Hello all,
Wow, 2015 has been a really great year, thank you all for being a part of it!
Traffic Metrics indicate that 2015 was our busiest year since inception and the early outlook for 2016 strongly suggests a continuation if not acceleration in this regard.
The last month or so has seen the highest amount of guest and spider activity I've ever seen since creating Band of Others/Fragtard so we'll work to keep the trend continuing.
Quicksilver and myself have been looking at XenForo Licenses and it's quite likely I'll be purchasing one shortly (no ETA yet).
For those not in the know, XenForo is the logical progression of where vBulletin should have been years ago. As it stands, our Forum Software is outdated, poorly configured and nowhere near optimized to my satisfaction.
With the move toward XenForo we'll have a much more integrated SEO Solution which will help spiders index our content better, faster and more accurately than before.
It will also allow us a lot more freedom in design and overall aesthetic which will equate to the following:
Once we're all satisfied with the overall usage of Xen a new test site will be created but this one will be created with your existing Forum Accounts in tact (except Password) on a migrated "test" database. We'll be keeping a close eye on this testing as this will likely tell us all we need to know about transferring the new forum to a fresh copy of the existing database.
I expect the final level of testing to take between 4 - 6 weeks.
Once we're satisfied all the bugs are worked out, Band of Others (including the Blog) will be taken offline for an as of yet undetermined period of time.
I expect the change will only take a few hours but the window I'm taking us offline for will likely be 12 hours (just in case).
You will be given plenty of notice as we draw closer to this event.
As for aesthetic, there is simply no way to integrate the features I want with our current design so the following changes will be made:
Having a Community is great to give people a base of which to operate from but is a time black hole if its content doesn't help contribute to sustainability and future growth.
The move to Xen should help in this regard.
Wow, 2015 has been a really great year, thank you all for being a part of it!
Traffic Metrics indicate that 2015 was our busiest year since inception and the early outlook for 2016 strongly suggests a continuation if not acceleration in this regard.
The last month or so has seen the highest amount of guest and spider activity I've ever seen since creating Band of Others/Fragtard so we'll work to keep the trend continuing.
Quicksilver and myself have been looking at XenForo Licenses and it's quite likely I'll be purchasing one shortly (no ETA yet).
For those not in the know, XenForo is the logical progression of where vBulletin should have been years ago. As it stands, our Forum Software is outdated, poorly configured and nowhere near optimized to my satisfaction.
With the move toward XenForo we'll have a much more integrated SEO Solution which will help spiders index our content better, faster and more accurately than before.
It will also allow us a lot more freedom in design and overall aesthetic which will equate to the following:
- Consistent integration of Aesthetic such as Navigation between XenForo (Forum) and Wordpress (Blog)
- Core SEO Optimization
- Easier integration of Social Features
- Better Sidebar features such as Latest Topics (that actually re-direct to the last post read), Profile Post discussions and much more.
- Infinite and unbound css customization possibilities without hacking raw code.
Once we're all satisfied with the overall usage of Xen a new test site will be created but this one will be created with your existing Forum Accounts in tact (except Password) on a migrated "test" database. We'll be keeping a close eye on this testing as this will likely tell us all we need to know about transferring the new forum to a fresh copy of the existing database.
I expect the final level of testing to take between 4 - 6 weeks.
Once we're satisfied all the bugs are worked out, Band of Others (including the Blog) will be taken offline for an as of yet undetermined period of time.
I expect the change will only take a few hours but the window I'm taking us offline for will likely be 12 hours (just in case).
You will be given plenty of notice as we draw closer to this event.
As for aesthetic, there is simply no way to integrate the features I want with our current design so the following changes will be made:
- Theme widening from current 1000px to 1200px design (also considering 1400px)
- Top Navigation Bar widened to include other Navigation such as League
- Header Widening and potential integration of Image Slideshow
- Removal of User CP elements above header; will be relocated below Social Icons to right of Forum as a Cog (Settings) and Letter (Private Messages).
Having a Community is great to give people a base of which to operate from but is a time black hole if its content doesn't help contribute to sustainability and future growth.
The move to Xen should help in this regard.
