OpenGeofiction
INTRODUCING THE KOOPER NETWORK - REAL INTERNET FOR OGF
Posted by adminero_us on 25 August 2016 in English.Not long ago, I read an entry about websites in OGF. That gave me an idea.: Why not making them real?
KOOPER.TK
I remembered I have an un-used website, it’s called Kooper.tk , and I tried to make a social network there. We can use it to make real websites with OGF-related content. We can make functional websites or just plain landing pages looking like real websites.
Why?
Just for fun. I don’t think why someone would like to read a website about how great life in Kalm is or one about how to move to Ostermark, but it can be pretty exciting to build a life-like website about your country, with even your own country domain.
Your own country domain
An OGF website address would look like “http://kooper.tk/livinginvinnmark” , but you can link to it as livinginvinnmark.vk.
Is it a good idea? Would you collaborate?
Comment below, please.
Discussion
Comment from deltanz on 25 August 2016 at 14:51
I think this is a great idea! I’d love to design websites for Neo Delta! Just tell what to do! :D
Comment from adminero_us on 25 August 2016 at 15:15
Hey @deltanz, how great to see you like it too! I’ll start planning it now, and I’ll publish the info needed to start with our project.
Comment from eklas on 25 August 2016 at 16:09
Yeah! However considering my html skills, you shouldn’t expect any mesmerizing results from me.
Comment from adminero_us on 25 August 2016 at 16:22
@eklas you don’t need html skills :)
Comment from Reece202 on 25 August 2016 at 16:26
I was actually looking at the possibility of making a tourism site for Calliesanyo, but I stopped looking when I saw I’d have to have a Cypriot address to get a ‘.cy’ domain for it. This sounds like a good workaround for that.
Comment from niels20020 on 25 August 2016 at 17:51
This looks like a fantastic idea! I would really like to make some Balonese websites :)
Comment from Egen on 25 August 2016 at 21:56
I generally like the idea, and have thought for a while that it would be nice to have usable URLs for those who want to put up web pages. I gave a few minutes thought to setting up a functional airline web site with reservations, flight status, etc. before deciding it was overkill. And besides, paxair.com was already taken!
A top level domain like .OGF would be perfect, but the USD 100,000 application fee seems a bit excessive. :) The next best option seems to be a generic domain, that optimally is under the control of the admins. Assuming it’s something they wanted to take on.
It would sad to see numerous web pages set up, and have them vanish if the registrant lost interest, or was no longer able to manage the domain.
If this idea takes off, it might be worth looking at some other options.
Comment from eklas on 26 August 2016 at 05:35
Not using html makes the whole concept even more amazing! Can’t wait to finally create a portal for the BUM! magazine.
Comment from Yuanls on 26 August 2016 at 08:17
This is a very good idea! It would be very useful if we didn’t need html. My html skills are very mediocre.
Comment from Sarepava on 26 August 2016 at 12:17
In my imagination, the most useful applications for such a site would be for newspapers in the OGF world, for train timetables (Andy’s Norscand site has an engine powering a journey planner for his high-speed railway network) and for ‘tourism’ websites. In fact the last could be used for a 1st April prank to convince people our countries are real - links to a map and wiki article would surely fool a few.
Comment from dryerlint on 26 August 2016 at 13:07
This does sound like a great idea. It would certainly be fun for people to practice their creativity as well as their HTML/CSS skills.
How do you plan to control access to the website? Just give everyone who applies a subdomain, and allow them to put whatever they want on it?
Comment from adminero_us on 26 August 2016 at 14:55
This is my plan. Contact me via private message if you are interested in my project.
By the way, I’ve already brought a site to life. Welcome Beeper
Comment from niels20020 on 26 August 2016 at 15:04
@eklas Oh, I would love to BUM! articles on the website :D
@adminero_us Is Beeper an OGF-based social network or a real-life one?
Comment from adminero_us on 26 August 2016 at 16:46
@niels20020 , it’s an idea from that post talking about social networks. It depends, it’s supposed to be an OGF-based social network “used” by the people in our fictional countries, but we can use it to “roleplay” and create “official” accounts (Presidents of countries, celebrities, important fictional websites, etc.)
Comment from eklas on 26 August 2016 at 16:55
I signed up on Beeper (using the email I have for discount codes and spam) so now you can say hello to iDrabnews.
Comment from kingfries on 26 August 2016 at 18:28
Sound like a cool idea, although I won’t use that feature anytime soon. But yeah this could come in handy to confuse people. Reminds of the story of how a british newspaper invented a country and fooled everybody to believe its real.
