click on the link named "Add Content" which is located near the top of the webpage, just above all your pages content items. 6. A window will open, asking you to choose what type of content you want to add. Fill it in as pictured above. 7. Click the "Save" button. 8. This is where you'll need to pay for the site for things to work. What you'll want to do next is click the "Edit Content" link of the content you just added. Another window will open up. There, you want to type in the RSS feed URL for WoW Insider, which is http://wow.joystiq.com/rss.xml . After that, you'll be done, and see a WoW Insider feed on your guild's website!
How to put WoW Insider on your web site and computer
Everyone these days either has a blog or a guild site that they post to regularly; and it's especially common amongst the World of Warcraft and the greater MMORPG community. One of the neat features of most of these sites is that they allow you to subscribe to other blogs, like WoW Insider. The software of these sites and tools can put up our headlines in easy to access places, so you and all your friends can stay up to date on the latest World of Warcraft news.Getting this setup might seem like a hard thing to do, but it's really not. In fact, with our guide, complete with pictures, you'll be able to get WoW Insider's latest news on your site in no time! We give you step-by-step instructions for sites and software like Guild Portal, Guild Launch, Blogger.com, Word Press, vBulletin, Google Reader, Outlook, and more. We also tell you the info you need to get our news setup on any other site.Continue reading on for a complete list of guides we provide.
How to put WoW Insider on your vBulletin Board forum
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index.About vBulletin Board vBulletin Board is a very advanced piece of software that has to be installed on a website. It uses backend technology to make a very nice forum website. Ask your web provider if they have a vBulletin Board system setup for you already. If not, you might have to go through installing it and setting up the basic functionality. While this process is not too hard, it is beyond the scope of this guide. However, once everything is all setup, getting WoW Insider syndicated on your vBulletin Board site is easy. How to syndicate WoW Insider on your vBulletin Board website 1. Log in as an administrator. 2. Scroll down the left side administrator tools until you see "RSS Feeds". Expand that topic, and select "Add New RSS Feed". 3. Fill in the information as shown above, and select the options that fit your needs. 4. Scroll down and click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page. 5. That's it. You're now syndicating WoW Insider on your vBulletin Board site! Give it five to ten minutes to grab the news from WoW Insider, and you'll soon see it on your site's forums.
How to put WoW Insider on your Blogger.com blog
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index.About blogger.com This site is owned and operated by Google, and has a lot of popular features. It's very popular and easy to use. You can be rest assured that while the site looks, and is, easy to use, there is still a lot of power with it, just like anything else the folks over at Google produce. How to syndicate WoW Insider on your blogger.com blog Log on to your blogger.com blog and head over to the Dashboard. This is where you write your posts. Click on the Layout tab. It's located right under the name of your blog, in the upper left hand corner of the webpage. While in the Layout tab, click on the "Add a Page Element" rectangle in the middle of the webpage. A window called "Choose a New Page Element" will come up. Scroll down until you see the Feed element and click the big blue "Add To Blog" button. Enter the RSS feed URL as seen in the above screenshot. It's http://wow.joystiq.com/rss.xml Click the orange "Continue" button. Title the feed, and choose the options you want. You can see what the feed will look like on your site in the preview box. Click the orange "Save Changes" button. You will be returned to the Layout tab of your Dashboard. You can see that WoW Insider is now listed in your side page elements. Click the orange "Save" button. You're done! You've now added a WoW Insider feed to your blogger.com site!
WoW Insider is taking over the world
Reader Andy wrote in this morning to tell us about what he read while having his morning cup of joe. From the The Guardian's article on The world's 50 most powerful blogs: "46. WoW Insider"Ummm... really? Cool!While I consider us to be a major source of news, information, and QQness about World of Warcraft related things, I never really thought that we'd ever be included on a list like this. It's kind of nice. So who did we beat? And who beat us?
Chris Forsythe retires from Adium project
According to a recent post over at the Adium blog, Chris Forsythe, the lead project manager, has decided to say goodbye after 3 years in that position with the Adium project. According to the post, Chris managed the Adium website, support network, and forum.Eric Richie, another member of the Adium team, volunteered for the new position. In the past, Eric wrote the in-application help for Adium and maintains the Adium TicketTaskForce.Chris is involved with some of the best applications on the Mac, a sampling of them: Growl, Perian, and Saltatory. We at TUAW wish Chris the best of luck in the future!Thanks Chris!
