Contributing to Site Development
Thursday, December 7, 2017 - 16:54
I am curious if OpenGameArt.org's website/API is open source. If it were available on GitHib, people wanting to contribute (including myself) could create pull requests for review & possible implementation. Personally, I have a limited knowledge of web languanges. But I would like to help out where I can.
I don't want to sound impatient. The admins & developers here on OGA are doing a great job. I just feel like the site itself may benefit from community development contributions if it is not already so.
I second this.
I was a professional PHP dev for four years, software QA for another four. Given that this is an artist / dev haunt, I'm sure there's quite a few others with that sort of background. Of course changes would need to be reviewed before they'd be pushed to a master branch, but the site could really use some love.
Glad to see that there are others interested in this as well.
If this were ever to come to fruition, I've created a GitHub organization where it could be hosted. Hoping that an OGA admin takes interest in it & wants to take over ownership.
@AntumDeluge: Very nice! :)
I found a quoted comment from two years ago from bart at the GitHub repo of Godot talking about releasing OGA: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/5253#issuecomment-226925236
Besides artists OGA also seems to have an active community of Developers, so i think it would benefit greatly from it helping out with the site's code, too. And yes, i also think that OGA could use some love. At the moment it feels a bit like there are people who would like to help, but cannot - besides donating which is not possible for everyone.
By the way, here is OGA's donation page: https://opengameart.org/donate (unfortunately the Flattr link is broken, Bitcoins don't seem to be supported anymore and there is no Liberapay account).
I really hope this thread doesn't make anyone feel pressured. We're all happy that a site like OGA exists and well, that it works. It would just be awesome if someone would tell us about the current state of this and if there's something we can already help out with besides donating. Maybe there's some way for us to help out preparing OGA for a repo. Or maybe some of us could help out keeping the site running. Anything! :)
Perfect timing for this, Bonsaiheldin. Admins are working on getting the site into a position to make exactly this sort of improvements. I can't promise anything because there are some very major updates and adjustments that have to be made to the site first, but so far it's looking good. :)
--Medicine Storm@MedicineStorm: Thanks for the response. That's nice to read! Looking forward to that development :)
Another though related to this subject: I would be interested in creating, or seeing created, an OGA app for Android. But, without the API available, only a simple app based on WebView could be created (as I understand it). Which probably wouldn't be much different than using a web browser.
There is an official app for DeviantArt, which is pretty nice (though, had some bugs last time I used it). Would be nice to have an app for OGA as well, especially since there is no mobile version of the site.
I would love that! Though, a custom app would need to be a community collaborative endeavor. DeviantArt has an official app mostly because of their nearly $22,000,000.00 USD ad revenue. Since OGA is completely free for users and free of advertising, the site has ~$6000 anually. which is almost entirely dedicated to servers and hosting.
What is this about "the API" people are referencing? Is there an established drupal API? If not, an API would need to be developed alongside the app or mobile version of the site. I'm for it. Working on getting the site code made available on github. :)
--Medicine StormI'm not sure how useful an app would be other than to view OGA post and recent uploads, which the website itself does just fine. I'm always on my iPad and I have downloaded sprites and uploaded art to OGA using it and it does it ok. I've had the occasional failed forum posts.I think that's more of an allowance issue from time to time or server timeout. I'm not against the idea, be interesting how it could be utilised.:)
Chasersgaming | Support | Monstropolis |
@MedicineStorm: By "official app", I simply meant it was endorsed by DeviantArt. I definitely think an app for OGA should be open sourced.
@chasergaming: With the app you should be able to do anything you can do on the site. Upload works, add comments & forum posts, etc. But layout would be much more compact. Perhaps similar to what a mobile version of the sight might be like.
Ah. I see. I was mostly referring to DA's ability to afford the development costs of a custom app.
If the features of an app are predomenantly about compact layout, it may be more efficient to create a mobile version of OGA rather than an app.
--Medicine StormI think there might be some other benefits to having a dedicated app, such as speed. But they are probably trivial. I personally prefer using dedicated apps over web browsers on mobile devices.
Edit: Push notifications would be another benefit I think, though this could be done with an RSS/Atom feed reader.
An app for OGA sounds really good, but like I mentioned above, if all it would do is allow post threads and general interaction the same as the browser then don't see the point of one, why not just have a Facebook or Instagram page. I get notified of anything via email, it's a lot of effort and cost, and I think that effort could be better spent refreshing the website itself and adding the features mentioned in the other threads.
maybe an creators tool, asset creator, generator, or music maker that was able to link straight to OGA and its community. That might be beneficial to OGA and encourage assets through an application like that, but that's even more work and cost. Just my thoughts.:)
Chasersgaming | Support | Monstropolis |
NOTICE: OpenGameArt.org has been open sourced & is hosted at GitHub. If you would like to help out you can fork the repository, request membership on GitHub, or bug Botanic to ask about how you can contribute.
Hmm, I looked at that at one point, but it's quite hard to set up without any idea of the site's configuration. (Or any data). In the end I got... something. (Also, the new OGA3 theme wouldn't even install on Drupal 8, which I think it's supposed to be for?)
I personally don't have any experience with drupal or the site's source itself. You should be able to contact Botanic via IRC chat. I do know that Botanic is overloaded with work & hasn't been able to do a whole lot yet.
For anyone else reading this topic (since @AntumDeluge has already commented on GitHub), I made some progress with my setup and managed to fix a few little things (like the audio previews on user pages).