(RFD) Amiga.org's future

[brianb]

Wayne wrote:

Less vaguely asked, why go to the (potentially several) hundred hours of so work required to change the site over once it no longer works?

I've seen the community that uses this web site dwindle from thousands per hour, to barely enough to qualify "hundreds" and most of those, the same people.

Well faced with those hard facts, it certainly doesn't make much sense.  (sadly)   Although I'd hate to see the site go, and appreciate the work you have put into it.   I can certainly understand your dilemma...  

If you nuked the current site, and started from scratch would there be anyway to make an archive of the original site available?  Even if not in a pretty form, but the raw data from the discussion boards?  Cause your easiest path, would be to start new (burn and rebuild) and if possible offer an archive download (even if it's some kind of HTML dump) option.  Just a thought...

[Nostalgiac]

@Wayne,

Just go for a modern system/site.
I really prefer a good site with good info/conversations above my ability to surf it slowly  :roll:

Let's face it... if you use your Amiga to surf this site... then you cannot surf any other site at the same time.

Tom UK

[mbrantley]

Wayne, I just thought I would pop into this thread to thank you for keeping the site going all this while. When I left the Amiga scene a few years ago and put my Miggies into storage, I was feeling quite low about the "future." Now that I'm back, I'm in a different place with regards to the platform and am enjoying using my Amigas without regard for any market prospects in any mainstream sense of the word. I am quite excited about the hardware that has come out lately for my old girls, and I'm enjoying the camaraderie of the people here. Thank you for the efforts you've made over the years to provide this site.

I do access this site at times using my Amigas, but for the most part I get here via a MacOS or a Windows path. Do what you have to do in the short term, and few of us really will be "cut off." Perhaps in the long term either a mobile device edition might prove to be a feasible solution for old hardware or a better browswer solution for that old hardware might turn up. Keeping the old stuff online as a searchable archive sounds like a desirable thing. Whatever you do, your consideration and work is appreciated.

[Warchicken]

My 2c here:

To be honest I haven't frequented this board a lot.
But whenever I seek for help on an Amiga issue, I know where to go.

But to be doomed to stay forever the same way is never an option.
Evolution is needed almost everywhere, and I think it's rarely a bad thing.

If there is a way to keep this database acessable, even in a crude format, keep it alive as some kind of archive and change the main site into whatever you're planning.

[Acill]

I havent posted in a long time since selling off my Amiga and Pegasos due the the high price of the later versions of MOS and AOS. However I still lurk here all the time.

Just go for drupal, I love and use it on my boards. Its not that bad to migrate from xoops, I did it, not sure how well the old version here will do, ar if it even can. The end result will be a nice looking site with lots of modern features.

[quarkx]

I don't know, I think "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". To myself, PHP and active scripting will be the death of the internet. All for "eye Candy". God knows I run enough "script blockers, add blockers and such". Just to have sites pile more and more crap on you. I left facebook for that reason alone,So much active scripting, you could choke a horse and sneak so many virus in a system, its not even funny.
There is really NOTHING wrong with the site "as is", to go through all the pain and hasel that will come just isn't worth it in my opinion.
I look forward to the day when I can get my Amiga online, so I wont have to put up with all the crap.

[chris]

aperez wrote:
There's an XOOPS 2 plugin which can bridge the amiga.org forums to NNTP quite seamlessly.

I'm absolutely for an NNTP interface to the forums - newsreaders are so much better than web forums.  There's a (read-only) vBulletin-NNTP gateway as well (it's a bit of an external hack, there may be a more direct option).


As for the browsers thing, it's only a matter of time before OS3 gets a usable CSS browser - either a new/updated port of OWB or NetSurf, the long-awaited new version of iBrowse or something completely new like Merlin.

I say upgrade amiga.org to modern standards and let the browsers take care of themselves.  It may even give potential browser programmers some extra incentive.

[punkyclown]

Wayne,

Even though I do not log in I visit the site at least 3 times a week and it is where I get all my amiga news.  It doesn't matter to me what platform you change to just as long as you keep it going.  I am a big fan, I own two A1200 and a CD32 and I am looking for me.  Keep up the great work.

