Fandom
In August of 2023 a Prop-Punk Fandom was being worked on by various moderators on the M82 Hangout discord server.
On the 2nd of September 2023 safeish DMed Messier 82 saying "I don't suppose you even read dms but still, I remember you mentioning something about a prop punk wiki, I was wondering if there was any way I could help with it" to which he responded "Yeah, we're still working on it. As for now, it'll just be the mods with access. Thank you though!"
Its not certain when the Fandom was abandoned but it was at some point between that message and the start of propedia.
Origins
On the 10th of April 2024 safeish DMed pelicannot asking for him to teach her CSS. Because, as safeish said, "i want to make a presentable prop punk wiki" and "html looks jank and while i like jank some people are less of a fan". pelicannot agreed to help even going on to write almost all of the JavaScript for the website.
Sent on the 11th of April 2024, pelicannot's first ideas for the contents of Propedia were as follows:
"main page
=politics
==alliances
===various alliances
==countries
===various countries with lore
==maybe wars?
=news
==time progression from gats
==news sources
===sibo
===other ones idk
==diplomacy/radio
=rules
==the rules
=comapnies
==categories of companies"
pelicannot created a Replit project which safeish joined (often referred to as "the dev branch" by safeish).
Naming
safeish chose the name propedia (a combination of propeller and encyclopedia) inspired by the name of Wikipedia. However it would turn out that a property database by the same name already existed. In spite of this safeish decided to use the name.
Secrecy
During the first few days of Propedia Development pelicannot and safeish agreed to work on the project mostly in secret to get a minimum viable product finished before presenting it to Gatsby as having a prototype to show would increase the chances of the project being accepted. However pelicannot worried that the secrecy could mean that the two were producing a their wiki whilst the Prop-Punk team was making their own saying "well yeah but it would be annoying to do loads of work and then he goes "oh yeah we made one it's coming out tomorrow"", safeish responded with "I know they haven't, I'm like 99% sure they gave up on it".Submission System Version 1
Submission system version 1 (implemented on the 14th of April 2024) involved sending the entire page through an email using SMTP however this had issues as sending HTML though email results in it being embedded. To combat this pelicannot added a encoding system that would replace parts of HTML with Unicode characters however this system required decoding the pages which significantly slowed down the process.
Presenting the Minimum Viable Product
On the 12th of April safeish messaged pelicannot saying "should we organise a meeting with gatsby to show it like its shark tank or something". pelicannot agreed and safeish messaged Gatsby saying "hey gatsby me and pelicannot want to show you something in vc at some point" to which he responded "Alr I’ll be on later today". Later that day pelicannot and safeish got into a VC with Gatsby where they presented the prototype of the website and all its features. Gatsby liked it and gave both pelicannot and safeish the Prop Punk - Game Master role.
After the presentation safeish drafted a list of required features as follows:
"features we need to add:
"features we need to add:
• better editing UI apparently
• how the fuck do you submit an image
• make it look ✨snazzy✨"
Headers and Footers
First Implemented on the 13th of April 2024. Each and every Propedia page includes a header at the top with the logo that doubles as a link back to the index and a search bar along with a footer that contains the editor. The headers and footers work using a <? php include ?> that appends separate footer and header .php files onto the top and bottom of the pages. This required turning the previously .html pages into .php.
Better Editor
The original editor used before the presentation was a simple text box that the user would have to type HTML code into. This significantly decreased accessibility and so implementing a proper editor became the top priority.
On the 12th of April 2024 after presenting the prototype to Gatsby pelicannot created a checklist for a better editor as follows:
"editing ui should include:
"editing ui should include:
• links
• titles and subtitles
• images
• tables
• bullet lists
• normal text"
On the 13th of April 2024 pelicannot added buttons for Subtitles, links, images and tables however the tables did not work properly until pelicannot finally managed to fix it on the 16th of April.
On the 17th of April 2024 pelicannot added a save feature to the editor that saves whatever is typed into the editor as a .txt file that's downloaded onto the users device.
On the 12th of July 2024 safeish added a button that added smaller subtitles at the request of a few people namely Melone.
Submission System Version 2
Submission system version 2 (implemented on the 14th of April 2024) involved sending the entire page not through email but rather through a discord bot. This was far better than version 1 since it didn't need to be encoded and decoded however it was not without its problems as discords message length limit meant that pages longer than the limit would break. In order to combat this pelicannot programmed it to split submissions into multiple messages of less than 1000 characters however this wasn't perfect and could be broken up if multiple submissions were sent at the same time.
Submission System Version 3
Submission system version 3 (implemented on the 10th of May 2024) stored the submissions as a gist and sent a link to the gist, this allows it to not be jumbled in the case of multiple submissions in close proximity.
Public Release
On the 26th of May 2024 Propedia was officially announced, the announcement was from safeish and is as follows:"@PropPunk Players
Introducing Propedia, the official wiki for Prop-Punk
• A tutorial for how to make your own pages is embedded on the first page
• Please check to see if your country page already exists, if it doesn't make a new one
• Please don't ask us to make it look nice we will work on that once everything is ironed out
(Credit to @pelicannot for the programming side)"
API Token Issue
Occasionally it was found that Propedia would suddenly stop allowing submissions and instead return "error", this stemmed from the API Token suddenly being revoked, for a long time the cause was unknown. Until on the 18th of August 2024 when pelicannot realised the cause:In order to create gists the website needs an API Token. Sometimes when there aren't enough closing div tags such as on pages edited in Replit instead of the website's editor, the editor contains the edit box as part of the content. Since the edit box code contains the API Token GitHub sees the API Token in the gist and considers it a security risk and automatically revokes the token. The fix is simple: make sure there are enough closing div tags and only edit using the website's built in editor.
Cancel Submit Issue
For a while whenever someone canceled submitting a page it wouldn't cancel the submission rather submit the page under "null". This was noticed by Icecream&waffles who sent a DM to safeish that read "I think cancelling actually submits it without a username". This was then fixed.New UI
On the 21st of august pelicannot updated the UI to be sleeker with a new font and new buttons.
(above) Old UI
(above) New UI
Switch to Git
Originally the "dev branch" was hosted on Replit however due to a change in the companies business model introducing limitations in the number of development time allowed this meant that the "dev branch" had to be moved to a mix of Git and VS Code which caused some issues namely safeish's struggle to get a PHP localhost server to work.Submission System Version 4
Submission system version 4 (implemented on the 11th of November 2024) revolves around creating a temporary page on the website after each edit or submission. A Discord webhook notifies moderators of the submission and links to the temporary page through which they can then approve or deny the submission, if its approved the old page is automatically replaced with the new one (or a page is created in the case of a new page submission). This new submission system removed the need for a dev branch entirely though backups are still made. (still, fuck you Replit).
Also the new search button thing works now
Further Feedback
On the 24th of December 2024 pelicannot sent a message in #prop-punk-announcements that read as follows:"hello everyone!
looking for some feedback on propedia:
• what do/don't you like about it?
• is there anything you want added to it?
and most importantly: what would make you use it more?
ty @PropPunk Players"
In a thread under the announcement pelicannot received many suggestions which he compiled into a list as follows:
"fix the search feature
more pages on home page
mobile layout
templates
light mode broken?
more themes
theme editor?"