Rel.to updates

10-Sep-2008 results of poll for Rel.to improvements:

4 votes for administrative system
3 votes to make categories expandable/collapsible
3 votes to make categories into anchors that can be linked from the top or bottom of the page
2 votes to provide a way to sort sites by language
2 votes to list most popular entries
2 votes to list most recently added/changed entries
1 vote for more intuitive way to link back to the front page
1 vote for other, a "Publication" link similar to the "Forums" link, for sites with publications
0 comments on link compactor service idea

New idea: Extend 'search' to match words in the titles/descriptions of the RSS history, thus producing two lists, "Matching entries" and "Matching articles"

Idea from Tweek: Make it possible to read the full articles in the RSS feed, not just titles.

Looks like adding an administrative system is up next!

dnidesk should point to http://web.archive.org/web/20060612200850/http://dnidesk.com/.

suggestions should point to this page.

dnidesk has already been removed; I'm uncertain about pointing to the Internet Archive for things. There are so many things there and I'm not certain I want to set a precedent to catalog all of those, too. (DRC site in July, 2003! etc.)

I'll update the suggestions link, good catch.

I need to add a new OOC blog:

http://www.kefrith.meinwald.info/blog/

I need to fix the entry for patchallel; it's in the wrong category and there is a typo in the description.

suggestions still doesn't point here.

The following point either to a nonexistent page, an error page, or a redirect to the index page:
beyondchat
dnigames
gadren
gmz
greydragon
heek
huru
imp
madhouse
srforums
tctblog
ururadio
ururadioforums

There should be a link to MYSTlore's jigsaw puzzle.

The description for bpgisme has two characters (� and �) that I can't read. They probably should be ' and ... respectively.

Marten, Can I merge your 2 Rel.to threads or do you need them to remain separate?

tctforum and tctforums should point to http://www.thecaverntoday.org/forum/.
egforum, like egforums, should point to http://eden-gira.frbb.net/index.htm.
goarchforum, like goarchforums, should point to http://www.dpwr.net/forums/index.php?showforum=61.

Cool! I just figured out that you only need to type as much of the keyword as will make it unambiguous.

Feel free to merge, Andros.

Hey Gorobay,

I'm not sure why tctforums is missing. I'll investigate. It looks like goarchforum is defined as a secondary keyword for the DPWR.net entry, so I should be able to fix that.

For the middle item though, I don't think I'll be able to force egforum to link directly to Eden Gira because it is a subset of both "degforums" and "egforums", and I'm pretty sure that secondary keywords are treated as partial matches. A rel.to link will only send a person directly to a website if there is an exact match to that site's main keyword, or if only one partial match exists to a title or secondary keyword.

As the updates I need to make to rel.to's database are piling up, I'll try to catch up on those tonight :)

And I'd like to emphasize that I really appreciate the updates that you post here. *big thumbs up*

eg works, although it is a subset of seven different keywords. If you defined egforum as something, wouldn't it work?

Unrelatedly, I think there should be a keyword like swn25 linking to the video of SWN 25.

"eg" works because it is a primary keyword. Any time a primary keyword matches exactly, that site will be loaded. However, by design, each site may only have one primary keyword.

Thus if I had these three primary keywords defined:
abc
abcdef
abcdefghi
... then if someone references

http://rel.to/abc

, it will go to the first item and won't match the other two.

But if the above entries were secondary keywords instead of primary, then the user would receive a list of all three entries and wouldn't be forwarded directly to any of them.

Note to self: I need to add "edengira" (no space) to secondary keywords for Eden Gira.

greydragon (http://www.thegreydragon.com/) has been domain-parked.

What does domain-parked mean?

It means GreyDragon did not renew his domain and let it expire. Either his hosting company, or another hosting company, has swooped in and grabbed it.

Still working on updating Rel.to here - I was interrupted when I tried to do it a few days ago. I'll try again tomorrow morning. :)

Ty Marten.

Added:
Kefrith's blog
MYSTlore Jigsaw puzzle
The Cavern Today Forums
Spoken Word Night 25
Guild of Storytellers
MYSThillarium
D'ni Cocktail Party CavernCam
Vortmax Films
Radio Vortmax
Granelda's website

Updated:
Suggestions link moved
Patchallel's link recategorized, typo fixed
beyondchat link moved
bpgisme cut-and-paste of odd characters fixed
DPWR Forums no longer lists goarchforums as secondary keyword

Inactivated: ( :( )
dnigames
gadren
gmz
greydragon
heek
huru
imp
madhouse
srforums
tctblog
ururadio
ururadioforums

Notes:
(1) It is possible that some of these inactivated sites have relocated elsewhere and I simply don't know to where. If you have information on any of them, please let me know.
(2) Many of the new additions are links that I found on BeyondUru's links page. Just giving credit where it is due. :)

The description for kefrith contains � (the replacement character) instead of an apostrophe.
There are two pages with the primary keyword jigsaw (those of MYSTlore and CCN). Also, CCN's jigsaw seems to have been moved to http://www.uruarchives.com/myst_online_uru_live_jigsaw.htm.
Uru Radio may come back, so you might have to readd the link there someday.

