While gaming and being a computer geek doesn’t necessarily go hand-in-hand, I’m going to guess that my three regular readers are all interested in computer hardware and technology in general. If you typically visit Sprawl’s Scrawl for the usual gaming previews, reviews, and beta coverage, then perhaps you’ll want to skip this article, but if you are like me, your monthly power bill is a bit shameful.

Did you know that you can still have multiple computers and be conscious of your power bill? This starts simply by shutting down your machines at night, or at the very least, having them go to sleep. Obviously, when you aren’t gaming, it is pretty easy to set your system to hibernate. A regular 200-watt system will drop to a mere 2 watts of power usage while sleeping. This is a huge difference, and a huge savings. Let’s calculate assuming a nice round 20 cents per kilowatt-hour.

200 watts * 24 hrs * 30 days / 1000 watts = 61.2kWhr * $0.20 = $28.80 a month

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So you want to create a website for your guild but do not know where to start? Well, this article is perfect for you then! I just recently went through rebuilding the community website for my online guild and had to face decisions many of which do not have a right answer. Building a website for anyone can be a daunting task, but I am going to share some of my experiences to help you get started with some of today’s most powerful Content Management Systems (CMS).

Figure 1: The Z Guild Site

While it is perfectly acceptable to create a website from scratch, there are a lot of things to worry about if you go this route. Everything from basic user handling to security needs to be addressed, and those are no easy tasks. The more complex you make your website, the more challenging it becomes to track everything. This is where the Content Management Systems come in. Teams of developers have bonded together to create highly customizable website templates that require a limited amount of HTML and programming experience. If you just need a simple static page to display information, then a CMS is complete overkill, but if you need the basic community package, which includes forums and a photo gallery, then a CMS is definitely the way to go.
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