Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: on April 29, 2009, 03:41:44 PM
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Good morning ladies and gents,
As most of you have heard, the site's software will -- by necessity -- need to change shortly to accommodate the mandatory upgrades to PHP.
To recap, keeping the current (7 year old) version of Xoops that we run for compatibility is no longer possible. There are core changes within PHP that would require us to minimally upgrade to a later version of Xoops which isn't HTML 3.x compatible (which is pretty much all the classic Amiga will handle).
While it's possible to go through the entire code base and change every line of code to be PHP 5 compatible, the amount of work involved is staggering compared to the returns realized (we'd still be running seven year old, unsupported software).
To that end, I've spent the last several weeks evaluating available software and have ended up leaning towards a software package called Drupal. (I'm open to any others)
What I don't know right now is whether or not I'll be able to rip out all the CSS and other display technologies that the classic Amiga can't handle, but at this point, it seems more reasonable than trying to retrofit Xoops.
Frankly, what I'm thinking right now is that the site would end up looking a little bit like a combination between bbc.co.uk, cnn.com, and even woot.com. It'll also have a few personalized features tossed in, like personal image galleries and blogs (maybe even be able to bring back AO e-mail addresses).
I know that change is scary, and I know that a lot of you will freak out by way of this message. I also know most of you aren't web programmers, and a lot of you have suggestions which seem simple.
The reason for this thread is that I don't want the site to die (I did just re-up it for a year on the 27th), but want to open a common dialog to discuss what will / can happen with the future of the site.
Please. Be open minded and constructive (as I'll try to be) and let's see what we can do to make Amiga.org better for the troubles.
BTW, this all happens around a June / July time frame.
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It is a shame these forced upgrades are shutting out the classics.
For my part,my old Mac IIci and Netscape 3 did all that I wanted/needed but was forced to newer browser/computer by website changes.
Better a website of Amiga info accessable only by PC/Mac than no website at all.
I wonder how that other guy runs a website using a C64? with all these forced upgrades?
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While there's surely NOONE here wanting a.org to die, I'm afraid there's no real way around migrating to something current (I was told Drupal is pretty nifty).
What's the perspective for the huge load of info that's been collected in the various threads over the years? Any chance it could get imported somehow into the new system? Mounted readonly in a separate branch? It would be a real shame to start from scratch again.
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recidivist wrote:
It is a shame these forced upgrades are shutting out the classics.
Let me be as clear as I can here. There is nothing specifically "shutting out the classics". The problem is, the Internet is now 15 years newer than the newest Amiga browser/compatibility and what ALL packages (Xoops included) now take for granted -- such as simple CSS -- the Amiga simply wasn't ever able to handle.
Keeping compatibility is second on my list, only second behind keeping the legacy data intact. Best case scenario is that I'm able to rip enough out of Drupal to where the classic Amigas "sort of" work.
The question however is really, "how much extra work do I want to put in for the sake of what amounts to fewer than 10 users?".
While I understand the sensitivity of making an Amiga site "usable by an Amiga", I just can't buy that almost all of you have other ways to connect to the site and that much of the fury behind a "non-Amiga-compatible Amiga site" is just Quixotic for the sake of holding on to the past.
Let me assure you that your Amigas will still work, regardless of whether or not this site uses CSS. :)
Wayne
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I do not know if anyone has talked about this idea before or not.
Can, this site be accessed by classic.amiga.org and the new site be amiga.org ?
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Zac67 wrote:
It would be a real shame to start from scratch again.
Regardless of what happens, the site's old data would be available in some format or another, even if it's just read only like ANN.lu or the Amiga Web Directory is/was.
Wayne
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trekiej wrote:
Can, this site be accessed by classic.amiga.org and the new site be amiga.org ?
Unfortunately no. The problem is caused by the fact that PHP 4 support is going away. PHP 4 support is required by the version we're running. Take it away, the site as it is now no longer works.
Wayne
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sad news. pity, as I did access this site using my Amiga 4000/2000. :-(
I'm sure there's others. Is the upgrade necessary? Why do we continue to upgrade when this site works fine the way it is? (sorry if i missed some news). if there's a choice i'd pick the less complex, simpler software that is compatible on Amiga Classics and PeeCee.
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Why not just migrate the site to the latest version of Xoops? That way you should be able to retain the look and content of the existing site better than trying to migrate the whole site is a completely new CMS model.
Drupal is a very nice CMS. It is one of the most versatile, but also one of the hardest to get to grips with. It is also mainly a framework more than offering a complete site structure out of the box, meaning the learning curve is quite high.
An alternative if you don't want to stick with Xoops is Joomla. I've been using it since the Mambo days and it is my preferred CMS over all others. And with Joomla 1.5 the CMS's core code is better than ever, more streamlined and easier to work with. And the mod community for Joomla is bigger than any other CMS on the market, commercial or open source.
One question that springs to mind. What are you going to do regarding forum software? Have you looked into how Drupal bridges the membership accounts with the forum software you are thinking of using? And also if the existing members accounts can be ported?
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terminator4 wrote:
Is the upgrade necessary?
Required by the Web host actually. PHP 4 was discontinued 3 years ago in favor of PHP 5 and the support path for PHP4 has now ended.
Why do we continue to upgrade when this site works fine the way it is? (sorry if i missed some news).
Please see above. Guess I need to build a FAQ or something, not that anyone would read it :)
Humorously, I remember years ago when I was enthusiastic about web dev and everyone used to get mad because I'd change the site regularly. Themes, upgrades, etc.. Then, about 5 years ago, the world simply surpassed what the classics could do, and no one looked back, so -- out of respect for the classic users -- I pretty much stopped adding / upgrading.
You guys were happy -- God knows why -- but now it's time when I simply can't hold off the present any longer.
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harrison wrote:
Why not just migrate the site to the latest version of Xoops? That way you should be able to retain the look and content of the existing site better than trying to migrate the whole site is a completely new CMS model.
Good question, but two reasons.
1) Xoops is now about 20 revisions above the version we use now. There is no upgrade path for software this old. Toss in that you're not just talking about Xoops but individual modules (such as newbb) which aren't supported any longer, and it's almost impossible.
2) Xoops went CSS / XHTML several years ago. This is why we stopped upgrading. Their decision to "live in the present" (to be compatible with all the current standards), makes it pretty much incompatible with Classic Amigas unless I want to spend 2 months ripping code out of it -- which means we'd be stuck with no upgrade path again
Drupal is a very nice CMS. It is one of the most versatile, but also one of the hardest to get to grips
with.
