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If you haven't checked out the front page of Dakka, you might not notice some of the new features that have come online since the latest and greatest software update was implemented Sunday morning (US time).

One of the most fantastic things we have now is a full article system that is wiki-based and allows everyone to contribute to articles together. Articles can be 'locked' so that no one (but administrators and moderators) can alter them, but the reality is, it is very easy to track and erase changes made to articles so there is very little reason to not utilize this feature that allows the entire community to come together to create articles about miniature gaming (plus it is very easy to tell who is making what changes so repeat offenders will quickly have their privileges revoked).


But I really think you need to see the article system in action to appreciate just how cool it is, so I've taken a bit of time out of my busy Adepticon painting schedule to whip up a few examples to show you a little taste of what the new system is capable of.

Remember, that this is just one day's work, and that much, much more is possible with the system. If you're interested in getting started you should read the following article tutorials:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Article_Tutorial
http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Editing_Tutorial
http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Image_Tutorial



ARMY PROFILES

Probably my favorite use of the article system is the ability to create Army Profiles, which is a throwback to the old days of Dakka. It really is very easy to create and organize and it is very easy to link your army profiles into your expanded profile page (more on that later).

Remember, we host all your pictures, so all you have to do is take the pictures of your miniatures and you can finally have a permanent display of your army online to show the world.

Here's an example of an army profile you can create, mine is Hivefleet yakface.



TACTICS, PAINTING, ETC. ARTICLES

Next up, the article system allows you to create traditional articles for whatever you want. Game or hobby reviews? Painting and Modeling blogs? Tacticas?

Check, check, check. You can make any and all of those articles very easily now, complete with pictures (hosted by us). The great part of this system is that now others can hop-in to your article and provide you with pictures you don't have, offer a differing viewpoint, or a few posters can work together to create the best tactica ever.

Your imagination is really the only limitation now.

Here are a few examples of articles I had written in the past that I quickly converted into the new system:

Line of Sight and the Magic Cylinder
Tactica Carnifex


As you can see, in the first article, I'm still looking for pictures I don't have, but with the new system now if anyone has those pictures available they can upload and add them without any hassle!



EXPANDED PROFILE PAGE

All Dakka members now have an expanded profile page which is basically just a blank wiki page all for themselves that they can use to put absolutely anything on (that is miniatures related, of course).

For now, it is a completely blank slate, but at some point we may add a few suggestions to the template to help give people some ideas.

You can check out what I whipped up for my profile page HERE.

Obviously as I make more Army Profiles I will be able to have an easy link to them on my expanded profile page. I can also keep links to my favorite Dakka threads on that page so I don't have to go searching everytime I want to find thread again. I've also linked to where I game at, so others can find the same store.

You could put links to your gaming group's club page or forum on there, you can put a gallery of all your mini pictures there, you could put your favorite army lists, etc, etc, etc.

The space is yours and you get to do whatever you want with it (provided it is miniature games related and remains family-friendly).


IGNORE POSTER & FRIENDS LIST


A couple of other new features you should really be aware of is the ability to 'ignore' users. Once you 'ignore' a user you will no longer see their posts (you will still see a note letting you know you are ignoring their posts though). With this feature implemented the amount of arguing and flaming is expected to decrease. If you have a continual problem with a poster, you will be expected to 'ignore' them from here on out.

If you fail to utilize this function and continue to insult/flame another user you will suffer posting suspensions up to, and including possible banning from the site.


On a more positive note, the 'friends' list is pretty much just a way for you to keep a list of posters you prefer to correspond with in an easy to find place (on your profile page). This can make it easy to PM someone, or check on their profile page to see what new things they've added to their expanded profile page.

For now, the amount of features stemming from the friends list is a little bare. But rest assured that in the months to come we will be implementing new things based off of your friend's list, so now is a good time to start clicking on those Dakka members you like to keep track of or correspond with.


I hope you all enjoy the new features, and big thanks again to Legoburner (as always) who slaves away for all our benefit.

Now that I see the article section in action, I have to say "Wow".

Very very cool. Thanks for this surprising addition.

