CodeWalrus

CodeWalrus Website => Site Discussion => Site Discussion & Bug Reports => Topic started by: Dream of Omnimaga on August 20, 2017, 05:50:58 AM

Title: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on August 20, 2017, 05:50:58 AM
An update on CodeWalrus' status and upcoming changes:


-Based on Juju's life schedule and mine (all of which is explained in two topics located in the access-restricted safe-haven sub-forum), CodeWalrus has most likely been saved at this point.

-No matter if things in Juju's life go haywire or not, the Discord, Telegram and IRC channels are here to stay.

-We are switching to PhpBB 3.2 software. This is our final weeks as a SMF 2.0 website.

-We will also attempt to merge the TIMGUL archives into CodeWalrus database, but it is not 100% guaranteed (a temporary conversion to MyBB is necessary).

-The new website will only replace the current one once Juju got OmnomIRC or WalrusIRC to work on it. (most likely OmnomIRC for multi-channel support)

-The new website will only replace the current one once Juju made sure that the current CodeWalrus topic URLs are still working (either via redirect or read-only archive).

-The old SMF CW website will remain fully browsable in read-only mode for posterity, but file attachments, as well as very large files (such as the arcade content) will only remain available on the PhpBB site for disk space reason.

-Work on the new website will begin somewhere around August 25th, where I will gain SSH and PhpMyAdmin access under @Juju 's supervision.

-All CodeWalrus features that are exclusive to SMF plugins have 99.99% chances to be reset, permanently lost or read-only during the PhpBB conversion, such as the following:
*Topic cloning (the ability to place one topic in multiple categories at once, which only staff could use)
*Post rating, karma and rating reasons
*Custom profile fields (Ticalc.org, Skype, calcs owned, etc). You will have to manually copy their content one by one from the archived SMF CW website onto the PhpBB one.
*The list of all front-page news posted before the upgrade. It will be archived in a topic.
*Publicly-visible board statistics (posts per day, Juju stat graph, site traffic, top members, etc)
*Other things I might have forgotten.

-There is no exact timetable about when exactly the new website will go live. While the bulk of the upgrade will happen during a short timeframe at the end of August up to early September, the rest will be slow, as work on the new website can only happen while me and juju are online at the same time for extended periods of time.


More information will become available as the upgrade process begins, but feel free to ask here or in this forum section, as we will not bite any member for being curious.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: Yuki on August 20, 2017, 07:48:18 AM
Heh, I'm very unlikely to delete anything here :)

But yeah, we historically went with SMF as it's the one @xlibman is used with, but unfortunately with all the mods customized to our likings it's getting a pain to manage, so it makes sense to go to some more modular software that is easier to manage. We'll start working on it as soon as I'm done with whatever talking all my time IRL (which should be around next week) and we'll do our possible to make the move almost seamless, keep the most data and features possible on the new site, offer you brand new features and, of course, keep you updated.

Stay tuned!
Title: Re: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: gameblabla on August 20, 2017, 08:23:08 AM
I thought this would take a little more time but seems like you got fed up with SMF.
I tried to use it for a while and it's clear that PhpBB is superior to SMF on almost all fronts.
Something like FlaskBB would have been better but i guess you needed to have PhpBB support. (plus i'm not sure you can do the IRC chat in flaskbb)
Title: Re: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: xMarminq_ on August 20, 2017, 01:41:55 PM
Will all the files that are up for download go to an archive to preserve them for the new website?

Also will the website have a new interface?

This seems exciting for the future of CW.  :D
Title: Re: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: _iPhoenix_ on August 20, 2017, 01:55:36 PM
Will there be a safe-haven subforum, and an excess of :walrii: on the site?
Title: Re: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: 123outerme on August 20, 2017, 04:16:55 PM
Sounds like a plan guys! I know that the future of CW was a bit hazy a little while ago, so I'm glad that you've got all that figured out and even doing upgrades! I will honestly miss post ratings a bit, but that's ok because I accidentally downvoted xlibman like 3 times, so now it's reset.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: kotu on August 20, 2017, 04:45:46 PM
will the password reset feature work once this is done?  >:D
Title: Re: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: Yuki on August 20, 2017, 05:06:36 PM
Quote from: gameblabla on August 20, 2017, 08:23:08 AM
I thought this would take a little more time but seems like you got fed up with SMF.
I tried to use it for a while and it's clear that PhpBB is superior to SMF on almost all fronts.
Something like FlaskBB would have been better but i guess you needed to have PhpBB support. (plus i'm not sure you can do the IRC chat in flaskbb)

Nah, we made a long list of forum software, looked at what we wanted in it and most of them failed the test and phpBB stood out as the one that makes the most sense so far. FlaskBB looks interesting, though. If we find something better than phpBB we'd probably switch to that instead.

Quote from: xMarminq_ on August 20, 2017, 01:41:55 PM
Will all the files that are up for download go to an archive to preserve them for the new website?
They should be moved with the new site. If not, they still should be preserved.

Quote from: xMarminq_ on August 20, 2017, 01:41:55 PM
Also will the website have a new interface?
Most likely. Of course we'll have to write a new theme to match the green one we have right now, but yeah, it should feel new.

Quote from: xMarminq_ on August 20, 2017, 01:41:55 PM
This seems exciting for the future of CW.  :D
Definitely.

Quote from: _iPhoenix_ on August 20, 2017, 01:55:36 PM
Will there be a safe-haven subforum, and an excess of :walrii: on the site?
Nothing is going to change on that side.

Quote from: 123outerme on August 20, 2017, 04:16:55 PM
Sounds like a plan guys! I know that the future of CW was a bit hazy a little while ago, so I'm glad that you've got all that figured out and even doing upgrades! I will honestly miss post ratings a bit, but that's ok because I accidentally downvoted xlibman like 3 times, so now it's reset.
Post ratings are probably going to return under a different form. It's not the highest priority in the move and it may or may not be reset (but we'll make our best so it's not), but yeah, I think post ratings in its current form are a bit of a mess and probably causes more trouble than it should. Oh well, we'll see.

Quote from: kotu on August 20, 2017, 04:45:46 PM
will the password reset feature work once this is done?  >:D
Most likely.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: xMarminq_ on August 20, 2017, 07:00:52 PM
How about sigs/karma?

Will they be saved?
Title: Re: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: GalacticPirate on August 24, 2017, 05:11:29 PM
So will posts be transferred? Also, this (the phpBB migration) might be the perfect moment to change my nickname to GalacticPirate (since I'm known as that on the Internet know :P).
Title: Re: CodeWalrus status update: SMF 2.0 => PhpBB 3.2 at the horizon
Post by: Yuki on August 24, 2017, 06:19:20 PM
Yes, everything transferable will be transfered and your username shall be changed, you should check your emails.