Well then, it's been a while. For that, I apologize! Life's been crazy for the past couple of months with "real work" and I haven't had time to even so much as look at R2-Db.com.

That's going to change, along with the entire website.

When we first set off on this project, we wanted to build an inclusive go-to site for everything you might need in SWTOR. We spend about a year and a half solid developing the entire engine that this site runs on from scratch, and we made some amazing things in the process. However, we never got around to finishing a LOT of the features that we wanted. This vision was too grandiose for our meager 2-man development team.

So, back in January, I wrote a post about how we are returning to our roots, that goal is alive and well, albeit delayed. Development on this process is underway once again! This time around, we are going to move at a bit slower of a pace, hopefully to avoid some of the burnout we felt right after the game launched.

So stick around and if you'd like to get involved, drop us an email to team@r2-db.com!

Some parts of developing a site like this aren't as exciting as others, let me tell ya! This is one of those times, a lull in new feature development, but a time where we revamp portions of the site. I wish I had some exciting new features to tell you about, but instead I'm occasionally poking out news updates to let you know we are alive.

Currently, everything we've developed in the last month is an improvement upon an existing system. We've come a long way in terms of the revamp since then, but this is one of those revamp's we aren't going to release until everything's in working order.

It's a bit more boring for us, and for you... I really liked the 2nd half of last year where every week or two I had something to show off and collect feedback on. Hopefully we'll get back to that stage of development again sometime in the 2nd quarter of this year. Until then, here's a quick update on what we've completed and whats still on the agenda!

In Progress or Complete (NOT Live)

• Homepage Revamp is pretty close to complete.
• Questions page has been redesigned slightly.
• Profile Pages (users, guilds, etc) are looking awesome, the content has totally been redone.
• Record Pages (Items, Skills, etc) are being unified to look the same and a LOT easier to navigate. Not quite done with it, but it's looking nice.
• Sidebar Widgets (over there -->) have a new look.
• The navigation at the top of the page is completely redone and MUCH better.

Things left on the TODO

• The Guides page, making it easier to create, find and discuss guides.
• Our "forums", they're pretty awesome, but still lots to do.
• Badges, yup, still working on them.
• A few unannounced features need polishing.
• The "guilds" list page has a few new features coming.

We are going to try to get into the habit of posting updates more regularly. Without things to show you, they end up being a bit more boring. We are holding off showing off our new designs as to not give away exactly what we're doing, we want to make a splash with how this will all turn out.

Anyways, hope you are enjoying the site and enjoying the game!

Last year, we wrote an article recapping 2010 in which we took a moment to reflect on the last years progress, or goals, and our accomplishments. It's pretty fun to go back and re-read, it gives a pretty good idea of how far the site has come along in a single year. So from here on out, the plan is to release a post like this at the end/beginning of each year recapping (quickly) everything we've accomplished, what's changed, and where we are going!

So, what happened in 2011?

The last year for our team has been intense to say the least! We've put in over a thousand more hours into the codebase, upgraded/migrated severs, changed layouts a few times and deployed a number of new systems on the site. Here's a brief overview of what we've accomplished in the last year:

• Created a news system for Groups/Guilds/Websites, which you are reading now!
• Created a system for Seed Questions about Game information to help rapidly populate the database.
• Improved our Dashboard with a few new features.
• Created the Galactic Librarians group to help manage the data.
• Switched to using nginx/php-fpm and MongoDB on our new server, Coruscant.
• Launched our Reputation System, allowing people to level up and gain reputation for providing good information on the site.
• We refined our Q&A System and illustrated a few pointers on how to use it.
• Created a script system to embed youtube videos.
• Created an easy system to let you use icons for anything in the database.
• Bioware invited us to the 2nd Fansite Summit, what a blast it was to meet everyone!
• We created a concept for The Stash, an Item Database inventory system (which is still heavily in production).
• The launch of our Guides Section, allowing people to use all of our tools in one place to share information!
• Our Skill Tree Calculators launched, revolutionizing them with Embedded Skill Trees (First!)
• We required reputation levels to perform certain actions.
• A revamp of the Tooltips, Search Data and Game Data.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, we've implemented so many improvements in the backend of the code is unbelievable.

