Some of you may remember that we will need to update our software. We suffered a hack-attack back in November which was caused by us running old versions of system software. The reason we ran these old versions, is because our forum software could not cope with later versions.
Upgrading our forum software was hard, because of the additions made to the software. These additions have served us very well for the last 8 years in allowing us to run the membership system for the Group. Additionally it has kept us largely spam free.
The Board and I (as the lowly sysadmin and system developer) had to bite the bullet. We decided to move to a newer version of our forum software, and re-implement the useful additions I had made over the years. That work is now nearing completion.
- We decided to re-implement our Full Member subscription system into version 2.0.11 of Simple Machines Forum. This allowed us to move up to the latest versions of Linux, PHP and MySQL;
- The server was moved to our existing hoster, but is now physically located in the US, closer to most of our membership;
- We moved all of the membership information that was previously in the Contao system (at the Home tab) to the Technical Manual, where it is easier to maintain (check http://sl113.org/wiki/About/Start and http://sl113.org/wiki/Main/Video for example)
- Contao was dropped and replaced with a Static website generator (https://gohugo.io) which now just provides the front end
- the front end part of the website is just that, a front end. It is designed to advertise our group, and membership. All the real content is in the forums or on the wiki
- the front end is responsive... that means that it works on small screens, big screens, phones and iPads (try it by changing your window size and see what happens)
The look and feel of the forum has also been cleaned up and simplified. That allows better usage on e.g. tablets. Enclosed a couple of examples of the look and feel.
The board and I are currently testing the new forums. When we are done, all information from this system will be transferred to the new system: all pictures, posts, messages, memberships. The system will be inaccessible for a short while when we do the transfer. Full members will receive an e-mail ahead of us taking down the system, and when the new one is back up.
Remember, change is good!
Peter