I understand the learning curve issues, but as a web dev, challenges might be fun for a change, and just what this site needs to become interesting again (from a dev standpoint). I'm already working to learn it now on another site or two.
An alternative if you don't want to stick with Xoops is Joomla. I've been using it since the Mambo days and it is my preferred CMS over all others. And with Joomla 1.5 the CMS's core code is better than ever, more streamlined and easier to work with. And the mod community for Joomla is bigger than any other CMS on the market, commercial or open source.
Joomla is my second choice, but I've only got experience with 1.0x, which wasn't usable for a site like Amiga.org is.
My loathing of the work involved in getting 1.0x to do anything at all makes it very difficult for me to embrace the 1.5 direction.
One question that springs to mind. What are you going to do regarding forum software? Have you looked into how Drupal bridges the membership accounts with the forum software you are thinking of using? And also if the existing members accounts can be ported?
I could either use Drupal's built in forums (which -- humorously -- are so basic that they'd be Amiga compatible out of the box) or I could hitch into something like VBulletin, which still has an upgrade path for our Xoops.
Matter of fact, last case scenario -- and it's a thought -- I could just scrap the world as we know it, put up VBulletin (importing users/forums/posts) and forego the news, images, and other stuff until I could write custom pages for those sections.
Wayne
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Dude you can not change the site. If I can no longer view this site on my ZX81 then I would rather the site die.
Seriosuly though I for one will be glad of a better site with more up todate features.
I used to like the fact the site was constabntly being improved.
I doubt I have ever posted to this site from an Amiga. What would be the point.
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I'm fine with the idea, but then I only access the site from PCs(Win/Linux) & MACs with modern browsers...
...i bet people would be more supportive of change if you always used the line "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.", works every time :-D
Andy
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ignore this...
I posted something without remembering that that feature was removed not too long ago
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I second that. Sooner or later I was gonna put up at least one of my Classic Amigas online but there have to be priorities. I'd say update the site to new software. This old format is getting boring too!
By the way, CSS and newer functionally is supposed to appear on the Classic anyway, sooner or later. Someone could port Netsurf. IBrowse 3.0 is supposed to happend too, at least in the next 10 years. Will we still be here within 10 years ? :-D We'll be getting on our 40s then :-o I don't know....Even more relevant to the thread, will we still be using our classics online ? I think everyone already has a PC or Mac.
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What are those "up to date" features what some people would want? I guess majority uses these forums just for messages and news items and those work fine with not-so-fancy technology too. I, for example, have never clicked any of those extra things and links on sides here :)
And as said, pretty many visitors still use Amiga browsers here. I for example have never used any other than IBrowse when posting here (from home). Not going to fire up some other non Amiga compatible computer just for some sites.
As the old wisdom says: don't change the working thing. Unless you really have to for technical reasons in this case :)
Changes for the sake of changes isn't good reason, IMHO. Someone gets bored to everything sooner or later. Content and availability is what counts on these kind of pages I think. Leave the funny blinkblink to gossip sites etc.
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But thats the point not many people do visit here from Amiga browsers, its less than 8% from memory. Thats hardly enough people to stop time for.
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EAB has a 'mobile' version that I access from my Viewty phone, and would probably work on an Amiga. (Although it is mainly just the forums)
How much work would that be to set up as well as the main site?
Think of it as a mobile phone/classic amiga version...
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pVC wrote:
As the old wisdom says: don't change the working thing. Unless you really have to for technical reasons in this case :)
Changes for the sake of changes isn't good reason, IMHO.
Erm... I think Wayne's already explained that. The host requires a PHP5 upgrade and the currently used version of Xoops is not PHP5 compatible, nor is there an upgrade path to the up-to-date version of Xoops (which isn't Classic Amiga-friendly anyway).
The option to "don't change the working thing" does not exist unless one was to move to a dedicated server running old software for no other reason than to run Amiga.org. The problem with this would be cost.
Time moves on and you can't rely on obsolete technology for ever.
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I love the annual changes in roadside stop signs,don't you?
A the previous poster said,change just for change sake is silly.
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Since the site must be redone,just keep in mind not everyone wants or needs to buy new hardware and software constantly.
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recidivist wrote:
Since the site must be redone,just keep in mind not everyone wants or needs to buy new hardware and software constantly.
:getmad: yeah like wayne will ask as all to get a core2duo to browse a.org :lol:
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Do what you have to do to make a new Amiga.org. :-)
A new Amiga.org will not stop me from visiting. My Amiga 1200 is 3 states away and I think most can get even an older 1ghz PC and install either Ubuntu/Linux and use browsers that are up to date.
Don't set me on fire guys, I am just saying its probably a good idea to finally upgrade after years. I just would hate using the Amiga 1200 on web surfing as I could not even do half the stuff thats out there now. Sure the Amiga is great for what it does and the retro feel is great, but it also might be a good idea to just have a PC to beat up on, and if it fails on you, it won't be a great loss.
Either way, we are all still Amigans! :-D
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recidivist wrote:
Since the site must be redone,just keep in mind not everyone wants or needs to buy new hardware and software constantly.
I realize when change is discussed, peoples imaginations are prone to running wild, but for the record, I'm not talking about Flash, or AJAX or anything else that would require anyone to use any specific browser or computer.
Basic HTML (as much as I can help) with a little Javascript thrown in for things like the message editors (which the Amiga seems to already handle fine, go figure).
What I don't want to promise you is that I may use basic CSS stylesheets for text / color formatting, while sticking to HTML for tables and layout. This would allow the site to look great in modern browsers, and even one or two Amiga browsers but present a much lighter "black and white" version of the site for older browsers like the Classic Amiga.
Dunno yet, no cause for twisted knickers.
Wayne
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harrison wrote:
Why not just migrate the site to the latest version of Xoops? That way you should be able to retain the look and content of the existing site better than trying to migrate the whole site is a completely new CMS model.
Drupal is a very nice CMS. It is one of the most versatile, but also one of the hardest to get to grips with. It is also mainly a framework more than offering a complete site structure out of the box, meaning the learning curve is quite high.
An alternative if you don't want to stick with Xoops is Joomla. I've been using it since the Mambo days and it is my preferred CMS over all others. And with Joomla 1.5 the CMS's core code is better than ever, more streamlined and easier to work with. And the mod community for Joomla is bigger than any other CMS on the market, commercial or open source.
