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Author Topic: Forum software upgrade  (Read 9558 times)

Offline Arparso

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Forum software upgrade
« on: December 02, 2010, 17:55:49 »
I just switched to a different forum software package, because the old one had some serious limitations (no private messages, for example). While this forum hasn't got THAT many members, I didn't really feel comfortable sticking with the old board anymore, when there are so many better alternatives out there. Hopefully, you'll find the new board even better, faster and easier to use than the old one. I sure do. :)

Of coure I tried to make sure to carry over most if not all of the relevant content including all boards, topics, posts, member profiles, attachments, etc. ... sadly some minor profile info such as gender didn't carry over, but each member should be able to quickly rectify that situation for him- or herself.

If you encounter any bugs or strange behaviour while getting accustomed to the new forum, please feel free to contact me or open a thread describing your issues.

If your first login attempt after the switch fails, just retry - the second and each successive attempt should work (it did so for all my tests). If it really doesn't work, you can always request a new password, which will definitely work 100%. This issue only affects older user profiles registered before the software switch - if you register a new profile, everything will be fine.

Offline Arparso

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Re: Forum software upgrade
« Reply #1 on: December 08, 2010, 02:31:51 »
Any suggestions for new boards? Right now we only have a few big boards with each one covering a rather broad range of topics like the general Nexus board, the modifications board, etc.... I'd like to change that and create more specialized boards, but I'm always kind of hesitant to split everything into tiny little pieces. What good are 50 well-defined and highly specialized subforums, if there are only a handful of posters around to populate and read them?

Any suggestions for that? Have a board in mind, that this forum desperately needs?

Some candidates of my own, sorted per category:

Nexus - The Jupiter Incident
  • General discussion
  • Multiplayer Arena (?)
  • Help / Technical Support
  • Modding (possibly subforums for larger mods, if there's demand for that)
Nexus Skirmisher
  • General discussion
  • FAQ (?)
  • Help / Technical support
Other
  • General gaming
  • Off-topic
  • Suggestions

Any comments or suggestions?

Offline Mularac

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Re: Forum software upgrade
« Reply #2 on: December 08, 2010, 02:57:37 »
Yeah, that sounds great. It's not such a radical change from the current layout, which is quite good.

But we could also split the "modding" into more appropiate areas, like campaign modding, regular scripting problems, mod-related issues, tools, etc.
And we very much should split that aweful "scripting issues" board into separate ones in accordance to each problem asked in that thread...

Offline Arparso

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Re: Forum software upgrade
« Reply #3 on: December 08, 2010, 03:29:27 »
But we could also split the "modding" into more appropiate areas, like campaign modding, regular scripting problems, mod-related issues, tools, etc.
I'm not sure about some of these. Does campaign modding warrant its own board? There weren't that many topics specifically targetting campaign scripting in the past. Also "mod-related issues" might have too much overlap with Nexus' "Help / Technical Support" board.

Making a "Tools" board sounds good, though... might be somewhat overlapping with moddb's download section or the section in the Wiki (if it'd feature more stuff), but that way we'd have a centralized place to offer support and suggestions as well.

How about creating a separate modding category and splitting the modding board into forums like:
  • Game Assets
  • Scripting
  • Modding Tools
  • Released Mods (?)
"Game Assets" would primarily deal with the creation and importing process for models, textures and sound files. Could be expanded to include effects and tacticstypes editing as well.

"Scripting" would obviously deal with everything scripting-related, be it missions, campaign, AI or whatever.

"Released Mods" I'm not sure about. To fill it with meaningful content, mod makers would need to actually come here and maintain their release threads, adding another burden while they try to keep their own site, forum and/or moddb profile up-to-date. Still, we'd need a place for people to announce their new mods or discuss new modding ideas... probably make it a combined "Mod Development / Mod Releases"-board?
 
And we very much should split that aweful "scripting issues" board into separate ones in accordance to each problem asked in that thread...
Yeah, that huge thread bothered me more or less since its very creation ;)
... not because of bad content quality, but because it makes finding stuff again a pain in the ass ... and not just for guests or new members.

The old forum software didn't even have a function to split threads, but the new one does... so I might actually do that in the next few days. ;)

Offline Mularac

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Re: Forum software upgrade
« Reply #4 on: December 09, 2010, 02:34:59 »
Yeah, that sounds great.

Offline Mularac

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Re: Forum software upgrade
« Reply #5 on: December 10, 2010, 01:13:04 »
Hey, how do you split threads? I just found out that my "Code improving" thread hosts two different scripting problems, and it'll be good to split that one too.

Oh, and great work on the new forum layout, it looks awesome.

Offline Arparso

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Re: Forum software upgrade
« Reply #6 on: December 10, 2010, 10:09:21 »
Only admins/moderators can split topics, so I've just done the splitting for you.

Oh, and thanks :)

Offline Sargoth

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Re: Forum software upgrade
« Reply #7 on: December 10, 2010, 19:36:45 »
like the new layout :)