2012, a rough outline

It's been a slow start to the year, with the holidays over and work picking back up again, it'll be yet another busy year. We've been busy brainstorming and planning over the past couple of weeks, and we'd like to apologize for being so quiet. Between playing TOR, getting back into the swing of programming and working full time again, it's been incredibly hard to find time to write up these posts!

I wanted to drop a few hints at a few things we've got planned for 2012...

• Site Revamp - We've got a new design coming down the pipe, this time it's focusing on making the site EASY to use and EASY to find information. Currently the site is composed of a bunch of lists, post views and random pages. This new design, which we hope to show off in the next month or so, will make the site a LOT easier to use.
• External Tools - Voting, Theorycrafting and Syndication are the themes. Expect some news on this front within a month or so as well.
• Guide Tool Revamp - We want creating guides to be as EASY as possible, so we are revamping the guide creation tool to make it super easy to explain what you need to, in terms and diagrams that other players can understand. We've got a few old tech demo's we plan on re-visiting, and a few you've never seen before. Some exciting things here!
• Profiles Revisited - Remember WAY back when we first implemented user profiles, and we talked characters hooked onto your profiles? That's at a point now where we can start implementing it, you all have characters now right?
• Your content, all over - We plan on providing ways (via API) to allow other sites to syndicate/relate/participate our Q&A Information as well as Guides onto their site.

I don't want to give away too many things, but 2012 should be an exciting year. We're refocusing our efforts, we're innovating and continuing to do what we've been doing! Which brings us to the next point...

Returning to our Roots

We started R2-Db.com based off of another site we run, EpicAdvice (which has since been neglected), which was solely a Q&A Engine built for WoW. It's out-dated, about a year behind R2 in terms of code, and hasn't had a redesign in almost 2 years. Someday we may revive it, but first we need to see how well the panda's and pokemon perform in Azeroth! ;)

Reading through our changes last year it's clear we've been incredibly focused on building social components and tools that go well with an item database. The item database was just a portion of our design, and we are still using it's components, but we are no longer attempting to compete with the likes of Torhead and the other item databases.

We are busy evolving into a new type of site, still a database, but a lot more social. You won't come here to find out "what items Boss X drops from Raid Y", but you will (hopefully) visit to ask questions about the encounter, read strategies, and find useful guides to help you get the most out of the game. We've chosen to partner with Torhead.com for our "Item Database" needs, using their service as a layer to help facilitate our goals of providing a platform of communication and theorycrafting unlike that you've ever seen.

From here on out, we will be referring to our site as a *SOCIAL DATABASE, a database with all the information needed, but designed to be discussed and analyzed.

A huge grandiose vision, that's what we have, and where we are going in 2012. It wouldn't of happened without...

Special Thanks to those who've committed time to improving the site!

First things first this year, we (Jesta & gnarf) have a list of people we would like to thank for their contributions throughout the year (in no particular order):

• Reedyn
• strawbeki
• Dariuas
• technogeek
• Temig
• Mike Norton (manorton)
• Winterborne
• Inazhria
• jpeg
• geneocide

I considered writing individual props on each name, but I don't want this post to get out of hand! I have so many good things to say about our community and our team, I just won't list them all here. Just know these are the people keeping the site fresh, helping keep things in line, generating content and in general, being awesome. This site wouldn't be nearly what it is without those listed above.

Now for a quick shameless plug... if you want to help us out with something, drop us an email or hop in our chat room and say hi!

Thanks to everyone who's supported us and encouraged us, we're still the same tiny team of programmers with a dream we've always been. Without you guys visiting the site, encouraging development and helping when you can, we wouldn't be where we are right now!

Here's to a good year! /cheer

Happy SW:TOR Launch Day!

To coincide with the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic today, we are excited to release a brand new set of features live onto R2-Db.com. We have been hard at work over the last few weeks implementing these new features, and while they are not 100% complete, we decided today was as good a day as any to release them to the public.

