Big changes coming week of Monday July 20th, 2009

[DirtyDog]

After doing much research, I have decided to migrate WTW to an entirely different forum software package. Unfortunately the company that creates the current Vbulletin software package has gone downhill drastically in terms of customer service and support, product functionality and updates, and overall value for the money.

The new software will be similar in most ways but there will be a small learning curve like anything new. I wouldn't be making this change if I didn't feel that it was very important.

Now on to the good news. The change will mean that both of the current photo galleries will be combined into a single, improved gallery system. The new software will be instrumental in implementing entirely new WTW website sections that I believe our users will enjoy a lot.

So here we go.........

 

[chnlisle]

Hard to believe this site could actually be better but----you go dog.

 

[ScottBailey]

Well, while your at it, maybe you could integrate MediaWiki...

Oh yeah, what's the new software?

 

[DirtyDog]

I'm going to the new Invision Power Board 3:

http://forums.invisionpower.com/

I am going to be creating my own version of Wiki for site members it should be pretty cool

 

[SunMan]

Giddyup...look forward to it. Bold statement in that new sig line

 

[ScottBailey]

I am going to be creating my own version of Wiki for site members it should be pretty cool

DD, before you invest big time in development, let me strongly urge you to try MediaWiki. It's free and has a huge community backing. It's fairly easy, I believe, to customize and integrate it. Although my experience is mostly to use it stand alone.

One hassle you'll have is URL rewriting in Apache. For that, I have some working -- although somewhat simplistic -- examples from my home install.

The other is modifying the login files, but I'm sure you know PHP. When I looked into this, I thought the authentication stuff looked fairly straight forward. Hard to remember. But I modified my other tools to authenticate from the MediaWiki DB.

Other than that, it's pretty simple. Again, l think MediaWiki is the way to go. It has way to much community -- and user! -- momentum to ignore.

 

[DirtyDog]

I'd agree with you that using software that is already created and supported is generally a better idea, but the media wiki really doesn't fit within my master site plan.

 

[RJones]

Dog,

Your efforts are most appreciated. Change is good.....

 

[EdoHart]

I don't envy you.

Sounds like a big job. Have fun. To parrot Jay, it's hard to imagine this site getting any better.

 

[DLN]

Keep up the good work dog, if you like it and think it's an improvement I'm sure the changes will work for us.

 

[Ted]

Seems to me the most users ever online was listed as something like 81 for a long time, though I rarely see more than 30 on at anytime. I just noticed it now says 641!!! What did I miss? Did google do a story abought the site with a link? You said there were big changes coming but wow.

 

[DirtyDog]

Yeah I saw that too but my stats didn't show any huge spikes in traffic. Not sure how that happened.

 

[DirtyDog]

Update: we have a test site up and everything is looking good but I don't think any public changes will be made until next week (especially cuz I'll be at Steens Mountain till Tues suckas!!!).

 

[EdoHart]

Bit shift error?

Seems to me the most users ever online was listed as something like 81 for a long time, though I rarely see more than 30 on at anytime. I just noticed it now says 641!!! What did I miss? Did google do a story abought the site with a link? You said there were big changes coming but wow.

Maybe the counter shifted the bits some with out double clutching.
81 decimal = 1010001 binary
641 decimal = 1010000001 binary

 

[EdoHart]

Congradulations.

Update: we have a test site up and everything is looking good but I don't think any public changes will be made until next week (especially cuz I'll be at Steens Mountain till Tues suckas!!!).

Congratulations on both the upgrade and I assume the recreational trip to Steens Mountain.