Our Third Impact is Nigh -- Upgrade Incoming
Moderator: Board Staff
- Monk Ed
- Sunshine Administrator
- Age: 38
- Posts: 8601
- Joined: Jul 12, 2008
- Location: Chicagoland area
- Gender: Male
Our Third Impact is Nigh -- Upgrade Incoming
We're moving to a new server -- and new software. EGF for the past several years has been running on an increasingly ancient and difficult-to-maintain forum software, so it's time for an upgrade to its most modern counterpart, which is the secret project that's been brewing in the background that Tines mentioned in a nearby topic.
The transition will not be seamless. There will be a service outage of, we hope, only a few hours at some point over the holiday weekend, after which the forum will come back looking very different, albeit only until we can get it looking like its old self again (or perhaps something new entirely).
Some old features will go inactive until we can get them up and running again, and some new ones will pop up, so don't be alarmed -- there will be kinks to work out.
The transition will not be seamless. There will be a service outage of, we hope, only a few hours at some point over the holiday weekend, after which the forum will come back looking very different, albeit only until we can get it looking like its old self again (or perhaps something new entirely).
Some old features will go inactive until we can get them up and running again, and some new ones will pop up, so don't be alarmed -- there will be kinks to work out.
System Administrator
"NGE is like a perfectly improvised jazz piece. It builds on a standard and then plays off it from there, and its developments may occasionally recall what it's done before as a way of keeping the whole concatenated." -- Eva Yojimbo
"To me watching anime is not just for killing time or entertainment, it is a life style, and a healthy one too." -- symbv
"That sounds like the kind of science that makes absolutely 0 sense when you stop and think about it... I LOVE IT." -- Rosenakahara
"NGE is like a perfectly improvised jazz piece. It builds on a standard and then plays off it from there, and its developments may occasionally recall what it's done before as a way of keeping the whole concatenated." -- Eva Yojimbo
"To me watching anime is not just for killing time or entertainment, it is a life style, and a healthy one too." -- symbv
"That sounds like the kind of science that makes absolutely 0 sense when you stop and think about it... I LOVE IT." -- Rosenakahara
- robersora
- Laissez-faire in Moderation
- Age: 32
- Posts: 4437
- Joined: May 17, 2011
- Location: Europe, Austria
- Gender: Male
As long as the people have access and the posts are still there, and most importantly, there's still a place for the beautiful angel headers I'm looking forward to it! Thank you for putting all your time and dedication into keeping this forums running :)
2Q||3.33 _ 神殺しを行う
Decadent Stoned Slacker Socialist
Decadent Stoned Slacker Socialist
- Rosenakahara
- Evangelion
- Age: 26
- Posts: 3319
- Joined: May 20, 2014
- Gender: Female
Great, hopefully the forum is back up for actual 3I day.
"She had better march back here and try again! I only send people off on my terms! ...Or in a casket."
I don't need a scabbard to sheathe my mind
What is going on is a concerted effort from anti-progressives to silence anyone who disagrees with them.-Bagheera 2016
The Twelve Kingdoms discussion thread
I don't need a scabbard to sheathe my mind
What is going on is a concerted effort from anti-progressives to silence anyone who disagrees with them.-Bagheera 2016
The Twelve Kingdoms discussion thread
Good to know. To be honest I'm mostly fine with EGF as is, but there are some conveniences present in other forums, that run on better software, that I'd love to see here, most importantly the ability to easily quote multiple posts.
Avatar: B-B-B-B-B-Bad
- TheFriskyIan
- Lord Hamburger
- Posts: 2033
- Joined: Mar 24, 2011
- Gender: Male
Ideally they will all be available through styles menu eventually, including the original.
Rest In Peace ~ 1978 - 2017
"I'd consider myself a realist, alright? but in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist. It means I'm bad at parties." - Rust Cohle
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
"The internet: It's like a training camp for never amounting to anything." - Oglaf
"I think internet message boards and the like are dangerous." - Anno
"I'd consider myself a realist, alright? but in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist. It means I'm bad at parties." - Rust Cohle
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
"The internet: It's like a training camp for never amounting to anything." - Oglaf
"I think internet message boards and the like are dangerous." - Anno
- FreakyFilmFan4ever
- (In)Sufficient Director
- Age: 36
- Posts: 9897
- Joined: Jun 09, 2009
- Location: Playing amongst the stars
- Gender: Male
- Sicarius VI
- Tokyo-3 Resident
- Age: 25
- Posts: 1149
- Joined: Aug 12, 2014
- Location: United States
- Gender: Male
^ Of Course, but then we can talk about it with a new and improved forum!