I know I tend to get long winded in my posts, so this time I'm going to try to keep each point short... wish me luck... Also, expect some more "Did you know?" videos showing off some of the new features and how to use them over the coming weeks (the holidays may slow things down though).

A brief overview of new Features...

• Tooltips - The first thing you are going to notice when you mouse over something is that the tooltip no longer follows your mouse cursor. Our tooltips are now "sticky" on the page and allow you to mouse into them and interact with the contents inside. For example, I give you the icon for the Sith Empire: ; mouse over the icon, then mouse into the tooltip, and you can actually spawn new tooltips and click the links inside. We have a ton of functionality planned for this feature, so expect some exciting things soon!
• Homepage - Our homepage received a bit of love, we changed to a higher quality background and widened it slightly to help with searchings. We also increased the number of articles that show up on the homepage to 10, up from 6.
• Search Engine - We have been working for weeks to completely rebuild our search engine, we are evolving away from being a traditional item database and are building towards becoming a social knowledge-base. No longer are your search queries just asking for something named with what you type, but it will intelligently return related results. Want to try it out? Here's a few fun searches:
  • "Bounty Hunter" - Returns the class, the advanced classes, talent calculators, links to Torhead's skill list for the classes skills and questions asked about the Bounty Hunter on R2-Db.com.
  • "which companion" - Returns questions about which companions each class gets, which you can then tooltip, and mouse into the tooltips to see all of the companions.
  • "starting planet" - Returns questions about starting planets for each class.
• Skill Data - Our partners over at Torhead have given us all their skill data, which we've imported into our R2-Db.com database. You should now be able to find and use any of the skills in the game in your guides, questions and comments!
• Level Requirements - We've implemented a lot of level requirements for performing actions on the site. Basically, our view of things is, if you are gaining reputation and earning levels, you're providing useful information to the community and care for the integrity of the system. We are starting to grant higher level users minor moderation powers to help users find the information they need to succeed in SWTOR! Here's a few examples:
  • Level 2 lets you Up Vote
  • Level 3 lets you Down Vote
  • Level 8 grants the ability to edit "Community Posts" (to help keep them useful!).
  • Level 14 allows you to create new tags for use on posts.
  • Level 16 grants you edit permissions on posts in the Q&A section (to help correct information and grammar).
• Skill Tree's Improved - We've improved our skill tree's slightly, pre-requisite skills now draw the line between skills that you are required to have, logic problems have been eliminated (for the most part) and a lot of the structuring has been improved. We are still in the process of hooking them all up, but the Sniper Skill Tree is completed, check it out.
• Our embedded skill tree's are complete, but require further testing, which will happen after the holidays. I'd like to note that someday we plan on abandoning our "traditional" skill tree calculators and will be morphing them into something a bit more, social ;)

Some non-feature related changes...

• Users can now use the "Forgot Password" feature to retrieve their password.
• The "paginators" used to swap pages have been revamped and improved.
• Updated our FAQ with Level Requirements for the site.
• Ordered our skill tree's to match the game's order.

Well, that wasn't too short, but it wasn't as long as some of the other posts I've written. We are planning on taking it a bit easier until the new year, no more 16 hour days, atleast until next year. We will be around fixing bugs and improving small things in our free time, but we need to get our SW:TOR on as well. I am planning on doing a recap post like I did last year, about where we went, where we are going and what to expect!

If you have any questions about the new features, feel free to ask them directly at R2-Db.com's profile and we will do our best to answer them! We would also love to hear what you think about the new features, how they work, and what you like/dislike about them.

Thanks to all of our Galactic Librarians and you, the community, for making this site such a success. We're growing by leaps and bounds, people are enjoying the site, and we enjoy developing it for you! Have a happy holidays!

We wanted to post something because we've been incredibly quiet on all fronts besides the contest recently. Work on R2-Db.com has been incredibly intense over the past 2 weeks, literally every day, all day. A couple weeks back, we released our skill trees and a "tech demo" of the embedded skill trees was promptly followed by our announcement to partner with Torhead.com. Since then, we have delayed a lot of major feature releases in preparation of one huge one!

