New Site Look

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Dave

Dave

Staff member
Remember when we talked about vBulletin going to v4? Well, that time is nearly here. For the past few weeks Ame and I have been testing (and retesting), beating our heads on the wall and trying to get things done. In fact, according to vBulletin, the new Gold release will be done about the 21st of December. What we'll do at that time is to totally upgrade the Test forum, make it look the way we want and then we'll be ready to rock.

ON OR ABOUT JANUARY 1st, I will be making an announcement as to when we are doing the move. It may be January 2 or it might be farther out than that. Right now it's up in the air. Suffice it to say you will have ample knowledge something is about to happen.

When it does all go down we will be shutting the boards down, making a total backup of the boards and then doing the move. If successful we will turn everything back on and listen to you bitch about how it looks different. If it doesn't work then we'll restore and try again. If it fails twice we'll put everything back, turn stuff on, make an announcement and go back to square 1.

The new site is going to look cleaner, more "ours" but will have a bit of different functionality.

For example, instead of a "Bug Forum" there's going to be a ticket system. You see something wrong you open a ticket and we work on it, closing it when done.

We will be losing a few add-ons that are not being ported to v4. Ones that I really like, too. Like LiveTopic and Prevent Double Posts. This can't be helped.

So keep an eye out for the notice that this is going to happen. And once it does we're going to start actively promoting ourselves, we're going to get Project Wonderful ads which I hope will be replacing the Google ads.

Stay tuned, folks.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Covar said:
YES! MOBILE BROWSING IN 2010!!!!
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Cross your fingers on that one. They say it's going to be standard but I haven't heard anything else about it since then.

It's very, very high on my list of priorities, though.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
doomdragon6 said:
I has question--- if we lose stuff we like, why move?

Or are there lots of improvements?
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This is a valid question. I'll do my best to answer why.

First, back in October vBulletin announced they were releasing v4 and that you got a substantial discount if you signed up for it and paid before a certain time. Then they said that support would be going away eventually for 3.8. So I decided that paying for it now would be for the best as we didn't have that much time to think about it (which was probably their aim, but they did have everyone over the proverbial barrel).

So now we've paid for this product which has extensively better integration with web 2.0, enhanced security and a more streamlined database which should improve performance. Could we wait? Yes. Probably. But we're going to have to do it eventually because of the pulling of the version support.

Yes we stand to lose some stuff, but we are also gaining some things. Plus it'll just look and feel newer.
 
Hylian

Hylian

While I will miss some of the features we have now I am still looking forward towards the new place. Of course I am still hoping that the features we lose will be available in the future.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
I know for a fact that LiveTopic is not being done. I went so far as to contact the developer. He's not interested.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Here's a quick list of what I'm looking at adding.

Not Necessary but Cool:


  1. [FONT=&quot]Members who have visited today. – Instead of just showing everyone who has visited it also would show the Registered Users who had been on for a 24 hour period. Not a necessary addon, just kinda fun.[/FONT]
  2. [FONT=&quot]New Latest Album Pictures – This will allow NON-PRIVATE pictures that users store in their albums to be randomly viewed on the front page.[/FONT]
  3. [FONT=&quot]Separate Sticky and Normal Threads – Just like it sounds. This one puts a small blank space in between the stickied threads and the normal threads.[/FONT]
  4. [FONT=&quot]Usergroup Color Bar Legend – One thing I’ve missed since coming over to vBulletin is the ADMIN in red, MOD in green, etc. This addon does that.[/FONT]
  5. [FONT=&quot]First Post Editable Indefinitely – Right now you can’t edit the first post after a while and there’s no setting for it. This addon will allow users to edit the first post for however long they want – even if it hasn’t been touched in months.[/FONT]
  6. [FONT=&quot]Tag Cloud on Forumdisplay – Just like the tag cloud we have now.[/FONT]

Necessary:


  1. [FONT=&quot]microSUPPORT for vB4 – This is the ticket system I talked about before.[/FONT]
  2. [FONT=&quot]vBH-Add new tabs – This addon allows us to easily add tabs to the top of the page. I know this doesn’t make sense right now but it will become more clear.[/FONT]
  3. [FONT=&quot]EzIRC - This addon puts a tab at the top of the screen that INSTANTLY takes you to the #Halforums IRC channel! Yes, some people may prefer #pvponline, but #Halforums channel will be the official. So this means we'll be losing the IRC sticky thread.[/FONT]
  4. [FONT=&quot]Panic Button - Puts an icon on EACH POST that when pushed takes you to the url of your choice. Boss coming? PANIC BUTTON! Solved.[/FONT]
  5. [FONT=&quot]StopForumSpam - This one was a dealbreaker. If it wasn't available we weren't going to switch. Yes, a few have gotten through. But those were all humans coming in and spamming, not bots. This addon KILLS bots dead.
    [/FONT]
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Oh, one other thing...The Arcade? Um....It may not happen right away.

See, the company that put it out has now gone to a pay model and hasn't even started working on v4 integration. Now, there's another one that is very similar that I will keep my eye on. But for a time we may not have the arcade.

In any event scores and stuff will go bye bye. So suck it, GasBandit! You and your Shoot the Gems Harder Score! You can BITE ME!!
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

Dave said:
In any event scores and stuff will go bye bye. So suck it, GasBandit! You and your Shoot the Gems Harder Score! You can BITE ME!!
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I think we've just been told the real reason for the change.
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

I can prove you're pretty. That's something.

Perhaps it's everything.
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

That's quite the petty, juvenile reaction for such an old man.
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
Dammit, did you guys start arguing like an old married couple again. I swear, sometimes it feels like living with Robin Williams and whatshisface in The Birdcage...

Now kiss and make up! Pronto!
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

Fine, North. I'll kiss and make up.

"I'm sorry, Dave. I didn't mean it."

*kisses Vyx*
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

the only problem is, with his senility Dave'll forget the apology right after reading it
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Okay, non-Grue related update. Ame and I worked everything out and we have a successful test environment! Can I get a FUCK YEAH?!?

Now comes the fun part. I get to put this live site there again and do it all again to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

wish me luck. I'm going in!
 
Bonhomme Richard

Bonhomme Richard

Dave, what are the chances of running the site off virtualization? I've only worked with servers in house where we can install whatever we want on them, but not sure if a dedicated server on a host can accomplish the same thing.

You could have two virtual machines on the dedicated server. One is your test/staging environment and the other is the live environment. When you get the test/staging environment ready, dump the data from the live environment and then switch them. Backups would be significantly easier as well if things went kaput.

I also can't remember the hardware on the server, so that might limit you completely anyway.
 
Bonhomme Richard

Bonhomme Richard

That's the beauty of a virtual machine. If things go nuts, it's all stored in one virtual hard disk file. Make a copy of the file before the update, update, things go haywire, overwrite the file with the copy.

There's also complete machine state snapshot abilitly with VMWare. It's roughly the same thing but faster.

Sounds like it might be moot at this point anyway if everything's pretty close.
 
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