I've been on other forums with Joomla and frankly it's clumsey and annoying
I don't like it
but I'm not going to have a fit over it
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Is there nobody a bit savvy with software who can make a new browser of the Amiga or else modifiy/patch the one of the current browsers ?
I'm no programmer , and i know that whoever dedicates a load of time into making a browser is probably never going to be financially compensated , but i guess if i could program i would take on the task .
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So long as the old data is accessible somehow I will be happy. Otherwise, do what you have to do.
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IMO, forget about the classics having issues with a new CMS. There can not be that many that do not have a modern system system with a modern browser to read AO. Go with the best possible CMS and leave the XOOPS in the tar pits where it belongs.
Dammy
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Hi there, I've been just lurking around for the past few years, not having had much to say until now, but since I happen to be a web developper, here's what I'd do:
Choose a CMS which allows you to create your own templates, hence giving you full control of the kind of HTML sent to the browser. Problem solved.
That way you can stick with tables if you must, sneak in some Javascript if classic Amigas can handle it (I've parted with my A1200 years ago so I can't tell :( or whatever you need - doesn't even have to be HTML at all.
Now I don't really know if Joomla, Drupal or Xoops can do that - I've resorted to writing my own CMS in order to learn PHP (and having been overwhelmed by those CMS' complexity at that time) and it runs in PHP5 and uses templates to generate any data I want, be it HTML, raw tables, XML or whatnot.
There just HAVE to be some CMSs that do exactly that (and much better than mine, anyways).
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Go for it Wayne, let your imagination go wild, and enjoy programming again !
Happy Wayne = Healthy A.Org :lol:
Oh, and have a :pint: with me for all the years of good natured banter.
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recidivist wrote:
It is a shame these forced upgrades are shutting out the classics.
Maybe it's about time for plan B (of mine)?
I posted this as an idea say in January.
Maybe the solution is (that would be a solution) to create a proxy server, filtering all classic UAs and smoothing new Xoops content (I mean classic html with strict tags and attributes).
This seems pretty simple, any xslt would do the job.
What do you think?
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Wayne, you had me at AO email address :)
All kidding aside, do what you gotta do. We don't own the site, stock in the site or anything else so don't feel to bad if not everyone gets what they want. And I think it is safe to say that we trust ya in what ever direction you go in and are eternally thankful for what you've done for all of us with this site.
ROCK ON!!!!
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Wayne wrote:
To that end, I've spent the last several weeks evaluating available software and have ended up leaning towards a software package called Drupal. (I'm open to any others)
Please consider CMSes that render i.e. for mobile phones.
Unfortunately neither WAP/WML, WAP1.2 nor WAP2/xhtml profiles match classic profiles, that's for sure. But when you can define / use many DTD/Schemas, we're all home.
EDIT* check out these:
http://drupal.org/project/mobile_tools
http://www.mobiledrupal.com/
http://drupal.org/project/hellomobile
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/
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I'd be inclined to go with something like vBulletin and post news items as forum topics, either as individual items, or as a single daily news summary post.
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Ya know, the whole "mobile war chant" while potentially valid, is kinda getting old
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I'd say as 'Dementhor' there ought to be a way to control exactly what is sent to the browser.
And like 'DiskDoctor' says it should be possible to setup a proxy.
I used an old browser by writing a perl proxy. And just strip all trendy tags. Viola it worked! ;)
And ANYWAY. All forum posts, and news items must be available in a SQL database. Can't be that hard to get them into something an Amiga browser can compute. Even if it means "Select from .. where .. and printf()".. ;)
Writing a new browser may work, but there's a risk that machines with little RAM or low Kickstart version will suffer. Many programmers seem to not consider that all that nice program code uses resources.
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Khephren wrote:
EAB has a 'mobile' version that I access from my Viewty phone, and would probably work on an Amiga. (Although it is mainly just the forums)
amigaworld has its version, too. I think xhtml mobile sites and Amiga browsers are not necessarily the same thing (as long as xhtml is actually bundled with CSS).
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Wayne wrote:
Ya know, the whole "mobile war chant" while potentially valid, is kinda getting old
:-( ??? Please clarify.
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DiskDoctor wrote:
Wayne wrote:
Ya know, the whole "mobile war chant" while potentially valid, is kinda getting old
:-( ??? Please clarify.
Do I *really* need to?
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... And just strip all trendy tags. Viola it worked!
Cool! Tell Viola she's got the job! *SCNR* ;-)
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Wayne wrote:
DiskDoctor wrote:
Wayne wrote:
Ya know, the whole "mobile war chant" while potentially valid, is kinda getting old
:-( ??? Please clarify.
Do I *really* need to?
You mean down for mobile? Or you just simple feel kindda bored?
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Wayne wrote:
DiskDoctor wrote:
Wayne wrote:
Ya know, the whole "mobile war chant" while potentially valid, is kinda getting old
:-( ??? Please clarify.
Do I *really* need to?
I don't mean to add fuel to any fire that may be brewing, but I actually applaud what few sites out there have mobile formatted web code. From my T-Mobile G1, I frequently visit Flickr, Facebook, and TUAW. I think it would be great to see Amiga.org also have mobile support, but I'm also not a programmer or web developer by any means, and have no clue how complex this would be to implement.
bhoggett wrote:
The option to "don't change the working thing" does not exist unless one was to move to a dedicated server running old software for no other reason than to run Amiga.org. The problem with this would be cost.
Just out of curiosity, what are we talking about to host the site on dedicated hardware. Is this just for the initial server equipment, or is the actual connection cost going to increase too?
:-?
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Hi Wayne,
Here's what I'd do if I were in your situation. There's an XOOPS 2 plugin which can bridge the amiga.org forums to NNTP quite seamlessly. I'd be more than happy to help you set it up. This would likely IMPROVE the experience for folks on Classic amigas, as NNTP newsreaders are extremely lightweight. If you have any thoughts, questions, etc and would prefer to contact me directly, so we can have an informed decision sans the riff-raff, feel free.
More info at http://www.opensource-cms.nl/nieuws/2009/04/26/xoops/xpnews-11-nntp-protocol-news/
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I'd have to agree, You have been a blessing to the Amiga community, we owe you, you do not owe us!
