I produced the ‘Darksteel Knights’ website for a group of players (guild) that play the Guild Wars 2 massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Upon the games release on the 28th August 2012, the guild had over 70 members actively playing. I proposed a guild website that would allow members to organise events and for members to communicate with each other when not in-game.

I registered the www.darksteel-knights.co.uk domain name and set-up a sub-directory within my own personal websites FTP server for web-hosting. I then redirected URL visitors from the website to the FTP directory through the use of an add-on domain with my web host, this allowed the website to be set-up and installed with minimal expense.

I installed phpBB; a mysql customisable discussion community, onto the web space which would allow guild members to register to the website, participate in polls, post new topics and reply to existing threads. The forum was split into sections for different areas of discussion and a variety of themes were trialled. To add additional functionality and accessibility to the website I installed board3 portal which ‘adds an easy to use, slim and customizable portal as the front page to your phpBB3 forum’. Once installed, a variety of ‘mods’ can be installed and configured acting as ‘modules’, which can be manipulated at the administrators discretion.

Darksteel Knights Website

The portal system was customised to include mumble (VOIP software) information, useful links for guild members, highlights recent topics, shows active polls and a calendar for future events. Selected members were given moderator privileges to enable the website to be maintained and actively updated.

Disclaimer: I cannot take full credit for the websites appearance as ‘Luke’, one of the members given administrator/moderator privileges created the main ‘Darksteel Knights’ logo.