Anyhow, has this version of forum software been around almost as long as Eva has? I did some research on it, and it's been the same since EGF opened in 2004. Ironic that we change the same time we approach the real date of 3I!
Anyhow, has this version of forum software been around almost as long as Eva has? I did some research on it, and it's been the same since EGF opened in 2004. Ironic that we change the same time we approach the real date of 3I!
"I'm not going there to die, I'm going to find out if I'm really alive." - Spike Spiegel
- pwhodges
- A Lilin in Wonderland
- Age: 77
- Posts: 11035
- Joined: Nov 18, 2012
- Location: Oxford, UK
- Contact:
My plan for the initial themes (as I seem to have elected myself theme-master for now) is that there will be a choice between one with the current banner, whatever it is, and one with a banner that chooses randomly on different visits or refreshes between all those so far released (including the school banner). A means for making a more focused choice will be worked out later; but first is to get something up and running.
We are also planning something different to replace the coloured boxes for different responsibilities, but that probably won't make the first cut - not too long after though, I hope.
"Being human, having your health; that's what's important." (from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?" (from: The Eccentric Family )
Avatar: The end of the journey (details); Past avatars.
Before 3.0+1.0 there was Afterwards... my post-Q Evangelion fanfic (discussion)
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?" (from: The Eccentric Family )
Avatar: The end of the journey (details); Past avatars.
Before 3.0+1.0 there was Afterwards... my post-Q Evangelion fanfic (discussion)
- pwhodges
- A Lilin in Wonderland
- Age: 77
- Posts: 11035
- Joined: Nov 18, 2012
- Location: Oxford, UK
- Contact:
Just the current version of phpBB* - v3.1 (if you mean the rotating banner in particular, that's just two rewrite lines in the Apache config). I've chosen a third-party theme that's pretty like our present one as the basis I'm working on for new themes.
There has been a lot of work to find how to convert the forum posts to work in the new version, because the old software is very hacked about in the area of character sets, which matter a lot for us (!), and the provided converter didn't get everything right as it stood. The updated software is Unicode-savvy, so there should be no character set issues any more.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* I experimented with SMF, as that's what I use for the forums I run, by preference; but the post conversion routine for that turned out to be too far out of court to be worth trying to hack into shape.
There has been a lot of work to find how to convert the forum posts to work in the new version, because the old software is very hacked about in the area of character sets, which matter a lot for us (!), and the provided converter didn't get everything right as it stood. The updated software is Unicode-savvy, so there should be no character set issues any more.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* I experimented with SMF, as that's what I use for the forums I run, by preference; but the post conversion routine for that turned out to be too far out of court to be worth trying to hack into shape.
"Being human, having your health; that's what's important." (from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?" (from: The Eccentric Family )
Avatar: The end of the journey (details); Past avatars.
Before 3.0+1.0 there was Afterwards... my post-Q Evangelion fanfic (discussion)
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?" (from: The Eccentric Family )
Avatar: The end of the journey (details); Past avatars.
Before 3.0+1.0 there was Afterwards... my post-Q Evangelion fanfic (discussion)
- Mr. Tines
- Administrator
- Age: 66
- Posts: 21376
- Joined: Nov 23, 2004
- Location: This sceptered isle.
- Gender: Male
- Contact:
To give the membership an idea of how bad things were, up until about a week ago there were quite a number of posts here that appeared to be blank if you went to them, and using the full editor on them got a "post not found" error (but could be opened in the AJAX quick editor); a number more which appeared blank but would open in the full editor. All of those, and more converted to empty posts in the new system. Some of them could be fixed by tuning the conversion program, but hand-editing was required in certain places.
For the technical details -- the forum works on the assumption that the text is stored as UTF-8; however it turned out that there were a number of posts actually encoded as in CP-1252 (Windows single-byte character set with high-bit set printable characters like smart-quotes or accented letters, which make broken UTF-8), Shift_JIS or EUC_JP (pre-Unicode representations of Japanese text), and thereby failing to interpret as UTF-8, and turning out blank. In addition, a few recent posts from iPhones have contained emoji characters that are from the Unicode first astral plane, and a few posts from three years ago contained astral characters for musical notation -- the converter choked on the 4-byte UTF-8 sequences involved, so those posts had to be hand edited (and will have to be hand edited back later).
