Main site upgrade in progress

The main classicamiga.com site is currently undergoing a major update.

One of the key components I use to build the whole directory structure on the site, jReviews, moved on from the version 1.2.X version I've been using, to a new version 2.X release. This adds a lot of new features, and fixes loads of things that were not quite right in version 1.2.X

One major change is the template structure used to build the site pages. This has ditched the restrictive patTemplate coding language and gone for a proper html and php based language, allowing much more to be possible on the pages, with proper logic now in place to control how the templates work. :)

I will add more as I progress with the update. Hopefully it shouldn't take too long to complete and the site will then be even better than ever to use.

A quick update for everyone.

As you all noticed, the main site was down for a few days and came back online just before Christmas. During this downtime a lot of the code behind the site was completely replaced and updated. And in addition much of the site structure was also updated and hopefully improved for the better.

Among these updates and improvements were the following:

1. Top Menu system overhaul (icon/button menus) - The Software and Hardware sections moved out of the Amiga section and made into their own main sections. This makes the 4 main Amiga directories (Games, Demos, Software and Hardware) as important as each other, and all top level sections of the site.
2. Member's Area icon button is now moved out of the Top menu system and can be found under the main Home section. This is so that everything about classicamiga is now under the home section.
3. Amiga section is now for everything Amiga Community and Amiga general info based. So it is now for the new Classicamiga Wiki, Downloads section, Web Links and the soon to be remade Image Gallery section.
4. Some of the main site's content is (or has) being moved to the new classicamiga Wiki. This includes the "About the Demo Scene" section. At the moment that section can still be accessed from the Demo section.
5. The News section has now been updated. In addition to site news and Amiga community news, the Demo scene news section has now been merged in with the other news. You can also access each type of news from a new left-hand menu within the news section.
6. Staff members can now access recent site statistics from the Home -> Site Information section.
7. Staff menu system has been updated (see the more detailed site updated staff topic here for further info).
8. Home page has been updated. The Popular content box is now linked into the directories more and shows thumbnails of the popular content. This is going to see further improvement with some more information displayed very soon.
9. Directory pages are now split into tabbed sections. Before the pages displaying information about a game, demo, software or hardware were a single long page of info boxes. This is now split up into tabbed sections to reduce the length of the pages and to make the sections of information within each page easier to navigate. For example, in the demo section a demo entry is now tabbed into "Information | Screenshots and Media | Downloads | Member's Reviews". Hopefully this makes it much more user friendly.

Things still to do.

Before you all start posting that some things on the main site are still not right, here is a list of things I still need to do to complete this update.

1. Section Image Buttons need to be made for the Software, Hardware and Forum sections. They are currently using the wrong ones but do work.
2. The Layout and information needs to be edited in the list boxes (latest, top rated etc) which are at the top of each page.
3. Split directory root list of categories into more than one column.
4. Hardware section needs to be completed. (only staff members can currently access this area properly)
5. Fix a conflict with the front page banner loader. There is a javascrip conflict between the new banner loader section on the front page of the site, and the popular content box when javascript is added to allow navigate to more lists of popular content on the same page. This needs to be tested and fixed.
6. Thumbnail view for general search results isn't quite finished.
7. Directory Thumbnail view is currently not rendering correctly in IE. The CSS code needs to be altered for this for cross browser compatibility. This is currently being worked on.

I hope you all like the updates.

Just wondering if the Hardware section has been completed yet. I'm going to pulling apart my 1200 over the next couple of days for some maintenance and will be taking photo's of some of the hardware for the main site and adding them to the site (already added a small Prelude 1200 page but need to amend some things and also add the manual.

It isn't quite ready yet. I'm hoping to get it completed by the end of this week. I will let you all know once it is ready.

However one thing I should mention. The Hardware section is for third party addons, so please can everyone only include those once it is finished and ready. Information about the actual Amiga models and images of them are instead being included in the Wiki's hardware section which is already started. I will be linking parts of the wiki to the menu system in the main site's hardware section so everything is linked together.

Along with the Prelude 1200 I should be adding the following:-
ZorroIV board
C64/3D
BMON
Delfina
Blizzard PPC
Mikrotec M1438s monitor.
Possibly Power Tower
Possibly Power Keyboard adapter
Amitek Hawk RAM expansion

Great. :thumbs: