Expanding your Website’s Horizons

In my previous article “Initializing your Web Strategy” we discussed starting your own website using Wordpress and how to make it look good on a limited budget. To mirror these discussions I’ve launched my own Bot website which you can visit at www.myrmagic.com.

This website is hosted by Dreamhost and I used their web app installer to install Wordpress and a free basic theme. I did edit the theme a bit to include the logo on the top left but otherwise it’s a stock installation. I also installed the Disqus plugin for comment management, and the MTG Helper plugin to linking my Cards and Desklists to Wizards Gatherer.

The MTG Helper plugin is a great way to enable card recognition when posting to your website. It uses in post tags, sometimes referred to as BCode which you may recognize from use in discussion forums. So if you want to link a Card to a Card Image that pops up when you hover your mouse over the name, you wrap the name in the [CARD] tag like this.

[CARD]Inkmoth Nexus[/CARD].

You can also create a simple deck list using the [CARDLIST] tag. All you need to do is list your cards on separate lines after the tag and if you want to specify an amount you type “ *4 Inkmoth Nexus “ to have the plugin count the total cards at the end like this;

[CARDLIST]
*3 Viral Drake
*4 Blighted Agent
*2 Clone
*4 Inkmoth Nexus
*18 Island
[/CARDLIST]

There are other functions like Drafting Lists (including a pick button) and other plugins for Wordpress which do similar things to this one but I picked MTG Helper because it was simple and didn’t distract from the original design of my site. I implore you to try them out and pick the one which works the best for you.

Now that you have all the basic parts of our MTGO Websites assembled, next week I will explore with you some simple ways of advertising your new site and spreading the word about your Bot.