AtariAge Forum Upgrade / Migration on Tuesday, August 9th

[Albert]

The AtariAge forum is getting a major update on Tuesday, August 9th, and will also be moved to a new home.  The forums will be unavailable for most of the day during this process.

 

This process will begin late Monday evening, as I need to take the forum offline in order to backup all the forum files and the forum database. 

 

Upgrade: The forum will be updated to the latest version of the Invision Community software.  You'll notice many changes to the software, although most of these are relatively minor.  There will be a few larger changes, such as the addition of Achievements.  And of course, lots of bug fixes. 

 

Migration: The forum is moving away from the self-hosted solution on dedicated servers that I have been managing for quite some time and moving to Invision's cloud-based servers.  This will save me considerable time having to manage multiple servers for AtariAge, and I expect performance improvements in several areas as a result of this migration.  This should also eliminate periodic slowdown or unavailability of the forum.  This migration is why the forum will be down for a good portion of the day, as it's quite time consuming.

 

I will post updates on Discord, Twitter and Facebook during this process.  Here are the relevant links you can save:

• AtariAge Discord
• AtariAge Twitter
• AtariAge Facebook Page
• AtariAge Facebook Group

New Forum URL: The forum will be located at a new URL, https://forums.atariage.com, so please bookmark that now!  A redirect will be setup so that any existing links to the forum will be seamlessly redirected to the new location.

 

After the forums come back online, there will likely be issues that will have to be addressed.  A new AtariAge theme had to be created since we were several versions of the software behind, and while the theme is similar to the existing theme, it is not exactly the same.  This is one area that I will continue to tweak for a while to fix any issues and make aesthetic improvements. It was also important to create a new theme so that the forum can be updated more promptly whenever there is a new version.

 

Some third-party plugins and applications that I'm currently using on the forum will not be available as they are either no longer being updated or the developer has yet to update the plugin/application to version 4.7 of the Invision software.  In some cases I will be able to find substitutes, in other cases the forum software now has that functionality built-in, and in a few cases there maybe lost functionality (although generally this would not be anything important).  One of my tasks after the forum has been successfully migrated is I have to reinstall all these plugins and applications, and I'll have those ready to go before the forum is opened again to the public.

 

I've been planning on doing this for a while, so I'm glad it's finally going to happen.  Of course, if it ends up being a disaster, I'll end up eating those words, but if that happens, I can always leave the existing forum online, and we can then try the migration again once the issue(s) are resolved.  But I don't expect that to happen.  After the forum has been successfully updated and migrated, I can then focus on moving the AtariAge Store to completely new software.

 

If anyone has any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

 

 ..Al

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Fingers crossed everything works well!

[Albert]

2 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Fingers crossed everything works well!

Same! 

 

 ..Al

[Mclaneinc]

Good luck Albert...Just get Peteym to give you a hand

[+Nathan Strum]

Any chance of updates to the blogs?

 

 

[Albert]

23 minutes ago, Nathan Strum said:

Any chance of updates to the blogs?

 

 

Invision hasn't been making any significant changes to the blog functionality, so don't get your hopes up on it being much improved.  After the migration, I can evaluate the current state of the blogs and look into paying a third party to make improvements. Invision does have a blog on their own site and it does look rather nice, but I'm not sure they are even using their own Blog module!

 

https://invisioncommunity.com/news/

 

I'll have to dig into this later, I remember someone saying they weren't using their own blog module and were instead using a custom "Pages" application (Pages is a module that allows you to write custom, database-driven applications, something I'd definitely like to try my hand at at some point).

 

 ..Al

[+Charlie Cat]

Good to know. Thank you for what you do for the community Albert. A pleasure to be part of AtariAge though out the years bro. 8^)

 

Anthony..

[ColecoGamer]

I’m excited for the changes. Thank you for all the hard work you put into the AtariAge community, @Albert.

[bubufubu]

@Albert  Are we finally going to get Status Updates back on the Forums Home page?

[+Random Terrain]

At the end of the day, when it's all said and done, it is what it is. No use crying over spilt milk. Speaking of milk, clouds look like milk poured into a fish tank, but that doesn't mean AtariAge floating in the cloud is fishy. I've been in the mountains and I can assure you that a cloud doesn't smell like milk or fish. As the old saying goes, if you slap a man with a fish, he'll stink for a day. Teach a man to slap himself with a fish and he'll stink for a lifetime.

[M-S]

Are all of the past threads migrating too?

[+Nathan Strum]

1 hour ago, Albert said:

Invision hasn't been making any significant changes to the blog functionality, so don't get your hopes up on it being much improved.  After the migration, I can evaluate the current state of the blogs and look into paying a third party to make improvements. Invision does have a blog on their own site and it does look rather nice, but I'm not sure they are even using their own Blog module!

