Transfans.co.uk server move

[Kaylee]

Hola,

Stewie-D is in the process of moving the server which hosts TransFans. At the same time, he made the mistake of getting me involved in upgrading the board to phpBB3.

If you fancy taking the new board/layout for a whirl, click through to http://unix-qa.rllyn.ch/community/

There is an option under your own account preferences for you to switch between the current layout and the new layout.

The board there based on a database snapshot from about 3 months ago, hence you can log in with whatever details you had then It also has full support for smartphones and tablets.

There are some style issues still, mostly where I'm ripping out the ******* godawful mind-bendingly **** phpBB stuff and replacing it with something a professional developer might create. I'd appreciate you letting me know:

1. Any pages you find with errors on them- bullet points going over the margins of the page, misaligned text, unstyled elements. That sort of thing

2. Any suggestions for changes. If I like it, I might implement it. If you flatter me, thusly appealing to my innate need for praise and validation, your chances will increase

At some point, when we're ready, I'll put this board into read-only mode, export the database, feed it through BeyondCompare (or similar) and bring the new board up to date with this one.

[Computron]

Loving the new upper left corner TF faces. Will have to give it a whirl in a bit.

Thanks muchly for all the hard work!

[Obfleur]

Thanks Karl!

P.S I love being one of the peons! You have like zero responsibility.

[Mr_Tigg]

This is rad!

If you need any help producing some vectors for the top left corner look me up

One piece of constructive feedback:

It's incredibly anal but you need to do a bit of scrolling on each page to get to the forum index.

Ideally if I was browsing and I click on a link to visit a particular area of the forum I would like to see all the topics of discussion listed immediately - it's a little irritating to have to scroll down on each page.

Thus I think what would make this ride even sweeter is if the header areas were smaller (especially the type).

[Kaylee]

Vector art would be super I'm happy to give you FTP access to my QA server as necessary.

Stu-ball also didn't like the space at the top of the pages. Guess I'll have to look into shaving it down... bah!

[Best First]

Can i compliment you a lot without having any particular ideas and just bank the subsequent swell in validation for future requests?

If so:

Thank you for doing this you are brilliant
Agree with the comments made but moreso i agree wth the gallant fashion in which you have processed the feedback

if not:
all still true.

Loving the ability to switch to the old layout as i find it quite unobtrusive from a work perspective.

Only thought (finally had one) is that maybe the red text doesn't sit well with the grey and blue. If there's an option for aligning that more to the current scheme that would be super dooper. If not, far far from the end of th world.

To conclude: thank you.

[Mr_Tigg]

A great digital tool for picking colour schemes - https://kuler.adobe.com/

I used it on both my websites.

[Kaylee]

You're all very kind thank you for the praise, it was fun to do.

I have:

* Shaved off some of the free space at the top
* Reduced the hero space size
* Corrected some of the 'red on xyz' text

and also cross-browser tested in:

* Internet Explorer 10 (A)
* Internet Explorer 10 [mobile] (B)
* Internet Explorer 9 (A)
* Internet Explorer 8 (A-)
* Internet Explorer 7 (B)
* Internet Explorer 6 (C - usable but looks ropey)
* Chrome (A)
* Firefox (A)
* Safari [iPad] (A)

Anyfink else I should take a look at?

[bumblemusprime]

Handles like a dream.

[Sunyavadin]

Messy. Bad layout, WAY too much unused space and the colours are a bit of a strain. Hugely oversized font size.

Having to scroll down an entire screen's worth of junk just to get to the list of topics is annoying, as well as the contrast, the background is much harsher than the softer current background, and so it's harder to read the text. At 50% zoom it's about bearable but has way too much empty space between lines, so it's hard to focus on a single element.

Basically I like it less than Wikipedia's redesign (I still use the old layout there on my profile) but more than Facebook Timeline.

Good potential though for when it's finished. I'm playing around with it right now at home to see if there are any tweaks I can make and just have my Firefox overlay on it


*Edit*
Also INTENSELY dislike any kind of menu bar that overlays on a page and scrolls with it but does not have a disable option.

*Edit #2
Surprisingly easy lazy fix was for me to do a blanket replace "30px" to 15px" Now I can fit a couple of sections of the board on one page. However, I really have an utter hatred for sticking data like "topics" "replies" and "most recent" in ROWS rather than off to the side in columns where they should be. If I'm scanning down a list of subforum names, the last thing I want is unrelated lines interspersed between them. It's kind of like if Tolkien had placed all his notes on Middle Earth and its history BETWEEN EACH AND EVERY LINE of LOTR, on every page.


*Edit #3*
A forgot to mention the things I LIKED, too. The heads rock.

[Sunyavadin]

I am however a really ******* picky bitch, so...

