Stratics 16th Anniversary Website

Stratics is the longest-running gamer-community website dedicated to massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). The website began in 1996 as a way for dedicated players of Ultima Online to share strategies and statistics with the growing community of fellow gamers. As a new player in 1997, I was soon involved as a community member posting content, answering questions, and writing short stories related to my in-game activities. From 2004-09, I became an official volunteer reporter, interviewing notable players and writing journalistic articles related to in-game happenings. I stepped away for several years, then returned as part of the leadership team in 2013 to migrate and manage content in a new WordPress portal.

Concepts were visually created and it fell to me and a hired WordPress developer to create a unified user experience between separate platforms (WordPress, a data-driven PHP site, and Xenforo forums) with content related to 8 gaming titles and several in-development titles. My area of expertise was front-end design and content management while the other developer managed backend customizations and bridge creation with single-sign-on between WordPress and Xenforo.

My role was also administrative (server management, database management) and operational (managing volunteers and paid staff as well as freelancers upon their contract). Furthermore, I worked with fellow leaders to strategize growth, establish relationships with key representatives of various game titles, and coordinate programs to facilitate brand loyalty and social network reach.

For the 16th anniversary celebration, a "steampunk" design was created and I was tasked to create a new WordPress theme utilizing custom CSS/HTML/XML while adjusting and creating images for branding as well as articles. Everything was completed and the new WordPress theme launched on time for the celebrations. Below is that work.

The PDF files are scrapes of select pages showing the final design work in several applications.

Below you will find original art and banners I made for the brand.

Cog Artwork

In line with the Steampunk theme, I added various icons and logos to a base graphic cog. Each cog was used as an identifier for its specific game, as well as to imprint the new branding for Stratics. A special CSS was applied in places (not javascript) to make the cogs spin when the mouse hovered over them. Social network cogs were simply static, but again impressed the cog branding for Stratics.

With leadership changes in 2016-2017, my involvement ended and I left the Stratics community as a volunteer and employee.

The community is still active and changing and I continue to participate in the forums, adding content and short stories, as my time allows.