Joined:
December 2001
Posts: 7222
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Forums Upgrade and Website Migration to new host
1/21/12 10:15am - THE FORUM MIGRATION PHASE 1a IS COMPLETE
The forums will be upgraded again in a few days, but feel free to continue posting, but don't get to comfortable with this new format.
Hello Everyone,
Thanks to the funds raised by Woody's kind donation of the proceeds from a custom built guitar, some much needed upgrades are in the pipeline over the next few weeks.
PHASE ONE
The largest step will be the upgrade of the forum software and migration to a new host server. This has been in the planning stages for awhile as the software we are using is no longer supported and starting to fail. The byproduct of this upgrade is being able to do more with the software besides just running efficiently.
For the geeks out there, the current forums are not using any sort of database. Every post is a file, every user record is a file. This has been the big gotcha on previous attempts to move because I did not have the bandwidth (physical or otherwise) to move 100,000+ files at once and converting to a database. So now I'm in the process of contracting with the current support vendor of the latest version of the software to move it. Also it will then be in a database, so any further upgrades or changes in the years to come are just a matter of writing an exporting/importing script.
While there are a TON of new features in the current version of the software, I will NOT be turning them all on at once. The idea is get up and running with essentially what we have now FIRST, then start making improvements. For the most part, the forums will "look" and "function" much like they look'n feel now, it's the engine that's changing.
One feature I will bring up as soon as I can is the Gallery. Yep, a full-fledged regular old Gallery for uploading pictures. No more having to host them elsewhere and link to them. You can load them here, and link to them elsewhere.
Photo Gallery Forums using UBB.Gallery
[list]
[*]Multiple Photos can be attached to a single post.
[*]Automatic Thumbnail generation, along with medium and full sized image.
[*]Content Island to display thumbnails of recent photos that have been uploaded.
[/list]
PHASE TWO
Once Phase One is complete, phase two will be to put in place a solution to handle audio/video. The exact method and technology is not known at this point as it's more important to get the forums taken care of first. But the ultimate goal is to have the forums, photos, video and expanded user profiles (like on Ning) all on one server or at least accessed from one place. While Ning is great for Businesses and Organizations that sell product or have paid memberships, it is no longer feasible for the OvationFanClub.
The goal is to have a solution in place with plenty of time to migrate from Ning before July 2012 when the next payment is due. For those that are wondering "why not use YouTube" or any of the other free services here are the reasons.
[list]
[*]Privacy. Being able to upload a video/audio and share them with the option to ONLY share with other members.
[*]Convenience. Most any of the external solutions involves individuals having their own accounts in addition to their OvationFanClub account. That also means people wanting to view other members media have to search for it.
[/list]
The goal is simply to have a Audio/Video Gallery just like most Photo galleries, all integrated. My company has the bandwidth and technology, I just need to put it into place. A round of applause and a heartfelt thanks to Mike Woodford for making this all possible.
I will post any outages (there will be some down time) as soon as I lock in a schedule.
Thanks for reading, and as always thank you for your support. |
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