Dateranoth Posted July 28, 2012 Share Posted July 28, 2012 Ok everyone. I'm going to have a major overhaul of the main site done in the near future. Here is your chance to place your input. The reason is the site performance. Running a major forum back end and a wordpress front end is just a waste of resources. I plan on ditching word press and integrating everything into IPBoard ( The forum software ) . This will allow for complete site/forum integration. Article comments will be forum posts, and forum posts will be promotable to articles.Now, here's the deal, I don't have the time or knowledge to do the major legwork of the redesign. So, I'm going to be paying a professional skinner to design everything for us. It's going to happen one way or the other, but I want your input before I make the investment.So, a couple of questions. First, it's completely possible to keep the exact look we have now. The front end will continue to look like it does now, and the forums will keep this look. Only they'll be integrated.However, this is the last change I personally plan to make. So, we no have the option to completely customize both the front end and the forum to whatever we like. So, if you want to draw up pictures, or create basic layouts to go by then now is the time. Do you have a color scheme idea, or would you like to see a new banner? Now's the time to speak up.I'll let the discussion go for as long as it needs, and if there is enough input we can vote on what we like the most, but keep in mind what we get is what we keep.Again, this thread is your first and last opportunity to speak up. Once the change is done, it's done for the foreseeable future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eminutia Posted July 28, 2012 Share Posted July 28, 2012 I'm happy the way it is but if the site will run faster I'm all for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dateranoth Posted July 28, 2012 Author Share Posted July 28, 2012 That's certainly an option. I can have the integration done without changing the look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skylark95 Posted July 28, 2012 Share Posted July 28, 2012 What all needs done? I have been receiving a lot of Java, Javascript and basic web dev training through work and may be able to help with some of the integration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avahra Posted July 28, 2012 Share Posted July 28, 2012 I'm all for whatever. No personal preferences here as long as the people stay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevnvek Posted July 28, 2012 Share Posted July 28, 2012 I think it looks great as it is (and the custom colors on certain areas of the forum are a nice touch), but if there's one thing I'd like, it'd be that the site doesn't go full on monochrome. I've always liked the color scheme of blacks, grays, and blues (basically my favorite colors anyways), and didn't like the logo up top losing the blue background/night sky and going fully monochrome. Just little accents of blue here and there, like how the main page has the little blue light and the text turning blue when you mouse over the tabs.Only other thing I can think of is be sure the new software has enough word formatting and especially image resizing/placement tools, if it will be what we write reviews with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LGWyant Posted July 28, 2012 Share Posted July 28, 2012 I agree with av.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dateranoth Posted July 28, 2012 Author Share Posted July 28, 2012 What all needs done? I have been receiving a lot of Java, Javascript and basic web dev training through work and may be able to help with some of the integration.I appreciate the offer, and what needs to be done depends on what we decide we want to do. If we're talking just integrating the main site into the forum software then it is less work. It will take PHP knowledge, SQL, and CSS. Along with some other skills, but those will be the heaviest hitters.If we do a full redesign, we may get into even more complicated matters.@KevinI'm still willing to change the logo. I would like to see grim stay in some capacity, but the last time this came up we went round and round and made no decisions. Again, it's part of the change. If we can come up with an idea, we can have a new logo made up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dateranoth Posted July 30, 2012 Author Share Posted July 30, 2012 From the input so far, I think everyone is leaning towards keeping the layout we have now. Which will be the easier option. I don't think having the skin made will be a problem, but I'm still working out the details of keeping all the content from wordpress. Again, I doubt it will be too difficult, but my main concern is keeping the same urls so we don't lose any of the traffic we already get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skylark95 Posted July 31, 2012 Share Posted July 31, 2012 SQL and css are good here, PHP... well it could be better. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dateranoth Posted July 31, 2012 Author Share Posted July 31, 2012 lol. Well, I'll let you in the seedy underbelly of the site when I get a chance. You can dig around and take a look. The PHP isn't really that complicated, but it's just the way they do it. Not sure what the term is, but it's the layered setup. So there's tons of different files to dig through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Siren Posted July 31, 2012 Share Posted July 31, 2012 I want to see everything in pink with polka dots and the grim reaper letting his weewee hang out while smoking a cigar. Seriously though, I think we are adaptable people here and whatever happens we call roll with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dateranoth Posted August 2, 2012 Author Share Posted August 2, 2012 I was going to leave this up longer, but from the responses I don't think it's necessary. Everyone is happy with the current look from what I gather. So, after this weekend I'm going to move forward with getting the Wordpress look integrated into the forum front end.If I go this route, very little will change. The front page will look like it does, except there will be login/logout info that will be tied to the forum. The forum itself will retain the same look as well. In the end it will drop wordpress and front page news will also be posts and vice versa. So any comments will be linked back. It will give our site a much needed lived in look. We have a lot of community here, but no one sees that on the front end.ANYHOW, Speak now or forever hold your peace. Nothing will be final for at least a week, but I plan on putting out the groundwork come Monday August 6th. So again, please speak up if there is anything you would like to see. I may not be able to accommodate everyone, but at least we can agree on an overall look.After the change there will still be room for tweaks here and there, but the site/forum layout and design will be here to stay. Please please please comment if you have any input or questions. I won't necessarily be cold, but I sure won't be listening to complaints once it's done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeeKnuckle Posted August 2, 2012 Share Posted August 2, 2012 If there are complaints after the change and that person didn't voice themselves in this thread... a pox on you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bacon Posted August 2, 2012 Share Posted August 2, 2012 I'm perfectly fine with what you have planned Dat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spawn622 Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 I hate the look. What jacka$$ put all this stuff together? Jeezuz the colors, everything. Just terrible. That guy should be banned form coming here, like, ever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dateranoth Posted August 3, 2012 Author Share Posted August 3, 2012 It's ok. He stepped down willingly. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spawn622 Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 It's ok. He stepped down willingly. lolWhew! Thank goodness. What a freaking jerk! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skylark95 Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 It's ok. He stepped down willingly. lolI got quite a laugh out of this for some reason.But yeah, plan sounds good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevnvek Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 Here's a suggestion. How about a directory type listing of articles? For instance, when you click on Reviews, you see all of the reviews listed as posts and have to scroll all the way through each one to get to the next. This is especially tedious if someone didn't use the Read More button to truncate the preview. A page where you can see text only links to all of the articles would be cool, with subsections for reviews, etc. We already have the tag system in place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dateranoth Posted August 3, 2012 Author Share Posted August 3, 2012 I'll have to look into it, but I'm pretty sure this will be natively supported when I do the change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skylark95 Posted November 2, 2012 Share Posted November 2, 2012 Any updates on this. Would be nice to see the site load a little faster. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dateranoth Posted November 2, 2012 Author Share Posted November 2, 2012 Now that my hand is better I'm going to start looking into it again. I haven't been able to find anyone who is willing or knows enough about IP.Content Skinning to do it yet. So I'll probably have to make the change myself or if anyone wants to take a stab at it. I would love to get away from WordPress. However, other than skinning there is still the difficulty of integrating all the old WordPress content into the IP.Content databases without breaking links etc.I have enabled archiving on the forums as of the first of this week. So far there are about 3300 posts that are archived with another 3000 still in the queue. Anything that hasn't had a reply in over 1 year will be archived from now on. This will and has helped improve the load times of the site. Archived posts will still be viewable, but will not have posting options. Once the archiving is done there should be a decent increase in load times for the site overall. Another problem we have is hits from Spam register bots. We have active Spam protection, but for some reason we have been seeing 30+ registrations of bots daily (54 today) for the past month or so. Not a big issue, but it certainly doesn't help. I also closed down all sub domains no longer in use. So hopefully some of this will help.And finally, we are still on a shared hosting plan. Which doesn't help anything at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skylark95 Posted November 2, 2012 Share Posted November 2, 2012 I might be able to write a script to transfer the data to ipboard. I would just need to know what the database structure is for both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dateranoth Posted November 2, 2012 Author Share Posted November 2, 2012 I'll let you know if I need it. I think that IP.Board has a script written for that end already though. The think I have to figure out is how to keep the URLs. If you notice, the forum uses a number before the post titles. Wordpress doesn't, and I don't know what is going to happen to those links when I import the info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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