I am slightly disturbed at you saying all 10 users. Do you have a count of what browsers are visiting? Please don't tell me yes and less than 10 are Amiga. I'm here on my peecee, my Amiga is needing some network help, but I sure have visited here quite a bit with Amiga. If the site no longer even worked on Amiga I think 99% of your visitors could cope anyways.
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@Wayne
Amiga OS 4, MorphOS and AROS users all have CSS capable browsers. IIRC, there is an older version of OWB compiled for 68k machines. The source code for Netsurf and OWB are both publicly available. If these aren't good enough, the source to Singular, a CSS capable browser for the C64 is also available. If there are enough classic users who browse the web with their machines, surely someone will step up and make it happen?
I'd personally have no problem with you switching to using CSS, but then, I'm an Amiga OS 4.1 user. It is also possible to make a CSS site readable and functional on non-CSS browsers, albeit a bit ugly.
Hans
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As a software developer I think your attacking this problem from the wrong angle... Developing for the lowest common denominator will always lead to poor/mediocre results and frustrating support. In this case developing around the small minority of "classic" users will hinder the majority.
Make a *great* site with the newest and coolest tools preserving the content as best as possible. That should be goal #1.
If the site was meant to be viewed on classic hardware solutions will come forward (heck maybe even a new browser), and if not then there was probably never much interest anyway.
Besides simple/older browsers could always use something like http://mowser.com/ just give it a site and it renders a simple HTML version removing unnecessary code, CSS, images, etc. Meant for mobile users, but I'm sure a possible work around for the hardcore classic users who have to use their classic systems on the web.
I think developing for the small minority, that do have some possible workarounds, is only going to limit you in the long run and cause increased frustration. And for what?! The 5% of people who might use a classic amiga to occasionally access this site? Why bother...
My $0.02 anyway...
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Wayne wrote:
Required by the Web host actually. PHP 4 was discontinued 3 years ago in favor of PHP 5 and the support path for PHP4 has now ended.
You might have considered this already, but if there is a demand to keep the site running "as is" I can recommend using a web hosting with virtual server (or dedicated server) and just install exactly what you need as "root" (eg. PHP4), not to mention the freedom to offer other services (besides web) to the Amiga community.
There are some benefits using old software on a web server in my opinion:
* Old software usually runs faster and less memory hungry.
* Keeping a system up to date for security is needed in new systems where evil hackers are active, while the really old stuff are reasonably safe. I guess the kids just don't know how to exploit them anymore. ;)
* Old PHP sources are usually easy to edit and maintain yourself, just make changes as you see fit in a system you know everything about. Good luck doing that with the new stuff coded in an object oriented fashion.
* Needless to mention, old unsupported software doesn't require updates. Lovely to be the lazy admin, right? :)
I write this out of experience from taking care of my own web site www.eurasia.nu since 2002 (which once was a php nuke 5.6 long time ago, before I started customizing most of the PHP code).
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JOOMLA 1.5 is a major step forward over 1.0. A good reason for using it is, that it has a massive user-base and thus a big pond of answers to questions. How Joomla sites perform on Amigas, I must admit that I don't have the answer. For sure, you'll need a browser that's capable of understanding CSS so that would limit it to OWB I guess.
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Hans_ wrote:
Amiga OS 4, MorphOS and AROS users all have CSS capable browsers. IIRC, there is an older version of OWB compiled for 68k machines.
CSS capable bworser ports might come usable some day on next generation machines, but for 68k it's very unlikely. It would need browser written from scratch and we've seen how likeky that is.... not sure how the speed would be even then.
Current version of OWB for 68k is just unusable. No GUI at all, url must be given in command line, and what's worst, rendering one page can take roughly 10 minutes on overclocked 060. GUI can be improved, but for bloated not so cleverly written engines you probably can't do much. They simply aren't designed for low end cpu:s.
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I'm all for the change Wayne, if it helps the site to carry on. There are just two things that concern me:
1. Availability of the old data
2. Preservation of accounts
a. To ensure everyone keeps their own username without it being hijacked
b. To keep post counts - yes it's childish, but you know, a high post count is a badge of honour on this site ;-)
Whatever happens, thanks for doing what's best for the site.
--
moto
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Some time ago we had a requirement for a CMS for use in an intranet at work. We evaluated several and settled on using drupal. When you dig deep, drupal comes ahead of all the other free CMS offerings.
I think that through a Drupal theme it's possible to create a new feature rich site, yet still classic browser compatible. These two themes are proof to this concept, aimed at mobile phone limited browsers:
http://drupal.org/project/mobile
http://drupal.org/project/mobi
Maybe the suggestion made previously of having two sites, one for classic and another for modern browsers would be a good idea. Both could be served by drupal, but using different themes.
Just my 2cents.
Cheers!
Edwin
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pVC wrote:
Current version of OWB for 68k is just unusable. No GUI at all, url must be given in command line, and what's worst, rendering one page can take roughly 10 minutes on overclocked 060. GUI can be improved, but for bloated not so cleverly written engines you probably can't do much. They simply aren't designed for low end cpu:s.
The speed of the OS4 version has improved a lot since the 68k port was made. I wouldn't dismiss it just yet.
Hans
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Hans_ wrote:
The speed of the OS4 version has improved a lot since the 68k port was made. I wouldn't dismiss it just yet.
But even if it get 10x faster, it would be way too slow still :)
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DiskDoctor wrote:
You mean down for mobile? Or you just simple feel kindda bored?
I mean, -- with all intended respect -- it's getting kinda old to hear every other post on the subject of redoing Amiga.org to be:
"mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile.".
Yes. We know. You want a mobile site. I get it. Enough already.
PLEASE -- Let's see what we can do about saving the site itself before we concentrate solely on a feature that all of 5 people might, or might not use please?
Wayne
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@ Wayne
Wayne wrote:
DiskDoctor wrote:
You mean down for mobile? Or you just simple feel kindda bored?
I mean, -- with all intended respect -- it's getting kinda old to hear every other post on the subject of redoing Amiga.org to be:
"mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile.".
Yes. We know. You want a mobile site. I get it. Enough already.
PLEASE -- Let's see what we can do about saving the site itself before we concentrate solely on a feature that all of 5 people might, or might not use please?
Wayne
You misunderstood.
This topic is about web system's transition. Nothing more. By mentioning the m-word, I entirely meant mobile rendering for classic, not mobile rendering for mobile. Just as means to achieve classic compliance.
