PetSite Maker - First Announcement

PetSiteMaker

New VPL Member
Member
Aug 31, 2021
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UK
Over the last 5-10 years, virtual pet sites have been on the decline.

The main reason not many new virtual pet sites have popped up over the years is because to create a pet site you either need;
- To have a lot of assorted skill (Hosting, Programming, Domains, Security, XSS-prevention, GDPR/COPPA alignment, Art)
- LOTS of money to throw at the above to use the skills from the right people to do it, or;
- Make all sorts of deals to share profits to get those skills for free (automatically locking you into a "this site needs to be designed to make money" mindset to pay the people who are working on the project with you.).

Even with the "pre-built" packages for virtual pet sites that are available today, you normally end up needing to have deep technical knowledge just to install it on your server or make simple changes.

It's due to these reasons we have decided to address this problem and create a brand new Virtual Pet Creator called PetSite Maker.

PetSite Maker has been in development for some time now, and we keep re-iterating to make the base framework better. The end goal is to make it as customizable as possible.

Some of the key features;
- Fully hosted on our servers - no technical skills required!
- Easy creation/deployment - Just choose your petsite's name and a unique URL for your subdomain, and then its up and running in just a few minutes. (We have the ability to use your own custom URL pointed at our servers road-mapped too).
- Full control over the look and feel - upload HTML templates, or use our built-in editor to design your menus, page layouts and more.
- (Customizable HTML/CSS/javascript for those that do wish to get a bit more technical/hands on)
- Thousands of configuration options to make your virtual pet site truly yours. Such as;
  1. Unique Pet Systems
    • Ability to enable pet evolution
    • Pet Stats - create whatever stats you want and decide how that is displayed on screen, how it goes up or down (through items? through features?)
    • Upload pet images and variations of a single pet (Pet image "layers" also road-mapped for the future).
    • Pet Genetics (This is on the roadmap and wont be available initially).
  2. "Daily" Generator.
    • Dozens of preset templates to customise to make your own "dailies" (eg, Auto-Prize [Think "Spin Wheels"], Choice-Prize, Luck based, and more! Also includes dynamic reward pools based on user/pet stats)
    • We're working on building a UI for this feature, so as the owner of your petsite, you wont even have to code anything.
  3. Feature Configurations - You can customise these features so much that no two virtual pet sites hosted on PetSite Maker will ever need to look the same.
    1. NPC Stores
    2. Quest System
    3. Trading
    4. Forums
    5. and more!
  4. Mobile Friendly - The core petsite design principle is to be mobile friendly to allow your users to play your petsite "on the go".
  5. Scalability - While each petsite that is created is sharing space on our server, each petsite has their own databases and codebases. This means should you start to scale up and get more popular and need more server resources, it is very easy to redistribute you across our server network, such as if you end up needing dedicated hosting exclusively for your site etc.
  6. Backups
    1. The core code-base is backed up in a seperate offsite repository, and "custom" code you apply is backed up to this offsite repository instantly anytime you amend or upload something new.
    2. All databases across our network are currently fully backed up every day (8am UTC / 4am EST / 4am Central / 1am PDT) and we keep 1 week of backups offsite.
... and the list keeps going. We're also providing owners with a handful of preset HTML5 games where they can customise the rules to suit their liking, and in the future we want to allow owners the ability to upload their own HTML5 games and link it directly into our 'Send Score' feature.

All features are completely optional and you can literally only enable and design the things that help with your vision!
Our plan is to be as customisable as possible so that this software can be used even outside of the virtual pet site industry - such as Human-Avatar community forums (ie, utilize the "Pets" as the HAs), browser-based RPGs (Mafia Wars anyone?) or even MMORPGs (Tile-based world editor). Naturally we need to get this framework right before we expand it to other markets, so our focus is exclusively on making the features that make a virtual pet site a virtual pet site.


Essentially, if you're someone who has always liked the idea of being able to create your own virtual pet site with no upfront costs, then this platform is for you.
- It is full hosted on our servers
- We provide a selection of Royalty-Free Art Assets and links to further resources, so you can get your petsite up and running straight away. Naturally once you draw your own art, or hire an artist to help you can swap out images any time you want.
- The entry level package is completely free which provides you with everything you need to get up and running.


It's still early days however, and over the coming months we'll share more in-depth information.
We're always open to suggestions to anything anyone wants to see in this framework, please let us know!

Let's bring petsites back into popular culture again!

Whilst there are no updates posted yet (at the time of writing - 5th Sept 21), we have a few channels you can follow for regular updates:

Twitter - https://twitter.com/PetSiteMaker
 
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This is so exciting! Are you or your team at all affiliated with what used to be "My Virtual Pet Site" or is this a completely new thing?

Thanks, no this is a completely new thing. We're not affiliated with MVPS or any of the existing petsite frameworks available at the moment, so hopefully we'll be able to put a new spin on the vpet world :)
 
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Thanks, no this is a completely new thing. We're not affiliated with MVPS or any of the existing petsite frameworks available at the moment, so hopefully we'll be able to put a new spin on the vpet world :)
I’m looking forward to this! Good luck. Prior to mvps, the industry had operational pet game as a framework. So will your framework have more features for future owners than what opg and mvps offered? Also, will the game’s pages be seo friendly?
 
I’m looking forward to this! Good luck. Prior to mvps, the industry had operational pet game as a framework. So will your framework have more features for future owners than what opg and mvps offered? Also, will the game’s pages be seo friendly?
Glad you're looking forward to it!

The primary goal is to make petsite ownership non-technical and as accessible as possible to anyone with an idea.

In addition to that, we want to ensure there is enough customisability - both front end and back end - that each petsite can pretty much be bespoke to the petsite owner's wishes by just turning features on and off and configuring how things work and look.