So It's Come To This... Another B/S Site Upgrade

[missionhockey21]

Hey guys and guys pretending to be gals (don't laugh, this has happened a few times on this site), sorry about the somewhat unexpected delay. To defend myself before the honorable Judge DirtyKash and the lovely court recorder Kingdom_of_Zito, here is the cliffnotes.

What the hell happened to the site Mission?
Hurricane Upgrade, and she was a cold *****. We upgraded from vBulletin 3.x to vBulletin 4, which was a significant upgrade on a few levels. First of all, the styling system has completely changed and so has a good deal of the code base. There are improvements here, but there is also a learning curve. In the past I would shut the site down for a semi-upgrade and I would finish the style, add in some modifications, etc. This time it was different and it was more about ensuring our rewrites are true, functionality is still there, and taking the proper precautions should there be any hiccups like other sites experienced (and there were.)

So... why?
One reason is that I would have to eventually do it at some point. And doing it before the season start, so we wouldn't lose a day of game action was important to me. Hopefully then too all the kinks are ironed out before we get into serious trade talks where traffic will spike.

Second reason, and the one I am most excited about, is we now have a very cool blogging system and an improved articles system. I will work on porting existing articles into the new system and of course customizing it. Once everything is properly set up though, you should fine that finding content is much easier and your ability to create articles, as well as the leaders ability to make them into articles, has been streamlined and is much more intuitive. Then there is a bunch of nerdy stuff that only I would care about, so carry on.

Yeah, so when are things going to be fixed? I am tired of your screwups.
Sorry. The site right now very much is in a state of being a work in progress. You have to remember that the site under vB3 was heavily customized, including styles, templates, products developed ONLY for this site, and so on. If you don't think you're crazy about some changes, imagine how I feel.

Give it a month or two though and we should be relatively close to where we were. I have a lot of work I want to do, but only so much time. I do appreciate your patience and for right now I would ask for you to avoid any bug/comment reports. I have a list to work through and unless it is something major, ie you can't post or login etc, I'd rather work through my list before seeing if there is anything I forgot. It would just be more helpful to my style of work.

I don't have all day.
In short, like with almost any upgrade, there will be some steps forward and some steps back. Anyone who has been here long enough know that I work hard on the site and we usually will improve sooner than we will regress. Be patient, enjoy the conversation and play set to start tonight and before you know it the site will be better than it was before.

Thanks for waiting!

[Foster]

A new ball season, and a new site to look forward too.
All is right in the world.

[DirtyKash]

Loving the new look. Job well done.

[Kingdom]

I'm going to miss the phrase "User CP"

[Impossibles]

Anybody else finding the site super slow?

[NYgiantsfan5689]

I'm a huge fan of the improvements. Excellent job Mission. Here are the only 3 things I've got:

1) I 100% relied on the number of new posts next to the "New Posts" button. I would really encourage you to put the number back next to the New Posts button if possible.

2) Is the mobile site going to be back online at all? I like it a lot, it's very helpful when using the phone. Makes everything much more simple.

3) I keep getting an error saying "You don't have permission to view this page" when I click on the "Home" button

[missionhockey21]

Anybody else finding the site super slow?

Not just you. I did a lot to improve speed with caching pages and stuff. I just did a few quick little tricks that maybe won't be huge speed boosters, but should help. Its something I'll be working on over the next couple of days.

[missionhockey21]

I'm a huge fan of the improvements. Excellent job Mission. Here are the only 3 things I've got:

1) I 100% relied on the number of new posts next to the "New Posts" button. I would really encourage you to put the number back next to the New Posts button if possible.

2) Is the mobile site going to be back online at all? I like it a lot, it's very helpful when using the phone. Makes everything much more simple.

3) I keep getting an error saying "You don't have permission to view this page" when I click on the "Home" button

1. No question. My favorite thing on the site to use. It'll be back VERY soon.
2. It'll be back. I took it down to redesign it and fix some of the things that bothered me, but it'll be back.
3. Thanks, didn't know about this (not that there really is a homepage yet, lol.) I'll check it out.

Thanks guys!

[NYgiantsfan5689]

Ok so now I'm gonna be a nitpicking jerk. This is something I never gave its due until it's gone. On the New Posts page, when you view a post on it, it becomes not bold, and the rest of the unviewed new posts are still bolded. I'm realizing now how helpful that is, when it's not there anymore.

[missionhockey21]

Ok so now I'm gonna be a nitpicking jerk. This is something I never gave its due until it's gone. On the New Posts page, when you view a post on it, it becomes not bold, and the rest of the unviewed new posts are still bolded. I'm realizing now how helpful that is, when it's not there anymore.

Yep, I am on it. Definitely needs to be fixed.

And it's not perfect, but there are unread post counts now. (That style or location likely will change, just wanted to add it in.)
(I'd recommend to hit Mark Forums Read after you see the new posts, as my fix included, at least for me, some older posts.)

[DravenX]

The one thing I noticed today is when I login, it goes to the home page, http://www.baseballslant.com and says I don't have permission to view this page. I just hit the forums link in the top left and it goes to the site. Must be the portal page I suppose but I haven't worked with the new vB4 yet.

[NYgiantsfan5689]

Something else helpful would be to have the new posts page to just contain the posts that are new since the last visit, rather than pages and pages of new posts from weeks ago

[realmofotalk]

damn, I see my blog entries in my old profile under the Zoints system were deleted.

[missionhockey21]

Something else helpful would be to have the new posts page to just contain the posts that are new since the last visit, rather than pages and pages of new posts from weeks ago

I think that is actually how it should function, but I do agree with you. I'll look into it (I'd actually prefer to have both options.)

damn, I see my blog entries in my old profile under the Zoints system were deleted.

The data is still there, I wouldn't delete it, I'd don't right now though if its possible to make a db connection from Zoints to the new vB. It would be nice if we could just automatically port those over though.

[realmofotalk]

You're right. I googled my username and zoints and the data is still there.