State of EN World Address - plan of action - upgrades, etc.

[Morrus]

I thought I'd post to let you know about some of the plans I have for the site over the next few months. These plans are all geared towards two goals: a) performance improvements and b) ease of use.

1) Server upgrade - this is happening soon. Adlon of Mortality.net is currently putting together a price/recommendation for me which I should have in the next few days. I will then be sending Adlon the money for the new server, and he and Walter Peterson of Cyberstreet have very kindly offered to build, configure and set up the new server. I'm not sure of the timescale involved, exactly, but it won't be long now. I don't expect downtime due to the upgrade to be more than a few hours.

2) Integration of sites - we currently have several database driven sites on the server, and that is far from efficient. Right now we have: D&D/D20 News, PDF News, Sci-Fi News, Reviews/D20 Guide, Topsites, Messageboards (plus several hosted sites). I want to integrate all but the hosted sites into one, meaning we have one database driven site with only one login.

This will be very difficult, and I'm not 100% sure it can be done. The D&D News, PDF News and Sci-fi News sites all run off the same software, so integration there will certainly be possible. The Reviews/D20 Guide is a custom programme written by Liquide & Blacksway, and will be difficult to integrate. The messageboards, again, are a totally different software package (vBulletin). Ideally, I want the whole lot running off of the existing vBulletin member account system. It's not yet certain whether this is possible, but it is being investigated by Michael Morris as we speak.

So, the result will hopefully be a sleeker, faster site running on a sleeker, faster server. It'll take time, and there's a lot of work involved, so don't expect miracles overnight - but we're going to try our best to get it done.

I'll keep you updated on what's going on, especially the server upgrade which I should know more about very soon!

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Thanks for the update Morrus. Good to know that things are starting to move along.

 

[der_kluge]

To be a true "state of" speech, you have to say "the state of ENWorld is strong" somewhere in there.

At least that's what U.S. Presidents always say.

 

[alsih2o]

thanks russ!

i always appreciate knowuing what is happening

 

[Macbeth]

Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Russ. And, yeah, you need to add "the state of ENWorld is strong" and something about how great our posters are for it to really qualify as a state of the whatever address.

 

[BSF]

Thanks Morrus! It's nice to hear what is planned.

 

[RangerWickett]

To be a true "state of" speech, you have to say "the state of ENWorld is strong" somewhere in there.

At least that's what U.S. Presidents always say.

Yeah, it was really cool this year that he gave a shout out to Morrus and crew.

 

[diaglo]

stands and claps

bahhhhh, bahhhhh

 

[Michael Morris]

Integration of vbulletin and PostNuke, a chief holy grail among those Russ listed above, has been accomplished by a couple of webmasters, and apparently a module for PostNuke is in the works as well. Russ also forgot to mention that, at some point this year, we'll be upgrading the boards to the final version of Vbulletin 3.0.0. Right now they're on RC2, and if it proves to be error free for the next couple of months Vbulletin will declare it as the final.

 

[jdavis]

Thanks for the update and for keeping your word and keeping us informed, you are a good man there Mr President