// WOW Server Status
// Version 3.1
// Copyright 2005 Nick Schaffner
// http://53x11.com
Blizzard has yet to release an RSS feed, or any other method of keeping track of your game server status - other than checking their website. This lightweight script will parse Blizzard's HTML page and display a server status on your Guild's webpage. The output can be configured as text/HTML or a dynamically generated image.
During peak hours, Blizzard's website connection is very unreliable. In previous versions of this script, it would hang indefinitely while waiting for Blizzard's server status page. This version solves that problem by caching data and only checking for updates at definable intervals.
1. First you need to make sure you have the GD library installed on your server. To test this, upload the file gd_php.php and run it. It must say “yes” for GD Support and PNG Create Support. If it doesn’t, you need to install the GD Library.
2. Open wowserverstatus.php with a text editor to configure the script variables.
3. Configure the requested variables as you see fit. Make sure to remain within the quotes. You can substitute any variable (except Server Name) with a url to an image.
4. If you would like the script to generate an image, instead of text/HTML, set $generate_image to TRUE. If you only need the image to output up/down server status (this is a much smaller image) set $display to "half".
If you are on German, French or European servers, you must change $URL to match Blizzard's Euro server status page. $language must also be configured appropriately.
If you have a working knowledge of PHP, the next area of code allows you to customize exactly what the script outputs as text/HTML.
5. Upload wowserverstatus.php and the wowss folder to your website.
6. Inside the wowss folder is a file wowss_data.txt. Set the permissions (CHMOD) to 777 on wowss_data.txt.
7. Now, to call the script as text/HTML into a PHP enabled webpage, use the include(); function. For example:
include("wowserverstatus.php");
8. To call the script as an image in any type of webpage (HTML,PHP, etc) place the following code:
9. There are three extra variables that you can tack onto the end of the URL calling wowserverstatus.php. $realm, $display, and $image. These allow you to change the output for different areas on your website or display other servers (note: script only caches main server) without changing the variables in wowserverstatus.php.
$realm is the name of the Server you wish to check. $display can be set to "full" to show the large server status image, or "half" to output the small version. $image will output text/HTML if set to FALSE or generate an image if set to TRUE. For example, to output text/HTML for the status of Azgalor:
include("wowserverstatus.php?realm=Azgalor&image=false");
Or to output the small image version for Ner'zhul
Now they just need to fix my server so I can play! Enjoy.
Version History
---------------
3.2 06/19/05 - German and French server status
3.1 04/21/05 - Added Europeon server support
3.0 04/21/05 - Added GD image library functions to generate an image based on server status, added server status caching to speed up script access time, slightly improved error handling
2.2 04/19/05 - Bah, Blizzard changes their HTML again, tiny fix
2.1 04/19/05 - Fixed glaring exit PHP error
2.0 04/19/05 - Rewrote most of the parser to accommodate Blizzard's changes, added error handling
1.0 12/09/04 - HTML Parser