Classicamiga forums major update schedule

[Harrison]

The Classicamiga forums will be undergoing a major update starting this evening, 8th June 2010.

During this update the forums will be going offline and may be unavailable for up to 2 days while this work is carried out. During this update I will be performing a major upgrade to the forum software to the latest vBulletin 4 release.

If during this update you need to contact me, please use the main site or my email address dave@classicamiga.com

New features

Many new features and changes will be added to the forums with this update. Among these will be the ability for members to create their own blogs, and for the forums to have an integrated content management frontend, allowing members to participate in creating guides, faqs and other articles for classicamiga, and linking these articles to discussion threads in the forum.

Removing features

Some old features that we no longer need, such as the Pager messaging system are being removed during this update. Also going will be the credits, forum money, system, as we don't really need it and it was only ever another number to keep trying to increase for each member.

This will also mean that while the arcade will be staying, members will no longer have to use credits to pay to play the games. Instead trying to get the high scores will be the goal. And with that in mind all current high score are going to be reset to 0 so everyone will have the chance to post new high scores again!

Return of some old favourites

Once the update is complete I would like to see the return of the game, quiz and poster of the month competitions. Along with the awards, and maybe more ideas for other things we could do. This is something I will need some help with running and we can discuss and explore this once the upgrade is completed.

I look forward to presenting you all with the new and improved Classicamiga forums. ;)

[Bloodwych]

Hope it all goes smoothly for you!

I think some members will be peeved to be loosing their hi-scores - some series hours will have been put into getting those!!!

It will be nice I guess to give others a chance, as some scores seem unbeatable.

The credit system was kind of fun, but I guess won't be missed.

[Demon Cleaner]

Yeah, hope everything goes fine. Although I'm not that confident that the update will only take 2 days ;):lol:

[Stephen Coates]

I never understood what the credits were for.

Good luck with the update.

[Harrison]

Credits are/were a money system on the site which you earned by posting and reading threads. And were spent in the arcade to play games. Also getting hiscores won you more credits. You could also use credits to by playing cards in TripleTriad.

Update will commence soon...

[Demon Cleaner]

Update will commence soon...Usually the updates take longer than you predict, now it even takes longer to start? Did something already go wrong?

[Harrison]

Nope. I've so far managed to complete a lot of the stuff in the background on a mirror of the site first before I perform the actual updates today.

[Tiago]

Good luck for the updates :)!

[Harrison]

Everything went well and as you can all see the forums are back up and running.

I hope you like the updated software. It took some doing to get some of the parts from the existing site to keep working with the new version, but on the whole everything is here again.

Still to do:


Customise the site design. As you can see there is only a small holding logo at the top of the site. The link button design will be returning as soon as I can code it into the new template structure. Other site design updates will also take place in the next week to take the site closer to the CA design.
Highscores are not saving in the arcade. Need to fix this.
Add a downloads product to the site that will replace the download areas of the forum.
Add a link to the mobile/retro site layout. I managed to get the mobile style working again and it is still reached at http://mobileforum.classicamiga.com
...

There are many other things to add to the to do list in the coming days.

[ArcadeGuru]

Harrison, Web site looks good and is defo an improvement:)

[Harrison]

Thanks. :) And there is much more still to come in the next week.

[Stephen Coates]

The new forum looks good :)

[Tiago]

So cool Harrison, looks very nice!! Good work.

[Submeg]

Wow, the forum looks very nice! Liking this!

---------- Post added at 11:44 ---------- Previous post was at 11:31 ----------


Wow, the forum looks very nice! Liking this!

Haha, look at all those high scores!

[Puni/Void]

The forum looks great. Congratulations on a fine update. Looking forward to explore it in full today.

:lol: Submeg's highscores takes up a whole page! Maybe it's time to have a go at some of those games.. ;)

[Teho]

So the forum really did come back after a couple of days without any unexpectred setbacks? Who would've thought. :p

Off to explore. :)

[Puni/Void]

Thanks to Harrison, I've now written my first blog ever! :D Woohoo!

[Submeg]

Thanks to Harrison, I've now written my first blog ever! :D Woohoo!

So what is the go with the blog? I think I may have said this somewhere else, but can I link in my external blog to here?

I also won back one of my highscores, but it didn't save the score! I think it's not working yet!

[Stephen Coates]

I think I am now a member of several boards that have there own built in 'blogs'.

I don't know whether anyone reads them :tumbleweed:.

