cKs Website v3.0 coming soon

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Created on Tuesday, 18 December 2012 16:22
Last Updated on Thursday, 02 May 2013 19:08
Written by Rooster
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I have been working on bringing our site to a more 'up-to-date' standard.  I don't know that it will make it run any faster, but it will certainly be more stable/secure, and add some default features (some of which I hacked stock code to create/simulate) that will facilitate things much easier, and make the site much more configurable for us, which is ALWAYS a good thing. 

     I've been working steadily on it on a test server at my home, and while my work is by no means complete, I have successfully converted/made work all of the important areas to us:  The forums, the accounts (logging in!), and the articles/news.

     As I've told a small select few, there are a couple modules I'm struggling with.  They are big, clunky modules.  We (Res and I) had to do A LOT of work to make them work the way we wanted, and even some of that has been removed/disabled through various past minor updates/upgrades (older members, remember the badges/achievements, GYP(games you play) sections that are currently gone?).  Some of those clunky modules, as I call em, are responsible for things 'not quite' working as expected; like our registration/lost password systems and the fact that when cKs gets a new registration, instead of getting an email sent to me that there is a new member, and who they are - I get an email saying there's a new member, and no name is listed o.0 (rofl, don't even ask!!)

     With all that in mind, I've been debating between creating the site "fresh and new", giving it my best at migrating every aspect, and working from there, or kind of a hybrid, where the forums, userbase, and articles (news) remain, but everything will be revamped and installed fresh and new.  I'm leaning toward the last option.  It means some things may be gone temporarily, like the PM system, and when it DOES come back, it will be new, IE all old messages will be gone forever.  The trade-off is every system will work as it should, without hacks/mods/workarounds (aside of what I've already done, that is) and should be very solid.  As time permits during the holidays, I will of course continue to add "updated" modules, as well as some exciting new things which the new system will allow. (membership map showing demographics of where we all are, something we were just unable to make work with the old, hacked system for example, and all the achievements/badges systems back up and running).  

     The new site (it's just a newer version of this site, don't worry too much) will have the same looking theme, at first.  They make the same theme, just a newer version, so for simplicity sake, we're going to run with that till the site is set up as desired.  Then theme modification will begin as we hopefully give this place an entirely new look. 

     I just wanted to give you guys a heads up on what's coming.  At some point over the next few days, depending on when I get a couple more things finished up, this site is going to be down.  It'll be down because of the upgrade process, NOT because of a host/server/router/other problem :)  I will create a channel in TeamSpeak essentially alerting you of the status when it happens, so you'll know.  The desire to retain posts/news/accounts DOES mean a longer downtime, as I have to grab the data when the site shuts down, and run it through some scripts to modify the code (database, actually) to be compatible with it's newer counterparts, so it will take some time.