WE ARE MOVING SOON, We will be switcing forum software in the coming days. I am not sure of the exact time and date but sometime this week. I will do my best to make sure the disruption is as little as possible but the site could be down for a good hour for the move. If you want to know about the new forum sofware please visit this Discussion
New Site Details
MrCaspan
Admin
So we are finally there after 6 months! So the platform we are on Vanilla Forums decided to go belly up and no more development work is being done on it. Not a huge deal but it was running on PHP 7.3 which is no longer supported by most hosting platforms. So I have had to start paying per month to continue to get 7.3 support. There was no way to update to PHP 8 because the software could not run on 8.0 and was no longer being actively developed. So we only had one choice, pack up our shit and move!
I was looking for new software that would support our current data and make it easy to port over any old data. Good news is someone built a tool to port all the data over to a new platform, bad news was it worked to get us 90% of the way there but no over the finish line.
I spent a BUNCH of time over the holiday migrating our data over and over and over again. With each port fixing another issue that then caused another 2 issues to pop up.. Things like attachments and embedded images pointing to old folder locations because the new software store it in a new location. Avatars.. the list was long. I wrote about 15 pages of SQL and PHP to fix all the issue the porting tool could not handle.
The new software is called Flarum and it is being actively developed so let hope this software does not meet the same fate as the old one. It is open source and free which is right in our price range!!
I do have a few users beta testing the new site with some old data on it just to make sure I have not missed anything. Once I get their approval that everything looks good I will be transferring over to the new software. This could be at any time so be aware the next time you log in the forum could look a little different! User name and passwords will stay the same so just log in like normal.
For the most part if you are familiar with forums on the internet this one if just another one, has all the same feature just in a different spot (think Mazda driver driving a Toyota vehicle) So it will be a pain to find all the things that you are used to but they are all still there!!
A few Changes
Events
There did not seem to be a really good event calendar integration and I don't have enough time to do any custom programming right now. In fact there is only one extension that give a calendar integration capabilities so that we could have a calenda like on the current site. For now hosts of games will make a post like they normally do, but they will also have to go create an event in the calendar with a link to their post. Its an extra step I know but I think this feature is really useful and I don't want to loose it. I am hoping to eventually tie it in to the posting of the game to create the event but I am just not there yet.
Looks
I am not a designer so I have not attempted to even apply some kind of theme or create new assets for the new site. If you are good with Photoshop please let me know so we can spruce up the new site!! But for now it will be very plain looking. Again I don't plan for it to stay this way but the important thing is to get us off this old software, we can put lipstick on the pig after!
Tags
The old main categories are still in the new forum. There is a new introduction of something called tags or labels. This allows you to use a Sub tag on a primary category. This allows you to add things like "Rant", "Hand Help", "Cash", "Tournament" etc to add to your post. This helps categorize it a bit more. Its not required to have sub tags on a post but if one fits throw it on! IF anyone has a suggestion for more Tags let me know once we start using them. We want to keep the list as high level as possible so we don't want granular tags but more 35,000 foot level so it could cover a bunch of things
Default View
The new default view is going to be the Discussion view. This allows you to see all the discussion on the forum in chronological order. When you come on to the forum you can see all the new posts and messages all in one view, no need to go into each category.
Notifications
The notification system is becoming more robust so that you can be notified when people like your post or they mention you in a post. Its all customizable so make sure you go there first to set up all your notification settings!
I know this is a long post but I wanted to give users a heads up about what is happening. That's about it, the rest if all the same stuff just in a different place. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!
I was looking for new software that would support our current data and make it easy to port over any old data. Good news is someone built a tool to port all the data over to a new platform, bad news was it worked to get us 90% of the way there but no over the finish line.
I spent a BUNCH of time over the holiday migrating our data over and over and over again. With each port fixing another issue that then caused another 2 issues to pop up.. Things like attachments and embedded images pointing to old folder locations because the new software store it in a new location. Avatars.. the list was long. I wrote about 15 pages of SQL and PHP to fix all the issue the porting tool could not handle.
The new software is called Flarum and it is being actively developed so let hope this software does not meet the same fate as the old one. It is open source and free which is right in our price range!!
I do have a few users beta testing the new site with some old data on it just to make sure I have not missed anything. Once I get their approval that everything looks good I will be transferring over to the new software. This could be at any time so be aware the next time you log in the forum could look a little different! User name and passwords will stay the same so just log in like normal.
For the most part if you are familiar with forums on the internet this one if just another one, has all the same feature just in a different spot (think Mazda driver driving a Toyota vehicle) So it will be a pain to find all the things that you are used to but they are all still there!!
A few Changes
Events
There did not seem to be a really good event calendar integration and I don't have enough time to do any custom programming right now. In fact there is only one extension that give a calendar integration capabilities so that we could have a calenda like on the current site. For now hosts of games will make a post like they normally do, but they will also have to go create an event in the calendar with a link to their post. Its an extra step I know but I think this feature is really useful and I don't want to loose it. I am hoping to eventually tie it in to the posting of the game to create the event but I am just not there yet.
Looks
I am not a designer so I have not attempted to even apply some kind of theme or create new assets for the new site. If you are good with Photoshop please let me know so we can spruce up the new site!! But for now it will be very plain looking. Again I don't plan for it to stay this way but the important thing is to get us off this old software, we can put lipstick on the pig after!
Tags
The old main categories are still in the new forum. There is a new introduction of something called tags or labels. This allows you to use a Sub tag on a primary category. This allows you to add things like "Rant", "Hand Help", "Cash", "Tournament" etc to add to your post. This helps categorize it a bit more. Its not required to have sub tags on a post but if one fits throw it on! IF anyone has a suggestion for more Tags let me know once we start using them. We want to keep the list as high level as possible so we don't want granular tags but more 35,000 foot level so it could cover a bunch of things
Default View
The new default view is going to be the Discussion view. This allows you to see all the discussion on the forum in chronological order. When you come on to the forum you can see all the new posts and messages all in one view, no need to go into each category.
Notifications
The notification system is becoming more robust so that you can be notified when people like your post or they mention you in a post. Its all customizable so make sure you go there first to set up all your notification settings!
I know this is a long post but I wanted to give users a heads up about what is happening. That's about it, the rest if all the same stuff just in a different place. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!
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