Welcome to FWKZT!
Welcome to our new website! Many things have changed here compared to the old site. We’re certain you have many questions and concerns that will be answered soon.
After sitting down an discussing the state of FWKZT’s web services, the development team at FWKZT came to an agreement that through the restructuring of our web services, we could:
- Build a unified system in which developers and non-developers can contribute
- Work off a platform that will allow for creation of both web-page content and API data
- Create a UI design to incorporate aspects of existing UI in FWKZT projects for a more consistent website design
- Find a way to make signing-in more secure & less damn confusing
After discussing these points among the team, the decision was to utilize WordPress.
Why!?
If you’ve ever strolled into the realm of web development, ever, you’ve heard of WordPress. It holds the reputation of being the most popular, bloated, and insecure CMS out there for usage. Despite this, it fits all of our use cases:
Work off a platform that will allow for creation of both web-page content and API data
Easy creation of pages & posts are the core of WordPress. In addition to the support of REST API’s with version 4.0+, we were able to port over all of our API’s with great ease!
Create a UI design to incorporate aspects of existing UI in FWKZT projects for a more consistent website design
Using WordPress allowed us to build a custom theme from scratch. We were able to breakdown each web page by template and region. This made construction of layouts and content placement much simpler to do and very similar to how we made pages on our old front-end website.
Find a way to make signing-in more secure & less damn confusing
Contrary to the popular belief that WordPress is insecure in every way, there are only a few ways in which exploits happen through WordPress:
- Outdated plugins
- Brute forcing login pages
- Exploiting old HTTP transport features(Such as xmlrpc features)
By taking precautions by only picking plugins that are actively receiving updates, limiting login attempts, and disabling xmlrpc, many of the go-to ways of exploiting WordPress are handled here. We can also pick-and-choose which parts of WordPress we actually want to use to eliminate some of the bloated features often associated with this CMS.
Features
- Global Sign-in integration – Once you sign in, you’re signed on every part of the website!
- Further optimized mobile performance – Emphasis on simplicity & less bandwidth usage shapes the look of the mobile site!
- Redesign – Things look a little different!
- Stat-View – A mini-webpage application for viewing every category of stats on the community. Whether you are looking for yourself or the leader boards, navigating to find either is now only a few clicks away!
FAQ
I’m still using IE11 or older, why don’t some of the web pages work?
In our current redesign of the website, we have decided to move on and drop support entirely for browsers from the era of IE11. Chrome,Firefox,Safari, and most mobile browsers should run this site just fine. Using modern features for JavaScript allows us easily create more interactive apps. We import a poly-fill to try to serve as much modern JavaScript to you as possible if you’re on such older browsers, but we cannot guarantee optimal performance unless you consider a browser upgrade.
Where is the old forum? What happened to all of the posts?
After considering this point for a long time, we decided to move on from our old forums and did not migrate any of it’s content(Beyond the old categories we used). Our reasoning for this was due to the already disconnected nature of our old website. Our old site was not one-big system that we used, rather a collection of third-party vendor applications and a custom front-end section. Trying to port over what data we did have would require massive amounts of time that wouldn’t have been worth it considering that the forums were not used as much as we would have liked. Many of the developers have downloaded backups if you’re looking for something specific.
Do I have to sign-in with my Steam account?
Yes, besides admins, all users who want to use the forums and/or store on this new site must register with their Steam account. This is done so we can use details such as your SteamID for future involvement with us such as purchasing in-game store items or using applications on the website that modify your in-game data. This also indirectly adds a layer of security since you are signing in with an external service versus a stored password on our website.
Where is the option to look up my stats now?
To encourage usage of our web application, personal stat viewing is limited only to those who sign-up. While you are still able to view leader boards, you must register your Steam account to view personal stats.
Credits
Thank you to the following people for their contributions to this project! All of you have spent well over a month, some of you putting many hours in every day to get this site built:
- X2 – Web Development, Project Management
- Visudo – Web Development
- Swiss – UI/UX design, Graphic Design
- Mka0207, Captain Chewbacca – Content contributions
- ABloodied_Weeper – Screenshot submissions
Make sure to thank all of these people when you get the chance, they deserve it!