Welcome back!

[Petie]

Hey everyone!

I know we've been down for a while today but I promise that it was for a good reason! Recently, MyBB (the software we use to power this forum) released version 1.8, which is a major upgrade from the version of 1.6 we were running before. Because there were so many changes though, we had to be careful about how we went about performing the upgrade. Last week, we tested an upgrade in place and it broke half of the forum so we decided we needed to start fresh but we obviously didn't want to lose the data we already had. A few days of planning and somewhere around 6 hours of prep time later, we had a clean install of 1.8 populated with all of the converted data from our 1.6 install. I'll spare you the technical details but suffice it to say that it was a complicated and delicate procedure.

On the surface, the site looks more or less the same as it did before but there have been a number of vast improvements to the back end that will make maintaining it much easier. Even on the front end though, you should notice much more consistency between themes and much sharper looking buttons now that we can use PNGs. There are a couple of minor new features that we've been wanting for a while as well so, as a whole, this was definitely time well spent.

We did a significant amount of testing and tried to be careful to copy everything over to the new install but the possibility that we missed something is ever present. So, as always, if you see anything wrong, just let us know. I kept backup copies of the original files and database so we should be able to restore anything we missed with little effort.

I'll wrap this up here for now so welcome back and enjoy!

[Omega]

Did you guys seriously remove the dark skin :U

Putting black on a few portions does not equate to a dark resource when it's 90% white.

[Shade]

Did you guys seriously remove the dark skin :U

Putting black on a few portions does not equate to a dark resource when it's 90% white.

They just haven't added it yet.

(The Darker Dark Resource)

[Mystie]

A quick tip for those who hate the new default layout: Go to your User CP, go to Edit Options, then in the Thread View Options, click the "Display posts in classic mode" checkbox.

Hope this helps.

[Vipershark]

Skins work differently on the new software so it will take a bit of time to get the dark skin ported over but it should be back soon.

[PatientZero]

Figured you guys would have hacked in .png support already, I'm not too well versed on the software but I assume it wouldn't have been too tricky.
(I might be entirely wrong, it's been known to happen.)
Either way things are looking a bit more shiny and web 2.0.
I still don't know what that means.


Also;

A quick tip for those who hate the new default layout: Go to your User CP, go to Edit Options, then in the Thread View Options, click the "Display posts in classic mode" checkbox.

Thanks for this, I'm a stubborn old man and I hate change.

[Vipershark]

Finally now that png support is in I can replace those horrible default icons...
...as soon as I get off work eheh

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

i feel like thanks don't stand out as much now that they're not in their own separate box from the rest of the post. and this is absolutely personal preference, but it bugs me that they're left-aligned after i've gotten so used to them being right-aligned.

also, the differences between themes are incredibly minimal beyond the headers on forums/subforums and threads, and it makes the themes feel superfluous.



can you tell what theme i'm using?

(apologies if any of this is wip stuff that's already slated to be changed)

[MaxiGamer™]

Nice update! I personally prefer the classic "avatar-and-misc-infos-to-the-left" mode, though.

[E-Man]

I'm going to admit that this new layout is going to take a lot to get used to. Even though I currently set it to the classic layout, there are still plenty of changes that make my experience here a little weird.

By the way, what happened to the options  on the user profile page to view all the posts you thanked and received thanks for?

Also, how come the spoiler tags are not working in my signature?

[Dazz]

i feel like thanks don't stand out as much now that they're not in their own separate box from the rest of the post. and this is absolutely personal preference, but it bugs me that they're left-aligned after i've gotten so used to them being right-aligned.

also, the differences between themes are incredibly minimal beyond the headers on forums/subforums and threads, and it makes the themes feel superfluous.

[IMAGE REMOVED]

can you tell what theme i'm using?

(apologies if any of this is wip stuff that's already slated to be changed)

That's how it's always been... It's just that the Dark Resource isn't finished yet.

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

i could've sworn there used to be at least a little bit of header color above posts in the past, but i'm probably wrong. regardless, my point still stands. right now, the forum looks really monochrome and boring because the only colors being used are white and two shades of gray.

[Iceman404]

At first I thought I went colorblind with all this white

[Dazz]

I've made a number of minor changes to the CSS prior to my vacation. Hopefully thread views are now more to people's liking (with separation and a clear distinct bottom to each post)

If you have any more cosmetic ideas, please share them and we'll consider them!

[Garamonde]

If you have any more cosmetic ideas, please share them and we'll consider them!

On that note -- and I'm sure I speak for the rest of the staff -- I for one greatly appreciate all of you putting your thoughts forward about the forum; it really does help us improve things