Comment from niels20020 on 26 August 2016 at 18:58
I just created the Beeper page for the Diario Balonésa.
Comment from adminero_us on 26 August 2016 at 20:33
Great :)
Comment from adminero_us on 26 August 2016 at 20:34
Love to see how the people like my idea :)
Comment from Myrcia on 26 August 2016 at 21:21
I love the Beeper feature. This is the Beeper page for the Myrcian Herald, Myrcia’s largest Ingerish-language publication.
http://kooper.tk/beeper/myrcianherald
Comment from niels20020 on 27 August 2016 at 17:20
What?! There are now 113 accounts on Beeper. Are these all OGF-related people?
Comment from Myrcia on 27 August 2016 at 18:47
They are almost exclusively spambot accounts posting about medicinal herbs.
http://kooper.tk/beeper/LesterDkt8
Comment from niels20020 on 27 August 2016 at 19:25
Maybe adminero_us can ban them?
Comment from trabantemnaksiezyc on 27 August 2016 at 20:01
I can’t enter the page, I am redirected to hostinger.pl/blad_404 .
Comment from isleño on 27 August 2016 at 21:11
Great discussion so far. If people are interested in tweeting as an OGF government/celebrity/news-outlet/etc, I’d encourage them to create those accounts on real-life Twitter, where they can be seen and enjoyed by so many more people. It would be awesome to watch an OGF community grow on social media, sharing in-world news and info, as well as showcasing the great talent and creativity of the people here.
As for building OGF-related websites, it’s hard to say how reliable kooper.tk will be in the future (it seems to be down right now). But depending on what people want to create, it’s pretty easy to build something simple on Wordpress (like we’ve done with OGN News) or other free platforms, which would also give you direct access to your site without relying on another OGF user to keep it online.
That said, one big drawback to setting up separate websites like that is the likelihood that they may not get much traffic. So if you want more people to actually learn about your country, then you may want to consider alternatives. For example, a lot of interesting content can be posted in the form of articles at OGN News — not just news articles, for example, but also travel articles, lifestyle articles, etc… and it would be great to see more people posting over there! Alternatively, pursuing something that would fit well on real-life social media sites, as mentioned above with Twitter, is another path that might get you more visibility than a separate website would.
Anyway, lots of different options to consider. :-)
Comment from adminero_us on 28 August 2016 at 16:08
Beeper has been sadly invaded by spambots.
I tried to login to start a massive ban, but I can’t. I don’t know what’s happening, even if the website is working and I remember my username and password, I can’t log in.
Comment from adminero_us on 28 August 2016 at 17:07
Finally got control but..
There are too much spammers! Deleting their accounts is a messy process and I’d take me horus :(
Comment from niels20020 on 28 August 2016 at 17:11
Try to delete as must as you can. Do you have any idea how these bots found the website?
Comment from adminero_us on 28 August 2016 at 17:14
Hours* and it looks like we will need to deal with that people. Anyways I’m going to create a special group for REAL OGF USERS, so we can only see real posts and not the ones written by that spamming scum.
Comment from eklas on 28 August 2016 at 17:17
Oh no, I’m so sorry. I found it unfitting that you would create accounts for single citizens from the start…
But I have to confess, some of the artificially generated beeps about herbs and alternative pharma were so derpy they made me laugh hard 😂
Comment from Bstn on 29 August 2016 at 17:01
Nice idea! Have you already implemented a captcha to stop invasions from alternative pharma bots? (Dunno if you have already implemented as I haven’t signed up yet).
Comment from adminero_us on 29 August 2016 at 21:12
It was built with a preset named Sharetronix that makes everyone (I’m just 14) able to create his own social network and it doesn’t offer captcha. I will probably re-create it with another preset (like buddypress) , copy the content and your accounts, and implement a captcha there.
Comment from CodeTriangle on 31 August 2016 at 05:49
I really like this concept, but I have a few questions. Do you own this server or is it hosted on a device owned by a company? Does it have PHP or anything else installed?
Also, how many subdomains do you have? Many services offer free unlimited subdomains with their plans. If you have this, wouldn’t it be more elegant to have subdomains such as bum.kooper.tk? If you don’t have this, I see the appeal in having everything be mostly run with a filesystem like you have. But if you’re running it yourself, you should have virtually infinite subdomains.
Anyways, I’m done bugging you – for now. If you don’t want to share this, I’m fine with that. But I would like to know, since I have a plan that I think would be awesome to work in.
– CodeTriangle
Comment from Kurzov on 7 September 2016 at 22:21
Apparently library over here in NC is blocking it because of “Elevated Exposure”. Woop woop.