Introduction
This section is meant to introduce you to the core of this long-form Article.
This post marks the announcement of the new state of the art Stoat Games News Feed, hopefully not too rough around the edges for you guys. If you have any tips on how we can improve the experience feel free to leave a comment. With this article we aim to achieve the following:
- Explain how the News Feed works for you, the user, and for the Contributor/Translator.
- Explain why the News Feed is setup the way it is.
- Explain how the Subsidiary News Feed differs from the Main Feed.
- and more!
How Does The NEWS FEED(TM) Work?
This section aims to explain how the NEWS FEED(TM) Works for all groups that may need it explained!
The News Feed works as follows. Basically we publish posts and you get them in the associated feed. With Tags available to find related Posts. But since I'm technically enthralled I'm going to deep dive into how it actually works rather than just the user facing stuff that is intuitive.
How we have this setup is that each Post has a ID, retaining to its title. This is the primary identifier of the post found in the sites url, for example with this article it is /implementing-the-news-feed/ which belongs to the archive News. Essentially Inheritance.
But there's a bit more that goes into it. We utilize a series of Categories and Tags to help you find posts relevant to what your looking for. For example News and Update are the Tags of this post which you'll find at the start of this article. If you click on one of these it takes you to a sorted Archive with posts belonging to that tag. Same can be said for the Categories.
Though keep in mind, the Categories only work if they are in the News-Line your after. Why you ask? Well simply, the main feed doesn't have a need to use Categories as all posts retain only to the Website itself. Not to any Subsidiary or Project. In a later section we'll show you the real reason we offer it as a sorting mechanism along side the other systems instated.
Now how the News Post is used in context of that Feed depends entirely on its Tag, if its an Update, it will resemble a meaningful update to the Website/Subsidiary/Project. If its News it will cover any new information pertaining to the given subject. There's a plethora more each explained on its Tag's page. If it's missing mention it and we'll get that fixed in a jiffy.
Also one key note, these News Posts also serve a secondary purpose, they provide a way for us to get feedback from YOU the user on how WE can improve your experience using the site, without you needing to make a account for some random service.
Do note the conditions outlined in the Privacy Policy for what happens with your data when you comment, namely the Core WordPress Policies within, but we implore you to read up the rest to know how your Data is being used. For the most part we aim to avoid collecting data unless ABSOLUTELY necessary for a plugin, GDPR and Privacy are highly important to us.
How does the system work for other parties involved? Well to find out more on other parties foldout one of the below and we'll tell you there. Why fold out the information you ask? Well, its done to keep the article shorter than it appears at first glance, as well as a keepsake for Readability and Usability of the site. We don't use it for purpose of obscuring information, rather condensing it into what's relevant to you.
FOR CONTRIBUTORS
If you are a Contributor the NEWS FEED works a bit differently. In the sense that YOU yes YOU will be the one writing the given articles. You'll need to follow the Guidelines provided in the form of a Checklist before you can publish anything, and make sure all applicable tags are applied to the given post for easier classification and finding in terms of User Accessibility.
To contribute to the main STOAT GAMES NEWS FEED you'll need to be someone working on the site itself, e.g. a site ADMIN. But usually you'll be able to contribute to Subsidiaries of this Website, or even host your own Subsidiaries under the Website. We'll go over how you can get access to a subsidiary under this site in a later section of this article.
The following are site-wide rules on what is allowed in Posts and what is not:
POST RULES
- All Posts must have a relevant title to the article, each subsidiary has the ability to have a post of that title ONCE and only ONCE. (This is set under the White Title box at the top of the post before the body of the post.)
- All Posts must utilize the template that we provide as their base, if the template is gone for whatever reason you can request a new one from us. It'll be titled something like !TEMPLATE!.
- All Posts you make must be relevant to your PROJECT or SUBSIDIARY, if its not we will not approve it.
- Before Posting you should fill out your Author Box so readers know who is behind what they are reading, for example the one found at the bottom of this pages post. (We also allow Coauthors, Reviewers, and Editors in our system, but the primary Author should be you, the one making the post.)
- All Posts must abide to the Site Content and Moderation Rules found in the footer. (not there yet, we'll get to it)
- All Posts should abide by the Privacy Policy and given License(s) of the site, subsidiary site, or project site if they have one applied.
- All Posts must be verified for accuracy before they are published, they must be read over in the case of Typos in the content or Poor explanations of the content it aims to address.
