Site revamp?

[Tbone]

There's no magic upgrade button. This is a HUGE undertaking that would take probably a year to do, as not only would it affect our member site, but also our public site and our challenge. Lithium and I have messed around with a few other CMS's, but two or three months before going live into a new game is not the right time to re-do everything from the ground up.

[likwidtek]

In all honesty, I hope the forums never change.

My largest complaints are:

The forums still are not able to correctly track which posts have been seen.  For example the //messages block on the left nearly always incorrectly displays orange icons next to posts that for sure have been read.  Additionally "&search_id=newposts" nearly always is incorrect as well.  This problem has been solved in the newest version of PHPBB which we cannot upgrade to as long as we're still using postnuke.

Second, is mobile accessibility.  Namely tapatalk support.  Being able to easily view the forums on a smartphone is possible once we upgrade.  Yes we can just use safari but it's a pain in the butt.  

Third, we're at risk of being exploited.  Until we move to a maintained platform we will be more and more exposed to attack.

I like the look and feel of the forum.  In fact, phpbb is great.  We're just stuck in the old version.  That's all.

[likwidtek]

There's no magic upgrade button. This is a HUGE undertaking that would take probably a year to do, as not only would it affect our member site, but also our public site and our challenge. Lithium and I have messed around with a few other CMS's, but two or three months before going live into a new game is not the right time to re-do everything from the ground up.

I feel that we could do it sooner than that.  I'll help.  I'm sure there are lots of talented programmers in the guild that could lend a hand as well.  If we don't do it before launch, it'll be forever before it gets done.  Now that the public site and challenge are finished why not attempt to see if there's enough talent to commit to assisting with the migration.

Yes it'll be a huge project.  I bet we can bang it out in a few months if we get the help of the faction.

Database migration, retool the custom mods (teamspeak block, challenge site integration, steam integration), reskinning the new site.  Those are the hardest pieces to the puzzle.  

It's doable!

[Ketamininja]

OK, so my thoughts on this.
The forums we have are good, themewise. Simple and pure. I hate the darker style skins. As for functionality, yeah phpBB aint the best.

However, I think any CMS must have a phpBB -or better- functionality [which is hard, near impossible to find built in, out of box].

From this method of thinking, I would say that we need to be investigating forum-down. Find good forum software, and find a CMS that can use it... and I agree regarding vBulleting functionality. As for CMS add-ons, all modern CMS should be able to handle any modular components we require/make so I don't see that as an issue, but of course must be confirmed.

Compatibility? Yeah, likely none between new board and old, so these need to be archive-able, searchable, forums in the first instance, but it may be possible to import - I wouldn't hold my breath.

Ultimately, we have a security issue. With no patches being posted for Nuke for several years now, upgrading should be an important issue, especially with the new game coming online where we will hopefully be seeing a lot of traffic again from fans and haters alike.

I also concur about mobility. These forums do work on mobile devices - have to zoom in etc, but making it mobile friendly and less traffic would be excellent.


So, if there is a way to move forward, can it not interfere with day to day member/signal websites? Of course - new CMS/forum would have it's own tables in SQL, and can be hosted at any directory level (or external site) until it is ready to be moved.

Change can be hard for us all. Perhaps we should have some counsel ready to assist those who have a difficult time through the process!!

[likwidtek]

The new phpbb isn't too bad.  SMF is garbage.  I'd be willing to bet that we'd have more luck getting a seemless database merge from our pnphpbb2 database into the newest version of phpbb3. vbulletin is nice however we'd have to pay for it.

The best way to tell is to get a tar of the site, and let's pick it apart and do a bunch of test conversions.  Once we can find a good method for seamlessly migrating and upgrading the forum database, we'll have a great starting point at then looking at CMS and challenge site integration.  

Again, my vote is for phpbb3 simply because it's so well supported.  Next would be vbulletin.  SMF is total crap and is broken and hard to mod.

[likwidtek]

Here's an example of a "portal" mod added to phpbb3:  http://www.board3.de/

A few others are here:  http://www.phpbbhacks.com/category3/34/

[Revalis]

I'd support a move to Joomla or Drupal.. If I'm not working on a Flash project, I'm generally stuck on 1 of these two CMSes, and honestly, I find them quite sufficient. Plus I can snag extensions from club memberships I have through work (if needed).

Joomla has Community Builder and Ninjaboard for forum solutions. Both are really well maintained and supported. I think Ninjaboard looks nicer, personally. Downside is Joomla just moved to 1.7, so it's going to be a month or so before all the third-party extensions catch up and 1.6 goes unsupported.

[likwidtek]

Here goes:

* There seems to be agreement that the site needs to be updated for security reasons.
* There's also some agreement that updating will enable us to have better mobile viewing ability.
* There's some good talk about alternative CMS systems.  Joomla being my personal favorite.
* There has already been an offer by yours truly to start researching and developing whatever migration tool necessary to convert the database to PHPBB to experiment with on a different site.  I'm even able to host a private test site so we can test and break things.

-=- Questions were asked previously and they went unanswered:  They included asking what Lithium's time table looked like.  Requesting who'd like to spearhead this project.  Asking who'd like to volunteer for PHP, CSS and Photoshop work (as well as testing.)

In my line of work I take projects like this, manage them and assist where need be.  I'm good at gathering people, putting aces in their places and getting a job done.  Step one is a little planning.  Step two is breaking the job into bite size morsels.  If I can help, that's awesome.  If tbone tells me to fuck off.  Fair enough.

If you have better ideas, please, contribute.  If I'm stepping on your toes or something, yell ouch and tell me to stop.

[Tbone]

I cleaned up this thread a bit to get rid of some flaming and baiting. I don't mind a healthy argument about the merits/logistics of the topic, but let's not let it get personal. Thanks.