Upcoming site update

Dr Zaius

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As some of you have noticed, Gamesquad has not been updated in about three years. The most important reason for the lack of updates is that vBulletin, the software which powers the site, has gone is a direction a lot of existing vBulletin users do not care for. The company which owned and developed vBulletin was bought out and nearly the entire staff of original developers quit over disagreements with the new management, which had a very different vision for the direction of the software.

The good news is, after the original vBulletin developers left they formed a new company and engineered a new forum suite, and it's a quality system.

Since I no longer have confidence in vBulletin as a product and greatly dislike what has been done with virtually every aspect of the current state of the product, I intend to migrate GS to the forum system designed by the original devs. I have not decided on a date yet.

At this time I can't tell you for 100 percent certain what all the changes will be. But here some things will you may expect:


  • Every attempt will be made to keep all of the existing posts and I do not anticipate a problem with that.
  • You will still have an avatar. However, avatars may change in size and you may or may not need to re-upload your avatar once the transition to the new software is complete.
  • There may be changes to signatures, so you may need to re-upload your signature.
  • At this time I am not 100 percent certain we will be able to keep the country flags. I will attempt to do so if practical.
  • The "Clubs" function will probably be lost. Something similar may or may not take its place, but don't count on that being there.
  • The "Downloads" function will more than likely be lost. It is unlikely this will be replaced as part of the initial transition, so if there is content in there you need, get it NOW!
  • The "Blogs" function will probably be lost. This is, however, something important to me and I am searching for a replacement system.
  • There will be a much improved homepage for Gamesquad.com, and at long last you will start seeing news and articles again. Yay!
  • Our current "reputation" system will likely be replaced with something, however, it may be quite different than what we currently have.
  • Expect some general forum reorganization. Exactly how deep the changes will be, I'm not sure at this point. But expect at least some changes.
  • New theme. Yes, there will be a new theme as it's new software. However, it won't be something radically different than what we currently have. If I had to guess, probably an easy-to-read blue of some kind.
  • "What's New?" function may different than what you're used to.
  • Advertisements, paid subscriptions, crowd funding. All options are under consideration to keep GameSquad going.
I am testing an installation of the new software and experimenting with how things work. When that is complete, the existing forums will be imported into the new system and the forums re-opened. During the transition, the forums will likely be closed for 1-3 days depending on how smoothly the import goes.

With a move of this type, there will probably be some new things you will like and some old things you will miss. Just keep an open mind and understand there may be a few growing pains.
 

Dr Zaius

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One of the changes I think people are going to like a lot is that the new system replaces the Private Message system with something better, called "Conversations."

With the current system, a PM is nothing more than a one time, disposable message. A conversation is similar, but it more less works like a private thread. In essence, when you start a conversation with another member, you're essentially starting your own mini forum. And when you first start it, you have the option of inviting other people, or even allowing them to invite others.

In short, it's vastly superior to the PM system and much more useful for complicated correspondence.
 

Redwolf

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Are there still plans to maybe make a new warfarehq?
 

Dr Zaius

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Sadly, no plans for WarfareHQ at the moment.

To be honest, it's extremely difficult to get people interested in much of anything these days. Most of the game sites I used to really enjoy have long since died and Facebook is busy putting the few remaining ones out of their misery. Even sites that were once fairly successful are now a distant memory.

The combination of social media, Google's insidious influence on Internet advertising, and the slow but inexorable consolidation of the game community around a few large corporate hubs has dramatically changed the landscape. For the worse, I might add.
 

Redwolf

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Myself I am pretty optimistic that the facebook group rush is a hype. People will get tired reasonably quickly of amateur moderators that are effectively chosen at random.

However, independent forums will have to do some work to get "business" back. The most important one is that people will not go through the trouble of registering and remembering just another password anymore. That's just over. Integration with the login services as available (facebook etc) is critical, and at the same time it must be convincingly guaranteed that the connection to the social site is just for login and that nobody except the forum admin will learn as much as the real name.

Trust will be critical. Trust to keep the data safe, including the real name. Trust that moderation, whatever it might be right now, will not develop at random. What I observe today when I join the forum should resemble what it will be. Trust is essential.

The assassination of the vBulletin product really hurts us, a lot. However, it looks like a more stable alternative comes along based by people that we in turn can trust (because they went through a phase of ruining a forum software and have demonstrated that they don't like it and rather start over).

I can tell you that I try to bootstrap a music forum (a sub-genre of heavy metal) and it is nothing short of brutal. I actually paused it for a moment, but I'll be back. I want to be there with a forum up when the facebook groups start bothering people.
 

Dr Zaius

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A brief update.

Testing is going well overall, however, it definitely will take a moment to get used to some of the quirks.

One good thing is that we will have a robust system for downloads which is built right in. That's nice. The new design is also pretty easy to use and intuitive, which never hurts.

On the down side, we may not be able to keep the blogs. I'm working on that, but no promises.
 

Dr Zaius

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One thing I am looking at doing during the reorganization is merging some of the old game forums into their respective parent forum as many of them have essentially been dead for a very long time. Also, I'm undecided about creating any new dedicated forums as this often proves to create a lot of work and additional complexity for the forum structure, with little in return.

So don't be surprised if you see many of the older dedicated game forums gradually merged.
 

Morbii

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Will our current private messages be retained? Or should we save them?
 

Dr Zaius

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Will our current private messages be retained? Or should we save them?
I don't think they will be saved. If there's something in there you really need, you should probably copy and save it.
 

Redwolf

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Don, I would like to clarify that I am thankful for your efforts so far, even if I sometimes sound frustrated. There is a lack of resources and the wargaming community is in big changes. I am very happy that you plan to make the changes to update the site. If I can be of help let me know.

I also have grave concerns about ACG, which once was a sister site. Did you look into what those folks are up to now? In case you don't know the print magazine is dead, and the forum is in rough shape (and also on vBulletin).
 

Dr Zaius

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Thanks.

Yeah, I heard about ACG. That's a damn shame as they were a good group of people.

As for pure wargame sites, what can I say. I've learned from bitter experience that grognards tend to be their own worst enemies. They're stubborn, confrontational, and demanding. Eventually, I just decided I had to learn not to care too much as none of it was doing me any good.

Most of the good wargame sites are long gone and they won't be coming back. I'm proud that GS has endured for as long as it has, but I do wish the grognards would not have fought me at every turn back when we were struggling to find ways to make the site self-supporting, or at a minimum keep it online. But as I said, grogs tend to be their own worst enemies. The sad part is that they seem to be aware of and understand the slow decline of the wargame community, yet they don't seem to be able to do anything about it. They don't want to change, and they don't want the sites that cater to them to make any changes that would help them to be more viable or relevant in today's gaming environment. And so I've watched as one by one most of my friends who worked on gaming and wargaming sites have been forced out and now work other jobs. Many are no longer gamers at all and I've lost contact with them, which is kind of sad.

It's almost 2016 and sites like Gamesquad.com are an anachronism. I understand that.

But you've probably noticed I'm a stubborn bastard and intend to keep plugging away at it. And to be brutally honest, these days I don't really care what anyone else thinks. I kind of think we have a unique group of gamers here and who knows, GS may buck the trend and keep going for a long, long time.
 

Dr Zaius

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On the subject of the site update, I want to get it done sooner rather than later. These days it's pretty much just me around here and so I don't have 6 months to devote to testing and tweaking before we do the update.

I'll try to make it as smooth and painless as possible, but there's going to be a few growing pains here and there. Everyone just stay calm and don't spill your beer on the floor.
 

Michael Dorosh

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A brief update.

Testing is going well overall, however, it definitely will take a moment to get used to some of the quirks.

One good thing is that we will have a robust system for downloads which is built right in. That's nice. The new design is also pretty easy to use and intuitive, which never hurts.

On the down side, we may not be able to keep the blogs. I'm working on that, but no promises.
Will be able to put links back in our signatures?
 

Rindis

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If you're willing to go to a separate system for blogs, I suggest looking at WordPress. I have some experience with the multi-site install, and it works well. Bad news is it will take some getting used to, and while the front-end is great, most people will have a learning curve dealing with the back end (actually posting). Main problem might be that they'd be too independent from each other.

As an example, note that these two blogs are actually using the exact same server install, but look very different:
http://www.rindis.com/blog
http://www.rindis.com/fox-den
 

Dr Zaius

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If you're willing to go to a separate system for blogs, I suggest looking at WordPress.
Yeah, Wordpress and Drupal are both great for blogs. BUT... I'm most definitely over having to manage two completely different systems on one server. That would leave us with the new forum software plus a Wordpress installation.

That's exactly what we have now and it's a huge pain in the ass. True, you can install a third party bridge software to link them, but the people who make those frequently disappear and leave you hanging with a site you can no longer update without breaking a whole bunch of stuff and losing half your content. Again, that's what we have now and I'm not doing that again.

This being almost 2016, you would think there would be a popular, top quality forum/blog/content management system out there, but the truth is the forum scene is still a bit of a mess in a wake of the vBulletin meltdown and the social media revolution. There are a lot of options out there, but all of them come with some pretty huge drawbacks.
 
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