- These rules may be amended in the future under the Site Posting Rules found in the footer. (not there yet, we'll get to it)
If we find violations to any of these rules we may restrict your ability to create posts to the news system, and if serious enough, get law enforcement involved (but it shouldn't be that serious right? Well who knows, but we at Stoat Games plan to ensure you are who you say you are before we let you in the door.)
Our Terms of Service, Use and Removal will cover your ability to take down posts and how to post them, it will come later down the line.
FOR TRANSLATORS
If you are a Translator the NEWS FEED works a bit differently. In the sense that you are responsible for translating both the STOAT GAMES NEWS FEED and the STOAT GAMES WEBSITE as well as its underlying Subsidiaries. You'll need to follow the Guidelines provided in the form of a Checklist before you can publish anything, and make sure all applicable tags are applied to the given post for easier classification and finding in terms of User Accessibility.
The following are rules regarding Translations to the NEWS FEED:
Translation Posts Rules
- All Content (The Body Text, Title, Alt Text of Images, Foldouts) should be translated unless they are one of the following:
- Code Blocks (with Computer Code in them for example the following):
{
"name": "Chaosyr",
"age": 17,
"year-written": 2026,
"verifiable": true,
"person":
{
"hair-color": "blonde",
"height-in-feet": "6'6",
"friends": 45
}
} - License Text, unless authorized (Legal Reasons)
- Keywords, for example references to specific classes within a code base.
- Code Blocks (with Computer Code in them for example the following):
- Slugs should be the same as the original language of the post with the language code it was translated to appended at the start for example
/de-implementing-the-news-feed/. - Translators must work with the given Page Author to Translate the page, namely to ensure accuracy across languages.
- Translators must have permission from a Author before translating the content, for example in the case that a Post isn't finalized and it would be a waste of time to translate it within that state. OR, the case where the given Author has a specific Translator for their Articles which they trust more.
- Translators must aim for 80% accuracy with the original posts language, even if the post uses unconventional grammar, or Archaic words in a language by language basis.
- The tone of the original Post or Page should be kept when translating it to the given language.
- All Translations must abide to the Site Content and Moderation Rules found in the footer. (not there yet, we'll get to it)
- All Translations should abide by the Privacy Policy and given License(s) of the site, subsidiary site, or project site if they have one applied.
- All Translations must be verified for accuracy before they are published, they must be read over in the case of Typos in the content or Poor explanations of the content it aims to address.
- These rules may be amended in the future under the Site Translation Rules found in the footer. (not there yet, we'll get to it)
If we find violations to any of these rules we may restrict your ability to translate posts in the news system or pages of the site, and if serious enough, get law enforcement involved (but it shouldn't be that serious right? Well who knows, but we at Stoat Games plan to ensure you are who you say you are before we let you in the door.)
Our Terms of Service, Use and Removal will cover your ability to take down posts and how to post them, it will come later down the line.
Why is the NEWS FEED(TM) Structured this way?
This section aims to explain the why behind the NEWS FEED(TM)'s structure.
The News Feed is structured the way it is to separate the global news from subsidiary news, and as a way to allow our subsidiaries to share their own news with their audience whenever they wish. Kind of like a Parent vs Child separator of sorts. The Parent is the one who has the loudest news that affects the entire site, while the child has quieter news affecting only their affective portion of the site.
Plus, doing it this way also makes sense with the essence of the site. Being adjacent of a Node Hierarchy System. Think of it kind of like this:
Stoat Games, the website represents the Parent and Umbrella by which all its children reside under. The 3 branches represent the Subsidiaries of this website. Lastly the branches under these branches represent individual projects under the Subsidiaries.
You may wonder, why not have the individual projects have their own news feed. Well, that's because the subsidiary has the ability to demarcate their own specific view by which will be used to resemble the projects specific news, due to our filtering systems. This is similar to what happens when we redirect you to here for example: https://stoatgames.icu/projects/?subsidiary=cecil-libraries-organization
If your wondering what's happening there, basically our server is checking the projects for items that have Cecil Libraries Organization as their parent, and if there are, it feeds back those projects. Keep in mind, its not the smartest system in the world, but it works nicely for our CPT level filtering. Which subsidiary news itself counts as one of such cases. If you want to help improve our filters see Stoat Games Website Functions File. This is the page by which our sites back-end functionality resides (our custom made back-end stuff for reference)
Subsidiary vs Main News Lines
This section aims to cover the difference between the Subsidiary and Main News Lines.
