Some news about the Site - future versions etc

[Melifluous]

So the site has been working in a 'sub-optimal' mode recently.

I had a chat with PP earlier on MSN (no he's not dead) he's incredibly busy at the moment but hopes that taking on 2 new staff at work soon may give him some more time, which will of course soon be taken up by Mini-PP mk 2.

So we talked about the site a little and agreed that Snitz could be better and maybe VB forums would be a slight improvement.

PP owns the www.civduelzone.com address and has a licence for the VB forums.

He will try and dig these out and pass these onto me. At that point I can try to

a) Set up the forums and use the snitz to vb conversion tool to get the existing forums into vb. If this fails I try option b)

b) Leave the old forums as they stand on civ3duelzone.com and stop anyone from posting on them. Enable the vb forums on civduelzone.com and we all start from scratch. People can then use external links to point people back to the original server should the need arise.

Just thought I'd let you know (Krys) that we are moving forward, and that we do care about server outtages and stuff.

Heres to the future [beer1]

[meli]

[Tubby Rower]

woo hoo!! All hail the Meli!!

All Hail the PP!!

[dominance

[socralynnek]

Yeah, cool, and then we'll have no extern spambots!!!!

Cool!!!

Go Meli Go!

I think your plan is fine.

[Melifluous]

I personally thought that b) sounded better than a) but if the conversion tool works satisfactorily then I have no problems really. I shall miss these old forums [sniff]

[meli]

[Socrates]

I decided to stop making propositions, as it is quite useless, but whatever improvements you guys will make, I'll support them and be grateful. I'm sure you Meli will work it out, whatever you choose.

We will all miss the old stuff if we're forced to leave the place, this happens in every circumstance in life, in various degrees. The thing is we should be looking forward to the future and not be afraid to move, because : what's the point in stagnating all the time ? Is our life only bound to repeat itself ? We have our memories to link ourselves to the (always better) past. And what's more, maybe we could even keep the old stuff as a museum. :D

Here's to the future ! [beer1]

quote:Originally posted by Melifluous

[sniff]

[snitz]

[Beorn]

The threads that have to be restarted will be, and within a month or two it will be back to full spamness.

[dominance

[Tubby Rower]

quote:Originally posted by kryszcztov

I decided to stop making propositions, as it is quite useless, but whatever improvements you guys will make, I'll support them and be grateful. I'm sure you Meli will work it out, whatever you choose.

We will all miss the old stuff if we're forced to leave the place, this happens in every circumstance in life, in various degrees. The thing is we should be looking forward to the future and not be afraid to move, because : what's the point in stagnating all the time ? Is our life only bound to repeat itself ? We have our memories to link ourselves to the (always better) past. And what's more, maybe we could even keep the old stuff as a museum. :D


What in the world are you talking about krys??? Am I too stupid or just too American?

[IglooDude]

quote:Originally posted by Tubby Rower

quote:Originally posted by kryszcztov

I decided to stop making propositions, as it is quite useless, but whatever improvements you guys will make, I'll support them and be grateful. I'm sure you Meli will work it out, whatever you choose.

We will all miss the old stuff if we're forced to leave the place, this happens in every circumstance in life, in various degrees. The thing is we should be looking forward to the future and not be afraid to move, because : what's the point in stagnating all the time ? Is our life only bound to repeat itself ? We have our memories to link ourselves to the (always better) past. And what's more, maybe we could even keep the old stuff as a museum. :D


What in the world are you talking about krys??? Am I too stupid or just too American?


I'm hoping the latter, because I don't get it either.

[Socrates]

if we can't transfer old stuff to vb :
old stuff = can't post again = we are nostalgic = but we have to move on = we have a brain to remember the old days = and maybe we can even visit the old stuff = like in a museum

Better ?

[grahamiam]

If there are any costs involved in this, please let us know. I'll be glad to add a contribution :)

[Darkness]

quote:Originally posted by grahamiam

If there are any costs involved in this, please let us know. I'll be glad to add a contribution :)


Same here...

[barbu1977]

quote:Originally posted by Darkness

quote:Originally posted by grahamiam

If there are any costs involved in this, please let us know. I'll be glad to add a contribution :)


Same here...


And here

[Whomp]

What Barbu, Darkness and Gman said.

I think I understand what Krys said is similar to what REO Speedwagon once said

So if youre tired of the
Same old story
Turn some pages
I'll be here when you are ready
To roll with the changes

I knew it had to happen
Felt the tables turnin
Got me through my darkest hour
I heard the thunder clappin
Felt the desert burnin
Until you poured on me
Like a sweet sunshower

So if youre tired of the
Same old story
Turn some pages
Ill be here when you are ready
To roll with the changes

Roll with the changes

[Tubby Rower]

yeah I was holding off my contribution until the contribution link was moved from going into annares account.

[IglooDude]

quote:Originally posted by Tubby Rower

yeah I was holding off my contribution until the contribution link was moved from going into annares account.


And ditto again, except for the part about annares account. And about holding off. Anyway, I'd be willing to pony up as well.

[Socrates]

And, as said several times before, you can also count me in for the support. I only need to set up a PayPal thingie, or else I'll wait for the next CDZ meeting, hoping to see more guys than last time. :)

[Pastorius]

quote:Originally posted by grahamiam

If there are any costs involved in this, please let us know. I'll be glad to add a contribution :)


I 'm with bert and ernie :)

[Beam]

Glad the forum issues are getting serious attention by the admins :) I hope we are relieved of this shit soon.