[Submeg]

LOL nice use of the tumbleweed! :thumbs:

Also...

1. the forums seem to keep logging me out??
2. The awards page is not loading (http://forum.classicamiga.com/awards.php)

[Harrison]

Not sure why the forums are logging you out. Have you tried clearing your browser cache, internet history and cookies? And also when logging in do you tick the keep logged in box?

For the awards, the url should be http://forum.classicamiga.com/forum/awards.php with the/forum/ bit in the middle, which is missing from the one you posted above. Again it might be directing you like that because of old cookies or internet history. It works fine from my end.

And finally, arcade high scores. As mentioned in the home page welcome message, saving of high scores from the arcade is currently broken since the update. This is effecting a lot of people using this arcade component and we are all waiting for someone to find a solution.

[Submeg]

Not sure why the forums are logging you out. Have you tried clearing your browser cache, internet history and cookies? And also when logging in do you tick the keep logged in box?

For the awards, the url should be http://forum.classicamiga.com/forum/awards.php with the/forum/ but, which is missing from the one you posted above. Again it might be directing you like that because of old cookies or internet history. It works fine from my end.

And finally, arcade high scores. As mentioned in the home page welcome message, saving of high scores from the arcade is currently broken since the update. This is effecting a lot of people using this arcade component and we are all waiting for someone to find a solution.

I have just emptied the cache using the Tools > Options > Clear offline storage. Will that reset it? (Using Firefox)

[Harrison]

Clear Offline storage should clear the cookies and is the most likely cause of the problem.

But if that doesn't fix it, in FF under the Tools menu there is also "Clear Cache" and "Clear Recent History" which might also help.

[Harrison]

Bug fixes and updates:


Member comments left for forum articles were showing up as forum posts in the new posts page. This has now been fixed and they should not show up.
Amiga mouse cursor is back
Members without an Avatar are now automatically given a blank default avatar until they add their own custom one.
Mobile/Retro forum version now fully working and linked from the bottom of the forum, in the footer bar. And also a link back to the full forum is now in the header bar of the Mobile/Retro version of the forums.
New downloads section installed. Needs to be configured, but once working it will replace the downloads and Vault download areas of the forum, and make it much easier to manage.
Personal Notepad - available in your Settings page - allows you to make notes and put anything you like here for future reference. This wasn't working with vB4 and was throwing up some php errors. I've now had time to look at the plugin code and have rewritten part of it, so it now works again perfectly, and any members who had notes saved from before the upgrade, your notes should be restored also.

Current Bugs being fixed:


Arcade scores not saving
Reply button - current standard behaviour now goes to quick edit box and not straight to advanced edit page. Will look into if possible to change this behaviour.

Current features from the old vB3.8.x version of the site currently missing from the new version (due to incompatibility or the plugin developers no longer supporting them, so no updates):


Jump Menu - I have contacted someone who has coded a very similar mod and hope he will release his version soon.
Quotes system - The quotes system we were using for the POTM competition is no longer being supported by its developer, so currently no compatible version exists for vB4.
Spell Checker - the old spell checker we had built into the forums no longer worked. If there is interest in this I will see if it can be made to work. However, with browsers now having built in spell checkers when creating posts, I don't think we need this any longer.
Quiz section - A new vB4 compatible version of this software is currently being developed by the original developer of the Inferno Quiz software we were using. Hopefully this will be released soon.
Triple Triad - A new Triple Triad game has been released for vB4. I will test this out when I get time. Is always fun to have this game available if it works.
Members Location Map - The old Members Map page isn't compatible with vB4. A new similar plugin is now available, but I need to test this before installing it.

[Demon Cleaner]

Looking for "forum jump" option which was very helpful.

When replying to a thread, it immediately takes you to the fast reply box, then you have to chose advanced to get to the "normal" replying site. Is it possible when clicking the reply button to be redirected there immediately? Saves one click :D

[Harrison]

The new way the reply button works is a change the cV team made to vB4. I will look to see if this behaviour can be altered. However, the quick edit box does have most of the advanced tools as I upgraded it to include them, so the advanced edit is really only needed when wanted to post polls and attachments mostly.

Forum Jump - the developer of that mod stopped supporting it, and there is currently no version available that worked with vB4. I have contacted someone who is using exactly the same style of Forum Jump menu on their own vB4 site, and they told me they developed and coded it themselves and haven't released it. But I might have now convinced them to turn it into a mod plugin and release it for the community, so you might see a jump menu returning to the site if they do that.