More on that in a bit, first though, here's some things that have changed!

Recent Events / Changes

• The contest has ended and our moderation staff is still trudging through the massive amount of questions/answers created, helping refine them so in the future they'll be easier to get through.
• Some reputation requirements have been implemented:
  • Required Level 2 to "Up Vote" on Questions
  • Required Level 3 to "Down Vote" on Questions
• Created what we're calling the "Console", which is a moderation dashboard with easy access to things needing moderation.
• Created a "Close Question" system which allows moderators to close questions, causing all future discussion to be locked on the question. It can be closed for one of the following reasons:
  • If it's not really a question or cannot be answered.
  • If the question is off-topic and not SWTOR related.
  • If the question is no longer relevant (ie. a 'Beta' or 'NDA' question)
  • If the question is not constructive, a poor question or just not worth answering because the answer is so obvious.
• Gave Closed Questions a spiffy new black background and displayed the reasoning for it being closed.
• Added a <spoiler> html tag to hide spoiler text when you hover over it: <spoiler>text here</spoiler>
• The ability for our moderators to merge questions and tags together.
• Created dozens of tools to detect 'Suspicious Voting Patterns' and remove them, no more making alt accounts to up-vote yourself!

Upcoming Changes

So, what have we been working on for the last 2 weeks besides all that stuff above? I'll break it down into 3 major areas...

Search Engine

We have been hard at work at a brand new search engine for the site which has a LOT more power to it. It's not simply going to return things that match what you type, it will intelligently return things you actually might be looking for and related information. Searching for a class will not only return the class, but all of the questions, guides, calculators and related tags for that specific class ordered by what people use the most.

It's coming, it's a major overhaul and we're pretty far in it's development, but we didn't want to release the new search engine without our new...

Tooltips

We've been talking about tooltips for a long time now and they are finally coming alive. Our tooltips will soon be interactive, much like Facebook has, allowing you to interact with the information relevant to that tooltip. Not only are we changing HOW they function, we changing what's inside them slightly. Our tooltips are going to be somewhat "lighter" on game data than Torhead's will be, we had to make room to display some new social information within them. It'll make more sense when you see them in the very near future.

A few new features also coming in the Powered Script:

Voting, the next frontier: The Powered script will be able to place a Voting +/- on YOUR website for your users to rate your content on R2-Db.com. This move will drastically increase the amount of social voting on content allowing us to better determine what the actual "Hot News" in the SWTOR community is. Think of it like a "Tweet" or "Facebook Like" button you see all over the place, except specifically designed for the SWTOR Community, by the SWTOR Community.

Embedded Talent Tree's: These are also still in the pipeline for the powered script, but will be in the next version. We'd like to apologize to everyone who's been waiting this feature, it's going to be a little longer, these last couple weeks like I said have been rough. Plus, we didn't want to release them without testing them against our new...

Game Data

We've been working closely with Torhead on the game data front and will soon be filling our entire database. You'll be able to easily talk, ask questions or use anything in the game while writing here on R2-Db.com.

The first thing to explain: R2-Db.com and Torhead.com are two completely separate websites, programming/moderation teams and owners. We also have incredibly different goals for WHAT we want our sites to do with the game data, which is the reason we decided to partner up and share our data!

It's win win as far as we can tell and in the future you can expect a lot more sharing of data between the two sites! This relationship is still in it's early stages, but holy crap, lemme tell you some of the things we've thought about are just... incredible. You'll just have to stick around to see how it all plays out!

Wrapping up

It's been insane, absolutely insane the amount we have accomplished in such little time. We wanted to take a moment and share the insanity and let you know we are indeed still alive, still programming and still coming up with ridiculous ideas. The next few months will prove to be incredibly interesting, we will be evolving and pushing a ton of new features (since we won't have to worry about a lot of the DB stuff!) and creating a place where you'll easily be able to find information about Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Thanks to everyone that regulars the site, posts questions, answers, guides, all that. We're building up a magnificent community here of some great minds! If you need something, make sure to let us know, and help spread the word about R2-Db.com!