The New PGD Starts Tomorrow!

[WILL]

Hey everyone!

I am very happy to announce that tomorrow the site will be down for the whole day!! :D

No, I have not gone mad. In fact this is very good news, because all day tomorrow while the site is down I will be working feverishly to make all the final DB adjustments and tweaks to the new site software that will go up on Monday, 13 September, 2010. The amazing vBulletin 4 will be customized with a nice new theme and a whack-load of features.

PGD is about to get more interactive! Available with your new PGD Accounts, you will be able to express yourself more with user profiles, your own Developer Blog, RSS Feeds and a lot more.

I hope you will enjoy the new site once we come online starting Monday. For those of you who need some last minute information during the outage, please get whatever you need done tonight so you don't loose access to that information over the rest of the weekend.

[gnoch]

Well... You didn't even listen to me, eh?
Waste of your users' money really.


Site Member warned!

[JSoftware]

Niceness!

Will all old posts be converted painlessly to the new system?



Well... You didn't even listen to me, eh?
Waste of your users' money really.

Let's see now.. :)

[chronozphere]

Well... You didn't even listen to me, eh?
Waste of your users' money really.


The fact that they chose vBulletin doesn't mean they didn't listen. They just disagreed. ;)

Looking forward to the new site. :)

[chronozphere]

Hey Everyone,

Just thought I should tell you about my first experiences on the new site.

The good things:

> It looks great! :D
> Forum posts can have attachements now. yay!
> I like the news posts and the blogging feature.

Things that still need work.

> Noticed that the site can be slow sometimes (> 5sec to load a page). Have a look here:

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73

> I miss a lot of options when writing my post (like insert URL, List, font etc).
> The PM's contain strings like "'" to denote special characters. Maybe we can convert those back?
> I don't really like the smileys, but that will probably be solved quickly.
> Maybe the *.pas and *.dpr extensions can be added to the "Manage attachements" panel?

Overall, I hope this will give us all a little boost. Guess it's time to organize the next compo. :)

[dazappa]

Well, I had to reset my password. You seem to have a slight problem with spam now as well...

edit: you should write a quick tutorial on how to create articles, how stuff can show up on the front page, where blogs are visible, etc. I've only got a basic understanding of this so far, but first I'd get to work on finding an anti-spam mod ;)

[Traveler]

It was to be expected that the conversion came with a few bumps. But I'm pretty sure they will be ironed out soon.

On a slightly different, but still relevant subject. As of today I am no longer part of the admin team. With WILL back in the lead chair and myself less in the position to commit to the job, I have decided to step down as admin. I will of course remain here on PGD, writing about my game, answering questions if possible, etc, but just not while wearing the admin cap ;)

[WILL]

Hey everyone,

If you haven't already check out the FAQ, it has a lot of good information about how to Create articles and use the Blogs. It also has the forum, blog and CMS Rules of Conduct along with some other important and interesting information as well. We do have a small issue of not seeing the WYSIWYG tool bar. I've been looking into it and hopefully we can fix this one soon. I'm sure it's just a setting I couldn't find. There are a lot of settings for this new board. :)

Sorry to those who have to reset passwords, unfortunately I have noticed the odd one or two that have even gone missing along with their posts. I hope you are not them, but if you are please make a new account and PM us. We may see about trying to retrieve your posts as we have a copy of the old database, but can't make any guarantees yet. The site software is rock solid, however unfortunately the importing tool was a bit shakey.

If you are having any more issues related to the new site please let us know and we will try to resolve it as best we can. Thanks and I hope you enjoy the new site.

[dazappa]

Except you don't allow regular members to create articles ;)

[Pain]

Hi, this might sound silly to waste my time to register a new account, just to tell you, i will no longer be visiting this forum for several reasons, after trying to login my real account, my password no longer worked, i tried to reset my pass, which sent me a random pass to my email, which when i tried to enter those details it told me wrong combination and subsequently blocked me from logging in for 15 minutes. i was also one of the members to warn that vBulletin is a very very bad choice, also another reason is. I really HATE change, i wanted to be able to come to a forum daily and chat about coding, or check up on the latest info, i dont want to be bothered with changing preferences, getting used to new websites, having my account blocked.... i much prefered the very original site and template on phpbb, which when changed to the new one i spent a long time getting used to the new style and site, and just when i finally got used to it, i came to the site today and this happened. i am very dissapointed that a programming community needs to rely on another website/forum system rather then furthur develope and spend coding time on the current site/forum.... thanks to those people that have helped me anyways, ciao.

[czar]

I had same issue as pain. Locked out, would not accept the password that was sent etc etc.

Are there any real benefits to the new forum software? Or was it just change for sake of change?

