Guild Companion Site Is Down

[pantsorama]

It's been down for quite a bit now.  Is it still an ongoing concern?

[Nightblade42]

Unfortunately, it seems GC has been gone for a couple of years 

Nightblade ->--

[Hurin]

Someone posted recently that you can use the Wayback Machine to access some of the content, if you're looking for something specific.

[jdale]

Here's that link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201029093103/http://www.guildcompanion.com/

I don't have any information about what's going on though.

[ob1knorrb]

Wow. I didn't realize it was gone.  I hope there is a way to bring it back, or recover the contents, besides the Wayback Machine.

[ob1knorrb]

Ahh, found this in the July 2021 Newsletter:
The Guild Companion magazine has been on hiatus for some while and has recently disappeared from the web. I have had a chat with Kristen Mork and Rob Brott, and we have acquired a complete archive of the Guild Companion magazine way back to the very beginning. Colin is busy getting the archive onto the new ICE webserver so we hope to have all issues available again soon.

[Hurin]

... and there was much rejoicing!

[Colin-ICE]

It may take some time to sort and upload the files into a sensible structure so if there is anything that anyone would like me to prioritise or anything specific people are looking for in the meantime, let me know.

[chook]

It may take some time to sort and upload the files into a sensible structure so if there is anything that anyone would like me to prioritise or anything specific people are looking for in the meantime, let me know.

The Middle Earth content would be my prority from a personal perspective please.

[netbat]

If you have the content and the storage why not just host the GC content on the iron crown site?

[Colin-ICE]

That's what I'm planning (I think).

I just want to make it super easy for people to find what they're looking for. I also want to combine it with a plan that I've had for a while now to create a big repository of useful game bits (like NPCs, adventure seeds, monsters etc) from the vault, the blog and some brand new stuff as well.

[Colin-ICE]

Which would the hive mind prefer: A link on the ICE website that opens the old Guild Companion pages in your browser or the Guild Companion content recreated in pdf or similar that can be downloaded?

[Boromir]

I'd prefer the PDFs, but it is not a strong preference.  An alternative metric would be what is less work for you, perhaps?  It'd be just great to have it back up.

[netbat]

... Guild Companion content recreated in pdf or similar that can be downloaded?

Would that be a single pdf for each issue/month or pdfs of the individual articles?
I generally find the webpages more useful, but individual articles would work as well. Particularly if you had them tagged and could search/browse by tags(i.e. spell list, house rules, RMSS, MERP, etc.)
Doesn't matter a lot to me as I pulled copies of all the articles I liked/used into zotero and tagged them so I will just use my database. I can reference either the updated url for a webpage or pdf when talking to others as long as the new archive is consistent.

I get that submissions were down, but it seemed that the main driver for the webzine ending was lack of time/support/interest in editing and managing the site. Any chance it will re-open or something similar will start up again?

[darkfeyprincess]

It may take some time to sort and upload the files into a sensible structure so if there is anything that anyone would like me to prioritise or anything specific people are looking for in the meantime, let me know.

Hi, I am really look forward to seeing all the content again. I have just recently asked for the Mystic Archer from the April 2004 edition, so I would be eternally grateful for getting that back 

[Colin-ICE]

Would that be a single pdf for each issue/month or pdfs of the individual articles?
I generally find the webpages more useful, but individual articles would work as well. Particularly if you had them tagged and could search/browse by tags(i.e. spell list, house rules, RMSS, MERP, etc.)... I get that submissions were down, but it seemed that the main driver for the webzine ending was lack of time/support/interest in editing and managing the site. Any chance it will re-open or something similar will start up again?

My plan (or maybe I should call it a dream) is to take individual articles and put them as downloadable pdfs on the website so the Rolemaster page (for instance) would have a tab saying "Rolemaster Content" (or something similar) which would lead you to a page that you can either browse everything Rolemaster related or filter further (to RMC or RMFRP) and then down to (Characters, monsters, house rules etc).

I can't answer whether the Guild Companion will restart but another aspect of my plan/dream is that eventually people are encouraged to submit things to the respository and that one day we have a load of free content for people to download and use whether that be characters, maps, mini adventures or house rules etc.

I should point out that given the part time nature of my work with ICE and the myraid other things that need tending to, this is not necessarily going to be a quick process.

[jdale]

While PDFs are nice, I imagine if you just link the .html pages for each article it will take about a tenth as much work and be done correspondingly faster.

[Colin-ICE]

That's a good point.

Maybe I'll do that as an interim solution and then I can slowly convert things to fancy pdfs in my own time.

[Frabby]

Thanks ICE for bringing it back, at least in Archive mode. The magazine had an incredible run!
I'm not particularly partial to any one format, but a search function or searchable file would be preferrable.

[allentown]

Any chance of a status update?