Creature Catalogue website won't load

[Cheesegreetings]

Can someone please tell me what happened to the Creature Catalogue website? It died several years ago. I still can't find any explanation of what happened or when it'll be fixed, or why the dead link to the website is still on this forum.

 

[freyar]

Wow, it's been a while since we actually had the website. Thinking back, it was having some kind of backend database problem for a while (crashing periodically) and then it just never got fixed at some point after the general board had a problem. That was before the forums switched to Xenforo, I think.

Cleon updates a zipfile of the conversions in the "ENWorld Resources" section at Creature Catalog . The last update was about a year ago, and I'm not sure when we have enough new critters to warrant the next update; the ones we're working on now are slow and complicated, and I unfortunately don't have much time to help out, which slows us down more.

 

[Cleon]

Wow, it's been a while since we actually had the website. Thinking back, it was having some kind of backend database problem for a while (crashing periodically) and then it just never got fixed at some point after the general board had a problem. That was before the forums switched to Xenforo, I think.

The old Creature Catalog had really kludged together coding that required a server running obsolete PHP and going by the backup Darjr sent me all those years ago it lost some of its data during one of those crashes, which is why a few of the older monster entries went AWOL.

After looking into the matter, getting it back to its original condition would have required me learning PHP and rebuilding the entire website with (hopefully) a somewhat sturdier architecture and I decided life was too short to bother with such a thing and just compiled all the monster files I could find to create a Zip file Creature Catalog in Downloads.

I'm not sure when we have enough new critters to warrant the next update; the ones we're working on now are slow and complicated, and I unfortunately don't have much time to help out, which slows us down more.

There are a bunch of simpler monsters left we could be converting but for some reason we're handling the nightmarish ones at the moment!

I should be posting an update to the Resource version soon since we've completed a couple monsters (Skeleton Archer & Caprine) and there's a few more that only need a final polish.

 

[Cheesegreetings]

Thanks, both! Is it possible to remove the link to the website from this forum so it doesn't keep misleading?

Edit: So, what is the difference between Conversions and Crypt? Some monsters are in the Crypt but not the Conversions.

Also, the links within the index do not work. Will they work if I unzip?

Edit 3: Weredrake [Vulgar Drakanthrope] mentions a Weredragon [True Drakanthrope] conversion which isn't present in Conversions or in Crypt. Is this a reference to an upcoming conversion, or a deleted one?

 

[darjr]

Thanks, both. Is it possible to remove the link to the website from this forum so it doesn't keep misleading?

@Morrus

 

[Cleon]

Thanks, both! Is it possible to remove the link to the website from this forum so it doesn't keep misleading?

I'd assume it's possible but it's not something either Freyar nor I could do.

We don't have any admin rights over Enworld.

We used to be able to edit and update monster entries to the old Creature Catalog website, but that was the limit of our powers.

Edit: So, what is the difference between Conversions and Crypt? Some monsters are in the Crypt but not the Conversions.

The original arrangement Scott Greene had was the Creature Catalog was for converting old-edition monsters that didn't have officially published 3E stats.

If WotC published 3E stats for a monster that already had a Creature Catalog entry, that entry no longer qualified as a CC Conversion so got archived in the Creature Crypt with a note as to the source the official 3E version first appeared in.

Also, the links within the index do not work. Will they work if I unzip?

That's right. The hyperlinks only work once the files are unzipped into regular folders.

Note that the HTML monster entries require some Cascading Style Script files in their parent folder for their formatting (e.g. the creature.css, dragons.css and monster.css files in the CC folder). So if you move an HTML file to a folder that doesn't have those CSS files in its parent folder they'll look screwy when viewed in a web browser/

Edit 3: Weredrake [Vulgar Drakanthrope] mentions a Weredragon [True Drakanthrope] conversion which isn't present in Conversions or in Crypt. Is this a reference to an upcoming conversion, or a deleted one?

The Weredragon's one of the aforementioned "nightmarish ones" that hasn't been finished yet.

See Weredragon (True Drakanthrope) Working Draft.

 

[Big Mac]

I'd assume it's possible but it's not something either Freyar nor I could do.

We don't have any admin rights over Enworld.

We used to be able to edit and update monster entries to the old Creature Catalog website, but that was the limit of our powers.

It's been some time since EN World got hacked and @Morrus ran a Kickstarter to fund getting it back online. If he isn't able to restore the original home of the completed Creature Catalog monsters, maybe people should start looking into alternatives, such as a Creature Catalogue Wiki on Fandom.

A wiki over there would be free to set up and you could do the working out over here and set up a structure similar to the original structure over there.

A Wordpress site would be another alternative.

 

[Cleon]

It's been some time since EN World got hacked and @Morrus ran a Kickstarter to fund getting it back online. If he isn't able to restore the original home of the completed Creature Catalog monsters, maybe people should start looking into alternatives, such as a Creature Catalogue Wiki on Fandom.

A wiki over there would be free to set up and you could do the working out over here and set up a structure similar to the original structure over there.

A Wordpress site would be another alternative.

That sounds like a lot of work.

Someone (which'd likely end up being me) would need to reformat all the old Creature Catalog's pages as Wiki pages and set them up, which'd take ages.

I've already got the monsters available as HTML files over on Resources so it doesn't seem worth the time and effort at the moment.

If we had someone else to do most of the legwork that might make less reluctant.

There's other Admin/Editor and copyrights issues I'd have concerns about. If the Wiki let anyone edit the entries it might drift far from resembling Scott Greene's original site pretty quickly.

 

[freyar]

I'm inclined to agree that I'd prefer to have it on EN World, too.

 

[Cleon]

I'm inclined to agree that I'd prefer to have it on EN World, too.

Yeah, I think it's going the CC is going to stay here for now.

Even if it does get reborn as a Wiki the Download version would presumably keep going here.