/##/ Tutorial Writers /##/ Publish Your Tuts Easily and FREE on UDK Central Today

[Sir. Polaris]

As of April 14th 2011, UDK Central is pleased to announce that its Tutorial Upload System is now ready for public use.

Visit UDKC.info and add your tutorials


UDK Centrals Tutorial Uploading System's front page

The Tutorial Upload System was built for tutorial writers and provides you with a great way to upload tutorials, get more hits and help out the community all in one easy posting. The system is free and is chalked full of benefits for both you; as a tutorial writer and your readers.

Publishers on UDKC get benefits such as:

• Free access to a large audience - over 800 unique people a day look for tutorials on UDK Central.
  
  • Shared growth - Every time UDK Central gets mentioned, you benefit. Even when another author uploads a tutorial, you benefit.
• Free hosting and bandwidth for your tutorials - 120$ a year if you don't need to?
• Free marketing and promotion - UDK Central is highly visible and its fans and authors promote internal links and the site often.
  
  • Our success is your rewards - The better we do, the better you do. Your hooked in and dragged along for the ride - free of charge.
• Your tutorials won’t be lost in a sea of posts - With UDK Central there is no sinking of your good threads by random offtopic or age, so you'll always get hits without needing to bump a forgotten thread.
• Searching is centralized at UDK Central - We have a search bar that works, and is ready to direct people to your tutorials.
• Our site is powered by a Semantic Wiki - Basically a real time database powered by a wiki, which gives incredible power for searching and retrieving tutorials.
• UDK Central is fast, instant and a home packed with supporting features.
• You retain your IP and rights to your work (aside what you grant to UDK Central and it's editors).

Tutorials hosted on UDKC get:

• History tracking of edits and your work.
  
  • This allows readers to make sure they have the most up to date version of your code/instructions.
  • Short of a database failure your content is not permanently deleted.
• Free hosting of images, small embedded videos and text
• A robust code parser that provides a professional look to your work.
• A link that is never lost and is cross promoted by other websites and tutorials.
• Supporting tutorials to draw from to make your tutorials streamlined and robust.
• Access to a powerful semantic wiki that can make pseudo SQL calls inside posts. Opening up a world of possibilities.

Best of all the process of publishing a tutorial is quick and easy.

To submit a tutorial you click a link, fill in the blanks and then on the last page you paste your tutorial in. From there you can use the rich editor to stylize your post or you can use mediaWiki syntax to build tables, use div’s and css and gain access to other cool scripts UDKC has. UDK Central has everything from displaying rich media like YouTube and code like unrealScript. If you want to see just how fast it is take a look at this link

But don't just take my word for it. You can go try it out for yourself. Just visit UDKC.info - Add a tutorial today and get a hands on demo of the system itself.

As a member of this community I aim to make a impact on the people around me. I look forward to hearing your feedback on this system and I hope this system works as well for you as it has other developers over the last year. With UDK Central you are truly helping to shape the future of UDK developers though education.

Thank you for your time

[KenD]

This is great! I just want to say thanks for the UDKC site and helping out with getting people started using the UDK man.

[aZzy]

Great work Sir. Polaris!

So many people will benefit from your many hours of hard work. For those that have troubles with UDK, your effort will make UDK a dream to use and hopefully many members will upload their tutorials to make this community stronger then ever,

Awesome work mate!

[TheAgent]

I like the new look!

[Sir. Polaris]

Thanks for all the kind words! Looking forward to this years progress making a strong impact for the community! Victory or death!

Here hoping more tutorial writers take advantage of UDKC's upload system. So many benefits over forum posting.

[Hboybowen]

you would get a more advanced audience over at www.polycount.com. Maybe want to consider recreating this thread over there to dude.

[DuckSauce]

I'm a bit here angry here, but I'm just gonna try to post my exploration into adding my tutorial to your site here, hopefully in a relatively neutral format...

The following is what happened to me:
1. I fill in the name and hit "create or edit"
2. I then get asked to fill in the title again

3. Then I have to make up a short description, which doesn't seem to give more room than the title...

4. Long description... uhm yeah why not just get ahead with the content already? I already made a description.

5. Tutorial Type... *picks mixed, everything goes here as long as it's more than one thing? Point of choosing this? Pfwah!*

6. *grumpily skips images part*

7. Quality level... uh why do I have to rate my own tutorial? 0.o

8. *Loses interest*

9. ... tries again 5 minutes later.