Having said that if this is the silver bullet for the forum probs we currently have I'll be a happy contributor. But for the following reasons I am not sure if moving to vB forums is that silver bullet:
- The forum sometimes is slow or not accessable. Meli posted just a few days ago this is most likely caused by another forum on the same server. The forum has been of the air for some time after that but for me it has been running fine since then (including posting).
- We are swamped with spambots and Meli has tried to install measurements to stop it. It didn't work but otoh when I read recent topics in the Snitz forum about spambots it seems that it is possible to solve this in Snitz.
- Then there are some wishes in terms of functionality. I've been in IT for over 20 years and there always are wishes over functionality no matter what. I've been on that other site for a long time now (not as long as Matrix) and they had their issues in vB. And afaik that other site isn't out of the box vB and quite some additions have been made.
- Which brings me down to effort. Installing vB may be a piece of cake but making it work as a whole might be a mug bigger effort than seeking solutions for the current issues we have (basically spambots if the performance issue indeed is gone with the fish in the cage).

Imo having another ip offers some more options than moving vB either way. Like having a testbed for vB migration or a testbed for Snitz solutions to spambots or both.

[col]

Still urking and following progress round here. Count me in for a donation too if you want to migrate,.

[Melifluous]

Thanks for your comments Beam and for the offers of cash from everyone else. Propain is still the person to talk to about the money, he pays for the site and hosting and I just fumble around in the code occassionally.

I too have been working at the sharp end of the IT sector in a small company which means that I have to wear many hats. I am considered at work to be an excellent problem solver and I pride myself in the fact that there are very few things with computers that I cannot fix. I will be giving my every effort to get this server working properly and keep you guys informed as much as humanly possible. Propain has not yet got back to me with licences and ip addresses and stuff so I am not currently in a position to get this started which is fortunate as I was due to move house tomorrow but due to the joys of the English house purchasing system this has today fallen through and now I should be moving next Thursday.

Some things I have to mention.

This will be difficult to implement.

It will not be a quick process.

It will not give you all you ask for in terms of functionality.

As long as you can understand this and take on board the issues we will face, this will be a nice change and a welcome break from the unwanted spambots.

Thank you for all your patience and suggestions in this, I really do consider you all my very best of friends [beer1]

[meli]

[Socrates]

Thanks for you upcoming work ! :) We will be patient and grateful.

Also, are you what we call an "architecht" in IT ? There are a few of them in my compagny, and they know how to solve a lot of things. :D

[Beorn]

quote:This will be difficult to implement.

It will not be a quick process.

It will not give you all you ask for in terms of functionalityIf there's a place to write text and post pictures, hopefully with some smilies somewhere, I think we'll all be really glad about it. I do know the perfectionnist urge to put everything and make a really sweet thing with your hands to give to your folks, but don't put pressure on yourself, our arms will be welcoming whatever happens.

[Melifluous]

quote:Originally posted by kryszcztov

Thanks for you upcoming work ! :) We will be patient and grateful.

Also, are you what we call an "architecht" in IT ? There are a few of them in my compagny, and they know how to solve a lot of things. :D


I dunno if I would so grandiose as to call myself an 'architect'

Code-monkey, bodger and tinkerer are closer the mark. I think generally I'm just a bright boy who seems to have a knack for fixing computer stuff probably not unlike Beam or yourself Krys:)

[meli]

[Shabbaman]

quote:Originally posted by Melifluous

Code-monkey, bodger and tinkerer are closer the mark.


I thought the proper description was "wanker" [punch]

Anyway, best news I had since returning from my holiday about 10 minutes ago.

[barbu1977]

Running across the web to find forum software and hosting services, I stumbled across this page:

http://www.invisionpower.com/community/board/convert.html

So apparently they convert Snitz to IPB for a 60$ flat rate

Anybody has a view on IPB?

Is PP still in charge of this site?

Meli are you intersted in taking a Pay Pal licence and take things under your belt so we can (finaly) pay some kind of contribution to the community?

[akots]

CFR runs on IPB 2.1.7. It is a nice engine, not overloaded with features but pretty comprehensive with reasonable security. I don't know how much it would cost since usually it is paid by the server company and price is included in the rent.

[Pastorius]

quote:Originally posted by barbu1977

Running across the web to find forum software and hosting services, I stumbled across this page:

http://www.invisionpower.com/community/board/convert.html

So apparently they convert Snitz to IPB for a 60$ flat rate

Anybody has a view on IPB?

Is PP still in charge of this site?

Meli are you intersted in taking a Pay Pal licence and take things under your belt so we can (finaly) pay some kind of contribution to the community?


IPB is more flexible than snitz.

I frequent a board run on IPB

[Matrix]

I had Invision Board for my family forum when it was free. Then they suddenly decided to ask a price for it, so when PHP6 was installed on my server and the forum didn't work anymore, I would have to pay to upgrade the forum. http://www.straland.com/images/smilies/swear.gif So I switched to Simple Machines Forum instead, where they have a converter from IPB (and lot of others) to SMF for free as well.

It's a common but dirty marketing trick that I do not like, and I therefore consider Invision Power to be uncool. http://www.straland.com/images/smilies/snooty.gif

[barbu1977]

Simple Machine does have a Snitz converter. :)

[Shabbaman]

What's wrong with Snitz anyway? I think we should try the new version before upgrading. It has quite some more new features.