All change! Time to modernise, but this will mean some disruption

[Ian]

It's rather amazing to think that I launched this site on Friday 13th August, 15 years ago. Everything was updated manually and we had a rather flakey discussion forum. Two years later we got organised and implemented a proper database driven publishing system and after that we added a commercial-grade forum (this one) and user photo gallery.

But time has passed by and it's fair to say that we haven't kept up with online developments.

The good news is that this is about to change! Under the hood updating of our server is complete and this means we can now update the forum and migrate to a new publishing system. This will make us more compatible with mobile and tablet devices and improve our search rankings. It will also streamline the publishing workflow, meaning I can concentrate more on writing articles and spend less time fiddling with code and html.

All this can't be done overnight and will be done in stages. The first change will be to the forum here. We are on vBulletin 3 and will be skipping a generation to version 5. This will happen in the next few days and will result in a temporary return to a vanilla default look and minus many of the customisations we have implemented over the years. I apologise in advance, but we will work as fast as we can to restore customisations and add even more functionality.

These changes will not affect existing posts or accounts. However, there will be short periods when the forum will be inaccessible while we work on it.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Ian

[patmoore]

Re: All change! Time to modernise, but this will mean some disruption

Looking forward to seeing the new version. The old one has been great so any improvements will be a bonus.

[Ian]

Re: All change! Time to modernise, but this will mean some disruption

One more reminder; this forum and the gallery will be down for periods of time during the coming week. I am aiming to provide a temporary information page here while the forum is down and provide some running commentary - if you are interested!

The forum will basically be rebuilt although the user data and posts will be preserved. At this point, however, I don't think it will be possible to preserve the post thanks and likes statistics, sorry about this. The software we use for this currently is no longer being developed so we will have to start afresh.

Ian

[mike_j]

Re: All change! Time to modernise, but this will mean some disruption

Sounds like a time consuming project, hope all goes well.

I do hope that you will be changing the header as well, it always seems very dated and in need of renewal though no doubt other older timers will disagree.

[Ian]

Re: All change! Time to modernise, but this will mean some disruption

Sounds like a time consuming project, hope all goes well.

I do hope that you will be changing the header as well, it always seems very dated and in need of renewal though no doubt other older timers will disagree.

Yes, all that is going and in fact there will be no header for a short period once the new forum us up and running. The redesign is also extending to the rest of the site as we move to the new publishing system. The old site will be frozen as a reference resource.

Ian

[Barr1e]

Re: All change! Time to modernise, but this will mean some disruption

Hi Ian -

Enjoyed the latest front page. A blast from the past to modern times.

How times have changed over the years. I see the latest magazine has a barcode!


Regards. Barr1e