New Website ! (was sneakpeak)

[indio]

I much prefer the forum full screen. Thanks for the looksee.

The topmenu always seemed to make most sense to me as it can remain a constant regardless of forums or main site content. Main site can have additional side menus as needed, but the forum need only have a top one to assist primary navigation routes (to the wiki, to log in etc...). But it looks good, is fast, and looks like a worthwhile upgrade.

[FanaticusIncendi]

dig the world clock. handy.

[Roekemoes]

dig the world clock. handy.

It's handy indeed, found it while browsing some community modules for Drupal. So if any of you have an idea for an add-on that might be handy on the forums/website just let us know. There's a good chance there will be a module available that's easily installed.

[Hialmar]

One of the main reasons for redoing the entire website setup, was that the old one had been hacked to death/pieces by various IA's and others through the years. All editing their own files here and there, and not documenting.

Personally, I'd like to thank all the people who worked with me on the old website.
Okay I know most of them are no longer in ALFA and I don't wonder why...
*walks back into retirement*

[hollyfant]

A few points, some of them not really of importance:

• We can't link to a portrait, only upload one. The maximum size and dimensions are drasticly reduced from the current forum: (85x85, 30kb vs 200x200, 651kb)
• The "Forum statistics" mention that our newest member is member. Clicking this member puts a user on a login page, even when he's already logged in.
• The world clock has no GMT/UTC timezone entry.
• There is very little contrast between links and regular text.
• The "Online users" can't be clicked to send someone a quick PM.
• The pictures can be accessed when not logged in.

[Veilan]

Personally, I'd like to thank all the people who worked with me on the old website.

Yes, you and your team did a terrific job of keeping things running and addressing things brought up with you in a timely and efficient fashion. I do not think the new website in any way belittles that outstanding record of maintenance.

That said, the new website may be a good opportunity to finally clean out a lot of redundant things that just started stacking up over time, with different administrations (other than IA) playing around with their parts of the old website.

Time will tell how successful it'll be .

[hollyfant]

Some more observations.

• The neon green "Data user_password => ****, for hollyfant synced to phpBB." thing seems to serve no real purpose.
• "Important info for current ALFA members: First time login will give an error, just try again, and you will be fine." I didn't get an error as such, logging in the first time (after that bug was fixed) simply didn't do anything.
• The clock in the forum is set to an unspecified timezone when not logged in.
• Entering the forum from the website doesn't automagically log a user in; you have to re-enter your credentials.
• When trying to do so, I got "You exceeded the maximum allowed number of login attempts.", even though I had never even tried to log in.
• Several forums are locked for no clear reason.
• The "Friends and Foes" thing... are we really at the point we need to blacklist people?

[zicada]

One of the main reasons for redoing the entire website setup, was that the old one had been hacked to death/pieces by various IA's and others through the years. All editing their own files here and there, and not documenting.

Personally, I'd like to thank all the people who worked with me on the old website.
Okay I know most of them are no longer in ALFA and I don't wonder why...
*walks back into retirement*

Dont get me wrong mate! I wasn't talking about you. You too had to get in and work on something that was allready hacked to pieces, before you even got there! You did an excellent job with what you had, but I'm sure you agree that starting from scratch and learning from past mistakes is the way to go.

[hollyfant]

• The forum has no link back to the website.
• I seem to have access to a "Moderator Control Panel".
• Some of the links in the Technical Documentation area aren't actual links.

[zicada]

Holly,

Thanks for the testing. But almost everything you're reporting is forum related. I honestly haven't even started setting it up. Currently it's just a converted version of our phpBB2 database. So obviously there's quite alot of fiddling to be done with that.

Focus is on the website itself for now, the drupal part. Not the forums. That's fairly easy to fix.

Thanks again for all the feedback though, im making myself a nice list here.


Also, I've added everyone who logged in lately to the ALFA Members usergroup now, giving you additional privileges. Some of the issues you reported were due to the fact that you hadn't been added yet Holly.

[zicada]

I seem to have access to a "Moderator Control Panel".

This, is an interesting one. Currently, ALFA has about 150 or so "moderators". Eg, we have things set up so that alot of people have moderation access on their own private forum space. I will have to look into how that works in phpBB3.

You mentioned the friends and foes thing. That just comes with phpBB3. I can turn it off easily. There was no thinking behind that, nor was it added on purpose. Could turn out to be interesting though, if it works sort of like /ignore on IRC


Holly, would be awesome if you could get on IRC later on. Much easier to solve things that way. I can just flip a switch and you tell me if it works or not, etc.

Again, thanks for spending time on this!

[hollyfant]

• The members list has some members in red, for no discernible reason.
• The "pillars" mention only one PC is allowed, which should be one PC per medium or whatever we want to call it.
• The "having been a member for how long" counter in the profile doesn't match the "date joined" in the members list.

[Hialmar]

Dont get me wrong mate! I wasn't talking about you. You too had to get in and work on something that was allready hacked to pieces, before you even got there! You did an excellent job with what you had, but I'm sure you agree that starting from scratch and learning from past mistakes is the way to go.

Not at all, Haltoc and I worked on this website from the head start. Maybe our design was not perfect but still this website works isn't it ?

I agree that we have to move to phpbb3 and drupal but not because the current website is "hacked to pieces" which it isn't.
We need to move on just because phpbb2 is the past.

When phpbb4 (or whatever forum we'll move to after phpbb3) will be there, I hope that the current IA won't criticize your drupal website as "hacked to pieces".

Also, just for the record, all the code that I developed is commented in as much detail as my hobby time given to ALFA enabled me to.

[Hialmar]

Personally, I'd like to thank all the people who worked with me on the old website.

Yes, you and your team did a terrific job of keeping things running and addressing things brought up with you in a timely and efficient fashion. I do not think the new website in any way belittles that outstanding record of maintenance.

That said, the new website may be a good opportunity to finally clean out a lot of redundant things that just started stacking up over time, with different administrations (other than IA) playing around with their parts of the old website.

Time will tell how successful it'll be .

Well said Veilan

[zicada]

Dont get me wrong mate! I wasn't talking about you. You too had to get in and work on something that was allready hacked to pieces, before you even got there! You did an excellent job with what you had, but I'm sure you agree that starting from scratch and learning from past mistakes is the way to go.

Not at all, Haltoc and I worked on this website from the head start. Maybe our design was not perfect but still this website works isn't it ?

I agree that we have to move to phpbb3 and drupal but not because the current website is "hacked to pieces" which it isn't.
We need to move on just because phpbb2 is the past.

When phpbb4 (or whatever forum we'll move to after phpbb3) will be there, I hope that the current IA won't criticize your drupal website as "hacked to pieces".

Also, just for the record, all the code that I developed is commented in as much detail as my hobby time given to ALFA enabled me to.

The difference really is that neither drupal nor phpbb has been made any changes to in the source at all. While on the old site, phpbb2 was integrated into a custom website in such a way that upgrading phpbb later was a huge issue. Same with the wiki integration. Whenever phpbb4 comes out, it will be a 10 minute job to switch to it. Every time theres a new version of either drupal or phpbb, we upgrade, with ease. And all the functionality we have made ourselves are in drupal module format and will just continue to work.
I wasn't ragging down on anyone Hialmar. I was being honest about the state of the current website. In my opinion, from the stuff i've looked at, it is indeed hacked to pieces in a way that the new one will NEVER require. If anyone does against my strongest wishes in the future decide to start editing sourcefiles, on this setup, that's on them. It would be foolish though as it is not required no matter what you want to acieve.