As I posted in Any webpage on ANY amiga browser (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=40242) thread already, I think mobile rendering is a possible out-of-the-box workaround to guarantee classic support after your planned transition.
Maybe I wrote somewhere I wished there was mobile.aorg site, but hey, I'm reading/posting on mobile sometimes and it feels great already! I want NO change thereafter (since a guy helped me out on it with my HTC phone) I do not state mobile aorg version is needed anymore. Especially on this very thread.
All I wanted to quote in my previous posts is that mobile CMS infrastructure provides a way to isolate and serve classic browsers properly.
My personal opinion is that new aorg site should indeed, support classics, for sake of preservation. But as I said, no one wants your time wasted on it.
Whatever way it is, mobile rendering, smoothing proxy or any other (including classic abandonment), it is you who decides here. You wanted opinion, you got my opinion, that's all.
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DiskDoctor wrote:
You misunderstood.
If that's the case, I apologize. I'm just perplexed over which direction to go in, and seem to have several people mentioning mobile.amiga.org repeatedly, which has my ears ringing unnecessarily. I'm not opposed to creating a site for mobile users.
I'm just pondering the bigger picture of how to best move forward to embrace the most people without angering the few zealot diehards in our midst.
E-mails I've received on the subject have seemingly been far more "screw the past, move forward".
Whatever format we decide to output aside, I just can't help thinking this site would be much more useful if EACH of you could set up your own working groups, establish friends lists, and that sort of thing to actually work on different Amiga-related projects.
... or has this community gotten to the point where everyone's more worried about saving the past than moving their hobby forward?
Wayne
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see poll.
Understand poll is not fair, nor does it indicate real choices. I'm just very interested in why you feel one way or another *if* those were your only choices.
Wayne
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That is a tough poll question, and the wording made me pick the option I didn't originally like.
But to sacrifice all this great information/knowledge in discussion boards so we can move the Amiga platform forward I had to go with preserve.
What is forward on the Amiga platform? What is to move forward? This is a niche hobby market at best, with a dwindling user base. The only "forward" I see on the horizon is the recent growth in hardware (FPGA) based Amiga emulators. There will be no killer-app, revolutionary hardware, etc. just people a little nostalgic for the good 'ol days of computing.
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brianb wrote:
What is forward on the Amiga platform? What is to move forward? This is a niche hobby market at best, with a dwindling user base.
Agreed, and a great point which brings up another. If we agree on the above, and at least I do, then you have to ask yourself "what's the point?". 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.
Rather disheartening really to think what Gateway > Escom > Amiga Inc (and Genesi helped) screwed up.
Wayne
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Time for my $0.02.
From reading so far, it seems like a given that the current archive of threads/images/etc. will be migrated to the new system, or at least preserved in a read-only capacity. That's the most important part of the transition, I think, so as long as that happens I'll be happy as a clam.
I do visit the site with IBrowse, but not exclusively, so I wouldn't be "locked out" with any CSS additions. That being said, it would be nice for the site to "function" (I.E., read and write posts) with IBrowse, even if it doesn't look good. Sometimes it's quicker to deal with IBrowse's limitations than to boot up another machine.
Regarding improvements, I would *love* to see a bounties module for OS3.x projects. I suspect that the majority of Amiga users still don't use OS4, MorphOS, or AROS, so for everyone still on classics and WinUAE (the easiest way to get into the platform), bounties might be a good way to extend the life of the classics. For me, pushing the machines farther than they were ever expected to go is part of the fun of the Amiga. It would also reaffirm community support for developers.
I'm also evaluating CMSes at the moment (albeit for a much, much smaller [non-Amiga] project), so I appreciate the challenges you're facing, Wayne. Thanks for the opportunity to chime in, and I'm looking forward to the end result.
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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...
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@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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 (http://home.kpn.nl/spijk336/browser/home.html).
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.
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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
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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!
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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
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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
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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).
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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.
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Upgrade!
With new features there will be more opportunity to promote Amiga and grow the community.
My 2 cents :-)
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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.
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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
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Wayne,
Many thanks for your hard work in maintaining this site until now.
I think the upgrade should be done as you see fit to make the site better.
Hope it goes smoother than you anticipate.
Cheers,
Al
8-)
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Since Amiga, Inc. has become bogged down to the point that I don't think any new hardware is forthcoming and the makers of OS4 are engaged in a legal mess with Amiga, Inc., I've had to satisfy myself with an Amiga emulation written by Cloanto (WinUAE), for Windows. Therefore, when it comes to browsing, I use the Windows system on my laptop computer and I run the Amiga software I want, in an emulation on the same machine. I still have my Amiga 2000, but this is a much slower machine than that afforded me by the emulator. So, for myself, I would be unaffected by an upgrade to this site. I come to this site, to see if there has been any progress in releasing a native Amiga computer or progress toward letting OS4 run on other computers (if nobody wants to make hardware for the Amiga, anymore).
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I haven't used an Amiga browser seriously since early 2004. I also stop by here from time to time just out of curiosity to read some of the discussions. It's too bad that there hasn't been much Amiga web browser development in the past few years, but that is the way that it is for now.
I guess my opinion then is to upgrade the site as you see fit.
David :-?
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Wayne. You're damn awesome! :hat: This has been an terrific place to get help for our poor orphan equipment. There's no way in hell I'm ever going to get my A3000 online, and after looking at AWeb through WinUAE, I don't see the point of going through the trouble. If reality is making you change, then do it. Its your site, and you should do what you feel is more beneficial and easier on your soul. Just archive all these threads!:-D
If someone wants a forum that the classic machines can access, let them start their own.
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ColorAtlas wrote:
I come to this site, to see if there has been any progress in releasing a native Amiga computer or progress toward letting OS4 run on other computers (if nobody wants to make hardware for the Amiga, anymore).
You're a bit out of date with your information on Amiga OS 4. New hardware is being manufactured by Acube (http://www.acube-systems.biz/). There are also various dealers such as AmigaKit (http://amigakit.com/) from which these systems can be purchased.
Hans
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If you use a package that can support mobile do you have to essentially do two separate sites, or is a mobile site simply rendered from the full site automatically?
That way you have a full normal site and a stripped down version of the site hopefully more compatible with old browsers. I see mobile's a touchy subject, but if one package easily sources both, it seems like a good alternative.
