The New Face of the IDC
By Brian Weeks

After months of development, the IDC is proud to show off it's new website. With ease of navigation in mind, via side menus and a site search, the new site has more to offer the SWTCG player than ever before. A new age of the Star Wars TCG can now begin. Welcome!!!

Around April of last year, as the IDC was heavy into development of the first IDC expansion, Fall of the Republic, the elected Public Affairs Chairperson stepped down for personal reasons. With less than two months left till the release date for FOTR, we were without a web host, a web design or even a direction to promote the newly formed IDC. What were we to do?

Even though I was the Card Development Chairperson at the time, I volunteered to take the reins of Public Affairs and use my emergency powers granted me by the IDC. The master card list had moved on the the other sub-committees (namely Rules and Playtesting) for review, so I had some "free" time. I purchased the url (www.skywlkr.net) and began design and development of the website.

With less than two months to create a "quality website and the need for thirty plus pages of content, I opted to create a standard html web site with no "flair". Graphics, format, fonts and code had to all be created from scratch. The site was completed on time and with all of the FOTR images and plugins ready to download. But I was not happy with the overall design. It need to be more "user-friendly".

Now, fast-foward to November 2006. The IDC had just released its second expansion, Scum and Villainy, and the site had nearly doubled in size. With a third expansion on the horizon, the site needed to be redesigned from the ground up. The goal was to make the site easy to update on a weekly basis, easy to navigate for the user, implement new technologies in web coding, yet make it accessible across various web browsers.

And now, three months later, I think we've achieved all of those goals. The site has been converted to asp, which will allow for implementation of databases, if need be, in the future. Using asp also allowed me to use Server Side Includes (SSI). By using SSI, I was able to create individual header, left column and footer files and include them on every page. If I change any aspect of one of these SSI's, it is reflected throughout the site.

The IDC site has been improved with a dhtml menu on the left table (which allows the user easy navigation through our site), a flash search engine (which the user can use to search the entire IDC site), and a site map. The expansion thumbnail pages have been revamped so the card image will appear on screen (no more window pop-ups, except on the cardlist pages and the pack images).

There is so much more to this site than meets the eye and I hope you take some time to explore and see what the IDC is all about. As always, if you see any problems, let me know. Just click the CONTACT button at the top of the page. Until next time, May the Force be with you!

Thoughts or comments? Visit the message board thread for this article here.

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About the Author

Brian Weeks (aka Skywlkr) has been playing the Star Wars TCG since its introduction at Celebration 2 in 2002. After playing the demo game and introducing it to RedneckJedi and Darthwalls, Team 'Dude Where's My Card' was created. He competed in three qualifiers, yet the closest he ever ranked was eighth. As a member on Rebelbasers, SWDuelist and a writer for the now defunct Diehard Online, he has tried to promote the game through information and interaction.

He is married, has a three year old son, is an architect, has been the Treasurer and Newsletter Editor for five years for JediOKC (an Oklahoma City based Star Wars Fan Club), was the IDC Card Development Chairperson for Fall of the Republic and is now the IDC Public Affairs Chairperson. Despite all that, he still has time to introduce the game to new players…KEEP THE GAME ALIVE!