Those in the first column should be keywords for the things those in the second are for:
gostorytellers = gostory
paradox_ic = paradoxic
tskimballic = tskimball_ic

The following should have keywords:
Veovis: Lord of D'ni
URU Exploration
Anzir's Weblog
Caverna Obscura
Inferiority Complex
Taproot Wanderings
Kestr'l's Uru Journey
backpack on my back
GoMaWiki
Explorer Video Archive

I think that there should be long versions of keywords as well as short, i.e. both ttp and thethirdpath, both ccn and caverncommunicationsnetwork. Also, there should be keywords based on the name of the site, i.e., both wiki and mystlore, both whilyam_ic and cavernlink.

Although this is not a suggestion for Rel.to, I wonder if this forum could have a customized BBCode tag for Rel.to links.

Rel.to does strange things when there are subdirectories included after the main keyword. They are reversed. What I mean is, http://rel.to/dlf/grammar/domahreh links to http://linguists.bahro.com/domahreh/grammar/. It is consistent but unintuitive.

Hm. That is definitely incorrect behavior. I'll have to ask Erik to look into it.

It's the Bahro playing with you.

more's description uses the word "Restoration". It should really be "Rerestoration".
armd's description should call it the Assembly for D'ni Music Restoration, not the D'ni Music Restoration Council.
There should be a keyword for D'ni Musicological Research, Turjan's blog.
There should be a keyword for Wine and Crystal Music.

Updates hopefully this weekend. No resolution on the backwards URL problem yet; Erik is very busy and I'm mystified.

Relto 1.1.9 - The backwards URL problem has been resolved.

kefrith's description now has a real apostrophe (') and not that weird impostor (’).
MystLore's jigsaw puzzle is now mljigsaw, and ccn's jigsaw puzzle is now ccnjigsaw.
ccnjigsaw now points to the updated URL.
ururadio is still disabled, but be comforted in the knowledge that I don't actually delete items from rel.to, I mark them inactive which removes them from the site but all I have to do is change a 1 to a 0 and they return. 8)
baladria added to OOC blogs (Veovis: Lord of D'ni)
URU Exploration already has a keyword, ue; but there was no space in the name (URUExploration) and that is now remedied.
Anzir's weblog will not be added at this time because it only contains one entry from December 2007 and thus it does not add value. (This rule was applied to every similar blog from UruBlogs & MystBlogs when I set up rel.to's database.)
kaelis added to IC blogs (Caverna Obscura)
inferiority added to IC blogs (Inferiority Complex)
keshwyn added to IC blogs (Taproot Wanderings).
Kestr'l not added because it hasn't been updated since July 2007.
I already had an entry for bpgisme; I've added the second (more uru-centric, but still OOC) blog as bpgisme_uru (backpack on my back).
gomawiki added, under Enthusiasts Resources, and a child of Guild of Maintainers.
eva added (Explorer Video Archive), under Entertainment and a child of CCN.

rel.to matches against site titles as though they are secondary keywords, but it doesn't know how to match something with no spaces against text with spaces. In other words, you can go to "rel.to/cavern communications network" (with spaces) and it will direct you to the right place (try it!), but as noted, there was no keyword for "caverncommunicationsnetwork" (without spaces). It'd be time consuming for me to fix every entry to match both with and without spaces... ultimately, I'll need a fix in rel.to's script that will do this automatically, so this is more of a feature request than a database change. When this is done, it should probably consider an exact match to be like a primary keyword rather than a secondary... but I'll have to think about it.

For now, however, I've added the keywords that have been requested: thethirdpath, caverncommunicationsnetwork, and mystlore. Whilyam's entry was actually formed wrong (the title was in the description), so "rel.to/cavern link" should now work, and I've added cavernlink as a secondary keyword.

more's title is now corrected.
armd's title is now corrected, though dmrc remains a secondary keyword. There was some reason for this that I can't remember (maybe the site changed names at one point?).
wacm (also wineandcrystalmusic, sirrusofspire) added to Enthusiasts Resources (Wine and Crystal Music). Not sure if that's the proper category for this one, please feel free to recommend another if you have thoughts.

