Website upgrade

bitplane · Post by **bitplane** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 8:38 pm

If all goes well, I'll be upgrading the Irrlicht website this week to WordPress and phpBB3.

Here's what I'm thinking:

1) Single sign-on using the forum database so we can have comments on news articles etc without needing new accounts.
2) Possibly custom fields for IRC nicknames so people can visit the chat room from the main page and have it automatically log them in.
3) Restrictive groups for new users, so spammers can't post links
4) Proper URLs using mod_rewrite, so our implementation and interfaces are properly separated.
5) If possible, embed the gallery in the main site. If not, then at least a link with the screenshot of the month winners being the main gallery for the site.
6) Source code highlighting on both sites.

Any suggestions or other requirements?

The test site is currently at http://test.bitplane.net/ - if possible I'd like some testers and possibly even php hackers to help out. You can find me on IRC if you want to chat about it (try out the embedded chat on the test site!)

Also, if you think you can do a better job of skinning the main site, then now's the time to speak up

fmx · Post by **fmx** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 9:11 pm

Great news, best of luck with it bitplane

Unfortunatly I suck at pixel art and have very little experience with web design and programming, couldn't help you even if I tried

Will you be keeping the old irrlicht logo or replacing it with the newer one?
Probably comes under "skinning the website", the website could really use a visual facelift more than anything else

3DModelerMan · Post by **3DModelerMan** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 10:59 pm

I'm really good at pixel art. Would you like me to help?

bitplane · Post by **bitplane** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:54 pm

I really need someone to help hack the templates so that they look more like the original site before the switch-over. Making a fancy new site and dealing with all the fall-out it will cause isn't an option right now, deal with the functional side first and the skinning at some later date.

My task list looks like this:

Somehow remove the tables from news posts so that they are easy to add, at the moment each one contains tables and images; it would be much nicer if these were added automatically by a custom field, tag, then category. This would allow custom images while making it easy to just post a news article in the WYSIWYG editor (then we can post news articles about new projects as they are announced) -- DONE

I need to go into the database and edit the entries so that they're posted in the past and retain their file dates and author. Basically just hybrid and niko. -- DONE

I need to copy over the authors and tutorials pages, add and rewrite the FAQ, plus any other missing bits. -- Done, kind of, needs work but anyone can edit once it's running.

I need to add a mod_rewrite script which redirects requests for html files in the root to the new pages, so that search engines don't break. Then rigorously test this so not a single inbound link is lost. -- DONE

Fix the links page, modify the theme so it keeps the same format of links.

Move the header bar links, make it load a specific menu instead of link category.

I'd also like to know if it's possible to do some kind of syndication with Niko's blog, so he can tag a post as Irrlicht and it will propagate to the main site automatically. -- DONE, my blog works fine, niko is making changes to his.

phpBB3 source code highlighting mod,

phpBB3 anti-spam measures.

htaccess redirects from /phpBB2/ to /forum/

Then the actual switch-over: extract the WordPress stuff and import into this database, move the files to my sf web space from my VPS. Re-test wordpress, lock the forum and do the phpBB3 upgrade, then finally, if everything works, move it all back to the root of this site.

Then spend a day doing bug fixes

I could use someone to maybe do some of the grunt-work while I do the php hacking and server admin side of things, to find bugs before the big switch etc. I don't mind doing it myself, but I bound to boy-hen something up if it's left to me!

3DModelerMan · Post by **3DModelerMan** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 2:04 pm

Uh, wow that's alot of work. Sorry I don't know PHP. But if you want help with any CSS stuff you can just PM me.

REDDemon · Post by **REDDemon** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:54 pm

remeber to remove tutorials wich link is broken (like the tutorial on a seamless world or the tutorial for the orthogonal engine)

agamemnus · Post by **agamemnus** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 9:10 am

Bolded parts on the left have a slightly larger left margin.. looks odd.

Lonesome Ducky · Post by **Lonesome Ducky** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:47 pm

On a side node, having the user information displayed on the right of the post kinda bugs me. There's not much space between the edge of my screen and the words.