Defiance Data's 4th Anniversary

For the next two weeks we are celebrating Defiance Data's 4th anniversary. Soak up some of the history, changes to the site, and hear about what I've been working on to modernise the site (and something about giveaways).

Site design: Mid 2013

History

Defiance Data started out as a generic Defiance resource site on my personal domain, it was announced April 10, 2013.

The first focus of the site was to provide hints to complete the Daily and Weekly contracts, while the in-game system was very vague. Take a look at one of these beautiful, lovingly crafted old designs.

It then moved on to provide screenshots to find the data recorders in the game, bringing together scattered resources and presenting them with multiple images as well as descriptions.

As the site became my first success, it's always held a special place in my heart (lessons I carried through to Trovesaurus). It's received a bunch of changes over the years and I've learned a lot (usually though mistakes) about running a site like this.

Site design: May 2014

Changes

To celebrate the anniversary of the site, I've been modernising the appearance and functionality bringing across lessons I've learned from running Trovesaurus.

I've also created a Defiance Data Discord Server, to allow me to communicate with the users easier. It also is where I keep the site change log.

January 2017

• Small facelift to the site, moved the calendar to the sidebar etc
• Added a new comment system
• Created the DD Discord Server
• You can now set Defiance appropriate avatars

February 2017

• Fixed the weapons builder and synergy builder
• Fixed the Defiance Data twitter news bot
• Created a dedicated Holidays page, with a history of holidays
• Created specific holiday pages, with information about those holidays
• Added support for Contract, Pursuit, Arkfall, Synergy icons and tooltips
• Added support for [contract],[pursuit], [synergy] tags
• Cleaned up the Contract individual pages a little
• Cleaned up the Pursuit individual pages a little
• Cleaned up the URL structure of database pages, /database /contracts /pursuits /arkfalls /synergies

March 2017

• Synergies now display what holiday they are available during
• Jackpot weapons can now support multiple synergies
• Removed the ability for users to submit weapons (it wasn't used)
• Added the ability for mission boxes to be created
• Weapon model page headers now display rarity and nano, when that data has been set
• At the bottom of each weapon page you can now see the other related weapons from the same source
• You can now browse weapons by source, not just weapon type
• Added new short urls /shields /powers /perks
• Loadouts page have received a URL and appearance upgrade
• Fixed an issue with some dev tracker links not taking you to the absolute position on the thread where the dev posted

Plans

I'm currently working on putting together a Trade system, it's still in the early stages and it isn't a confirmed thing that will be released. Once I am personally happy with appearance and functionality, we'll open it out for others to test.

This is my main focus over the next two weeks, but there are other things on my task list as well:

• Transition over to email only login system
• Add automated reminders when calendar events end (for me, because I'm bad)
• Add automated draws of winners in giveaways (for us all, because I'm bad)
• Add Manufacturers DB
• Match DD's weapons structure more closer to Trions
• Improve the way we store shields, and add shield jackpots
• Upgrade the mail system
• Re-add the server status page
• Add upcoming downtime notifications, and downtime indicators to the header (automated system)
• Finish cleanup of loadouts section

If you have other suggestions for tasks that I work on, please let me know in the comments.

Giveaways