Plaz
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BTW, is there some how we can keep our karma ratings? I worked a long time for those 5 little checked boxes and I like my seven year old join date. :-P
Plaz
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Hi Wayne, sorry in a way to see the old girl go, however, if you're on the lookout for possible candidates for a new cms (I remember your comments to me about what a pig xoops was to work with), have you considered e107 (http://e107.org/)?
I've used it on a couple of sites and found it to be very robust and easy to use.
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As most of you have heard, the site's software will -- by necessity -- need to change shortly to accommodate the mandatory upgrades to PHP.
To recap, keeping the current (7 year old) version of Xoops that we run for compatibility is no longer possible. There are core changes within PHP that would require us to minimally upgrade to a later version of Xoops which isn't HTML 3.x compatible (which is pretty much all the classic Amiga will handle).
While it's possible to go through the entire code base and change every line of code to be PHP 5 compatible, the amount of work involved is staggering compared to the returns realized (we'd still be running seven year old, unsupported software).
this is probably an ignorant suggestion,
but if the problem is the dependency on PHP 4,
couldnt you just change the host? :-D
namecheap.com is very cheap hosting, about
$6 a month for modest hosting,
by default they are PHP 5, but they support
both PHP 4 and PHP 5. You can select which from
the php configuration in the controls
But maybe I misunderstood the full problem and
there are other dependency problems.
:crazy:
the current graphics of the forum are fine
and more sophisticated than the few
non Amiga forums I have used.
you never see stuff like this elsewhere:
:flame: :destroy: :roflmao:
and that guys avatar with the fly flying around
in this discussion, a bit morbid but impressive!
there isnt that level of graphics outside of the Amiga scene.
the version of Xoops may be legacy but the usage is
STILL ahead of what PC users :madashell: use
its not what you have, but what you do with what you
have that matters. PCs today are more powerful than
my uni mainframe, but the performance is worse than
the Amiga 500. eg XP can only have at most 26 partitions
as they label these A, B, C, ... Z AND you can only
have a maximum of 4 bootable partitions per drive, as even
2009 mobos dont support booting from logical partitions.
if you go beyond 26 partitions on Windows eg insert
an extra flash drive then it cannot be used until
you relabel from another labelled partition.
But the earliest Amiga HD's had an UNLIMITED number of
partitions and an UNLIMITED number of boot partitions.
On the Amiga you can do accent symbols eg é
as alt-f e but try googling for how you do that with
XP, its very complicated
(alt 0233 for é)
Alternatively if you set up your own server you
could install the necessary legacy dependencies,
but I know nothing about rolling your own server!
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whoosh777 wrote:
this is probably an ignorant suggestion,
but if the problem is the dependency on PHP 4,
couldnt you just change the host? :-D
The problem is that support for PHP 4 is ending, meaning any security issues that crop up from this point foward will not be addressed by the maintainers as they have in the past.
Do you remember what happened to this place when it was running on PHP nuke prior to the great shutdown? Do you?
whoosh777 wrote:
the version of Xoops may be legacy but the usage is
STILL ahead of what PC users :madashell: use
Care to supply a citation for that?
whoosh777 wrote:
its not what you have, but what you do with what you
have that matters. PCs today are more powerful than
my uni mainframe, but the performance is worse than
the Amiga 500. eg XP can only have at most 26 partitions
as they label these A, B, C, ... Z AND you can only
have a maximum of 4 bootable partitions per drive, as even
2009 mobos dont support booting from logical partitions.
if you go beyond 26 partitions on Windows eg insert
an extra flash drive then it cannot be used until
you relabel from another labelled partition.
But the earliest Amiga HD's had an UNLIMITED number of
partitions and an UNLIMITED number of boot partitions.
All very interesting and utterly pointless in this discussion. And quite frankly, I'll take 3 or 4 partitions on a one Terabyte drive over 50 on a 4Gb drive or whatever the limitation is now.
None of this changes the fact that the site must move on. :roll:
whoosh777 wrote:
On the Amiga you can do accent symbols eg é
as alt-f e but try googling for how you do that with
XP, its very complicated
é is Alt-Gr E. (right hand alt key.) Very complicated indeed!
whoosh777 wrote:
Alternatively if you set up your own server you
could install the necessary legacy dependencies,
but I know nothing about rolling your own server!
It's a ball ache, it's expensive, but most of all, it doesn't solve the fundamental issue that the site would as time went on become more and more vulnerable to hacking and or other mischief.
Also, and let's be clear here. Wayne has run this site for the better part of a decade now, he could have pulled the plug long ago and there were times in this little soap operas history where he could have done so justifiably. But he didn't. He catered to a tiny, fractious and in some cases downright nasty community far beyond what most people would have done, he held the line whilst most others dropped by the wayside.
Technology moves on. So suck it up.
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the_leander wrote:
Also, and let's be clear here. Wayne has run this site for the better part of a decade now, he could have pulled the plug long ago and there were times in this little soap operas history where he could have done so justifiably. But he didn't. He catered to a tiny, fractious and in some cases downright nasty community far beyond what most people would have done, he held the line whilst most others dropped by the wayside.
Technology moves on. So suck it up.
As always, well said! :mickeymouse:
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NoFastMem wrote:
One doesn't honour the dead by mounting the corpse in plain view.
That one sentence summarises the whole argument for me.
For Amiga.org to cater to Amigans it is not at all necessary that Amiga.org also caters for Amiga Browsers.
Browsing on the Amiga is not a big part of the fond memories I have of using an Amiga when they were at the leading edge, I tried it using Mosaic way back then and compared to today's Opera etc. it sucked.:-)
Let's not forget that access to Amiga.org is free and as someone else said, if you want to access it with Ibrowse or Aweb or for gods sake Mosaic then that is really your battle to get it going.
I own a few Amigas and some of them are on my network and do share my internet connection but I could count the number of times I've read Amiga.org using a Miggy with the fingers on one hand.
They are connected to the internet mostly for the sake of doing it and also to download from Aminet but for reading forums I use my PC or my Ipod.
@Wayne,
Thank you for the use of your site and for putting this topic up for discussion.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm a guest in your home and I'll go with whatever changes you wish/need to make.
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adz wrote:
the_leander wrote:
Also, and let's be clear here. Wayne has run this site for the better part of a decade now, he could have pulled the plug long ago and there were times in this little soap operas history where he could have done so justifiably. But he didn't. He catered to a tiny, fractious and in some cases downright nasty community far beyond what most people would have done, he held the line whilst most others dropped by the wayside.
Technology moves on. So suck it up.