The GOW wiki is available in English, German, Spanish, and French.
kaelis and bpgisme_uru have the impostor character.
wolfgray only has two entries. Is that notable enough?

As I understand it, Rel.to tries to match the given keyword to any part of a primary keyword; e.g., shw redirects to keshwyn because it is the only keyword with "shw" in it. When I tried me_ though, it did not work, although only one keyword includes that string. What is the meaning of this?

For some reason, searching for 0, ., or .. brings you to the home page. Searching for comma(s), underscore(s), more than two periods, or anything beginning with two slashes and including a nonslash lists all the keywords. Searching for diacritical letters does not work (the only ones are in "Fakultät" and "für"). Searching for the words without the diacritics ("Fakultat" and "fur") does not work.

tree of possibilities should have a keyword.

The primary keyword (or whichever one is that which shows up in searches) for Alahmnat's blog should be alahmnat, not alamnat.

I will try to work on the recommended updates later this week.

Presently, I have added direct keywords for each of the IRC channel/server entries on the IRC page. So, rel.to/cc_irc, rel.to/gome_irc, rel.to/gow_irc, and rel.to/pyprp_irc are all working.

I've created entries for openuru and openuruforums.

The GOW wiki is available in English, German, Spanish, and French. Fixed
kaelis and bpgisme_uru have the impostor character. Fixed
wolfgray only has two entries. Is that notable enough? I only see it once - where do you see it twice?

As I understand it, Rel.to tries to match the given keyword to any part of a primary keyword; e.g., shw redirects to keshwyn because it is the only keyword with "shw" in it. When I tried me_ though, it did not work, although only one keyword includes that string. What is the meaning of this? The meaning of this is that an underscore is a wildcard in SQL. I have implemented a solution for now and I've passed my thoughts on to Erik to see if he agrees with the approach that I took.

For some reason, searching for 0, ., or .. brings you to the home page. Searching for comma(s), underscore(s), more than two periods, or anything beginning with two slashes and including a nonslash lists all the keywords. Searching for diacritical letters does not work (the only ones are in "Fakultät" and "für"). Searching for the words without the diacritics ("Fakultat" and "fur") does not work. I managed to get exact matching to work, but it broke the appearance of results returned to the user. So I've undone that change, and asked Erik to investigate if he has time. Supporting SQL for matching different character sets seems to be a problem; I'm not certain that I'll have a solution for this any time soon. As for searching for punctuation only... I'm not certain that is something we'll spend any time investigating. It is not useful to fix that behavior unless it is a symptom of a larger problem.

tree of possibilities should have a keyword. Google says that it is unable to access that page. As such, I am unable to add it to the index for now; has the address changed?

The primary keyword (or whichever one is that which shows up in searches) for Alahmnat's blog should be alahmnat, not alamnat. Whoops! Fixed.

Searching for "Fakultät" will now work correctly! Erik knew just what to fix.
Searching for "Fakultat" without the accent will be something we'll try to add later.

D'ni Hall is now added to the list of sites under "help", "Enthusiasts' Resources".

However, it will not show up in listings unless you edit your Preferences and enable Portuguese sites to appear.

As of this writing, Rel.to's hostmaster is working on the system to improve performance. Please let me know if the site is more responsive.

Rel.to's performance issues should be resolved.

Added: D'ni Hall forums
Removed: Alpha Blue Forums
Revised: Alpha Blue now points directly to the forums

Scheduled for next update:
- Need to remove John Lynch's archive - it's gone
- Check if

http://uruexplorer.blogspot.com/

is in the list, if not, add it (resolve conflict with the domain for D'ni Explorer's Guild)
- Revise "Myst Online" subcategory of "Official" category - website sections have changed
- Update "Beginner's Resources" subcategory in "Help" category; move ABB and FAQ to Enthusiasts' Resources and update descriptions
- Add "Developer's Resources" subcategory to "Help" category; move existing tools there
- Add Alcugs to Developers Resources
- Add ULM to Developers Resources
- Add Drizzle to Developers Resources
- Add Offline KI to Developers Resources
- Move GoMa and GoW wiki links to Developers Resources
- Add new top level category, Ages. Move Ages from Enthusiasts' Resources (under "Help") to Ages.
- Add other Ages to Ages category (need list).
- Add

http://myst-aventure.com/forum>

- Add

http://afteruru.forumakers.com/index.htm