3D Realms Site: About the site

About the Server

The 3D Realms Web Server is located at 3D Realms HQ, and is connected to the net via a T3 line provided by Savvis. The box is a Dell PowerEdge 2550. It's got Dual Pentium III 1.13Ghz processors with 2GB of RAM. There's a 68.5Gb Raid 5 drive array. Our connection is 10Megabit connection.

We do have three pictures of our web server when it was here at 3DR HQ being configured for use at our previous host. [ 1 | 2 | 3 ] - New pictures will be taken later.

Site Content

Brian Cozzens did all the site graphics for this site, as he's done on all the various site redesigns since 07/97. The current site layout design was handled by Joe Siegler, George Broussard, as well as Brian Cozzens.

For more, please visit our Intellectual Property Rights -- Terms of Use page. In short, if you want to use materials from our site, you can, but you need to credit us, give us a link, and they can not be used on "questionable" content sites like porn sites, racist hate sites, that kind of thing. For further clarification, see the Property Rights page linked above.

Some others who helped us out in some way in getting the site going were Doug Howell, Rob Brown, Chris Day, Joe Selinske, Joel Finch, & Scott Farrell.

An extra special thanks goes out to Brad Wernicke (formerly of 3D Portal fame) for helping us with some custom CGI projects - couldn't have done it without you, Brad!

Site Configuration

The new site configuration as of March 2000 is optimized for a screen resolution of 800x600. Anything smaller, and it will look odd. If you have larger than this, that's OK, but the layout is designed not to go wider than 750 pixels, so if you have a large screen layout, the content will be centered in your screen.

Our site is optimized for Netscape v4 & MSIE v5. It works well with both. A concession is attempted to be made for older browsers; but since about 90% of our site traffic is with one of these two browsers, it's best if you use one of them. Javascript is strongly recommended - as the menu buttons on the left will not look as cool if you have Javascript turned off, or just do not use it. Text browsers such as Lynx are probably out of luck - sorry.

Our Web forums use the Ultimate Bulletin Board package - they require the use of Javascript & cookies to function correctly.

Also, the advertising on the web site requires the use of cookies. If you want to read more about how we use cookies on this site, please see our cookie page.

About our Webmaster - Joe Siegler

Joe says,

"I've been asked several times what software I use to code our web site. Here's a list of what I use; I do all this work under Windows98 Second Edition. All this is current as of March 2000.

HTML Editor
I used to code our website using a program called HTMLPad, a text based HTML Editor. However, in January of 1998 I crossed over to the Dark Side, and started using Microsoft FrontPage 98. However, for real down and dirty coding, the editor I mention above still works great. There's some totally rockful features about FrontPage that make it very attractive. However, I generally hate this kind of software because it doesn't teach you anything about HTML. It's a crutch. If you know HTML, great. If you don't know HTML, LEARN IT FIRST before using something like FrontPage.

This past November, I've gone further into the void as I'm now using FrontPage 2000. The new site as of March 2000 was all coded in FrontPage 2000. The primary difference between 2000 & 98 is that 2000 has a single pane editor (no more separate explorer and editors), and it also does not require the personal web server to serve up your sites locally - you can run 'em straight from the hard drive. If you're a FrontPage user, you should check out FP2K.

(Update Jul 2001) - I've also updated to Frontpage 2002 now. It's got some oddness, but what program doesn't? Still the best tool I know to manage a site of this size.

Search & Replace 98
During development of this web site, I ran across a utility called Search & Replace 98. There are a few annoyances I have with Front Page 2002 (and with FP2000 & 98 before it) in regards to search & replace. Let me tell you this - S&R 98 is an absolute godsend. This program should be in everyone's library - it's totally awesome, and is free! I have about 600 HTML pages online when this site launched, and for this program to load them all up, and do a search & replace took less than 90 seconds. It's amazingly fast! Get this thing.

FTP
Primarily, I use the built in transfer of FrontPage, but when I can't use that, I also transfer files from Apogee HQ to our servers with a program called WS_FTP. I've been using this for a *LONG* time; there's nothing better for FTP transfers.

Graphics
I use a couple of programs. Primarily, I use a program called LView Pro. It may not have some of the more advanced graphic features of something like Photoshop, but for quickly editing graphics for a web site, and especially for Transparent GIF's, this thing rocks. For the animated GIF's that are on this site, I use a program called GIF Construction Set from Alchemy Mindworks. The base art that was done by Brian was done using Photoshop.

Sound
We make use of the Real Audio streaming audio format (as well as the more conventional wav format). The Real Audio files require that you have Real Player, which can be downloaded free.

Other Stuff
Some of the other programs I use are Pegasus Mail & Netscape Mail to handle customer mail, while the person that does all inbound customer Email and at the same time runs the autohelp account uses The Bat. He even has a tattoo of a bat on his arm. For awhile we used a Kodak DC-120 Digital Camera to take various pictures on the web site. While we still have that camera, and it still works, we've started using a much better one, a Nikon Coolpix 900. (This link goes to the Coolpix 950, but that's because Nikon has replaced our model with the newer 950)."