Game Website

When Evennia starts it will also start a Webserver as part of the Server process. This uses Django to serve a simple but functional default game website. With the default setup, open your browser to localhost:4001 or 127.0.0.1:4001 to see it.

The website allows existing players to log in using an account-name and password they previously used to register with the game. If a user logs in with the Webclient they will also log into the website and vice-versa. So if you are logged into the website, opening the webclient will automatically log you into the game as that account.

The default website shows a "Welcome!" page with a few links to useful resources. It also shows some statistics about how many players are currently connected.

In the top menu you can find

Home - Get back to front page.
Document - A link to the latest stable Evennia documentation.
Characters - This is a demo of connecting in-game characters to the website. It will display a list of all entities of the _typeclasses.characters.Character` typeclass and allow you to view their description with an optional image. The list is only available to logged-in users.
Channels - This is a demo of connecting in-game chats to the website. It will show a list of all channels available to you and allow you to view the latest discussions. Most channels require logging in, but the Public channel can also be viewed by non-loggedin users.
Help - This ties the in-game Help system to the website. All database-based help entries that are publicly available or accessible to your account can be read. This is a good way to present a body of help for people to read outside of the game.
Play Online - This opens the Webclient in the browser.

Modifying the default Website

You can modify and override all aspects of the web site from your game dir. You'll mostly be doing so in your settings file (mygame/server/conf/settings.py and in the gamedir's web/folder (mygame/web/ if your game folder is mygame/).

As explained on the Webserver page, the process for getting a web page is

Web browser sends HTTP request to server with an URL
urls.py uses regex to match that URL to a view (a Python function or callable class).
The correct Python view is loaded and executes.
The view pulls in a template, a HTML document with placeholder markers in it, and fills those in as needed (it may also use a form to customize user-input in the same way). A HTML page may also in turn point to static resources (usually CSS, sometimes images etc).
The rendered HTML page is returned to the browser as a HTTP response. If the HTML page requires static resources are requested, the browser will fetch those separately before displaying it to the user.

If you look at the evennia/web/ directory you'll find the following structure (leaving out stuff not relevant to the website):

  evennia/web/
    ...
    static/
        website/
            css/
               (css style files)
            images/
               (images to show)

    templates/
        website/
          (html files)

    website/
      urls.py
      views/
      (all python files related to website)

    urls.py

The top-level web/urls.py file 'includes' the web/website/urls.py file - that way all the website-related url-handling is kept in the same place.

This is the layout of the mygame/web/ folder relevant for the website:

  mygame/web/
    ...
    static/
      website/
        css/
        images/

    templates/
      website/

      website/
        urls.py
        views/

    urls.py


  Game folders created with older versions of Evennia will lack most of this
  convenient `mygame/web/` layout. If you use a game dir from an older version,
  you should copy over the missing `evennia/game_template/web/` folders from
  there, as well as the main urls.py file.

As you can see, the mygame/web/ folder is a copy of the evennia/web/ folder structure except the mygame folders are mostly empty.

For static- and template-files, Evennia will first look in mygame/static and mygame/templates before going to the default locations in evennia/web/. So override these resources, you just need to put a file with the same name in the right spot under mygame/web/ (and then reload the server). Easiest is often to copy the original over and modify it.

Overridden views (Python modules) also need an additional tweak to the website/urls.py file - you must make sure to repoint the url to the new version rather than it using the original.

Title and blurb

The website's title and blurb are simply changed by tweaking settings.SERVERNAME and settings.GAME_SLOGAN. Your settings file is in mygame/server/conf/settings.py, just change SERVERNAME = "My Awesome Game" and add GAME_SLOGAN = "The best game in the world" or something.

Logo

The Evennia googly-eyed snake logo is probably not what you want for your game. The template looks for a file web/static/website/images/evennia_logo.png. Just plop your own PNG logo (64x64 pixels large) in there and name it the same.

Index page

This is the front page of the website (the 'index' in HTML parlance).

Index HTML template

The frontpage template is found in evennia/web/templates/website/index.html. Just copy this to the equivalent place in mygame/web/. Modify it there and reload the server to see your changes.

Django templates has a few special features that separate them from normal HTML documents - they contain a special templating language marked with {% ... %} and {{ ... }}.

Some important things to know:

{% extends "base.html" %} - This is equivalent to a Python from othermodule import * statement, but for templates. It allows a given template to use everything from the imported (extended) template, but also to override anything it wants to change. This makes it easy to keep all pages looking the same and avoids a lot of boiler plate.
{% block blockname %}...{% endblock %} - Blocks are inheritable, named pieces of code that are modified in one place and then used elsewhere. This works a bit in reverse to normal inheritance, because it's commonly in such a way that base.html defines an empty block, let's say contents: {% block contents %}{% endblock %} but makes sure to put that in the right place, say in the main body, next to the sidebar etc. Then each page does {% extends "base.html %"} and makes their own {% block contents} <actual content> {% endblock %}. Their contents block will now override the empty one in base.html and appear in the right place in the document, without the extending template having to specifying everything else around it!
{{ ... }} are 'slots' usually embedded inside HTML tags or content. They reference a context (basically a dict) that the Python view makes available to it. Keys on the context are accessed with dot-notation, so if you provide a context {"stats": {"hp": 10, "mp": 5}} to your template, you could access that as {{ stats.hp }} to display 10 at that location to display 10 at that location.

This allows for template inheritance (making it easier to make all pages look the same without rewriting the same thing over and over)

There's a lot more information to be found in the Django template language documentation.

Index View

To find where the index view is found, we look in evennia/web/website/urls.py. Here we find the following line:

This is found in evennia/web/website/views/index.py. If you don't know

The frontpage view is a class EvenniaIndexView. This is a Django class-based view. It's a little less visible what happens in a class-based view than in a function (since the class implements a lot of functionality as methods), but it's powerful and much easier to extend/modify.

The class property template_name sets the location of the template used under the templates/ folder. So website/index.html points to web/templates/website/index.html (as we already explored above.

The get_context_data is a convenient method for providing the context for the template. In the index-page's case we want the game stats (number of recent players etc). These are then made available to use in {{ ... }} slots in the template as described in the previous section.

Other website pages

The other sub pages are handled in the same way - copy the template or static resource to the right place

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