[Kaylee]

* Font size is 1em (ie browser standard, 14px). Identical to Guardian, BBC news and most places. What size would be standard to you? Because the font sizes are relative, you can alter them in your browser settings.
* 'Messy' isn't helpful: what should go where and in what order? phpBB controls are littered throughout the templates, so I styled them up in place. I'd like them all in one (or two) consistent places, but the controls come/go/change/grow/shrink depending on context, which makes that difficult.
* Colours are a strain- that means what? Do you have colour blindness or a sight issue, you just don't like them, you would prefer pastels, you find it hard to read? What colours would you like? All the colours, just the text or the background? I'm not a designer, hands up, but dark on light is usually readable.
* What screen resolution do you have to not see any content above the fold? My ThinkPad is 768px vertical and I can see content. On a higher res screen you get more, up to my 1080p TV where you basically get the site on a page. Have you got toolbars or menus taking up screen real estate?
* 50% reduction in size (equivalent) isn't happening. The content would be unreadable for many visitors.

The code is all up (and public) on BitBucket. You would be free to fork it and improve it- would you like the link?

[Hot Shot]

My thoughts on the new layout:

-Homepage:
---The banner of Shockwave is way to big, and I don't like the effects it's been put through.
---The login part of the page could be on the right. Most boards I've seen have it on that side and it just feels "right" to me.
---I'm not sure if the word "home" needs to be on the homepage.

-Index:
---The forum names look fuzzy and make me strain a little to read them.
---The index wouldn't look so stretched if you shifted the forum details over into the empty space and columned it like the current layout.
--- Maybe rework the "View most recent" link to be the title of the most recently posted-in thread, with "By ____ *date*, *time*" below it.
---The light blue could be a little muted. Maybe splash in a little Shockwave purple?

-Forums:
---Look great.

-Threads:
---Running into the same problem with the index: Everything's crammed over to the left.
---The "Report" and "Quote" options could be renamed as such and placed in the top-right of posts.
---The username should go above the avatar.
---The bar separating the post from the sig is barely visible. You could darken it up slightly or color it with some dark blue.
---Attachments could go between the post and sig line.

-Posting form:
---Also looks great.

Overall it needs a bit of work to be more user-friendly, but I have faith in you.

[Kaylee]

Ignore the homepage for now- it's totally broken while I meddle with the CMS. I'll have a look at the other bits

[Sunyavadin]

My thoughts on the new layout:

-Homepage:
---The banner of Shockwave is way to big, and I don't like the effects it's been put through.

mmmhmmm

---The login part of the page could be on the right. Most boards I've seen have it on that side and it just feels "right" to me.
---I'm not sure if the word "home" needs to be on the homepage.

Yeah. Unless it's part of a sidebar on the left, I'd lean towards trying this. I look to the right on the current Transfans forum for the login button, because that's where it is.

-Index:
---The forum names look fuzzy and make me strain a little to read them.

With me it's not fuzz, but the contrast between the font colour and the background colour being so much higher than on the current forum. Blue and white have always been a massive pain on my eyes, but softening them makes them bearable. An off-white works wonders for that.

---The index wouldn't look so stretched if you shifted the forum details over into the empty space and columned it like the current layout.

Agree 100%

---The light blue could be a little muted. Maybe splash in a little Shockwave purple?

Oooh, Shockwave did Transfans.

-Threads:
---Running into the same problem with the index: Everything's crammed over to the left.
---The "Report" and "Quote" options could be renamed as such and placed in the top-right of posts.
---The username should go above the avatar.
---The bar separating the post from the sig is barely visible. You could darken it up slightly or color it with some dark blue.
---Attachments could go between the post and sig line.

Yep.

Overall it needs a bit of work to be more user-friendly, but I have faith in you.

Agreed. A bit of work and it can be great.

[Kaylee]

Still munching through your suggestions, Hotshot. Unfortunately I am unable to put the most recent post in the forum title. Shame, I liked the idea. It's a limitation of phpBB.

If anyone wants to be involved:

1. The test DB (backing the CMS and the forum) blows itself away at 0500, every morning. Just something to be aware of if you wonder where any test posts might have gone. The username/password is available in the (public) code so it just keeps things tidy. DB administration is available at http://unix-qa.rllyn.ch/phpMyAdmin

2. The code for the forum and CMS is all public on BitBucket at https://bitbucket.org/kgl2083/transfans.co.uk-website anyone who wants to can download the code, make changes and submit them for approval. The 'master' codebase is production ready, the 'develop' branch codebase is where changes happen.

3. I am using Cloud9 (http://c9.io) to develop. It's free, integrates with BitBucket and lets me run-and-develop locally without the WAMP (puttup!!) stack.

4. Changes made to develop run through a build process (optimising PNGs, minifying CSS and JS etc) which is available at http://build.rllyn.ch:8111 anyone can log in as a guest and view the current build state.

5. Once built, the changes are automatically deloyed to http://unix-qa.rllyn.ch for quality assurance/user acceptance testing.

6. When develop is ready, it gets merged into 'master' and a release is produced which can be deployed anywhere.

Suny, I'm looking in your direction- other than agreeing with Hotshot's suggestions, you want to do something practical?