Brad Hansen

[merlin]

Sadly I have not visited this site for quite some time and when I received the email asking the question, my first thought was, "Bloody hell, are they still going!"

Like most of you here, I have grown up using Amiga's and my case ended up being in a commercial sense, with a few Amiga A4000's with all the latest hardware that there was at the time, dishing out multimedia projects using Scala, for hotels and conference centres etc. I also used to help out at an Amiga Club in Lancashire, UK where we could pull in 40 odd people every week at one time. Those were the days!. But heh!, thats the past and its time to move on.

I started my computer life using C64's and then on to some of the Amiga range and I now run my own web development and hosting business now. And it's all thanks to Amigas getting me into computing in the first place.

I would bet that the majority of visitors, that do still visit the site, don't necessarily use their Amiga's to visit?. And, I would certainly take the opinion, that you should bring the site into the 21st Century and hope that the small minority of users still maintain an interest. Though retaining the information as an read-only archive, I would say is a must do!

Hell, I would even be willing to give a helping hand. Not recall anyone else offering!

[zeigerpuppy]

Glad to hear that the site is still up and running.  A lot of sysadmins got to understand how an OS ticks with Amiga, I for one.

If the main issue is PHP4 compatibility, then I would be happy to offer some server space to host amiga.org for free (assuming the traffic isn't huge) or a nominal fee if there is a lot of traffic.

I have a managed Ubuntu server running from the UK on a good pipe.  I wouldn't have time to do any admin on it but I could set up the services so that it can be administered by the existing site admin(s).

I don't want to get in the way of an upgrade... but I do come from the "if it aint broke don't fix it" school of computing.

Cheers

[SimonPPC]

Sorry for my bad english....

They are agreement with to modernize the site… Unfortunately the retrocompatibility is difficult maintenance… In bottom now the users are few who use only Amiga… It must watch to the future… Forever spirit of Amiga

[Lwanmtr]

I visit this site occaisionally (though havent actually logged in for a while)...but this is an interesting dilemma...

I love my Amiga(s), but to be honest havent fired them up in quite a while..and certainly not to browse the web..There is too much out there that it simply cannot do anymore.

My feeling is that if an upgrade is required to keep the site active, then do it...I find it difficult to believe that everyone here just uses Amiga to browse the web (though I do know some do)...

I think that to hold the site back, or even see it disapear because it can't support the classic would be a shame...best to keep it going..specially since there are fewer Amiga related sites these days...

Who knows...maybe someday someone will find a way to bring Amiga into the 3rd millenium...but until then we can continue to play with them while we browse amiga.org on our macs (cause, frankly, windows still sucks).

[helix]

I only surf with linux and winxp so I doesn't make a difference to me but thanks for asking

I would make changes that make the site easy to maintain, more secure, easy to upgrade and not worry about backward compatible because...well....that would be backwards. That's my 2 cents.

[spiffydinosaur]

Upgrade!

With new features there will be more opportunity to promote Amiga and grow the community.

My 2 cents :-)

[NoFastMem]

I remember this was discussed some time ago and even back then my opinion was that retarding the site for the sake of Amiga web browsers did nothing to spur development, and nothing to make the community look like it had moved on from '98 when people seemed to genuinely believe the Amiga was due a comeback.

Is anyone still under the impression that's going to happen? Amiga is retro, and it's freaking awesome, and if people want to browse the web on one, have at it. But it's their battle.

Now, as ever, I think that Amiga.org should serve the classic Amiga community in the same way the C64 sites do, or whatever. No-one at those sites worries whether they're going to render okay on a Spectrum.

One doesn't honour the dead by mounting the corpse in plain view.

[Klatch]

May have already been mentioned, But I have 3 websites I maintain. All 3 use php4 without the hosting company saying I have to upgrade, They did offer me an upgrade to php5 awhile back, I had no reason to bother with it.

Oh and they are linux servers