Its been a while since our last post on Bytewire so we thought it was time for an update on what we have been up to, what we have been planning and an insight into the future for us at Bytewire.

Recent news

We have focused our efforts over the past few months largely on our online game, Street Crime. Street Crime has evolved into a popular gangster text based game with now over 15,000 registered users and over 600 users playing on a daily basis. We have been working on improving and implementing new and old features to enhance overall gameplay.

Below is a short overview of recent additions to Street Crime :

• Turf Damage – Gangsters turfs now come under threat from a series of random events which cause damage to the buildings which costs money to restore. If a building reaches 100% damage it will no longer produce an income to the gangster. This feature is a replacement for the previous maintenance feature which was too static.
• Trade – Provides a secure feature for gangsters to trade various items such as casinos, cars, credits and crews with each other. Each player adds their side of the trade in and then locks in their items. Only when both players have locked in their items and finalised the deal will the items switch hands.
• Weapons – Street Crime now boasts a weapons locker of more than 30 different weapons which can be unlocked through earning Prestige throughout the game. There are 6 categories of weapons all of which serve a different role in the game. Weapons needs to be trained up in order to fulfill their potential when using them in an attack.
• Achievements – An additional 40+ achievements have been added to Street Crime to give gangsters additional tasks to achieve whilst playing the game. The achievements range from easy tasks such as crushing 350 cars to stealing 50 cars in succession without getting one confiscated by the police.

Coming soon to Street Crime

With the recent additions of Heavies, Turf Damage, Weapons and more we are now getting close to an announcement for Attack so stayed tuned for more information. We have been working on attack and all its interlinking features for sometime now as we hope to produce the most unique attack systems of any online game of this genre.

Look what our designers have been up too

Our designers have been busy building us some new graphics for Street Crime characters to replace our old system with a cool new fresh look. We’re naturally really excited about these new funky characters and will be looking to get the system into the game as soon as possible. Check out some of the characters we made below.

Our Plans

At Bytewire we believe its good to plan ahead and have therefore already discussed various key areas and key development projects we will be pursuing and developing in the near future. We are devoted to continuing to work in the online games sector as we continue to work on Street Crime and aim to create one of the largest gangster games on the internet. In addition to Street Crime we also have further game ideas which we have developed over time that we would like to see come to fruition, when the time is right and the development time is available from our already jam packed schedule.

We also plan to broaden our horizons by working on a Facebook game which we hope will open our games to a wider variety of users. In addition to this we hope to make mobile versions, including an iPhone application, of our current game Street Crime to ensure users can keep their accounts up to date even if they are not able to access a computer.

There are also plans to develop our core websites such as games top sites and a game advertising network as we feel these would accompany our core competences as a business well. More details on all of our upcoming projects will follow in the future.

Wordpress is becoming a more widely used tool by web developers to create websites. Originally Wordpress was seen solely as a tool for blogging, they were easy to setup and you can choose from a selection of free templates to make your blog stand out from the crowd. As developers have learnt more about the capabilities of Wordpress it has become apparent that creating your entire website in Wordpress is advantageous as it makes for an excellent CMS.

How do I get started?

As with any normal website you need the basics before you can start creating your Wordpress website. The basics include purchasing domain name and hosting package. Once you have this setup you can download the latest version of Wordpress here.

Next you need to upload the files you downloaded to your server, the best way to do this is using an FTP program such as FileZilla which you can download here for free, the details you need to connect to your website will be provided by your host.

Once you have uploaded all the files simply go to the domain where you want to set this up to for example: http://www.bytewire.co.uk. You will be taken through the steps to install Wordpress on to your server.

How do I stop Wordpress looking like a blog?

In order to setup Wordpress to function like a “normal” website and not just a blog you need to make some changes to your Wordpress settings. First you need to give your pages a template name, this is so that Wordpress can link a Page created to a file, this will all begin to make sense further down.

Setting up template names:

• Navigate to the files of the theme you are using for example yourdomain.com/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/
• Create a new file called homepage.php
• Add the following code to the top of the page: <?php /* Template Name: Home */  ?>

Linking template names to Wordpress Pages:

• Login to the dashboard and navigate to the Pages tab
• Create a new page called Home
• On the right hand side change the template from “Default template” to “Home”
• Create another new page called Blog and leave the template as the “Default template”

Set Wordpress to show the Homepage not the Blog

• Within the dashboard you need to navigate to “Reading” which is in the Settings tab
• Set it so that the “Front Page” shows “a Static page”
• Select Home from the Front page drop down box
• Select Blog from the Posts page drop down box

Turn on Permalinks

• By default Wordpress does not use enable Permalinks, permalinks allows URL’s to be more friendly for example news/20/11/2010/setting-up-wordpress
• To enable permalinks go to “Premalinks” in the Settings menu
• Select “Day and name” option as this gives you the best URL’s.
• Press Save Changes
• Wordpress will now attempt to create a .htaccess file to make the changes to your Wordpress settings, if your files have strict permissions set on them Wordpress will not be able to do this, follow the on screen instructions to complete this manually.

Common Problems

Sometimes when you set a static homepage this page is also shown on your posts page. If this happens to your blog, you need to rename the homepage file on your server to something different. Wordpress uses a template hierarchy in which index.php and home.php are at the top. Your posts page will be named index.php therefore you posts page should not be called home.php to avoid confusion.

Your Wordpress website

You now have a Wordpress website which now has a static homepage whilst still making use of the superb blogging system provided by Wordpress. From here you can add other pages just like the homepage was setup to create your whole website in Wordpress.

Today, 18th December 2008, we release our Bytewire Ltd website. Bytewire Ltd specialise in website design, online gaming, computer and laptop repairs and home networking. For a full list of services Bytewire Ltd offer please see the services page. The aim of the site is to begin building our web presence whilst also advertising the services and expertise that we offer.