[Kaylee]

Righty- the server move is about ready for the discussion board. Accepting that changes can be made after, does anyone have anything they want to add or anything they want to be involved in?

http://unix-qa.rllyn.ch/community

I'm still dicking with the CMS (the only page is the homepage, so far, and that's still broken) so that might go live after.

Any requests for a date?

[Computron]

Any requests for a date?

Karl, you minx, I'm a married man.

*crickets*

Um, what is the turnaround time on turning off the old board and activating the new one? I don't want to presume, but given that you are doing this of your own free time, I think the scheduling is going to be at your convenience.

What seems reasonable? =)

[Hot Shot]

Looking good.

Whenever is fine.

[Kaylee]

Cool cool- the server move is happening tomorrow (Sunday 2nd June) at 0600 EST (0100 GMT). The board will go offline probably tomorrow afternoon to give me time for the migration, the inevitable errors, the correcting of said errors, the catastrophic error resulting from my correction of the previous errors, my restoring the whole thing from backup and starting again and then correcting that when that goes wrong.

Not that I'm cynical or anything.

I'm still not sure if the new CMS will go live tomorrow with the server move or not. What I'd hoped would be 1-2 large tasks is actually more like 100 tiny, irritating tasks. We'll see how that goes, but it'll probably happen sometime in the next few days.

[Kaylee]

And we're back.

After much wailing, gnashing of teeth (and I'm sure Brendan wishing he could murder me) we're up and running on a new server, upgraded PHP runtime, updated mySQL database, new version of phpBB and a new CMS for all our content.

I'll start a topic under website info for bug/issue reporting.

[Computron]

Looking good. In a mark of success I was able to ban an ad spammer pretty easily!

[Brendocon]

I dislike change.

[Kaylee]

I dislike change.

Solved.

[Brendocon]

Much better thanks.

[saysadie]

I miss the avatars, and the text flow/size in the left hand column is making my eye twitch. I'm too used to the custom title text being below the username.

On the plus side, I kinda dig the starry background ^^ up thar. And I like the layout on the individual board areas better on this forum.

edit: title text on post when you use the "reply" button looks a bit too big, imo. I'd suggest matching it in size and text colour to the timestamp in the upper right hand corner.

edit: except that I noticed it's a link. Size only then, perhaps?

edit: menu bar thinger at the top: hate, it, but accept it, and kinda dig the way it sits under the floaty head. Having my link to jump back to the main forum in the upper right hand corner is going to take some getting used to.

Having the Moderator names listed alongside the topic title seems unnecessary, imo.

[Kaylee]

I miss the avatars, and the text flow/size in the left hand column is making my eye twitch. I'm too used to the custom title text being below the username.

On the plus side, I kinda dig the starry background ^^ up thar.

edit: title text on post when you use the "reply" button looks a bit too big, imo. I'd suggest matching it in size and text colour to the timestamp in the upper right hand corner.

edit: except that I noticed it's a link. Size only then, perhaps?

Yes, the custom titles/ranks need some meddling, and the fonts/topic layout will evolve too- display on smartphones is a bit awkward with the post subjects etc.

[Sunyavadin]

Is the ginormous humongo-text in the header for each subforum really necessary? It takes up half my screen, vertically. I know that "Over the last 25 years the Transformers have appeared in media from the exquisite to the scribbled and been licensed to the responsible and the... Pat Lee.", I don't need ot be reminded in text This big inside a bubble twice the size.
I mean, is this really necessary?


I mean sure, I haven't made the switch to defaulting my display to 2048x1152 yet (Too many of my games I run in windowed mode run best in lower resolutions), but it should never be too hard to code something to scale to the user's resolution.


Also an option to display avatars would be nice, makes it easier to see who is speaking at a glance without having to read each name.

And the colours still burn my eyes, can we get an option for a less bright, lower contrast skin please? Something akin to the old forum? I find myself having to drop my monitor to 3500k just to read it.

[Kaylee]

Is the ginormous humongo-text in the header for each subforum really necessary? It takes up half my screen, vertically. I know that "Over the last 25 years the Transformers have appeared in media from the exquisite to the scribbled and been licensed to the responsible and the... Pat Lee.", I don't need ot be reminded in text This big inside a bubble twice the size.
I mean, is this really

Also an option to display avatars would be nice, makes it easier to see who is speaking at a glance without having to read each name.

And the colours still burn my eyes, can we get an option for a less bright, lower contrast skin please? Something akin to the old forum? I find myself having to drop my monitor to 3500k just to read it.

You've got a skin option. Stuart very kindly hacked the 2004 style to work and its available under your user control panel. I mentioned that earlier.

[Sunyavadin]

Awesome. I literally could not find anything in this thread in the new style one, so had missed every previous post. Thanks for the quick response.

Also, good thing I kept the original resolution version of my new avatar, now I can rescale it to 150x and people can actually make out what it's meant to be!