As always, well said! :mickeymouse:
TY :-D
You know I've been thinking that when I go on a rant like that I need a image saying something like "The Leander's seal of finality" or something :lol:
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Regarding CMS solutions, although I haven't really used Drupal (just installed it once, saw it requires Register Globals to be on and uninstalled it :-) ) I've seen a friend's website getting hacked 4 times in a row despite upgrading to the latest version. Could happen to any Open Source CMS though.
Joomla is more or less ok. Some things about it I like, some things I don't.
I made a website with it a few months ago, but had to correct a few mistakes at the core to get some modules to work as they should.
Joomla's got plenty of modules, but they're always a security risk, meaning that you might have the latest version of the CMS installed, but there could be a mistake at a third party module you're using.
As far as classic Amiga compatibility is concerned, I'm writing this on a Peecee :-( , but I like to see some sites working (especially Amiga sites) when browsing with my Amiga.
Writing an old standards front end for Joomla shouldn't be much of a problem, as you can override the modules' output. This way you can write the main template with the old standards and then override the modules you use to output accordingly.
There's a drawback though when overriding the output. Whenever there's an update, you'll have to compare the files that are updated with the files that you have changed and make the required corrections.
That's even worse of course if you've made changes to the core, or some modules' internals.
There's also going to be an issue with preserving content, but there should be components for PHPBB etc, although I don't know how correctly written or secure they are.
You could also check out PHP-Nuke (I think it was called), or see if you can override Xoops' output in its latest versions, as you can with Joomla.
To conclude, I can't really decide as far as the template is concerned. There should have been some CSS support for our old browsers at least.
Sticking to the latest standards will save you a lot of work, but on the other hand, this site is about people with outdated hardware and software (that's us :-D ).
It all depends on the amount of your free time and your patience.
P.S. You could also check the site's statistics for visitors' browsers to aid in your decision, or make two templates (one conforming to the old standards and one to the new) for people to choose from, or load automatically upon browser detection.
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NoFastMem wrote:
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.
I just plainly hate these C64 comparisons when talking about web surfing. I think everyone should know how different capablilities these computers have.
Those who surf daily with Amiga (and compatibles) have 24bit gfx-cards with high resolutions etc. There simply is absolutely no point to try to say anything about C64 within this content. Amiga was there when internet made breakthrough and has always been usable with it. Nobody can seriously say that C64 has ever had the potential for any kind of serious net usage.
And what have Spectrums to do with C64? Stop that flipping trolling, please.
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NoFastMem wrote:
One doesn't honour the dead by mounting the corpse in plain view.
Just had to say, I love that.. May I quote you?
Wayne
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I would hate to see this site go, please dont let this site go. Its my home away from home. Its the only site I regularly visit apart from the daily mash.
And as moto said would prefer it if we could keep our accounts or at least our account names after whatver migration.
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@ pVC
What planet do you live on, since when have Amigas been comftable with the internet, oh wait there never.
And I think people drawing the comparsion to keeping classic amiga browsers happy with this site and trying to browse on a spectrum, amstrad, dragon32 whatever very apt.
And can hardly be called trolling.
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C'mon JJ....
There's no need for such sarcasm. We're trying to be constructive here.
Wayne
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Sorry Wayne
And sorry pVC
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Hi Wayne,
I haven't visited Amiga.org in a long time. Basically I decided Amiga wasn't going in any direction I liked anymore. So I cut back on my browsing-time by removing all Amiga-related sites from my daily bookmarks.
But having received the email asking for feedback, I wanted to at least tell you I've always enjoyed amiga.org a lot and it would be a shame to see it going away. For me it is not important to stay backward compatible since I'm not using any Amigas anymore. I actually prefer W3C compliant XHTML + CSS. I think the decision could best be made based on the visitor-statistics.
Looking at the Donat-o-Meter I had one other thought:
I don't know how your Python or Java skills are, but if you're going to switch frameworks anyhow, maybe Google App Engine would be an option for you? It could lower the hosting costs for Amiga.org and I'm sure there are plenty of CMS systems available for Python as well (I know there are for Java).
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Hi Wayne et al,
Not been here for a while. Got your email about the proposed changes and I think it is a good idea to base he site on newer technology.
I've been looking into Drupal recently and it has certainly become quite a powerful CMS and with the usabilty changes due in version 7, I don't think there is another opensource CMS as powerful or flexible as Drupal.
That being said it is more of a bare framework and needs many modules installed to add features commonly found as default on other systems. Even a WYSIWYG editor is not natively built in and has to be added as a module.
But as you are familiar with coding It should not be too difficult for you to hand code any modules that don't already exist out there.
Legacy compatibility should not really be a problem as it is rare nowadays for someone to depend on a classic Amiga for web browsing. With the advent of cheap netbooks even moreso.
There was an offer on at Tesco Superstores last week where you could buy an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz powered Acer Netbook for £129 (129.00 GBP = $191.898 USD). :-o
Anyway back to the upgrade, Go for it I say. Drupal is no lightweight. It is used by some really high profile websites so you can't go wrong on the tech front.
Keep in mind the SEO aspect of this site though. Search engines have thousands of pages indexed and breaking the URL's could affect your rankings.
It might be a good idea to leave the original site where it is for archival purposes and put the new site in a folder. You could permanently redirect any traffic from the main homepage to the new on in it's folder and all references to the old URLs would remain intact.
In time you could migrate the content to the new platform and after it is re-indexed you could scrap the old one if required.
I haven't done this myself but have spoken to someone who has tried this method on a site of his.
Good luck with the upgrade. I'll be sure to follow it's progress.
See you around.
Gadget
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As far as I can tell, this is just a website which serves its purpose. I'm not really sure what more you want it to do, other than change the date the software was updated?
A problem with a site such as this is that it contains a vast amount of useful and interesting information. I regulaly search for information and pictures. This must be retained, otherwise the last however many years of making this information would be pointless.
I don't understand what is meant by 'moving the site forward'. In the last few years, I have seen lots of things do this so called 'moving forward', and 'coming in to the 21st century', amonst others. Alot of the time, it has meant just changing things for the sake of it or to make it look as if an organisation is doing something useful when in fact all they are doing is updating the date on it.
I'm not saying that this applies to amiga.org, as I don't know what additional fuinctionality is required, but as far as I can tell, it does the job fine as it is.
