Donate to PGD!

[WILL]

Hey everyone,

Things have really got quiet around here on the site and we are looking to help pick things up a bit. As you know PGD is a community site which is geared to helping pascal developers connect with other pascal developers so that you can all learn and share with each other. And we feel that we can do more to make that happen, but as you may or may not know, is that the entire staff is a volunteer-only group of independent developers just like you. All that you see here at PGD are the direct results of our spent time and money put into this site. And since 2004 there has been a lot of time, money blood and sweat that has gone into this place. Time has not always been our friend and well money we just don't usually have. We want to continue to do what we do, but we want to also do better than what we have. This is where you, the community, comes in.

We would be very much appreciated to anyone that can spare whatever they can to help us in some of our goals. These are things that will help us make this place better, easier to maintain (time and financial wise) and more fun. Emphasis on the more fun! Because thats why we work with Pascal and come here in the first place.

Some of the things that can be done with your contributions:

- Nicer site experience. Purchase of site software such as vBulletin so that everyone can post news and articles in a nice and easy manner without the hassle of extra logins and configurations and mismatched free site software.

- Help pay for hosting. Dom, bless his heart, has been flipping the bill for ages for the pascalgamedevelopment.com domain and it's web space. And as much as he doesn't mind doing it, wouldn't it be nice to help cover some of this as a community?

- Advertise the site and the community outside of PGD. This will help bring in others that don't know about how great Pascal is and what we are all doing. Imagine all those that have not been initiated. This helps bring in new blood to the community and make events like the PGD Annual more exciting with more renewed participation. We also get to show all those C weenies just how much better our language really is. ;)

- Help purchase better competition prizes for PGD Annual and other events. You know we have had some great sponsors in past years for our competitions, but wouldn't you really rather win a sound or graphics card instead? Or many other options and cool things we could do if PGD had the cash to fund future competition events themselves.

These are some of the awesome things we could do for this community if you and your other hundreds of PGD members just gave what they could to chip in. I've created this Donation button below for you to click on and enter whatever amount you feel you want to or can give. It's totally up to you! We would like to see this community continue grow so please help out and give what you can. Thanks. :)

[chronozphere]

- Help purchase better competition prizes for PGD Annual and other events. You know we have had some great sponsors in past years for our competitions, but wouldn't you really rather win a sound or graphics card instead? Or many other options and cool things we could do if PGD had the cash to fund future competition events themselves.


I don't think this is really neccesary. I just recieved the books I won and I'm very happy with them. I've got approx 1000$ worth of prizes if i'm not mistaking, which I think is alot. :o ;)

What we need is more people to join the competitions. Last competition was a bit dissappointing because there were very few competitors (this wasn't caused by lack of "good" prizes, I'm quite sure of that). It's all about showing your progress and commenting on progress of others. That's what makes PGD a great place to be.

I think that advertizing is the way to go here. More interesting content, like games, tutorials, the PascalGamer magazine will also attract programmers.

Unfortunately most new programmers are drawn towards C# and XNA, I-phone development or other fancy game-engines that have nothing to do with pascal. That's probably because those communities are bigger which means: more tutorials, more tools, more people who can help etc... :(

[BeRo]

I've 5$ CAD donated now ;D

[Pyrogine]

My donation is in too ($20CAD).

Provide me with a standard 460x60 banner for PGD and I will get in the banner rotation on my site.

[WILL]

Unfortunately most new programmers are drawn towards C# and XNA, I-phone development or other fancy game-engines that have nothing to do with pascal. That's probably because those communities are bigger which means: more tutorials, more tools, more people who can help etc... :(

FPC can do iPhone development. A long running member of PGD offered to do an article for a future issue of Pascal Gamer Magazine on it. :)

Thank you JSoftware, Glenn Linde, Benjamin Rosseaux and Jarrod Davis! :)

[AthenaOfDelphi]

You WASTE MONEY on vBull you can pretty much guarantee it will DECREASE how often I come here - have you SEEN the TRAIN WRECK of bloated bull version 4 is saddled with? Lands sake the damned forum index of maybe 3k of text content is a megabyte download! Between the endless AJAX for nothing, abuse of ordered lists on obviously tabular data, nonsensical heading orders and obvious content cloaking effectively shooting oneself in the foot so far as SEO is concerned - They've got giant brass balls charging money for that ****.