Thank you so much Yak for that article on the magic cylinder. I am printing it off for one of the stores I play at because this has been a cause of many arguements.

Yup, that LOS article is possibly the best I've ever read on the subject.

Top work fell ! Rest of the upgrades are pretty solid too.

Ok Yak,

That IS COOL! Well done. I really like the return of DakkaArmyprofiles and hope we can turn this feature into one cornerstone that makes dakka so special. The Hobbytalents of Warseer should also come in and do Army profiles and see the quality of the dakka forums in the process

Question:

How are articles indexed and how do people casually browse
to get to them?

For example, when I go directly to articles I can't seem to
casually browse to Tactica Carnifex. Is indexing subject to
moderator approval?

Click 'all articles'.

We are still experimenting with article organisation. For now, there are a number of ways to browse...

The articles and army profile home pages will have moderator-picked articles but will only be updated as and when we get round to it (hopefully once a week or so). We'll be trying out different formats to see what works the best.

The 'All Articles' link on the left hand side of the articles section will list all articles, limited to a set number per page, sorted alphabetically.

The 'Categories' links you see at the bottom of most pages (except the two article home pages) will take you to an index of articles of that type (even if the link is red)

The 'View a Random Article' link will send you to a random article which is a good way to find random things when you are bored

The 'Recent Changes' link will give a list of the most recent article updates. The dakka home page also has a cleaner list of the 15 most recent article updates and is a good way to see what is happening, but it only updates every hour or so.

You can always link direct to an article in the forum (or anywhere else) too... Tactica Carnifex

Very cool! This will definitely help consolidate the fact I am a blog whore in my wife's mind. Working on my WikiDakka when I don't feel like painting and building will be great!

Are you going to update your 'fex Tactica now that the Orks and Chaos Codexes change some of your points?

Wehrkind wrote:Very cool! This will definitely help consolidate the fact I am a blog whore in my wife's mind. Working on my WikiDakka when I don't feel like painting and building will be great!

Are you going to update your 'fex Tactica now that the Orks and Chaos Codexes change some of your points?

Absolutely. I'll actually finally be able to update it to include information specific to Godzilla armies and maybe add a few pictures to spice things up.

It's just cool that's it is so easy to edit and update articles as needed now.

It's really cool. I just fiddled around with the Army Profile thing with some of the recent pics I took of Craig's Trolls. But I'm inspired now to go dig up some of my old 40k photos as well as shoot some of my new PP stuff as well.

Great work Yak and lego!

HBMC had a great article on IG doctrines and Cypher has those fantastic WHFB tactics articles. Don't forget to add those to the articles section.

One question: how/where do I add the country flag?

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Ozymandias wrote:HBMC had a great article on IG doctrines and Cypher has those fantastic WHFB tactics articles. Don't forget to add those to the articles section.

One question: how/where do I add the country flag?

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Country flag has a little bug which I have not uploaded the fix for yet... basically it will take a little while for the flag to be displayed after you post, but it will be there in the future. It will be there instantly when I put the fix up in a day or two.

Really nice to use, though some of the formatting stuff took a little getting used to, but the preview and some editing worked out a lot of the problems I had.

I just finished the translation of the Ork Takktica to the article system so it's up there now too.

Really nice work guys. Now I just have to finish painting stuff so I can make my Army Profiles.

Voodoo Boyz wrote:

Really nice work guys. Now I just have to finish painting stuff so I can make my Army Profiles.

Gak

Don't remind me.

I still haven't figured out what kind of armies to post: if I only posted the successful ones
you'd never see them!

It's a question with Warmachine/Hordes as the characters/models are going to be all
the same. Maybe I should just post them into likely groups and combinations to
make the most out of them!

Ok, I see my flag now. Cool.

Army profiles makes me want to finish my DA 5th company...

Ozymandias, King of Kings

I dont see your flag, you homeless bum.

*Points and laughs at the homeless bum*

[edit]

Hey! I dont have a flag anymore either... *crys*

I am a homeless bum now too! :S

*Passes the mad-dog 20/20 wine in a paper bag to Ozmandias*

[edit#2]


oh I have a flag now...see you around sucker! Gimme back my wine! I am going home!

