Forum Upgrade and its Repercussions

[Skuld]

Alright, guys.

If you couldn't tell we went through a forum upgrade last night, as Sinful Soul mentioned in his last announcement. Because of this, our forum is going to be a much stronger, faster and overall more effective tool for roleplaying and in our recruiting quest. It has, on the other hand, also brought with it a bit of work for the staff. There are a lot of small things that must be fixed, tweaked and addressed- we know this.

Chat is one of those things.
I promise, we are working on this. As of the moment there is no way to get to #GWing from the forum. My suggestion, though I understand that not all people will be able to go with this option, would be to download a program to use. Personally, I'm an X-Chat fan, but I know there are many, many more. That is the only way I can promise your chat experience to be back up and running in the very near future.

Other than that, we need you guys to bare with us. We are working hard, and there is a lot of "behind the scenes" work that must be taken care of to make this upgrade the effective effort we hoped for. Give us a bit of time, and we will get things running as smoothly as possible. If you have any questions, comments, concerns or suggestions, please go ahead and leave us a note in here, or in the Help forum.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation, and welcome to the new RPGateway!

Skuld

[Edge]

What kind of chat programs are there to use for those of us who don't go off looking for chat programs?

By X-Chat do you mean X-Fire program?

[Kouketsu]

For those that don't want to go through an external client, you can also connect through this for now:

http://www.surrealchat.net/chat/GWing - Java chat for the #GWing channel.
http://www.surrealchat.net/chat/OOC - Java chat for the #OOC channel.

Or just in general: http://www.surrealchat.net/chat/<name of channel here>

[Midnight]

Man this new set up is a shocker compared to the old one. I got on and WAM I was on the floor. (figuritvly speaking of course)

[Selik]

To be entirely honest , i was upset by this change. Tru it will be smoother and all that but before it had the look of a RPG site. Now it looks like , no offense her , a big fancy posh load of crap!!

PS. plus the scantily clad red head is gone.....awwwww

[Skuld]

As I tried to explain in my first post, there are some settings that are priorities. The look of the site is, unfortunately, not on the top of the list. We are working on it, and it will be changed, but we must remember that there are many other features that you would rather have. Trust me.

So, again, bare with us, and all shall be fixed as we find the time and energy. I promise.

[Zee All Knowing Peacock]

The look isn't that bad if you ask me...

[Kasurin]

The forum is so much cleaner and sleak; it's really eye-appealing. I don't mind this change. : 3

[LordSaladin]

I must agree that the new layout and aesthetics of the site are good.

As Ichigomama mentioned, it looks cleaner and sleeker, it also looks more professional and I feel that the it will serve as a marketing tool on its own. An attractive site is something that will make people want to return, and whilst the previous layout and aesthetics were nice; I feel that the site now looks more mature.

I think it would be a shame if we change it, as the colours and font also make it easier on the eye, especially when typing posts. However, obviously, the decision lies with the Administrators of the site, and I know they will do what is best. We must also bear in mind that this layout is the default phpBB3 layout, so there is bound to be more themes made in time, and perhaps those themes that are made, if Eric doesn't make his own ((Do you do that, as phpBB3 is open-source?)), which will look just as professional.

As well as the more immediately noticable changes, such as the appearance of the site, the new features found in phpBB3 are fantastic. I know that for the Mods and Admins, their Control Panel is much more intuitive and organised. And many of you will have noticed that the User Control Panel is greatly improved, giving us all much better control of things like our PMs and avatars etc.

It has been a long time coming, definitely, but with phpBB3, the site can certainly take itself to new levels. The wait was certainly worth, and whilst the initial problems/issues are a bit of an irritance, once they are sorted great things will happen, I can tell that much.

I know that the Mods and Admins have been working even harder than usual to fix everything that will ensure the site can be operated smoothly, for example, the chat. A lot of the MAJOR issues have been in the background, but as Skuld mentioned, once they are finished, the smaller issues will be fixed.

We can certainly trust our site management to utilise this new forum to the best of their ability to ensure our experience is the best it can be.

So, we all need to be patient and sit in anticipation of all the improvements that will certainly come our way.

I know I am looking forward to them all, and support our staff wholeheartedly in this, trusting their abilities, which have been proven to us many times anyway.


Lord Saladin

[Midnight]

Well I must agree with Saladin. This does look good and more mature. But my only peive about the look is that the brightness burns abit.

[.Enzeru]

What kind of chat programs are there to use for those of us who don't go off looking for chat programs?

By X-Chat do you mean X-Fire program?

He's talking about a Chat client. > http://www.xchat.org/

Xfire is a Gaming Messenger client. > http://www.xfire.com/

And as much as I like the new PHPbb3 -- it's a little slower than the original. It needs an ExtremeStyles Mod quickly made for it to process the PHP files in a faster manner. <3

But it's alright. Aside from the laggish banner at the top and the overall bulk of everything, it's a little cleaner. But, meh ... I've admin'd PHP forums for years; I just like bb2 better. =/ I'm bias.

Also - you're missing your Alignment tags, kids. ;]

[Azamiko]

Okies...I'll check this out...O.O;...

I think the site looks nice and neat. Though, it kind of annoys me how popular blue is. ;-; What's wrong with green and orange...?

[Zee All Knowing Peacock]

Say it sista!...... Sorry, really, I am.

[Azamiko]

...? Sorry for what? You didn't say anything rude.

What about a nice dark red. It's not really a 'girly' color, and it's different enough to be interesting while still being simple and non-distracting.

[Remæus]

.Enzeru, the benefit that the ExtremeStyles mod gave phpBB2 was a caching system, which is actually built in to phpBB3. We're only on RC2 right now, so we can't really make any final determinations on speed. RPGateway seems to run a bit slower, but that's because I'm clearing the cache like twice a day. We'll see, though. The phpBB team says RC2 is supposed to be seeing a big speed increase on medium to large boards, but a decrease on smaller boards due to the total number of queries in use. Caching queries doesn't do much when the data return is smaller than the cache itself.

Azamiko, I promise we'll provide all sorts of color styles for you in the future - right now, we're sticking with this one, as our priorities are elsewhere. I like the idea of a red scheme though... ::Wanders off to mess around with CSS3 and rgb support...::

[Azamiko]

Eh? O.O I didn't mean to sound like I was criticizing...It was just a random suggestion, thrown out there...

[Remæus]

I know. Oh, and we've deployed a few of our new color schemes.