|
|
|
|
|
|
Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
|
Butting in a bit (sorry steve). If you guys want to do more with the rest of the RoboWars website, Im open to giving you access to more than the front page as well.
The existing site is certainly getting a bit dusty, but I havent seen anyone produce any content that looks like it is worth rebuilding the html pages for.
What Ive been reluctant to do is let someone whos only been around for a short time, or strikes me a bit of a website newbie embark on a major revamp, or installation of a CMS system without my believing that they will be in it for the long haul.
Any idiot can push the "Install Drupal/Joomla" button in Cpanel and fiddle with the templates. But understanding the backend well enough to be able to deal with PHP and SQL issues, and keep it up to date, back it up, and upgrade it when necessary to deal with the (regular) security issues that dynamic pages suffer is actually quite a lot of *work.
Additionally, the RoboWars server, some email accounts and domain are used by me for other cient-related jobs, so I cant just hand over the keys to the whole server. But I can grant access to selected folders and databases, so if anyone really wants to do more than just update the front page and is prepared to commit to making a serious go of it, I am open to suggestions..
Just thought Id throw that in there incase any of you really want to see any particular additions or updates other than just front page updates. for example, A videos page with dynamic links to youtube event and tutorial videos would be nice.
If you want, feel free to boot this message out of your thread into its own steve. didnt want to hijack the QSRC thread, just thought it was appropriate to mention here _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
|
Sat Jan 10, 2015 11:41 am |
|
|
|
|
Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
|
I did a fair bit of research into forum software a while back.
Simple Machines seems to be the nicest current piece of open-source code.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Machines_Forum
There are converters, but there are also heaps of posts from people crying because the database didnt convert properly. Given the lack of amazing features of new forums, and the customisations done to this one to cut down on spammers and stuff, it just didnt seem worth it to go to all the trouble for a ~2 to 5-post-per-day forum.
Watch our for Wordpress, its easy to get going, but its often hacked, because so many people use it. Requires regular patching to avoid the frequent vulnerabilities. http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-2337/product_id-4096/ - add in a few plugins and you will be working hard to keep on top of it.
It also tends to thrash the memory and disk cache i/o on low-end hosting packages making for poor performance. Once you start loading it up with content, you usually have to tweak some of the php config files memory limits up (past what most shared hosting deals will let you), or you will be looking at 10-15 second page load times. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=wordpress+phpbb+memory&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=J6GfVZGrHKWhmgWau4WwDg
Theres a reason Robowars has stayed static HTML for all these years
Everyone thinks that cos Cpanel has a magic "Install WordPress" button, its easy. Its easy to *Start. Its *hard to keep it going. I had a client running a hosting reseller company offer me a job to help out his clients keeping their CMS powered sites hacker free cos it became such a problem and he didnt know enough to keep things patched up properly (without busting the clients sites on occasion).
Anyway, good luck with it, Im happy to link across to you, but I'd give it 6-12 months of stress testing once the crackers scan, find and start probing your site before you can feel confident youve got it dialled in.
and keep your rolling auto-backups up to date ! _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
|
Fri Jul 10, 2015 8:48 pm |
|
|
|
|
|