If you want to be taken seriously when presenting "rational analyses" like this I would suggest you don't shout as much, focus more on the facts of the situation and lose your obvious sense of superiority when it comes to matters of web development. With all due respect, you are not some all seeing all knowing god of web development, despite what you may think!

We (the admins) have discussed our choice of forums extensively, and we have access to a full vB4 installation (I'm currently porting my own forums to vB4 so I've given WILL, Traveler and Savage access) so we can get a feel of what it's like and what it can do, and well... WILL and I like it because we can see the potential for it to free the admin team from having to look after the mechanics of the site so much (we won't have to worry about integrating bits and pieces which ultimately lead to a site that is prone to security problems because it's such a pain to update) and get back to what we like best... making content and other fun stuff for the community.

If we upgrade and you don't visit simply because we're using vB4, then really, thats a little childish and the only real loser in that situation will be you and if you really think it's a bad choice, present us with reasoned arguments and we'll listen... not this kind of aggressive put-down crap that you seem to like posting.

On the subject of the facts of the situation... I'd like to know which forum you visited where the index page is a megabyte download... my plain vanilla out of the box install with my forums on is significantly, read hundreds of kilobytes, less than a megabyte, so I've not noticed any problems with page size, and I have to say... I've never noticed any problems with page size (even when I was running a beta of my game and the forums for the game down a 56K modem).

[Wizard]

it will DECREASE how often I come here - deathshadow

maybe that won't be such a bad thing...

[chronozphere]

maybe that won't be such a bad thing...


That comment doesn't help anybody. >:( Please don't post things just to piss someone off.



it will DECREASE how often I come here


It's all pretty simple:

You should come here if you like programming games with Pascal, and not because we have a fancy customized or whatever... kind of CMS. I respect your oppinion about software, but that statement doesn't make sense at all.

[User137]

I never actually knew much or looked into forum softwares before but this thread made me to. Google came up with some reviews and they give an overall impression. Sorry to say most user comments talk about same things deathshadow mentioned.

vBulletin3.8 user rating 5/10 of 83 votes.
vBulletin4 user rating 3/10 of 37 reviewers.

You can look up at:
http://www.forum-software.org/vbulletin/user-opinion
http://www.iterating.com/component/content/article/138-forums/7501-vbulletin

This just for quick Googling ::) I'm not saying you should change or something because of this, just stating the facts. It may be big, slow, bloated resource hog but it's used by alot of people.

[AthenaOfDelphi]

I haven't had enough time to analyse the situation as deeply as you clearly have what with work, my own projects and my degree work, so all I can say is that my experiences don't mirror yours.

If your only argument is bloaty, badly written HTML etc. then I really don't think that is a sufficient no-no to avoid vBulletin. When I revisit the forum homepage at vbulletin.com, I get hit with a 20k download (at 56Kbps thats about 3 seconds, so if your 22Mbps connection is taking 30 seconds to load that, then there is something seriously wrong with your connection, your ISP has really bad peering arrangements, or you're on some seriously high contention service... regardless, on my 8Mbps service the page loads in under 4 seconds and a large portion of that is courtesy of facebook and google). It's never going to be as neat and tidy as hand optimised HTML granted, but if it's the choice between vBulletin with all the features we want to provide in one easy to maintain platform and some open source product which requires a bunch of plugins/modules to do what we want and so becomes a nightmare to maintain, then I would go for vBulletin EVERY time.

Some people don't like vBulletin... I wasn't keen until I used it and ran a site on it. In my experience, it just runs. In 8 years of running a vB board, I have NEVER experienced any problems like we have experienced here from time to time (and we've used SMF and phpBB). From an admins perspective, thats a very appealing direction to go in.

[alexione]

When asked by his nephew about his profanity, Patton remarked, "When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight it's way out of a piss-soaked paper bag."

"As for the types of comments I make", he continued with a wry smile, "Sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence."