Raph Koster imparts MetaPlace game design wisdom
Areae's official MetaPlace blog is a bastion of quasi-regular updates amidst a whole field of general silence. You usually have to go to the source for any kind of information, but the source made some visits to the MetaPlace website; Raph Koster published two whole posts there over the past few days, and while he didn't go into a lot of detail about MetaPlace itself, he had a lot to say about the basics of game design.Since MetaPlace's premise involves users creating their own games or other interactive environments, Koster thought it would be prudent to lay out the core principles of game design. The first post was about the "atoms" that make up a game -- essentially mini-games that come together to make a greater mechanic. Koster used Tetris to illustrate concepts. The second part was about the mathematical skeletons of gameplay mechanics, and offered up some techniques for brainstorming ideas.He didn't spend any time at all discussing the less mathematically-oriented attractions in games, like social interactions, narrative structure and writing, visual artistry, emotional engagement , or immersion. It might be accurate to describe those things as the meat on the mathematical skeleton, but maybe they're coming up in a future post. These were just "fundamentals" posts, after all!
Former STO designer: Star Trek might be "hardest MMO IP ever"
Star Trek Online is one of the most anticipated MMOs on the horizon, but it's no secret that Perpetual Entertainment has had a rough couple of months. There's an ever-present air of uncertainty around STO's future.Most of that uncertainty stems from Perpetual's legal and financial troubles, but one former STO team member has written up a blog post suggesting that making a Star Trek MMO might be a Kobyashi Maru scenario to begin with. "At first glance, Star Trek seems like the perfect setting for an MMO," said former systems designer Eric Heimburg, "but appearances can be deceiving. It's actually a huge landmine of problems."Heimburg wrote that it's an expensive and difficult task to produce both a space game and a land game, that making space interesting is challenging, and that it's impossible to please all Star Trek fans because everyone has a different opinion about what makes the franchise great. All good points; we'll see if Perpetual has what it takes to make it all come together ... if it can even survive its financial and legal woes.[Via TTH]
Areae explains MetaPlace's MetaBucks
The MetaPlace developer blog was updated with a description of Areae's plans for "MetaBucks." Unsurprisingly, MetaBucks will be the currency of MetaPlace. They will be exchangeable both ways for real-world currency, and will be used to buy tools and assets with which to build worlds. Also, MetaBucks will provide a system for creators of virtual worlds made in MetaPlace to charge subscription fees.If you're thinking, "gee, that sounds very Second Life-esque," you're not the only one! MetaPlace seeks to bridge the gap between gamers and virtual world residents by providing tools (like MetaBucks) that will be useful to both. For a browser-based title, MetaPlace is unusually ambitious in terms of scope.If you're curious how all this fits into Areae's business plan as a whole, check out the business plan FAQ. Basically, MetaPlace is free until the world you create crosses a certain traffic threshold. After that, it costs money to continue hosting your world there, but you can use MetaBucks to charge players or take donations, and use that income to cover the costs.
Damion Schubert seeks a different kind of grind
MMO developers and publishers try to provide game-play that keeps you coming back again and again so you won't stop their money flow by canceling your subscription. The easiest way for them to do this is to make their games an addictive grind. You feel compelled to level up. You can't help yourself.Just because something's addictive, though, doesn't mean it's fun. But is there another way? Damion Schubert (of Meridian 59 and Ultima Online fame, and one of a certain blogger's personal heroes) posed that question on his Zen of Design blog. MMOs must be centered around highly repeatable activities, Schubert said. Combat, for example, works well because developers can put in a lot of changeable variables to make the experience different every time. On the other hand, he uses puzzle/mystery games like Myst as examples of games not based on a repeatable activity. Once a puzzle is solved, it's solved, and that's the end of it. So, if not that, then what? What other games have mechanics that can be used as a model for MMO game-play that sticks?That discussion is going on right now at Zen of Design.
So, how much does a blog spend on VC games?
With this week being dedicated to the first birthday of our most favorite thing on this planet, the Wii, we looked at every possible aspect of the console we wanted to discuss. All of our launch day stories, its first year when compared to the GameCube and, last but not least, Nintendo's first foray into the downloadable content arena. And, as many of you faithful readers know, we love checking out what the service has for download every Monday.
