Making some changes

[Sledgstone 8,672]

First off I deleted a bunch of those random spam posts that I've been neglecting on taking care of.

 

Upcoming changes:

 

1) I will most likely trash our current article system. I always liked the concept of having Ancient Clan be an actual site, but its always been a forum at its core. I'm going to revamp the front page to highlight forum posts and new content. The biggest issue I have with the article system now is that it is tied directly to the forums, we make a post, update it to an article and the article will have all the comments of that forum post, but its all duplicated content because its two separate pages with the exact same information. The articles comments also look bad because it shows comments from the beginning of a topic instead of beginning where a post was promoted to an article. I can honestly say that I almost never reply to an article when I can skip its' clunkiness and go right to the forum. There are so many sites that are article based, kotaku, gizmodo, blog format sites like geekologie and others and we don't need to be like them. I'm thinking AC's future should be more forum based like reddit, neogaf, the old Ancient Clan, etc.

 

2) Instead of articles, we can post the new info and or articles right into the forum or topic like we usually do and it'll show up on the front page automatically as new content.

 

3) Mobile friendly. The majority of people that use the internet will browse on their phones now, the new ipb version we'll be updating to is extremely mobile friendly. We won't have large giant images on front pages anymore. It'll speed up the site's load times and it'll be a more fluid experience. We'll still keep signatures in the forums, but they won't be visible on the mobile version.

 

4) Themes. I have to look into some more theme options, I might be changing us off these dark and light themes in favor of a faster layout with less maintenance between patches.

 

5) Media embedding. The new ips uses a different media embedder, some site's videos might not be embeddable until I figure out the new embedding mechanics and how its coded. Other standard media sites like youtube will be embeddable by default.

 

Please let me know your opinions on these changes.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

3) Mobile friendly. The majority of people that use the internet will browse on their phones now, the new ipb version we'll be updating to is extremely mobile friendly. We won't have large giant images on front pages anymore. It'll speed up the site's load times and it'll be a more fluid experience. We'll still keep signatures in the forums, but they won't be visible on the mobile version.

 

Finally, my phone hates the current mobile version of the site (always crashes Firefox one me).

 

All other changes sound good to me (especially the article changes, I skip right past the main page and jump directly to the forum to begin with so I never even see the articles).

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I hate the mobile version of this site. I have to set it for full site all the time.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

I generally have to as well when it doesn't crash my browser.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

If you want to see a preview of our new mobile version it'll be just like this:

http://community.invisionpower.com/

Its very nice when logged in to. notifications, statuses, etc are all easily viewable. There is even an activity steam that shows all new / recent content From all parts of the site, status, gallery, blog, forums, etc. All on one page.

http://community.invisionpower.com/activity/

[Sledgstone 8,672]

The next version of IPB is 4.1 and once it gets released I'll do a final test and upgrade the site. Sometime early october according to this blog entry:

 

https://community.invisionpower.com/blogs/entry/9739-ips-community-suite-41-editor-update/

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

My Galaxy 6 loves full site versions more than mobile sites. I find myself clicking the full site option more often than not. My once desire for a more mobile friendly site is out the window.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

They delayed the release again. It'll happen eventually. I'll probably upgrade sometime in November now.

 

https://community.invisionpower.com/blogs/entry/9742-ips-community-suite-41-upgrade-prep/

 

As far as I can tell there won't be a full site option anymore. With how the new layout will be coded, the full site auto formats into a more mobile friendly version of itself. Check the link above and tell me what you think of the navigation for it on your phone since it'll be what we'll be using soon.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I have a bunch more testing to do, but a big update will be happening... eventually. Our current themes are not going to be used anymore, but I did find a new set of themes (light / black) that we'll be switching to. The new forum software will no longer have a "view full site" option because the layouts are all adaptive to whatever size the window is set for. Its very effective and much better for mobile use. I'll be changing the login and registration to accept facebook and twitter logins and we'll have browser notifications available as well.