PGD news postings

[Traveler]

A few thousand I guess. I'm not sure what the rates are in various countries, but if you hire a freelancer here in Holland (one who knows his stuff) you're looking at 65-85 euro an hour.

I understand what you're suggesting, but really it's not the way to go. If we had a community of a few hundred active member to back it up, maybe, but with the way things are going now... The reality is that over the past couple of years we've lost many active members, and with active I mean those that really contribute to the community with screenshots of their games, tutorials, answering questions on a regular basis, sharing videos, that kind of thing. 4 or 5 years ago that was happening all the time, but now?

Perhaps we have to start realizing that the glory days are over. We're now living in a time where games are made for iphones, the XBox360 (and soon even more mobile platforms). Yes, I know it is possible with a couple tricks to do that with Pascal, but the new guy simply doesn't care. He uses C# or Java, or one of the very capable tools like Unity3D or whatever it is to get his game done.

Don't get wrong, I still love the language and I know what it can do, but the number of people that actively support that is declining each year. Throwing in a couple thousand just to get a website that is easy to maintain is, in my humble opinion, a waste of time and money.

[AthenaOfDelphi]

If we really have to upgrade the site software, I would really suggest that you avoid custom solutions for a site like this. For one, a custom solution is likely to ever only have a couple of people look at the code, and it will only ever be installed on one site. An off the shelf solution such as vBulletin and DokuWiki is a far more secure solution, especially when the features we really need are a forum and a wiki. Plug vBAdavanced into that for a portal and you have everything you need. vBAdvanced has a bunch of nice features, like automatic placement of new items from a forum on the front page.

I would also suggest we avoid heavy customisation, because the more customisation you do, the trickier it becomes to upgrade when software updates are available. The site has suffered directly because of this in the past, and I speak from personal experience of maintaining highly customised sites in the past (I eventually removed all customisations for an easier life).

Having a contractor do this would cost a not insignificant amount of cash... cash that could be better spent on competition prizes for example. I appreciate having a contractor do it would relieve staff from handling it, but we could also end up in a situation where our only choice for maintenance is to go back to the contractor as we won't know all the details of how the system works... not a good scenario.

I also agree with Traveler but for different reasons. Migrating the site is not really the answer as it won't solve the real problems which are a lack of time on the part of the admins and a decline in popularity of the language. No matter how easy you make it to post stuff, if people don't have the time, it won't happen. I've spent a month in Belfast and I have a bunch of posts I want to write for my blog about my time there, but finding the time to do it... unless I sit down and set aside some time, it's not going to happen and at the moment, I have a bunch of more important stuff to do. Delphi isn't as popular these days, which is hurting us too, but it isn't dead. At work, we've managed to convince our bosses that rewriting everything in .net isn't always the right thing to do and the job market for Delphi is starting to pick up again. Pascal is still used as a teaching tool so people are still being exposed to it. But, it isn't always peoples tool of choice and that is the real problem. We need to convince people that it is a viable choice for writing games... unfortunately, the lack of final entries in the last competition hasn't done a lot to help with that. There also aren't that many great eyepopping projects being posted about (probably due to a lack of time/interest)... changing forum software won't help with that.

In short, if we are going to change site software, we should go with off the shelf tools (vBulletin, vBAdvanced and DokuWiki... the only one of these that cost money is vBulletin), stick to their default styles and customise as little as possible to make maintaining the site easy. We should also try and encourage the community to help with some of this stuff. If someone drops me a mail with news, I'll post it, but I don't have the time to go hunting for news myself. No one has written any new stuff for the library for ages... there are more people visit this site than just the admins, so come on people... this is a community site... if you want content, help us... write stuff, send us news, post some nice eye popping screenies of your projects. And this now feels like a serious case of deja vu... take a step back a few years and this is exactly the same discussions that were going on... people complaining about the site theming... lack of content... lack of news... and funnily, I think I said exactly the same back then.

PGD revolves around the community and if that community is shrinking, it is inevitable that the site will shrink in response. But, there will always be the die hards who love the language and what it can do who will always use it as their first choice for developing stuff (I put myself in this category)... I'll always want the site and the resources it provides.

