Is Neverwinter Connections up and working or not? I can't tell.

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               I always lurked at NWNC so I don't think I even have a login there.  What I'd do is just swing by every couple of months and read the forums.  It looks like there hasn't been a post in the forums since March and I since I never used the matchmaking thing I can't make sense of whether there are still games being set up through it.  It looks ilke it- I think, anyway.  Is the site still being worked on or has posting just slowed down a lot for the summer?

Thanks!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ehye_khandee]

               OTR - neverwinterconnections.com was passed from the old team to the new team in the spring of this year (2012). Prior to our taking over, nwc had been hosted on windows servers, and had been coded in Cold Fusion. You may also recall that nwc had been the target of some hackers over the years too. The new team did not see the value in dropping $3000 for a commercial license for Cold Fusion, and we are great fans of FOSS, so we chose to re-code the site from scratch, using LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL and PHP).

We rolled out the 'Phase One' portion of the new NWC a few weeks back. Phase One included ONLY the core features of the site; game scheduling and related tools. At this time we are collecting feedback on the function and look of the site from regular users with a variety of hardware/software configurations. These are the hottest months for us and so we have had to slow down our development pace a bit - last year, you might recall, the Cyprian military accidentally detonated a large amount of unstable chemical explosives on the parcel of ground right next door to the generators that, until that point, had supplied half the islands' electricity. This summer, with the heat rising folks on the isle are using their air conditioners more and it is causing rolling brownouts for Erin (my favorite genius in the whole world)... she's got a UPS now so at least it does not fry her hardware (as it did earlier this year prior to the addition of the UPS) - but she can't get much time on the internet / computer - at least until the heat drops a bit. We anticipate resuming the build again in the early fall months.

You can contact me directly if you have any questions/comments on nwc - we also have a bug reporting forum/tool if you'd like to join us there.

Be well. Game on.
GM_ODA
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Oh!  I had known that the old site was going down and that it had been passed on but I didn't realize everything was being re-coded from the ground up.  That's a pretty huge project! (mind boggles)

Have you folks looked at Railo?  (Wiki)

Open source alternative to CF.  Anyway, I wish you luck on this project!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ehye_khandee]

               Thanks for the Railo link and the heads-up - but we prefer to code this from scratch and avoid CF and CFoid stuff (PHP is our preference)... we feel better coding this from scratch to avoid security issues and ensure full portability for the future... we like to get a handle on the security from the foundational layers all the way up, and following anothers' design can limit options unduly.

It _is_ a big task, but Erin is amazing, and in less than two months time, she had the from-scratch back-end running for the game scheduling (as I like to say "I put the lipstick on the pig (website), but Erin taught it to sing and dance.").

Phase two will include the old forum (but we figured forums were everywhere while the game scheduler was key to the old nwc site, and unique there). Stay tuned for more news as the season cools and we get knuckle deep in the code again. '>

Be well. Game on!
GM_ODA

http://playnwn.com