10. *Skips everything, plonks old tutorial in, to test how much needs to change when transforming into a wiki format from forum format*

11. *Hits preview button* Is told there's an error and to look down for it, no error shows down, just what I plonked there and other stuff. *Checks other tabs, sees red warnings, oh right, that's not down! But I get it*

12. Fills everything with gibberish, leave tutorial unchanged.

13. *Hits preview button*

14. Loading...

15. ???

16. Profit... wait no... Loading...

17. Makes this post.

18. Still loading! Can't cancel(it doesn't cancel, just goes back to page 1 changing nothing), can't try again. Seems I'd have to start over to try again... 5 minutes passed at least.

---

So as you can tell, I won't be using this, it seemed like a good thing, but it's not working out well, too much info that seems irrelevant and has to be filled in before the important part... the tutorial itself and a preview that doesn't seem to work at all... in Firefox at least, don't force me to use IE or get another please, that's nuts. Firefox is one of the most well supported browsers around far as I noticed, if it's just because I'm using Firefox, then that's strange.

[Sir. Polaris]

Thanks for the feedback DuckSauce. This kind of feedback is helpful as it gives me insight as to problems strangers to UDKC and it's developments may have when approaching our systems for the first time. I am also glad you chose UDKC as a place to upload your tutorials, I am sorry that you had to get hung up and go though all this tribulation.

You'll be happy to know the site is built for Firefox 3. The problem you ran across was that, the preview feature is extremely hard on CPU the server. It often results in the server CPU being overloaded and auto killing the process. It works best when limited people are on the site - none the less, I have now removed the preview button to avoid any confusion.

The reason you must fill the title in alongside all the other values is so that the tutorial is full of semantic information. This semantic information powers the sites ability to search for and display tutorials like yours. Below is one render of the ways semantic information may be displayed soon.

A semantic system can be though of like a database. This add-on to a wiki provides extreme power as now pages (and in our case tutorials) can be loaded on the fly with 'properties' which then can be searched, compared and run against in queries.

Unfortunately the system cannot populate itself. This is why the form exists and why it asks you for all this information. Each field relates to some feature UDKC provides/will provide. Clicking the field link will tell you more about how each field is used.

Things might like short/long description may seem redundant but when you learn that one is for mobile viewing and tutorial list view, and the other for your page view - it makes more sense. The images are for the same reason. Also because anyone can edit your tutorial/page - some fields are weird at first like "Skill level" and "Quality level". However when you consider this allows people can edit and adjust it when consensus states that the tutorial is indeed, better or worse then first thought - it makes more sense. Ideally a embedded voting system would be best - however UDKC is unfunded, and it would likely clash with the wiki system

I do wish I could correct the issue of asking for the title. Unfortunately due to how the system works, I cannot get access to the value. I have tried all I know to get it to default to the page title

Again sorry you had so much trouble. I hope you will try to use the system again. If you need any help you can find me in IRC.

It's a great system and it will be most powerful when it's online and UDKC swells into the 200-300 tutorial range. Just being able to ask "Give me all tutorials that are made by TheAgent and that has 'Rain' in it's decription, uses Kismet and that has a skill level of less then 3" gives incredible power. If done correctly this will also allow videos to be much more searchable - even more so then hunting them down on youtube.

You can take a spin around the semantic system though this link: http://udkc.info/index.php?title=Spe...ding_a_vehicle

[MonsOlympus]

I do think that the scemantic page title being seperate from the wiki page title (being the page name) has benefits. It allows creation of pages with short versions of the name for the title then a proper full title without messing up the urls.

I can sympathise with DuckSauce as I followed the tutorial myself and encountered errors when trying to save, little did I know the issue was unfilled required fields which were hidden on tabs I couldnt see so I assumed something was broken. Ofcoarse once I knew what the issue was I didnt have any issue.

I do like the tab layouts but Id really like to see a save button on every page as when Im editing sometimes I have to go back tabs then back forwards again just to save the field Ive modified. I guess the idea is to follow the flow as the image above the posting new tutorials shows but I do feel its alittle more backwards and forwards then that.

I do think moving to the scemantic forms has a huge benefit and thats for me a long time wiki user. I know my markup pretty well for wiki but having the forms there makes it alot easier for those people without markup skills so they dont have to learn yet another language just to post up tutorials. It'll help with layout and all other kinds of things making this wiki one of the most specialized and web2.0 looking as well as having the ability to add features not seen on your general wiki's.

Thanks.