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok. Anyway, as the forum now is a bit different, you have to get used again to it for a certain time. But so far I really like the look and the changes that were made, will see after some time what could be better, or what is better now. Great job mate :thumbs:

[Submeg]

Has anyone else noticed that once you've read through the unread posts, they don't leave the unread posts screen?

[Harrison]

That is working fine at my end. Which unread posts screen do you mean? Can you post the url?

[Submeg]

I just marked all threads as read, cleared them. Maybe I hadn't looked at all the posts? Who knows!

[Demon Cleaner]

Happens to me too. I had 8 unread posts just now. Checked, only 2 were new. Then clicked unread posts again, and it shows me that there are still 6 unread, although I get the message "Sorry, there are no new posts to view. You may search for posts updated during the previous 24 hours, here".

[Teho]

Saw this earlier today too. But I also saw this sometimes recently before the update as well.

[Harrison]

Looking for "forum jump" option which was very helpful.

Just thought would add that at the bottom right of every page (under the pagination page links) you will see a "quick navigation" drop down menu. This works in a similar way to the jump menu, listing all forums to quickly go to.

[Harrison]

Regarding unread posts. There is currently a bug in vB4 which is displaying new CMS article comments as unread posts. I've now installed a mod which allows specific forums to be hidden from the unread posts count/list. Hopefully this will fix this issue. This vB4 bug is in the list of fixes for the next 4.0.4 release at the end of this month.

[Harrison]

Rearranging existing forum structure.

Some of you may have noticed I tidied up some of the forum during the upgrade, moving some forums in together to make it easier to navigate.

I'm also planning to merge some of the lessor used off topic sub-forums. To do this I'm going to create a set of title prefixes to replace the sub-forum areas. So for example, all parts of the entertainment section could be merged into a single sub-forum, and then use prefixes such as TV show, Film, Music.. etc to indicate what each thread is actually about. And we can now click on a thread prefix to make the site auto sort the threads into just that type. So if you only wanted to view and read Music threads, clicking on the prefix for one of them will order the posts into just music threads. And clicking a prefix again will return to the full thread view with all threads visible.

This should tidy things up and make it easier to navigate.

[Harrison]

As you can see, I've begun making the custom classicamiga forum template.

The top part is completed and should be fully working. If anyone has any issues with the layout and how it is loading please let me know.

There are still lots of little visual updates to complete this coming week to finalise the design.

[Tiago]

looks great, i like the way wiki was integrated in the site, very nice.
I was afraid that wiki inside the layout has less visible space, but you can read and navigate easily, and still see all info. Very good.

[Demon Cleaner]

Shouldn't new posts be highlighted? I noticed that this isn't happening anymore.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/classicamiga/newpost.png

[Harrison]

That screenshot is showing a highlighted post. It is just very subtle in the new default vB4 template, using a pale blue. Read threads have a white icon instead. I will take a look at making new post icons bolder and a more obvious colour.

[Demon Cleaner]

Oh yeah, now I can see it :o Didn't notice that yesterday.

[Harrison]

The forum software has now been updated again to the newly released latest version of vB 4.0.4

The vBulletin developers are scheduling regular incremental updates, to be released each month. This will include all bug fixes and updates they have been working on during that month, and so the aim is to regularly provide these monthly updates to customers to keep the software as up to date as possible.

As always, if you spot any new bugs, something broken, or strange goings on please let me know.

[Harrison]

Sidebar feature now added to the right of the forum index/homepage.

This shows the latest threads, posts, blogs, articles etc, plus more popular search terms used by members that are tagged in posts. Handy for quick navigation to new content.

This sidebar can be opened and closed, and the site should remember its current state, so if you don't want it open you can slide it closed and it should stay there.

I've also added a popular site tags cloud to the CMS home page.

[Harrison]

The members map is back!

The vB mod that provides this hasn't been updated to vB4, but a helpful member of the vB community has updated it to work, and I'm pleased to say that his update does indeed work well. A proper new version from the original mod's author is currently in development and will be released this summer, with new features, and a new look, but until then we have the old members map back, complete with all members existing locations.

If you haven't added your location to the map yet, please do. It is great fun seeing where everyone is located on the world map. :)

You can access the map from the forum tab, under the community menu (called GoogleMap ME).

[Phantom]

Hey Dave, nice work, I'm really impressed.

I've been absent for the time being, but returning back, I've found all these changes. Great work man. ;)