Sploder

Sploder was a Flash-based game creation website. Users could use the online "game makers" to construct simple games that were then published on the site. The site was turned read-only on and appears to be down since sometime in late with the domain failing to resolve (authoritative Cloudflare nameservers responding with Extended DNS Error Code 20 Not Authoritative).
== Shutdown announcement ==
On , the site admin, Geoff, posted a thread on the Sploder Forums titled Sploder Endgame. The full post is as follows:
Hi all! I'll keep this short and sweet...
We knew it was coming. I am effectively freezing Sploder main site in read-only mode for the foreseeable future. All public games will still be playable if you have the technology, but users will not be able to register or log in. Comments are turned off as well.
I hope some day I can come back and revive some of the game engines with native web technologies.
The forums will also be shut down on January 1st.
It's been a blast. I am incredibly grateful to all of you who have played and worked tirelessly to keep things running.
Happy New Year,
Geoff
As of this point, the following had been archived:
* All games up to (by Flashpoint)
* All game pages up to ~
* All user profiles up to ~
* The last page of comments for all game and user profile pages
* The forums, up to ~
User:Betamax is attempting to contact the site admins to ask about preserving all the comments, and keeping the forums read-only rather than shutting them down.
== Archival Attempts ==
FlashPoint have archived all the games up to 2020-03-28, along with the game makers, however certain metadata such as comments along with user profiles, groups and the forums have not been saved. Members of Flashpoint will be saving all the more recent games, however certain content such as the forums (and possibly user profiles, comments and groups) are out of scope for Flashpoint - Archive Team will need to take the lead on this.
== Site structure ==
The main content of the site is structured into five areas:
* Games
* Games Makers
* Members (Users)
* Groups (of Users)
* Forums
=== Games ===
Paginated list of all games: http://www.sploder.com/games/n/ , where n is an integer starting at 0 for the most recent games, and moving up in increments of 12 (since 12 games are shown on each page). Note the format of the page for n = 0 is slightly different to all the other pages - it contains a short description text of the top of the page. This description includes a link to the end of the list, which can be used to determine the total number of games on the site (around 4.44 million at the time of writing).
As well as a link to the game, the paginated results include basic metadata for each game: it's name, creator, when it was published, how many views it has had, its averaged 5-star rating, how many ratings it has had, and a small screenshot of the game.
Each game has a URL of the form: http://www.sploder.com/games/members/member/play/game/ , where member is the username of a particular member, and game is the encoded version of a game's name. An example of a game's URL is http://www.sploder.com/games/members/flyingmachine/play/last-december/ .
Each game page has the following content:
* The name of the game
* The member that created the game
* The date that the game was created
* The game itself
* A screenshot of the game
* Comments left by other members
* Tags
Curiously, there is additional metadata for each game that is not displayed on the game page, such as the number of views a game has had, the number of ratings the game has had and the average rating of the game. The first two of those can be found in the HTML of the game page, all three including the latter can be found in a game's entry in the paginated list (see above). There is also information like the difficulty and "awesomeness" of the game, that is contained within the page HTML (in the <meta> tags).
=== Game Makers ===
Sploder offers five different game makers:
* Retro Arcade Game Maker
* Platformer Game Maker
* Physics Puzzle Game Maker
* Classic Shooter Game Maker
* 3D Game Maker
There is also a Graphics Editor that can be used to make graphics for use in Sploder games (or as export as GIF for use elsewhere).
=== Members ===
Paginated list of all members: http://www.sploder.com/members/all/n/ , where n is an integer starting at 0 for the oldest members, and moving up in increments of 64 (since 64 members are shown on each page). At the top of each page is a link to view the most recent members, at the time of writing it links to http://www.sploder.com/members/all/3257600/ , indicating there are around 3.25 million members.
As well as a link to the member profile page, each entry in the paginated list includes basic metadata on the member: an icon of their profile picture, their rank, the number of games they have created, the number of "friends" they have, the total number of views across all their games, and the total number of votes they have had.
Each member profile page has a URL of the form: http://www.sploder.com/games/members/member/ , where member is their username. An example of a member profile page is: http://www.sploder.com/games/members/geoff/ .
=== Groups ===
Paginated list of all members: http://www.sploder.com/games/groups/n/ , where n is an integer starting at 0 for the highest-ranked groups, and moving up in increments of 12 (since 12 groups are shown on each page). Unlike the games / members paginated lists, there is is no direct link to the end of the groups list. However, at the time of writing (December 2020) the final page is at the URL http://www.sploder.com/games/groups/16776/ , meaning there is around 16,800 groups.
Each group page has a URL of the form: http://www.sploder.com/games/groups/random-string/group/ , where random-string is a short but random alphanumeric string, and group is the name of the group. An example of a group URL is: http://www.sploder.com/games/groups/a25x860y/sploderian-community/ .
=== Forums ===
The Sploder forums are hosted at http://forums.sploder.com/ . From reading various forum posts, it seems the forums were down for some time, then were partially recovered . However the consensus is that the forums are tied to the main site (which is due to go down), and therefore are also at risk . Additionally, the forums are HTTP only, with no plans to upgrade .
The forum software used is Simple Machines Forums.
=== Messages ===
There is a dedicated live messages section, however I believe it is just a compilation of all the messages across the rest of the site (game comments, member profile messages, group messages, etc...). Therefore so long as the other sections are archived, this section is not a priority. Additionally, loading the messages page is very slow (10s of seconds) when you try to load older messages.
== References ==