[Sir. Polaris]

A do believe me when I say, I by no means aim to leave it as it is. I work daily on UDKC to help it move forward and increase the benfit that it gives to UDK and its tutorial writers. However I am just limited by my own personal skills in web development and the products as a result I am forced to use. I am doing my best to make the most of every resource I have though.

The most important thing here is putting in place the systems provide the next generation of tutorial writers with the ability to do good for UDKC's 800 a day unique visitors and the next generation of UDK users.

[Sir. Polaris]

Bump a lump.

[JUGGERNUT]

What for, what's changed?

[ilguano]

This is great. I might have a few tips to share over there

[Sir. Polaris]

What for, what's changed?

There has been minor changes from the first post. The bump was primary for bringing awareness to the thread.

[JUGGERNUT]

Hehe, so from now on I'll associate "a lump" with "minor updates".

[Crusha K. Rool]

I tried to give it a shot too, but I am already fed up with it on the first tab.
It expects me to submit pictures in a certain format. Although I have zero motivation at this point, I get GIMP going and scale some of my tutorial images to some format that could fit.
But I don't have enough width information in that large image, so I thought it would be ok to leave it at a lower width value as long as I don't exceed any of the values. The height was ok.

As the other point with the "User:" is confusing me (why have it entered there if you want the user to remove it anyway?), I click on one of those blue requirement fields and a whole new page pops up with more detailed explanation (why even bother with the misleading tooltips on the side of the tutorial wizard if we can have it this way?).
Only on this page do I get to know that the large image needs to be EXACTLY the mentioned size. And for the small image it says that it needs to be 256x256 but then it suddenly says that the image must be 130h x 480w - wtf?
Sorry, you lost me at that point, I am definitely not keen on resizing images all day long when I just wanted to submit some text and pictures.
Feel free to delete the pictures I uploaded by now, seems like I can't do it myself.


Sorry, it's simply not worth all that trouble to me.

[Sir. Polaris]

First Crusha I would like to apologize for not being there yesterday to help you though the trouble you have been having. I worked a 9h shift yesterday and was unavailable from 12PM EST to 9PM EST. I hope you popped into IRC when you first ran into trouble - there should have been someone there to help you. While you shouldn't be having this trouble in the first place and you shouldn't need to go out of your way to seek help - if you do run across any issues with the site again as PM on these forums will also trigger a fast response from me if I am not in IRC.

I am striving to make the form as simple as possible, I am however severely limited by my web design/coding skills to put any truly advanced and custom work on the site. This forces me to have to mod and make use of the feature scraps I find across the net. I agree the system isn't as friendly as I would like but the nearly best I can provide at this time. I am making progress to secure a web developer as well iron out some bugs this thread has a illuminated. It a shame that earlier testing failed to pick up on these issues. I also want to make note that your feedback is most appreciated. It helps me grow and make a better service for everyone. I cannot fix that which I do not know is broken

If you have a few moments I replied to your questions and points in your posts. I hope I can provide some understanding as to why you ran into the issues you did.

---

The two images at large and small size are banner images. They will be used to entice people, as well as, give insight at first glance as to what your tutorial is about. These images are exspected to be hand crafted, like promotional images in a thread or a news post. This images allow your tutorial to display to view your tutorial on: page view, list view, mobile view as well as be sample for front page display, e-mails and news posts.

It is encouraged but not mandatory that a tutorial is uploaded with the two main images. I understand that often, even more so when bringing in ones older tutorials, that images are not easily available. Without both images the processes that rely on them will be hindered. Which in turn hurts the advertising/promotion/sharing of the tutorial. I feel however a rushed and sloppy job would be a greater disservice to the tutorial and it readers, so I leave it open to be approached at authors' leisure.

The major reason for the set size is uniformity. It looks better when scrolling down a list as well, it makes things like image carousels not have issues with the images I will feed it.

Much like the User: a few of the systems could do with custom work to improve it's user friendliness - I am however no web developer. I am however looking to secure one in the near future.

The reason User: exists as it does is because it is doing a auto look up. It is looking in the User: Namespace for people. The problem is this form system is like a database and accepting the auto complete "User:Name" would be poor. I could disable the auto complete but I feel it speeds up the process and reduces people making guesses or having to do look ups. All that is required is that the person kills the "User:" out front.