Choice of forum software is not really life-or-death situation in which man you quote was, isn't it? I don't think his opinion matters much in this discussion.



Might as well get automotive construction advice from the team behind the 1984 Yugo GV.


As I am from the country where (in)famous Yugo was made and since it was my first car, and since my good friend and I still drive it, I would laugh with you on this if your tone wasn't so offensive... Well, you still made me laugh :-)

As of the rest of your post, it is clear that you do know lot of web, and you did show number of places where vBulletin's output is not optimal. But I guess that's the price you have to pay if you want to have forum software which does not require you to spend enormous time setting it up, installing plugins, configuring... On top of that, I can just imaging all the features their clients requested to be available out of the box, and I can understand that they had to make some trade-offs between implementing those requests, and trying to maintain as well-formatted output as possible.

[de_jean_7777]

To me it's fine as long as it functions, and makes everyone's life easier. I'm not saying you should use anything, as it still needs to function and be simple. If vBulletin is that, then I say go for it. I'm all for optimization, since I've written my site by hand in notepad2 and have valid CSS and XHTML (not considering the javascript crap that my hosting company puts in), but I believe functionality and simplicity should come first.

[WILL]

I have deleted deathshadow's posts due to their blatantly rude and discriminatory contents. If you wish to make a point, do it respectfully or at least diplomatically or simply don't do it at all. If this behaviour continues I'll just start suspending accounts of those who don't respect others on the forums.

[Colin]

altho he may have stated it in a bad manner, i do agree with him in that vbulletin is a waste of money and resources, it is very bloated, and provides no better features than free alternative softwares.

-Colin

[chronozphere]

Allthough I'm not an expert at webdevelopment, I agree with Colin. I think that there is some truth in the points made by DeathShadow. We might find a better alternative.

[Pyrogine]

What about this, upgrade to SMF 2.0 RC3 and use SimplePortal (http://simpleportal.net) or the latest TinyPortal (http://tinyportal.net) which now works with SMF 2. TP has a button to promote a forum post to the front page. Unless there are other specialized needs, SMF 2.0 RC3 + TinyPortal I think will give you the features needed. As far as other MODs, stick with the higher quality free or paid ones and you should be ok. The new SimpleDesk (http://simpledesk.net) is a great example of a high quality free addon for SMF.

The one problem I find is when a mod does not confirm to the SMF standard and breaks something or will not install because it's in the wrong order. From my experience using SMF, if you keep the MOD count to a minimum and not go crazy adding them (like you naturally will have a tendency to do once you see how cool and easy it is to add stuff), go with the quality ones then it should be ok. I like SMF because it's just so easy to use with plenty of great MODs (quality free and paid).

What about this, create a test.pascalgamedevelopment.com site, install the different forum software, add the mods that you think will be needed and let the community see if it they like it. Just a suggestion.

[Colin]

i'd like to know how much the owners are paying for hosting and what specs they get, as i'd like to help out in that department.

[WILL]

Ok I hear what you guys are saying and it does have merit. Truth is so far it's what we've found to be one of the easier alternatives to maintain and setup that will look good. Here is the deal with the site software so that you guys can see if from a full perspective.

Time Limitations: We as admins have a limited amount of time that we can put towards slaving on page tweaks and changes. On top of that the more time we are scrounging and playing catchup looking for bugs we are spending less time organizing competitions, advertising for PGD and other cool events that help make this place fun. Also taking from past experience trying to merge free CMS and forums software to get what we want takes a whole lot more time than something that comes with everything we want.

Reliability: We want the most reliable solution. Merging 2+ pieces of software doesn't come with the promise of working 100% without a lot of work put into them, which as stated above we don't have. If it was designed and tested as working together then it's fair to assume that it should be properly functional with all the features under the hood. The current CMS was the free alternative, but frankly it doesn't work well at all and has some serious bugs that prevent us from being able to do what we need to make this place better.

Our Needs, Out of the Box: So far nothing thats free has ALL of PGD's needs out of the box. We need forums, news posts(by members and staff with staff publishing them), private messaging, member profiles and the ability to easily and quickly write and approve articles. We need it all to work together and be fun to use. Bugs aren't fun and lots of different free stuff with lots of bugs does not a PGD make. :p And this is the PGD of the past so we clearly want to avoid this from the very next step.


