Field Day Website

public website for Field Day

Building the site locally

Requirements

• PHP - v5.4 or newer
• Node - v10 or newer (recommended for gulp, not compatible with a windows build)
• an HTTP server running with vhosts pointing to %project_dir%

Initial Installation

1. Clone the repo

git clone <path-to-dir>/fielddaysite
cd <path-to-dir>/fielddaysite

2. Install Node Dependencies npm install in your %project_dir%

Build & Run the Site

1. Run Gulp from Node Script

npm run watch

2. With Gulp running start your HTTP Server with PHP:

php -S localhost:8080

or with MAMP:

• Follow these steps to set up MAMP to serve the site

Deploying

The site is hosted by UW Madison DoIT on Plesk, and Plesk deploys it straight from this repository (Plesk → Websites & Domains → the domain → Git). Only the two branches below are deployed; master is not. Changes for the live site go to wwwtest, then production, and the files below (.htaccess, .github/workflows/plesk-deploy.yml) live on those branches.

Branch	Site
production	https://fielddaylab.wisc.edu
wwwtest	https://wwwtest.fielddaylab.wisc.edu

• Pushing to one of those branches runs .github/workflows/plesk-deploy.yml. It joins the campus VPN, SSHes into porky with the fielddaylab.wisc.edu deploy key, and from there calls that site's Plesk webhook (repository secrets PLESK_WEBHOOK_PRODUCTION/PLESK_WEBHOOK_WWWTEST), and Plesk pulls the branch into the site's /httpdocs. The webhooks (port 8443 on porky and petunia) only answer inside the campus network, not from GitHub's webhooks and not over the VPN. If a deploy doesn't show up, re-run that workflow or use Pull now on the domain's Git page.
• Plesk copies the whole branch, dotfiles included, so .htaccess deploys like any other file.
• Plesk leaves files that aren't in the repository alone, such as the Unity builds the game repositories upload to /play/<game>/ci/<branch>/.
• Test on wwwtest first, then bring the same commits to production. doit-production was the production branch until 2026-10-05 and is no longer deployed.

Until 2026-10-05, .github/workflows/main.yml rsynced doit-production to the server over the campus VPN, and cloudrun.yml deployed staging/production to Cloud Run (fielddaysite-staging/fielddaysite-prod, which no domain points at). Both workflows were removed and disabled. Their rsync never copied dotfiles, so .htaccess never reached the server until Plesk took over.

Redirects

.htaccess holds the site's redirects, and the DoIT Apache honours it. Every old game address (a game's /play/<game>/ci/master|main|production builds, a bare ci/, and its old build folders like /play/lakeland/game, /play/jowilder/build, /play/atom-touch/build) 301s to the game's Vault Learning Games page with the player open (https://vaultlearninggames.org/<slug>#play). The list was built on 2026-10-06 from every game address in this repository's history plus every /play address people requested in a year of server logs. Team test builds (ci/develop, ci/staging, …) and the /play/<game>/ pages are left alone. Old builds of games not on Vault (Alien Gardener, Ice Cube, The Station Maine) go to their page here. Keep the block the same on production and wwwtest. Before adding a game, check that its Vault listing plays from the Vault CDN, not from the URL being redirected, or the redirect will loop.

PBS Wisconsin Education

PBS Wisconsin Education's "Play the game" pages open two games' old addresses in an 880-pixel popup: /play/jowilder/game/iframe.html and /play/emerald/ci/production/. When the request's Referer is pbswisconsineducation.org, those two addresses 302 to the game itself on the Vault CDN (https://cdn.vaultlearninggames.org/fieldday/jowilder/iframe.html, …/fieldday/emerald/), so PBS players get the game without the Vault player's bar, as before Vault. Every other visitor gets the game's Vault page. These rules come first in the redirect block.

• They are 302s, not 301s, because they depend on the Referer, and a browser keeps a 301 for the address whoever sent it.
• The Vault CDN only serves a game's page to a browser outside the Vault player when its Cloudflare redirect rule allows it: the rule "CDN builds only play in the Vault player" (Cloudflare → vaultlearninggames.org → Rules → Redirect Rules) has an exception for exactly these files with a PBS Wisconsin Referer. A new PBS game needs both an .htaccess rule here and that exception. Without the exception, the CDN sends PBS players back to Vault.
• Each game's own analytics then tells PBS players from Vault players by referrer: pbswisconsineducation.org for PBS, vaultlearninggames.org for Vault. That's Jo Wilder's UA-72694027-9 (Google forwards it into GA4 G-4JW7HRZEM0) and Emerald's GA4 G-70RRTWTVBE.