DS8 Progress

[IrascibleOne]

Hi all! Welcome to the DS8 build progress thread! Here's where I'll post occasional updates on the progress of the new site and how things are going as I do it. Let's start, shall we?

Today I started setting up the basic layout of the site. This is more of a mock-up than anything else at this point, but I think it gives you some idea of where I want to go with the site. My goal is to keep things as clean and focused as possible.

Screen Shot 2015-09-20 at 22.30.20.png

Questions, comments, ideas, and suggestions are always welcome!

[brektzar]

I dont think i have any suggestions on that It looks very clean as is.
It seems like a streamlined design, easy to navigate.

[IrascibleOne]

Sorry for the lack of activity here in the last few months, just haven't been able to get much done. But, I do have an interesting find: http://flarum.org/

It's not even close to production ready, but could serve as a really nice replacement to this forum. And since it appears to be built on top of Laravel, it'd fit well with my current progress on DS8. Styling/layout even looks close enough to my design that it would only take a few tweaks to get it to fit in.

In any case, I'm alive. You know, if you were wondering.

[brektzar]

Flarum looks good, i especially liked the touch optimization, it looks smoother than many others.

And i think we need to find something to spark the flame again... I have not used Blender for a long time now Ive been stuck looking for jobs and playing The Witcher 3, Fallout 4 and Elite: Dangerous..... Those games will eat your availible time..........

And, now its christmas time...

[IrascibleOne]

Yeah, I've been doing the same with the video games . Those winter GOG deals have not helped any...went on a bit of a nostalgia kick with older games I used to play. At this point, I haven't touched Blender in a very long time...

[djm]

As for me I touch Blender daily, but with my crappy old laptop whenever homework is not eating eating me alive..

[IrascibleOne]

Just a quick update. Been creating wireframes and reviewing a lot of the design work I did last year for DS8. I also did an install of Flarum on my computer. Will need to figure out how to build extensions and look into the backend to see how it will fit with the overall site. More importantly, I'll have to figure out how to transfer users and posts over. My hope is to have a more seamless transition between the forum and everywhere else. That's the plan at least.

In any case, I'll see if I can post a few of my wireframes within the next week or so. I feel it's coming along nicely and believe it will be a huge improvement for the site. I'll also take a look into setting up a subdomain where you can actually touch and feel DS8 before it goes live. Probably beta.darkscarab.com or something like that.

Anyways, I'm rambling. So I'll be back with more info as I make progress. If you have any suggestions or input, I'm all ears!

[brektzar]

The migration might be solved by this: Migrate Script

[quote="The main limitation is user data, passwords are not transferable so instead the script will create a user with a random password. which after the migration they would need to reset.[/quote]

So a new password will be generated, this would be sent by email i am guessing?

[IrascibleOne]

Ah, sweet, that should make things easier.

In terms of passwords, what will probably happen is I post a message on the login page explaining what happened. Particularly if someone tries to log in with a pre-flarum account. At the very least, I don't want people to go through a lost password form without knowing why their correct password isn't working.

I could blast out a mass email to all members when it goes live, just to let them know. Undecided on that though, don't want to be spammy or anything.

In any case, I'd have to do it myself because that script looks like it only creates the SQL to run in your Flarum database. Shouldn't be too big of a deal though.