New Site: What are the changes?

[jeffstatt]

So...what's changed? What are the major differences between the old site and the new site? Well, a lot actually! I've tried to outline the biggest stuff here, but there is so much more. All in all we've got a much more solid, fast and compatible site now. I hope you'll all come to appreciate the advantages despite some learning curve on its day-to-day use.

So here's the big list of differences from PH 1.0 to PH 2.0!

• A ton more space
  Stretch out! We've increased our database space by 20 times. (Our old hosting provider maxed our SQL Server out at 500mg. Most people have this on their cell phones these days! )
• Better software
  We've switched from Community Server 2.0 to phpBB3. We had an old, buggy version of Community Server. Their license structure changed and made it very expensive to upgrade. Now we have the most recent version of phpBB, which is robust and time tested. phpBB is an industry standard and has a VERY large community available for support and upgrades.
• Better hosting service
  We've switched from GoDaddy to BlueHost. GoDaddy was a very affordable entry-level solution, but performace was inconsistent, upgrades were very expensive, and they did not allow database backups. BlueHost is much better for us.
• No more rich text editor
  One downside of this new site is we no longer have the nice rich-text editor we used to have. On the old site you could see the format of what you were posting before you posted it. Now you have mark-up codes (BBCodes) that do the formatting for you. You don't see the results until after you hit "Preview" or "Submit". (To be honest As nice as the rich text editor was on the old site, it definitely had its problems.)
• Adding photos to posts
  The process for adding a photo is completely different. I'll be adding some instructions on how to do this. I'll add the link here after after I've created them.
• Better photo galleries
  At the time I'm writing this there are no photo galleries on the site. However, the gallery we will will be a big improvement over the old ones. I think we'll find a lot of folks wanting to use them over flickr or smugmug. We'll see.
• Lot of little differences
  A lot of the small stuff is different too - how to change the order of posts, hiding and showing forums, smilies, your user settings, avatar, etc, etc. We'll all muddle through the differences together!

[adamschneider]

(To be honest As nice as the rich text editor was on the old site, it definitely had its problems.)

Ya think? I hated hated hated that "rich text" editor! It overrode my keystrokes, stopped taking input randomly, put in line breaks whenever it felt like it... all hail phpbb!

Suggestion, Jeff: if you can mess with the stylesheets, adjust the formatting of the "quoted text" boxes like the one here where I've quoted you. Right now they don't look different enough; the background ought to be subtlely darker than white, and indenting would be good too.

[jeffstatt]

Good suggestion. The other thing I'd like to change is the mouse-over "feature" on the text box as you're typing.

[jaimito]

Good work Jeff and everyone else in getting the site moved over… I know it was a bear.

Jamie

[adamschneider]

Good suggestion. The other thing I'd like to change is the mouse-over "feature" on the text box as you're typing.

Yes, that too. Jeff, let me know if you want some help with that stuff... you'd probably have to deputize me as some kind of admin, though...