A forum upgrade?

So... this site is pretty out of date. Its difficult to use, browse and send messages. Are there any plans to upgrade it or switch to a different 'backbone'? No offense or anything, but you shouldn't have to make a topic to let people know they have a PM. :)

Yes, it's nearly ready ...

Oh Yayyyy.  Thanks Simon!

Oh my!! :D

Yaaaaaay!

Simon,

Is there a need to donate to this site,  I have found it to be more and more of a help and want to help keep it going.  I am not rich, but I never like to be a free loader.  I know in many ways you are past this part of your life, but keep the site going as a service to others.  Let us know either way.  Thanks for all the work you do.

what Diest said..

HOW much longer, Simon... How much longer? This is like waiting for armageddon...

V665

Generally, I cope okay with navigating my way around this forum. However, one feature that often sends error messages is pms: Sometimes I have toclick three or four times before the error messages stop and I can read messages others have sent me. At one stage I gave up triyng to open them because of the eprsistent error messages. Thinking it had now resolved, I just tried to open up a message sent to me and again the error messages dominated. THat's a shame because I'm sure oit puts people off leaving others private messages.

Thanks for the thoughts but the forum is mostly self-sustaining now with the ads so no need for donations.

The new site will have an indicator to show how many unread PMs you have (no need for "you have a PM" topics, yay) and while the initial PM system will not be amazingly different to the current one (other than it shouldn't give error messages) the intention is to make the PMs just like regular topiccs ... in fact, think more of private discussions that you could invite people to, rather than PMs directly between just 2 people.

I've had a week off work to work on the site to try and get it to the stage where we can switch over (and then I'll carry on making improvements to it). Unfortunately, there were a few technical challenges with the import and because it takes a day to run it slows progress down - there are around 4million posts, 120k PMs and 40k accounts to process (parse and clean the HTML etc...) plus the new site does a few extra bits now too:

If you include a link to another page then it's examined to find any embeddable content (e.g. YouTube videos, Amazon books, Photos) and pictures are automatically downloaded and resized so if someone embeds a huge 4Mb photo you only have to download maybe a 50k jpeg instead (and I can have it show smaller versions if you're on an iPhone for instance).

Incidentally, the image download / proxying also provides other benefits:

• Only images that are viewable are included in the posts. This makes things look nicer and pages load faster.
• I can convert annoying animated gifs into static images to help keep the site looking classy (sorry, I hate animated gifs)
• No one can track visitors by including an image and then checking their server logs to see where the hits come from. Security and personal privacy are very important so I think this is valuable.
• An archive of what was posted is kept - even if the source image is removed then the content of the post isn't lost.
• It prevents people abusing the site by posting lots of images and then swapping them for porn - what you see is what you posted.
• Moderating content is easier because we can see a stream / feed of new images (also, there will be rating / alert options for users to report things)

The main thing with the new site is that it is a solid foundation to build a lot more features on and make the forum nicer to use.

At the same time that it *does* a lot more, it should also be faster because of the technologies and architecture behind it.

Soon, I promise ... soon !

Simon - 

We appreciate what you are doing!

BTW: For anyone interested ... the import isn't just a database to database transfer, the system actually processes each user registration, PM and post as though it was being made by you. It takes a little longer to run but tests out the whole system plus you see the site running in speeded-up time (about a days worth of posts every few seconds).

Ah, what the hell ... here's a link to the preview:

http://184.107.26.105/

NOTE:

It may or may not be available as I work on it (sorry).

The import is running which may affect performance plus there are some config optimizations to be made for the final version so final performance should be considerably faster than what you see.

You should be able to logon as normal and see the posts auto-update while it's running (hovering your mouse over the list stops it though).

The 'similar topics' and search is currently disabled (I have it working but don't want to include building the full-text index while I'm testing other parts).

It will update upto about a week or two ago (it's off a database snapshot) but I may point it at the current database when it's finished so it will then be a live view of the current system.

I haven't done complete cross-browser testing yet - you'll probably have most success with Chrome, Safari and Firefox vs IE

Some books appear straight away but videos only make an appearance from about 2006 (remember, there was a time before YouTube!)

This is the best view (active topics): http://184.107.26.105/forum/all?page=1&sort=ByUpdated

You can also view the active topics for an individual section, e.g. http://184.107.26.105/forum/watchtower?page=1&sort=ByUpdated

(this shows the auto-update a little better instead of having a whole page of topics change, the topics should shuffle around when someone posts)

You can turn off the auto-update, change the sort order and the page size to suit. Font-size changes will come later.

... let me know what you think !

I was thinking the other day, what if something happens to Simon? Who would keep it running? 

I'm just saying... LOL

I was thinking the other day, what if something happens to Simon? Who would keep it running?

Yes, it's a "one bus system" right now (i.e. if I get hit by a bus ...)

The other thing I'm working on is making the software more packagable so if I decide to give it up or pass it on it won't need someone with intimate knowledge of the database to work it (as it is, it's a bit rough-and-ready at the backend). It will be hostable on lots of platforms (maybe move to Amazon or Windows Azure cloud for instance) and can be administered from the UI with minimal technical know-how.

This sounds exciting.  Will our pm's transfer or should we copy them?  I've always just left info in them.

NC

The PMs will transfer. If you sign in on the new system (http://184.107.26.105/account/signin) then you should get your status in the top right which will include the number of unread messages, if any, and a link to your inbox.

The display is a little rough right now but that will be improved.

BTW: Here's an example of the image resizing:

http://184.107.26.105/topic/want-rise-above-all-this-schtuff?page=1

The original image was ~385kb (not too huge in this case) and 2400 x 1200 pixels which messes up the display on the current site (http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/9974/1/Want-to-Rise-Above-all-this-Schtuff).

On the new site the image is 17kb and 640 x 320 so will download faster and look better.

Thats just Awesome..Thank you Simon..

                                                            .....................;-)...OUTLAW

Simon..Do I get to keep Mutley?..

                                              ..................... ...OUTLAW

Simon omg your are soooooo smart .... very creative!!!!

ps  pls don't get hit by a bus

gratefully ...clarity