Forum Upgrade

Sometime in the next couple of weeks I'll be upgrading the forum software and gallery that this site runs on. There will also be quite a few other tweaks, mainly to remove any template bugs and improve the layout of some sections such as the excellent database that John is working on, and the article section.

I'll be designing these changes on my own PC before they go live, so once I know what will be changing and when I'll update this thread with more details.

 

Thanks Ian.
We appreciate it.

 

I'm working on the test forum now on my own PC, trying out ideas and the new features. It's going to take about a week before it's ready to launch, but once it's online it may take a couple of days to get the full funcationality back (I can't do it all on my PC and them move it, as I can only take a snapshot of the post database - and I don't want to lose any posts ).

The gallery is going to be upgraded to a new version that works much better, the excellent database section is going to be given a facelift to make it easier for John to edit and give it some extra prominance on the site It's going to be quite a big change, but it's needed to make sure that we are the best reefs forum on the planet I'm really excited about getting the new changes online.

One very visible change will be in the forum categories, as there are some sections which overlap at the moment (such as the 2 photography forums). There's going to be a big move around of forum sections, the biggest change will be splitting "Reef Talk" to be it's own section containing several categories (including the existing Fishes, Inverts and Coral categories). This means that there won't be any confusion on where to create or find a thread, as some threads could go in many forums as it stands. I really think this is going to be a great change, as we'll have a forum that is easy to navigate and has some great new features.

Other things on the way are calculators (for salt levels, water changes and many other things)... you guys are going to love it

 

As soon as I've got some screenshots I'll post them up - but it's mainly just code for now so I'll post some pics next week

 

Unfortunately this time it might take some time - as it's a huge upgrade in comparison to past upgrades. I'm hoping that the site will only be inaccessible for about 10 minutes - but the site might not function or look 100% for half a day (you'll still be able to read/post though which is the main thing - but the graphics might need tweaking and so on ).

 

How would people feel if the Reef Talk forum was split in to the following categories instead?:

Fish, Corals, Inverts, Tanks, Algae, Chemistry?

The old posts would end up in the new categories - but there would be no more general "Reef Talk" section. How would people feel about that? It makes things much easier to find and post in, as we have forums for things like "Reef Fishes" at the moment but many posts that could be in there are in the much less specific "Reef Talk" forum. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on this

 

It looks like the blank ad space is overlapping - I'll see what I can do to fix this in the new design

 

Cant wait to see it up and running Ian.

 

The upgrade is going well - the design is being tweaked as I type this to allow it to use all the new features. The outer blue border will remain, but the menu at the top needs to change quite a bit to work with the new system.

In a couple of days I should have some screenshots to give you some more ideas of what it will look like

 

I should have a screenshot up in a few hours time

Instead of rollout out all of the changes at once with a medium amount of downtime, I'm going to release them gradually - but the forum upgrade and design change will be done first (probably tomorrow morning GMT).

Extra features will then be added gradually over the coming weeks, as well as tweaking some of the existing implementation. The articles section and database are due a big overhaul, which will take some time - but it will be well worth it and means they will be much easier to edit and view in future. I will try my best to get the database section done on the same day as the launch as it's a fantastic feature that John has worked on.

 

Here's the screenshot:

I'd really like to know what you think of the new forum categories - as the general reef talk section has been replaced by others with more specific categories (no posts will be lost, just moved to the new places). Does the new category structure cover everything?