To me "User:Name" is a poor value as I don't know of anyway to parse values when processing them out of the database. This means when I ask for "Value X" and X is representing the author, which is a string to a username, I will get "User:Name". The problem then arises when I go to display it. I cannot say "This tutorial was made by 'var:x' " for I will get "This tutorial was made by User:Name". If I was provided the username less the "User:" namespace header, now I have free use of the name and I can do whatever work is needed. Now It will display as "This tutorial was made by Name" and then I can just instruct the link to display "Link to User:'x', mask of 'x'". Aside from just that (as I know you know a mediawiki pipe trick will work) it also allows me to future proof the site and do future work where names are needed.

I apologize again for error in Small Display Image text, apparently when I updated the system I didn't update the restriction section. It is now been corrected to the correct size of 256x256. This is the size that will be used for list view as well as scaled for mobile and icon views.

[tegleg]

its much better than when i tried a few months back, but..
for no reason, when i click 'save page' it says

There were errors with your form input; see below

and theres nothing below
on the third try, starting from the first page again, it does it ok.
very frustrating and offputting indeed.

also using this doesnt seem to work
<pre class="brush:unrealscript">MYCODE IN HERE</pre>
but this does
<div style="border:0px solid; width:580px; margin:1px;"><pre class="brush:unrealscript">MYCODE IN HERE</pre></div>

hope you can smash those bugs because its a good site and i want to add stuff to it.

[Lexluthor1]

As of April 14th 2011, UDK Central is pleased to announce that its Tutorial Upload System is now ready for public use.

Visit UDKC.info and add your tutorials


UDK Centrals Tutorial Uploading System's front page

The Tutorial Upload System was built for tutorial writers and provides you with a great way to upload tutorials, get more hits and help out the community all in one easy posting. The system is free and is chalked full of benefits for both you; as a tutorial writer and your readers.

Publishers on UDKC get benefits such as:

• Free access to a large audience - over 800 unique people a day look for tutorials on UDK Central.
  
  • Shared growth - Every time UDK Central gets mentioned, you benefit. Even when another author uploads a tutorial, you benefit.
• Free hosting and bandwidth for your tutorials - 120$ a year if you don't need to?
• Free marketing and promotion - UDK Central is highly visible and its fans and authors promote internal links and the site often.
  
  • Our success is your rewards - The better we do, the better you do. Your hooked in and dragged along for the ride - free of charge.
• Your tutorials won’t be lost in a sea of posts - With UDK Central there is no sinking of your good threads by random offtopic or age, so you'll always get hits without needing to bump a forgotten thread.
• Searching is centralized at UDK Central - We have a search bar that works, and is ready to direct people to your tutorials.
• Our site is powered by a Semantic Wiki - Basically a real time database powered by a wiki, which gives incredible power for searching and retrieving tutorials.
• UDK Central is fast, instant and a home packed with supporting features.
• You retain your IP and rights to your work (aside what you grant to UDK Central and it's editors).

Tutorials hosted on UDKC get:

• History tracking of edits and your work.
  
  • This allows readers to make sure they have the most up to date version of your code/instructions.
  • Short of a database failure your content is not permanently deleted.
• Free hosting of images, small embedded videos and text
• A robust code parser that provides a professional look to your work.
• A link that is never lost and is cross promoted by other websites and tutorials.
• Supporting tutorials to draw from to make your tutorials streamlined and robust.
• Access to a powerful semantic wiki that can make pseudo SQL calls inside posts. Opening up a world of possibilities.

Best of all the process of publishing a tutorial is quick and easy.

To submit a tutorial you click a link, fill in the blanks and then on the last page you paste your tutorial in. From there you can use the rich editor to stylize your post or you can use mediaWiki syntax to build tables, use div’s and css and gain access to other cool scripts UDKC has. UDK Central has everything from displaying rich media like YouTube and code like unrealScript. If you want to see just how fast it is take a look at this link

But don't just take my word for it. You can go try it out for yourself. Just visit UDKC.info - Add a tutorial today and get a hands on demo of the system itself.

As a member of this community I aim to make a impact on the people around me. I look forward to hearing your feedback on this system and I hope this system works as well for you as it has other developers over the last year. With UDK Central you are truly helping to shape the future of UDK developers though education.

Thank you for your time

Hi Sir Polaris............
I tried uploading some of my tutorials and that amounts to 350 at this point and I got to the stage where it said upload, but then it said that 7 meg was the maximum upload size..
Seeing as my tutorials are all in HD video on YouTube, (http://www.youtube.com/user/lexluthornumber1) 7 meg is about 3 seconds of video.
Have I done something wrong in filling out the tutorial form?

Thanks in advance for possibly solving my issue....