Reminder: Play nicely <<>> My vanity publishing:- NGE|blog|Photos|retro-blog|Fanfics &c.|MAL|𝕏|🐸|🦣
Avatar: art deco Asuka
Avatar: art deco Asuka
- Monk Ed
- Sunshine Administrator
- Age: 38
- Posts: 8601
- Joined: Jul 12, 2008
- Location: Chicagoland area
- Gender: Male
With the character set issue we're technically still not completely out of the woods -- fixing posts is one thing, but with PMs we can't even check our work. Instead, I've hacked the converter to just shove PMs into their appropriate slots in the new database if they otherwise fail the conversion process, which will at least get all the bits and bytes in their proper place whether they're interpreted correctly or not.
So if something goes funky with your PMs, uh... you'll have to elect to let us know. And I'll keep the final backup of the old instance in cold storage in case issues get discovered way down the line with old posts or PMs.
So if something goes funky with your PMs, uh... you'll have to elect to let us know. And I'll keep the final backup of the old instance in cold storage in case issues get discovered way down the line with old posts or PMs.
System Administrator
"NGE is like a perfectly improvised jazz piece. It builds on a standard and then plays off it from there, and its developments may occasionally recall what it's done before as a way of keeping the whole concatenated." -- Eva Yojimbo
"To me watching anime is not just for killing time or entertainment, it is a life style, and a healthy one too." -- symbv
"That sounds like the kind of science that makes absolutely 0 sense when you stop and think about it... I LOVE IT." -- Rosenakahara
"NGE is like a perfectly improvised jazz piece. It builds on a standard and then plays off it from there, and its developments may occasionally recall what it's done before as a way of keeping the whole concatenated." -- Eva Yojimbo
"To me watching anime is not just for killing time or entertainment, it is a life style, and a healthy one too." -- symbv
"That sounds like the kind of science that makes absolutely 0 sense when you stop and think about it... I LOVE IT." -- Rosenakahara
- TehDonutKing
- Camel Dilettante
- Age: 28
- Posts: 3934
- Joined: Apr 23, 2010
- Location: Outer Space Jupiter
- Contact:
Just please don't remove the ugly style. Or, at least, give us themes that are more colorful than gray, grey, and græy.
/hj
I said and did some dumb and hurtful things in my time here when i was younger. If i ever hurt you, i'm sorry. If you see any of this while reading old threads, i'm learning and trying to improve. Donut redemption arc in progress.
I said and did some dumb and hurtful things in my time here when i was younger. If i ever hurt you, i'm sorry. If you see any of this while reading old threads, i'm learning and trying to improve. Donut redemption arc in progress.
- pwhodges
- A Lilin in Wonderland
- Age: 77
- Posts: 11035
- Joined: Nov 18, 2012
- Location: Oxford, UK
- Contact:
It's not a matter of removing anything or not - it's a matter of finding the time to implement them again in the new software. Even if the present forum software had not become incompatible with its original version, styles did not carry over from v2 to v3 or subsequently to v3.1.
The ugly style will not be there from the start; but I guess it could be added back if there's enough persuasion (and cookies - I like cookies).
The ugly style will not be there from the start; but I guess it could be added back if there's enough persuasion (and cookies - I like cookies).
"Being human, having your health; that's what's important." (from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?" (from: The Eccentric Family )
Avatar: The end of the journey (details); Past avatars.
Before 3.0+1.0 there was Afterwards... my post-Q Evangelion fanfic (discussion)
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?" (from: The Eccentric Family )
Avatar: The end of the journey (details); Past avatars.
Before 3.0+1.0 there was Afterwards... my post-Q Evangelion fanfic (discussion)
- xPearse
- Ramiel
- Age: 31
- Posts: 331
- Joined: May 11, 2014
- Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Gender: Male
Oh. That's interesting. Will there be an interface update or just stuff in the background?
Evangelion, Higurashi, Terra Formars and video game translations
http://pearsehillock.blogspot.co.uk/
http://pearsehillock.blogspot.co.uk/
- pwhodges
- A Lilin in Wonderland
- Age: 77
- Posts: 11035
- Joined: Nov 18, 2012
- Location: Oxford, UK
- Contact:
Ten years and two major versions of interface changes... I'll be trying to make it much like the present, but some things will inevitably end up a bit different. This is how it looked this morning; I'm just getting the menu box programmed in at present:
"Being human, having your health; that's what's important." (from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?" (from: The Eccentric Family )
Avatar: The end of the journey (details); Past avatars.
Before 3.0+1.0 there was Afterwards... my post-Q Evangelion fanfic (discussion)
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?" (from: The Eccentric Family )
Avatar: The end of the journey (details); Past avatars.
Before 3.0+1.0 there was Afterwards... my post-Q Evangelion fanfic (discussion)
Return to “EvaGeeks News and Feedback”
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests