Website Revamp: Its time for change and I need feedback

[Slayer]

The Badass LAN party we had last Saturday got me thinking about the website. The PHPNuke CMS that slayfest.com runs on is getting old and out of date. I attempted to do some updates Sunday night but they failed due to the host not supporting a php extension. This made me think that its time for a website revamp. The problem is that we need to keep the users, forums, and news.

My Options so far:

Option 1:

Switch from PHPNuke to phpbb3 - This is easy and it basically is just the forums. Its just like the current forums with a few new features but it does not do the news on the homepage like nuke.

Then Recreate the CMS portion in Joomla or Wordpress - This would be much cleaner than you see now. It would be for posting LAN Parties, news, and events.

Then make it so Joomla/Wordpress communicate with phpbb3 for integration of users.

Option 2:

Switch hosts and get the updates I tried on sunday to work. get a new Nuke theme. disable old modules. get some cleaner modules and add some new features manually through mods. Overall its a ton of work switching hosts but once thats done I can easily update and change the site as i go.

Option 3:

Take slayfest.com out back and shoot it. Then Frankenstein it back to life in a new form. Basically start over. Blow-Away everything and start anew. Probably just have Slayfest be a blog where i can post LAN parties. Forums would probably not be needed but I know many of you get all your best tech support that way.

Option 4:

Keep slayfest.com domain and have it link to a free blogger account or something.

There is lots of room for problems here but I feel like doing nothing is not an option. Slayfest.com still gets a fair amount of traffic. Most of the original members that made Slayfest what it is, have moved on to other things.

Please give me some feedback. I want to know what you would like to see change and what should stay the same.

Thanks,
Slayer

[phx]

I do like how the forums are integrated into the site instead of being a separate entity like you would get with pbpbb3.

[NPC]

i say go for the phpbb3 simply for the fact that a forum is the main thing that is used on this site as for the homepage news it could be accomplished by simply having a news forum. all in all it sounds like the easiest of all the solutions

[Slayer]

Here is basically what i envision.

http://www.interlopers.net/

The Backbone of the whole site is phpbb3. The homepage news is actually taken from a phpbb3 forum. All of the comments on the news stories are in the forum. Its simple to use and elegant in design. Its all integrated and I think it would suit our needs.

The problem Is I need figure out how to do that.

Its possible that some sort of portal could be used.

[Crayon]

I believe the first option would be the best bet.

I just installed phpBB on my web server to see how it handles the database. Honestly, I think setting the front page up like the site you linked would be rather simple with some queries. Each forum has an id, the topics have an id and the posts have an id. Your query would look only in the news forum table, take the topics and the first post and just convert the other information into a "blog" format. All of the relevant information is built into phpBB; dates, titles, poster, etc. For comments you just take the post id's other than #1 because #1 is the news. Actually, this is really hard to explain in text, but it's definitely doable. Once finals are over I could code it on my site, then help you work it into Slayfest.

Glad your thinking about change, let me know if you need help.

[Slayer]

Here is what I'm leaning toward.

http://www.wp-united.com/

Its basically Wordpress with phpbb3 Integrated. It will allow us to keep all of our current forum data and basically use a single login for use on both. I have it functional but it needs some work. BTW im using XAMPP for all the testing and mods.

My other problem is I have to manage 2 themes with this method. Trying to find a couple that match without CSS conflicts will be a challenge. Im trying to stick with the grey/black/white look. I will also need a new logo and favicon.

Seeing what this combination can do makes me excited/terrified to see what will happen once the users get to play with it. Flash based video in posts and image attachments that auto thumbnail already opens up a ton of options.

@Crayon
Doing up a custom homepage with a db query would be the best thing. I just would need to figure out the right things to call and code it. At the moment I have absolutely no idea how to do that. Which is why I'm leaning toward the wordpress/phpbb3 method.

[Crayon]

@Crayon
Doing up a custom homepage with a db query would be the best thing. I just would need to figure out the right things to call and code it. At the moment I have absolutely no idea how to do that. Which is why I'm leaning toward the wordpress/phpbb3 method.

Like I said, I could probably do it for you after classes are done.

[Slayer]

I appreciate it. I know you and Impaler have a lot on your plate with finals.

I have tried a ton of theme combinations on the wordpress/phpbb3 idea and its just not working the way I planned. CSS conflicts up the ass. Font sizes, background colors, text colors and page widths are not working.

More and More I see the custom portal becoming a reality.

Since phpbb3 is a certainty at this moment lets pick out a style(theme) and design the custom page with that in mind. The links below have a demo for each style. Some of the ones I like are Bl@ck, proDark, ProNight, and sabah_siyah. The default phpbb3 theme is prosilver. If everyone could post a couple that they like we can set up a poll or something later to pick from finalists. Make sure you check some of the actual posts. Some have the user and avatar displayed on the right instead of the left like our current forum.

http://www.phpbb.com/styles/demo/3.0/?style_id=1
http://www.phpbb.com/styles/

@Crayon
I found a couple things to get us started on the custom homepage. Maybe now we dont need to write the query by hand. I will try these out tomorrow.

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... #p10626265
http://softinquiry.com/latest-posts-sta ... hpbb2.html

[Crayon]

I messed with the second links code for about an hour and I have it 80% working with my test forum. I just have to get the posts to appear like comments. It should only take me another hour or so.

Just wanted to let you know not to waste a lot of time, because I have it mostly done.

take a look

edit: comments work, prolly 95% done, just have to iron out a few things

[Slayer]

Sorry I missed your call earlier.

Awesome work. Now we just need to create a layout and header that we can integrate into the phpbb3 header. In the end I would really like it to look and function like http://www.Interlopers.net. But I'm open to ideas. Once we get that done I can start creating the content I want included on the site.

We should get together next week Tuesday or Wednesday and brainstorm site layout. NPC could be brought into the mix.

[Slayer]

After several hours learning div tags and css Impaler and I were able to put this together. We still have some work to do but here is the vision of the future.

Prototype News

Prototype Forums

[Crayon]

Hey guys. I've been slowly building the site. You can keep track of my progress here:

http://escapeplod.net/sf/

I may need motivation from time to time so I thought I would put everything online. I am basically working on the layout right now; no php yet.

[Slayer]

I'm glad to see things are taking shape. I cant wait to get things up and running. I appreciate everything your doing.

Motivation, Like in Swordfish?

[Crayon]

Made some changes that I think vastly improve the way information is displayed in the main content area. I definitely thought about Impaler saying the site was flat. I think this tackles some of that. The downside is now I am going to have to rethink the sidebar.

Refresh your browsers and let me know what you think.

[Slayer]

The rounded corners absolutely help and they are not overdone. It flows well from Latest News into the first story.

Im not quite sure if that method can work for the recent posts. As you said we need to rethink that for this setup.