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Forum software upgrade on the way

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Joe Blow

Joe Blow

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Time for an ASF update as there are big changes on the way.

Many of you will remember the last forum software upgrade in late December 2016. Well, we are in for another one of those in approximately one to two months from now.

The software we are currently using, while fine for present purposes, is now four years old and in development terms has reached EOL, or end-of-life. In other words, all active product development has ceased and third party development has now dropped off to virtually zero.

The last forum software upgrade was more of a complete change of platform rather than an upgrade. This time it will be an upgrade, but a rather big one. The developers of this software have completely rewritten it from the ground up, which means that all custom coding, and the website design generally, will need to be redone from scratch. This process commenced a little while ago and is ongoing.

The good news is that there will be quite a few new features, although I won't go into detail about those yet.

I will, however, be looking for a couple of volunteer beta testers to give me some feedback on the new ASF before it goes live. If anyone is interested in helping out with that, please send me a PM.

That's about it for now. I just wanted to set the stage for what is coming. There is more to tell, but that can wait for another day.
 
Looking for a beta tester or two to muck around with the new version of the forum software on the test site and give me some feedback.

If you'd like to assist, please send me a PM. :xyxthumbs
 
Just wanted to let everyone know that if all goes to plan, the software upgrade will be going ahead this Friday night. This upgrade will be a big one so there will probably be a substantial amount of downtime. I expect that ASF will be unreachable most of Friday night and while I hope it will be back online very early Saturday morning it will probably take most of the weekend to implement all the necessary customisations and get the site back to normal.
 
barney said:
Good luck with it Joe. Hopefully you still have time to watch the footy over the weekend!:)
Click to expand...

Thanks barney. No football for me this weekend unfortunately. This upgrade will be a big one and I need to spend a lot of time preparing for it.

ASF will look a little different after tomorrow night. It will be substantially the same but there will be obvious differences and changes in layout and functionality. I have tried to make it as familiar as possible but it will take a little getting used to.

I just hope that the improvements and added functionality will make up for any inconvenience involved in getting used to the changes.
 
Joe Blow said:
Thanks barney. No football for me this weekend unfortunately. This upgrade will be a big one and I need to spend a lot of time preparing for it.

ASF will look a little different after tomorrow night. It will be substantially the same but there will be obvious differences and changes in layout and functionality. I have tried to make it as familiar as possible but it will take a little getting used to.

I just hope that the improvements and added functionality will make up for any inconvenience involved in getting used to the changes.
Click to expand...
good luck Joe. thanks for taking an awesome effort at no cost to the forum participants.
Take care
 
Joe Blow said:
I just hope that the improvements and added functionality will make up for any inconvenience involved in getting used to the changes.
Click to expand...

M8, I reckon the fact that you are still having a crack given some of the issues you've encountered over the years is a credit to you personally.

I am super keen to see whatever changes you have come up with ... not because I'm unhappy with what we have (because it is working pretty good;)) ... but simply because, any change can sometimes give a new lease of life to whatever it is we are changing.

In my usual stupid sense of humour, I was tempted to write ... "I even changed my undies this morning, and what a difference that made!!"

But I decided not to write it because that would be just stupid:p:eek:

Anyway, good luck with it ... and bad luck about missing the footy:D
 
Thanks barney, like all change it will take some getting used to. But in time, we forget what the old was like and adapt to the new. Humans are funny like that.

Does anyone who has been here more than 10 years remember ASF from 2015, or 2009? Probably not.

I know that there will be some complaints about changes in layout, missing functionality, frustrations related to new ways of doing things etc. I will do what I can to address those concerns but it is a case of onwards and upwards. This upgrade is necessary and keeps ASF up-to-date software-wise.

The good news is that there will be new functionality that has not existed before, some of it addressing issues that have existed for some time. One the most interesting is the two-way block which will be of particular interest to those who use the ignore list. I haven't fully tested it but the gist of it is that if you ignore someone, not only will you not be able to see their posts, but they will now be unable to see yours. In the past there have been issues with people who were on ignore commenting on the posts of those who have ignored them. If this two-way block works as expected that will now be a thing of the past.

That is just one new feature. There are others. No doubt there will be some teething problems, but hopefully that will all be sorted out within a week or so after the upgrade. I'm hoping that 90% of the issues will be sorted out by Monday morning.

I'm carrying out pre-upgrade checks this afternoon and at around 7pm I'll close the forum, turn on some soothing music and pull old mate "Nes" out of the cupboard and it will all begin. :D

IMG_20200912_130446.jpg
 
Last edited:
Not long to go now folks. I'll be starting the upgrade in about 20 minutes. See you on the other side. :)
 
There's still a lot of work to be done, but I'm opening the forum up again as I need to go to sleep now.

It is still very much a work in progress that I will continue working on later today once I wake up.

I realise that everything is going to be very unfamiliar, and changes can definitely be made. But this is where we are starting from.

I will leave you to explore the upgraded software. Please feel free to post any feedback and I will reply later.

The competition page is currently not working. I will deal with this later.
 
I really like the fact that it seems i can type without my entry being mangled on my phone.this could make a huge difference and a relief for the poor members trying to read me.but no clue why the text is underlined
 

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