Archmage Vargoth's travels documented in blog form
As I've said a few times on the site before, I love seeing Archmage Vargoth in the weirdest of places. Wherever players can go, I love seeing that little purple guy show up, too. And so reader Horns has made my day-- he's started a blog completely dedicated to seeing Archmage Vargoth all over Azeroth. Vargoth in the Undercity, Vargoth in Feralas, Vargoth in that little cave above WC, and Vargoth under the hammer of Rag in MC.Awesome. And Horns needs your help-- if you've got a pic of Vargoth in a funny or interesting place (or even a boring place-- would be awesome to see a hundred Vargoths standing in Ironforge's AH), get it to Horns and he'll post it for you. I'd really like to see Vargoth in places that he shouldn't go-- since he actually summons a little bit off center of the player, it should be possible to stick him in place players can't go, shouldn't it? Like on the roofs of buildings in Stormwind? I'll try messing around with it when I get a chance, but if you guys pull it off, send the pic to Horns.
Qumana blogging client
The Qumana blog editor is a free cross-platform blogging client with support for a variety of blogging platforms including Wordpress, Blogger, MoveableType and others. It offers WYSIWYG editing, offline composing, and a variety of other features. Setting it up to work with a public blog is quite easy, requiring you just to enter the blog's root URL. It will then prompt you for your username and password and you're pretty much set. Unfortunately, there are two catches. First, it appears to be a java application with all that entails for resource usage and UI inconsistency. Second, it's free because Qumana wants you to use their Q Ads service (which is built into the editor). Q Ads are text advertisements that you can manually add to your blog (by defining keywords) and Qumana will share some of the revenue with you. Fortunately it appears you can use the Qumana editor even without inserting Q Ads. It's not as Mac-like as MarsEdit by a long shot, but if you'd like to try a free editor that works easily with a variety of blogging platforms then Qumana is worth a look. The Qumana blog editor is a free download from Qumana.[via MacApper]
MacRadio opens beta for new design
MacRadio, the home base for a few Mac-related podcasts, has announced they're going to facelife the entire site, and instead turn it into a hub for all sorts of Mac podcasts-- a "podcast portal for the Mac world," as they say. I sure thought that was the Podcasts tab in iTunes, but maybe that's just me.Anyway, to kick off the redesign, they're offering a beta, in which you can give feedback and help them build the site the way you want it. There's a FAQ up on what's happening, if you're interested, and they mention that they're looking for people running all OSes and browsers. Oh, and apparently everyone who tests the beta gets a free t-shirt, as well as a chance to win more prizes. Pretty slick. Help MacRadio become better and win stuff![ via IMG ]
Xfire and WoW Insider, live from the BlizzCon floor
Our BlizzCon coverage continues all this week-- we're sending our staff out to Anaheim (I'll be out there on Tuesday laying all the groundwork), culminating in the second BlizzCon event on Friday and Saturday. So whether you're going or not, stay tuned to WoW Insider all week for breaking news, liveblogging events, and pictures, video, and tons of coverage from Blizzard's big get-together.And don't forget that all of our coverage is being co-presented with Xfire. In addition to their BlizzCon info page, they've also set up a special "blizzcon2007" account, and both Xfire and WoW Insider staff members will be blogging there during the event. Also, if you have an Xfire account, be sure to add "blizzcon2007" to your Friends-- that way, you'll be able to get invites to Xfire chats later this week coming directly from the BlizzCon exhibit hall. And if you don't have an Xfire account, then get one for free!So this is it. It's time to hear about Zul'Aman and the next expansion. It's time to see Starcraft II playable and in action. And maybe it's time to hear about that third game Blizzard is working on? At BlizzCon, you never know. Stay tuned to both WoW Insider and Xfire to find out.
iRovr: social networking for iPhone only
Our good friends over at DLS just posted some news about a service called iRovr, which purports to be a "unique social experience" made exclusively for the iPhone. Basically, you sign up, and are given a set of email addresses to which you can send content directly from your iPhone (including blogs, photos, videos, and even comments), which is then archived on their pages. It's definitely an interesting concept, and even if you aren't ready to join yet another social networking service (especially since Twitter is already on the iPhone, and Pownce is sure to follow), I actually entertained myself for way longer than I planned to just browsing through the content that's been uploaded.You have to give iRovr credit for using email hackery, a squeezed design, and probably a heck of a backend just for getting this all working smoothly together as an app that is completely accessed only by the iPhone. I'm sure an app like this is just what Jobsy had in mind when he spoke of the "very sweet solution."