 

https://invisioncommunity.com/news/

 

I'll have to dig into this later, I remember someone saying they weren't using their own blog module and were instead using a custom "Pages" application (Pages is a module that allows you to write custom, database-driven applications, something I'd definitely like to try my hand at at some point).

Thanks - I appreciate that. The blog software is so bad now, I've still got dozens of broken links from their last "update".

 

I'd be perfectly happy detonating the Invision blogs, if the old content could be transferred over to, well, anything else.

[Albert]

13 minutes ago, bubufubu said:

@Albert  Are we finally going to get Status Updates back on the Forums Home page?

No.

[Albert]

7 minutes ago, M-S said:

Are all of the past threads migrating too?

Yes, certainly, it's going to be an exact copy of the database.

 

 ..Al

[+save2600]

Imagine if you will, something goes devastatingly wrong... backup databases are destroyed and the ONLY threads to survive the update are...

 

 

...the never-ending obsessive-compulsive armchair-expert-rambling Amico threads. That can't be hidden! ???    ?
 

 

[+save2600]

Kidding aside, I did have a thought regarding the forum software lately. When clicking on a thread title, it would be nice if that link took you directly to the beginning of the thread. Only when clicking on the 'replies' link, would it take you to the bottom of the thread. Swear, I've seen that behavior before in some threads here, but doesn't seem consistent. 
 

There's many times when browsing (especially one with several pages) that you want to catch up on a particular thread, so linking directly to the beginning would be convenient. A 'for sale' thread is one good example where this would be handy. Save some clicks since you know the latest reply is usually just a bump. 

[+frankodragon]

Hopefully, it will reduce or eliminate those Cloudflare 520 errors especially with threads containing lots of pics.  

[Mathy]

Hello Albert

 

Which time zone are you in?  I know Cupertino is 9 hours behind Central Europe, so 10 in the morning there is 19:00 in the evening here.  Meaning that if you're in the same time zone and you start at 09:00 in the morning, we here in Europe can access AtariAge up until 18:00 hours Central European (daylight savings) time.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

[+Cafeman]

3 hours ago, Albert said:

such as the addition of Achievements. 

Hope it doesn't result in a flock of spam posting! 

 

[bubufubu]

1 hour ago, Albert said:

No.

Damn.  That's very disappointing.  Myself, and others, have sorely missed this front page convenience since you removed it many months back.  Don't understand why it was done in the first place as there is plenty of room on the right side panel for status updates.

[+save2600]

8 minutes ago, bubufubu said:

Damn.  That's very disappointing.  Myself, and others, have sorely missed this front page convenience since you removed it many months back.  Don't understand why it was done in the first place as there is plenty of room on the right side panel for status updates.

Can simply click on Status Updates when logged in, or My Activity Streams/Status Updates if not. 
 

After exploiting a glitch in the Status Updates pane with the last update, some people couldn't help themselves and felt compelled to spam it up with several "topics" of their own. Completely monopolizing it. 
 

If that's the way it's going to be, good riddance!

[Trebor]

Thanks is good... Subscribing is better. 

[Tempest]

I'm sure it will go smoothly.  There are always hiccups of course but the last few updates have gone off more or less without a hitch.  I'm hoping this update will fix the dark theme issue where text sometimes turns invisible.

[Albert]

1 hour ago, save2600 said:

After exploiting a glitch in the Status Updates pane with the last update, some people couldn't help themselves and felt compelled to spam it up with several "topics" of their own. Completely monopolizing it. 

I'm pretty sure Invision made this change intentionally, but it would be possible to modify it so that it only shows a single status update from any given user. 

1 hour ago, save2600 said:

If that's the way it's going to be, good riddance!

There are a few reasons I removed the status updates. Yes, it could be abused by people spamming status updates.  Unfortunately, some people abused the status updates by posting content that is not allowed on the forum (politics and religion, for instance).  Or they'd use status updates to complain after being moderated elsewhere in the forum.  Or use them to attack other members.  And because members can delete status updates, people would sometimes do this and delete the offending update(s) before a moderator could take action (reports would still be visible, even if the status updates were removed).  Several people lost access to the status updates functionality because of these abuses.

 

Unfortunately, the allure of posting something that would be highly visible on the front page of the forum made it ripe for abuse, and this is why we can't have nice things.

 

 ..Al

[+5-11under]

Albert: Thanks for all the hard work you do for AtariAge. Best of luck on the upgrade and migration.

 

Everyone else: Now is a good time to become a subscriber (it always is). There's benefits when you purchase from the store, and more. If nothing else, it's an appreciation for AtariAge and Albert!

https://atariage.com/forums/store/category/1-subscriptions/