The main difference was discussed already, but lets continue describing the difference, in a Table fashion.
| Main Feed | Subsidiary Feed |
|---|---|
| Global Feed, all site related news goes here. | Subsidiary Feed, all subsidiary and project related news goes here. |
| Written by Site-Level Maintainers and Staff. | Written by Contributors e.g. Subsidiaries and their Staff. |
| Official regarding the website. | Official regarding the sub-website. |
| Maintence, Updates, Vulnerability, Security, and News related to the Website | Anything in regards to the Subsidiary and what it is. |
| Reviewed by Staff Members of the Site before publish | Reviewed by Staff Members of the subsidiary for the final draft to be reviewed for publishing by the Staff of Stoat Games. |
Those are the name differences, others may show up as time goes on. Hopefully that helps answer it in more depth.
What is planned for the site going into the future?
This section aims to answer the question of what the future plans for this site are.
Going into the future we have a couple of plans for the site, but we'll definitely need your help to get there!! Namely because doing everything as a one man team is going to be really hard. But right now this is our Project Board (click the cyan to go there). Anyways, heres a summary of the plans as they stand.
So first things first, we do have a monetization plan, but this will NEVER affect our Users to any extent. What the plan is, would be something like whats shown in the following screenshot:
Basically the plan is that organizations, or businesses, can go through us for hosting of their organizations content for the low price of 15$ a year (this is actually alot cheaper than most hosting options out there.). Or, if you just want to host your project under the site, for documentation and versioning and similar, you can pay 5$ yearly total.
People who pay for either will be considered a Contributor to the site, and have access to add their content to their portion of the site. Under the condition they follow all the applicable rules and terms we have set in place for protecting our users. For reference, this would use our live sites WordPress back-end on contributor level (we have a permissions plugin for that purpose) so they can format their pages however they wish (minus headers and footers, those are covered by us directly.)
Why host with Stoat Games? Well for the following reasons:
- You don't need to pay the full price of a hosting company.
- You don't need to pay for a domain.
- You don't need to hire anyone to manage the Website as a whole.
- We offer a easy to use backend (which will become even easier over time)
- We offer direct support for ANYONE trying to utilize the website to find your content.
- We have a unified system for finding your content under the site, and we'll automatically send your content off to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster (via IndexNow), if you notice delay in doing so, we'll let you know the ETA, and Holdup.
- We offer an in-depth wiki-based system for projects.
- We'll cover setting up your headers and footers for your subsidiary or project.
- We give you access to the news system for your Subsidiary, and if applicable your Projects.
- When purchasing a Subsidiary, you do NOT need to pay extra charges for additional projects.
- We have a License database you can add your custom licenses into for others to utilize.
- and more!
We will have a news article launch when we have this set up, ideally soon, but school tends to get in the way for us. What are some other plans?
Well we plan to hire front-end and back-end developers to help us maintain and improve the site, but that relies on me (The Site Owner), getting a job in the Real World, or getting enough income to support it. Speaking of we have a bill due in March of this year, and it would mean alot if you could help support the ~156$ bill by donating at Chaosyr's KO-FI.
We'd also love to hire some designers and artists to help spruce up the look of the site, into something that will be much nicer for you to look at.
WE WILL NOT USE AI TO CREATE ART OR DESIGNS OR MUSIC OR ANYTHING ELSE FOR THIS SITE, IF SOMEONE IS CAUGHT TRYING TO DO SO, WE WILL HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE, THIS IS A ZERO-TOLERANCE RULE.
Of course, if such a case arises, we will contact their organization about it, before any punishment comes there way, as usually it should be a simple fix. If you catch any AI written articles that we missed the same rule above applies.
Other than that, we plan on getting our rule-sets organized and tided into the footer to make way for people to start hosting under Stoat Games. This is a major project for me, and I want it to go perfectly, and for it to remain that way. I will also not allow ANYONE to try and sell this company off to another Organization, Stoat Games will remain ours till the end of time (if time ends anyways, perhaps a multiverse exists)
Conclusion
This section covers the Outro of this Article.
To conclude, we now have a News System for keeping you informed about things regarding this website. We have a system in place for future Contributors and Translators. We have a planned monetization model. We plan to hire developers, artists, and designers to work on the site. And we plan to finish up some legal documentation work. Oh, and we also have a yearly 156$ bill in March, that without any income coming in cannot cover, so if you can please donate.
Oh also, the official company LinkedIn for Stoat Games is called Stoat Games. (click the text to go there.) The Official Discord is also called Stoat Games. Anyways cya around strange fellow, hope to see you again, let me know what you thought about the article in the comments please! Feedback is appreciated.
Great content! Keep up the good work!
Thank you so much!!