In conclusion to all of this, yes I see that you guys think that vBulletin is a big stompy monster, but it does everything we need. Now I've only used it for a short time, but it doesn't appear to be latent with bugs like SMF and phpBB, but we do have to look into this for ourselves and make sure it will perform properly as we need it. As far as the out of the box, it's the only one that fits our criteria that we know of. However, if you good folks have an alternative that isn't going to be just mash free X with free Y, which is a road we've been down for years now, then we will be willing to check it out.

We do listen and we do care what you guys think, but we also have to do all the work and we just aren't willing to settle for any more mad scientist projects much anymore, we've been there and done that and to be fair, it just isn't working all that well for us or for you guys really. :)

[Chesso]

In all honesty your better off reaching out for offers for a custom job (which would take some strain off current staff).

I guess it's easier to throw money at the problem, but it's up to you all!!!

[WILL]

Well the staff is waiting to see who else will be donating towards EVERYTHING we would like to do. New site software is one of those things, the others would be setting up for advertising on other sites, hosting payments and of course setting money aside for the next competition so that unique prize items can be acquired as well. (printed t-shirts, mugs, books, gaming hardware, etc)

[Chesso]

By the way, not sure if it was mentioned somewhere, but what is wrong with the current setup?

Are there features you don't want and/or do want? (on top of what the current offering has available).

[AthenaOfDelphi]

By the way, not sure if it was mentioned somewhere, but what is wrong with the current setup?

Are there features you don't want and/or do want? (on top of what the current offering has available).


The main problem is that we are running on a pieced together platform... SMF for the forums, TinyPortal for the portal part, WakkaWiki (or something like that) for the Wiki for the library. This makes maintenance a pain if there are version dependencies, requires multiple logins and a bunch of other reasons.

Mainly we want to go for an all-in-one solution like vBulletin because it can do everything we want straight out of the box. This makes our life as admins easier and means we aren't spending time maintaining the site when we could be generating content.

[Chesso]

I presume phpBB won't do it for you? (It can be quite heavy but it is feature rich, tons of support and more mods than you could throw a rain forest full of sticks at).

Or I had a look around and some people are comparing http://www.mybboard.net/ to a similar but free version of vBulletin, have not tried it myself though.

MyBB from what I could see has in-built portal and some mods floating around to do some things with it, as for the wiki I didn't see anything extensive in terms of mods and unsure if in-built is any good to you.

Anyway if I come across anything really good, I'll be sure to let you know.


EDIT: Also drupal looks pretty nice!!!

[dazappa]

I presume phpBB won't do it for you? (It can be quite heavy but it is feature rich, tons of support and more mods than you could throw a rain forest full of sticks at).

Or I had a look around and some people are comparing http://www.mybboard.net/ to a similar but free version of vBulletin, have not tried it myself though.

MyBB from what I could see has in-built portal and some mods floating around to do some things with it, as for the wiki I didn't see anything extensive in terms of mods and unsure if in-built is any good to you.

Anyway if I come across anything really good, I'll be sure to let you know.


EDIT: Also drupal looks pretty nice!!!

Oh, drupal... I setup a test drupal installation, and even with cache mods, it was doing 60 queries/pg... not acceptable.

I believe it was already mentioned that they wanted a paid software, which would hopefully have guaranteed support, stability, and faster bug fixes.

[Stoney]

EDIT: Also drupal looks pretty nice!!!


You really need to know how to configure Drupal, I have seen many good and bad Drupal sites. I currently have a side job working on configuring and managing some Drupal sites, so if the decision would be for Drupal, I could help configuring the site.

[Chesso]

Sure but there are some pretty good free options with pretty big support base. I'm just keeping an eye out.

I have tried paid for web products before and while not on all accounts but I went to free alternatives of said web product and got answers faster..... lol.

I haven't used vBulletin so I don't know just how comprehensive and easy it is to use, but the price is a bit of a stinger.

[WILL]

Big thanks to Marek Mauder who donated today! :)