[dazappa]

Hi, this might sound silly to waste my time to register a new account, just to tell you, i will no longer be visiting this forum for several reasons, after trying to login my real account, my password no longer worked, i tried to reset my pass, which sent me a random pass to my email, which when i tried to enter those details it told me wrong combination and subsequently blocked me from logging in for 15 minutes. i was also one of the members to warn that vBulletin is a very very bad choice, also another reason is. I really HATE change, i wanted to be able to come to a forum daily and chat about coding, or check up on the latest info, i dont want to be bothered with changing preferences, getting used to new websites, having my account blocked.... i much prefered the very original site and template on phpbb, which when changed to the new one i spent a long time getting used to the new style and site, and just when i finally got used to it, i came to the site today and this happened. i am very dissapointed that a programming community needs to rely on another website/forum system rather then furthur develope and spend coding time on the current site/forum.... thanks to those people that have helped me anyways, ciao.
If you do wish to pop back in the future, Will mentioned above that importing deleted or glitched a few accounts and he could try to help, but you don't seem too interested.

The very original site on phpbb annoyed me slightly, the SMF one was "all right", they didn't want to install mods to add new functionality so purchased vB. I understand your feelings to a small extent, I don't have enough experience with other paid forum/etc software to make a valid judgment though.

I don't think there's much to get used to; maybe a few buttons are located differently and the colors have changed, but it's easy to ignore using blogs and articles. Then again, I have a friend who feels the same way toward these types of changes when I'm rather indifferent. Wish you the best.

[dazappa]

I had same issue as pain. Locked out, would not accept the password that was sent etc etc.

Are there any real benefits to the new forum software? Or was it just change for sake of change?
The main purpose was to add new functionality such as the blogs and articles which would easily allow the regular users to contribute to the overall site. (as far as I can tell) Deciding if it has more benefits than SMF is largely opinion, though.

(Blah double post?)

[WILL]

Well I'm sorry that past members like "Pain" feel like they have to leave a community like ours. The change over to the new VBulletin was not made over night. In fact we looked all over for a new replacement for SMF. We were not going back to phpBB obviously because it did not have the features we needed AND the current SMF was not working properly. We also felt that SMF 2 would also not give us the functionality and bug-free usage that a "paid for" site software would.

So rather than waste time programming our own software to incorporate all the features our members would desire, we chose to go with vBulletin instead so that we would have more time to focus on more fun and interesting things such as future PGD Annual competitions, advertising and bringing new people to the community, writing articles, posting news on the main page once again (tell me you don't miss that?) and organizing events for everyone to enjoy.

Free BB and CMS software was and is not the answer for us at PGD. The adjustment to a new site software will bring a period of adjustment no matter what we went with. We are working to fix accounts and get you up and working again, however this is a part of the adjustment process. If you are willing to go through the odd inconveniences initially I'm sure that you will find the rewards of the new site worth it.

As for benefits of vBulletin there are many I've listed some of the main ones on the main page.

[deathshadow]

Well, I see once again the total /FAIL/ at web design with all the fonts declared in a undersized px metric... Though that's typical for the fat bloated train wreck that is vBulletin -- especially version 4. Sad when I'd rank this lower than phpBB, which is on my total *** list.

Particularly laughing at the invisible links in the footer... though at LEAST the content text has legible contrast, so unlike previous incarnations I won't have to use user CSS to override the color scheme just to make it legible -- all I have to do is dive for the zoom to increase it to 160%.

Basically, a mixed reaction. I hate vBull because of it's bloat and outdated markup circa 1997, where it blows 600+K to deliver 14k of plaintext. (say no to javascript libraries!)... and I hate having to dive for the zoom due to font declarations on content that should NEVER be done that way... but at the same time the color scheme is a VAST improvement.

If anything, it feels like a step sideways instead of forwards.

[Murmandamus]

Back after a few years.. perfect timing. :P

Was able to get my profile info updated and password reset without too much hassle (yay for being my own ISP -- can recreate old email addresses temporarily at will).

As for the software.. meh. As long as it works and I can do what I need to do (read/post/etc), I don't care. I don't prefer vB, but I can use it happily enough.

[Nitrogen]

@Murmandamus: Back foul pantathian! Yeah, I'm a Raymond E Fiest fan :P

@WILL: Everythings looking good so far, except that I cant change the silly American date format... (or Canadian if you had anything to do with that *glare* ;) )

[Momor]

Works fine for me, congrats for the good work Will !

[WILL]

Hey Mike, glad to see you around again. You'll have to post about some of your future digital exploits soon. :) And... no, at least I don't think I had anything to do with the date format. I'm not sure if it can be changed, but if it can then you should check out the "Settings" link at the top of the site page to the far right. In there you may have an option.

[Nitrogen]

Hehe, I'll have to come up with some digital exploits first! I looked in the settings and couldnt find anything. Oh well.

[AthenaOfDelphi]

Just to let you guys know, I'm going to be looking into the date format because I'd like to change it myself.

[WILL]

Hasn't really effected me much. Though if I had to choose, I've always preferred to have Day, Month(alpha not numerical), Year. It just seems more ordered this way to me. Anyhow whatever you guys want is fine by me. :)

[WILL]

Just to let you guys know, I'm going to be looking into the date format because I'd like to change it myself.
I found the setting and changed it to the 'European way.' (which is also the Canadian way too) I assume that "d-m-Y" is much preferred to that of "m-d-Y"? Or would all of you rather have the date with the name of the month instead of the timestamp?