Hellfury wrote:I dont see your flag, you homeless bum.

*Points and laughs at the homeless bum*

[edit]

Hey! I dont have a flag anymore either... *crys*

I am a homeless bum now too! :S

*Passes the mad-dog 20/20 wine in a paper bag to Ozmandias*

That's because there's no country for old men...

*hopes hellfury and ozymandias are older than him*

Hellfury:

I'm more partial to Cisco myself. http://www.bumwine.com/

I was worried that you wanted the "Ignore" button to ignore my posts. I'm actually worried that much of what I say now will be ignored.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

malfred wrote:It's a question with Warmachine/Hordes as the characters/models are going to be all
the same. Maybe I should just post them into likely groups and combinations to
make the most out of them!

Malfred, here's what I came up with for Hordes:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Craig%27s_Trollbloods

Ozymandias wrote:Hellfury:

I'm more partial to Cisco myself. http://www.bumwine.com/

I was worried that you wanted the "Ignore" button to ignore my posts. I'm actually worried that much of what I say now will be ignored.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

What was that again? I cant see your post....

Just kidding.

ok sorry for being so off topic guys. I'll stop now.....and go to my corner...

RussWakelin wrote:

malfred wrote:It's a question with Warmachine/Hordes as the characters/models are going to be all
the same. Maybe I should just post them into likely groups and combinations to
make the most out of them!

Malfred, here's what I came up with for Hordes:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Craig%27s_Trollbloods

How did you decide what to put?

I calculate my Protectorate of Menoth stuff to be about 3000 points at the moment.

Do I just pick one warcaster?

Do I include everything?

The options!

I say you include it all Malfred.

You can always make the 'main' choice a big picture and then your alternate warcasters as thumbnail pics.

That probably will work best.

Warmachine is so weird. Since you rarely play multiple
warcasters, you never really buy enough stuff to field full
allowances of everything. So I could not re-create a
Protectorate of Menoth civil war, for example.

It'll be fun...for me. My wife is going to think I'm crazy. Er.

"I can't put Feora into a shot with epic Feora because that
would disrupt the Iron Kingdom's space-time continuum!"

malfred wrote:
"I can't put Feora into a shot with epic Feora because that
would disrupt the Iron Kingdom's space-time continuum!"

For something like epics what would be cool is something like

"Feora has been with the battle group for many years... here she is in her younger days commanding one of her first battle groups. Today (pic of Epic) she is a proud warcaster that leads many more into battle."

Each 'caster could have a "life and times" section.

I can't wait to see your stuff.

Hahaha, yeah. That would be kind of funny.

I guess I could base armies off of my various warcasters
and just do sections for each.

I started working on some Idrians last night. I've had them
for a couple months now.

Dunno how, but my article got clipped off halfway through between this morning and the evening. I saved the Wiki-fied text on another PC, so I should be able to re-upload it tomorrow.

Also, I like the army pages, more tempting pics of PP stuff.

Voodoo Boyz wrote:Dunno how, but my article got clipped off halfway through between this morning and the evening. I saved the Wiki-fied text on another PC, so I should be able to re-upload it tomorrow.

Also, I like the army pages, more tempting pics of PP stuff.

It's weird because the oldest version of the article on the wiki is still chopped off.

I'm assuming you're totally positive that the whole thing was there at some point? If so, it sounds like a definite bug of some sort because if it was there, it should show up on one of the older edits (but it doesn't), which would definitely be some sort of error in the software.

Wow, looks like you managed to hit a limit that I didnt even know was there (close to 100KB)... I'll add a warning to the wiki editor that there is an upper size limit, and the solution for you would be to split the article into two parts (just add a 'Ork Tactica Continued' article and link to it at the bottom of the current article). Sorry about the slight inconvenience, but allowing articles that are larger than that could really spank the server.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Felix%27s+Protectorate+of+Menoth+Armies

I'm slow. I had no idea that the photo-dump portion of the
forums and the wikipedia portions of the site were two
separate things. So I spent all night taking pictures, then
I uploaded them via Photo Dump then I uploaded everything
AGAIN using the wiki part.

Really cool stuff, though.