[WILL]

Alright well I recommend that we get vBulletin then. I've seen some of the screenshots and I like some of it's features. It actually looks like something you'd want to have for the PGD site. I assume that it's a one time fee for the site software (unless you want to upgrade to a new version later) so the amount we are looking for is a mere $285 USD. Which I'm sure the tired PGD community can muster (I'll put in a good chunk myself for crying out loud.) to make life easier for all. The feature I like most is that other community members can add content in a fun and interesting way. Hate to say it but the current PGD site just isn't fun to add to right now. (Save for the forums which aren't too bad, but I think thats because of the nice posting menus that have seem to become standard of late.) And it's more work if anybody does add content to it for the admins. ie. the current PGD Library.

I say lets get ahead of the struggle, put up a Donate button, collect the cash, get vBulletin for PGD, hold another competition (because I think we're due again, no?) and then probably get back to work as I'm sure we will probably be busy again at that point. Come back next day and see how cool PGD is again.

Seriously though the Donate button works. It not for that for other things. Advertising, etc, etc, etc... Someone give me a second [vote]...?

[WILL]

Oh and here is what vBulletin looks like:

http://files.vbulletin.com/images/ca...s/CMS_home.png
http://files.vbulletin.com/images/ca...cle_inline.png
http://files.vbulletin.com/images/ca...er_profile.png
http://files.vbulletin.com/images/ca...forum_main.png

and here is the site that hosts it so you can see all the other features:

http://www.vbulletin.com/

I'll go one better and throw in to help customize it all and do some maintenance when possible.

[Traveler]

Uhm well, before Im going to express my view on whats been suggested. I would very much like to know about opinions from people other than the pgd admins.

[Brainer]

Personally, I agree completely with Athena. We don't really need any new forum software. I don't really think there's a wiki needed, either. We already have a news system, but the problem is that no one ever cares to post anything new there. I think the main problem is that most of the people around here are busy with everyday life and treat programming only as a hobby. We'd need someone who can take their time and keep the website active.

Let's not switch to any other software, but rather we should think how to attract others here.

[Stoney]

I am for some changes, but I don't think a new forum software is necessary. What about Wordpress (with a theme from ElegantThemes) as a portal with blog posts as the news, a link to the forums and a link to a DokuWiki page? (Of course you should be able to use one login for DokuWiki, Wordpress and the forums.)

About the popularity problem. These are my thoughts:

• There is no free version of Delphi currently available. Delphi is still the most mature Pascal-IDE in my opinion, even if it is not (yet) cross-platform
• Embercadero is not promoting Delphi as a viable option for game development
• There is no really-easy-to-use game development option for Pascal (we would need something like Unity but with Pascal, I personally think GLScene has that potential, but GLScene does not always work out-of-the-box, well at least for me)
• I do find more and more disadvantages when thinking of DelphiX, but DelphiX was something that brought tons of new Delphi users (A similar concept for Lazarus: A control widget, a timer and an image list and you are ready to go. That may have the similar effect for Lazarus which DelphiX had for Delphi)
• If you look for Unity or XNA tutorials on Youtube, you will find more than you can count, now look for FreePascal/Lazarus game development tutorials. Yeah, I didn't find any either
• Developing for Mac OS X, XBox 360, iPhone with Pascal is really easy, but there are too little tutorials/how-tos on those topics

I am actually against more liberal approach to open up the forums to Unity/C#/etc. We might then be labelled as just a clone of TIGSource.

[arthurprs]

try hiring someone on www.rentacoder.com

don't forget the donate button, also a donators list (topic) is a good idea.

[Stoney]

I have just donated 25 CAD through PayPal. If there is any other way I can help such as looking for news, writing tutorials/how-tos and/or video tutorials, please let me know.

[WILL]

I have just donated 25 CAD through PayPal. If there is any other way I can help such as looking for news, writing tutorials/how-tos and/or video tutorials, please let me know.

Thanks so much! Every little bit does go a long way for us.

The biggest thing we can ask from you is to just participate post cool stuff you're doing. Make mention of whats going on out there if I hasn't been posted here. Make a cool game, etc anything so long as you get involved.

You you may or may not have seen on the front page of the site, yes I have put up a Donate button for giving donations to the PGD Website Staff for use in improving the community through various means. (And for some reason my web browser couldn't load the PGD site after making a couple of edits. Irony it seems. )

You can access this page at http://www.pascalgamer.com/pgd_donations.php

Any amount can be put in and it doesn't matter if it's 25 cents or $100. Every little bit helps.

I'd post the button but thats what got me into trouble in the first place and well the site just won't let me.

Oh and I've also created a new topic so that everyone from the site got a copy of this announcement. Click here for it!