I would be happy for the site to be upgraded as long as all the current content is retained, and it isn't updated to look like a 'Web 2.0' site and as long as it works on my amiga. When I say works on the amiga, I mean as long as the layout is clear and it works as a forum should do. Doesn't have to be perfect. Oh, and as long as it doesn't make excessive use of javascript as it takes forever to render such sites on my PC, never mind the amiga.
Also, I thought it had already been proven that the version of XOOPS that is in use is compatible with PHP 5?
Who cares if something is supported by manufacturers/whoever? Virtually everything I have here is either out of waranty or unsupported. I would have had a very hard, expensive and pointless time if I were to keep everything up to date. Especially considering that it works. If it didn't work then it would be another matter.
-
the_leander wrote:
whoosh777 wrote:
this is probably an ignorant suggestion,
but if the problem is the dependency on PHP 4,
couldnt you just change the host? :-D
The problem is that support for PHP 4 is ending, meaning any security issues that crop up from this point foward will not be addressed by the maintainers as they have in the past.
Do you remember what happened to this place when it was running on PHP nuke prior to the great shutdown? Do you?
I dont remember as I wasnt there!
maybe you are inventing the event!
I would prefer to have had an answer from Wayne
as he was fielding the question!
when the prime minister takes questions from the
press, the other journalists dont answer the questions
for him! as they would then clearly push their
own agenda.
I spend most of my time programming and the main
websurfing I do is for non computing things eg
following financial news.
Your argument then is not about compatibility but
about security?
the only alternative options to what has been said
then are eg to port Firefox to 68k-AmigaOS
or I dont know if CSS can be done via an IBrowse plugin
which would then need to be coded or ported.
whoosh777 wrote:
the version of Xoops may be legacy but the usage is
STILL ahead of what PC users :madashell: use
Care to supply a citation for that?
yes:
typical x86 forum thread:
http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=10108
which has more impressive graphics?
this thread or that thread,
and you can select out any other thread from
that forum
I think Amiga users often are fighting an imaginary
enemy, they imagine that Windows users are
in some sort of computer paradise.
in fact they are in a computer hell!
And they imagine that Microsoft are out to
get all competitor systems,
[/quote]
whoosh777 wrote:
its not what you have, but what you do with what you
have that matters. PCs today are more powerful than
my uni mainframe, but the performance is worse than
the Amiga 500. eg XP can only have at most 26 partitions
as they label these A, B, C, ... Z AND you can only
have a maximum of 4 bootable partitions per drive, as even
2009 mobos dont support booting from logical partitions.
if you go beyond 26 partitions on Windows eg insert
an extra flash drive then it cannot be used until
you relabel from another labelled partition.
But the earliest Amiga HD's had an UNLIMITED number of
partitions and an UNLIMITED number of boot partitions.
All very interesting and utterly pointless in this discussion. And quite frankly, I'll take 3 or 4 partitions on a one Terabyte drive over 50 on a 4Gb drive or whatever the limitation is now.
None of this changes the fact that the site must move on. :roll:
AHA, FALSE ARGUMENT,
because you can have an unlimited number of boot partitions
with a Terabyte on AmigaOS.
Also SATA allows lots of your terabyte drives, but
4 partitions on 6 SATA drives and you will run out
of volume labels!
(as the optical drive will be another label,
which then leaves just one label left)
The Windows scheme isnt scalable, the Amiga 1000 scheme
IS scalable.
Actually todays mobos allow much more hardware than
Windows can cope with.
but the AmigaOS 3.9 architecture can cope with it,
whoosh777 wrote:
On the Amiga you can do accent symbols eg é
as alt-f e but try googling for how you do that with
XP, its very complicated
é is Alt-Gr E. (right hand alt key.) Very complicated indeed!
NOPE, disinformation,
I tried just now on XP with Firefox, Internet Explorer AND Qedit,
and in all 3 cases Alt-Gr E causes the Edit menu to open,
doesnt cause any char to appear!
and I tried Alt-Gr E with capslock, with shift,
and just the lower case, in all cases it causes the
edit menu of the respective program.
Trust me that I have Googled various sites and the ONLY
XP way to do e with the accent is Alt-[number-code]
but on AmigaOS it is just Alt-f e
the only way to get more useful shortcuts to create the
char on XP is by buying commercial products.
whoosh777 wrote:
Alternatively if you set up your own server you
could install the necessary legacy dependencies,
but I know nothing about rolling your own server!
It's a ball ache, it's expensive, but most of all, it doesn't solve the fundamental issue that the site would as time went on become more and more vulnerable to hacking and or other mischief.
Also, and let's be clear here. Wayne has run this site for the better part of a decade now, he could have pulled the plug long ago and there were times in this little soap operas history where he could have done so justifiably. But he didn't. He catered to a tiny, fractious and in some cases downright nasty community far beyond what most people would have done, he held the line whilst most others dropped by the wayside.
Technology moves on. So suck it up.
well as you know all the answers maybe you should
run the site!
You say its expensive but I bet you dont know!
you could only know for sure if you have set up your
own server, please tell what the URL is for your
own server!
there was a guy on I think the Windows gcc mailing list
who had set up his own server from home.
I have done some PHP coding and it looks pretty safe to me,
if a forum is text only (including some text interpreted as smileys) I dont see what can go wrong.
all that malware could do is enter a huge amount of text
but you can counter that by using a time based quota system
of how much can be uploaded.
now if you can upload an avatar, then you could smuggle in
a virus, but that could be dealt with by avatars being
manually approved of.
hosting companies either disallow or manually verify
anything at all risky. they use an opt-in principle
rather than an opt-out. If you allow everything
and then opt-out things found to be risky then
you will continue getting security problems.
But if you disallow EVERYTHING and just opt-in
things which cannot cause problems then it is
pretty safe.
that is why Windows has hundreds of viruses and malware
as the default design is an active system (opt out),
whereas AmigaOS is by default a passive system (opt in)
on *nix it must be less of a problem, by limiting what
files can be uploaded, confining uploads to a specific
server directory, and limiting the filenames and their
protection flags.
I am very curious to know how you get past php
on a *nix server hosting account.
you could login by chance, but servers usually
will block your ip number if your login fails
a few times, but say some malware logged in,
then what?
surely you are limited to what the forum buttons allow,
eg replying,
you just have to limit how much malice can be done
with the forum features (buttons, text, uploads)
NOW if your server was Windows then yes, all hell could
break loose. But you should be using *nix for your servers,
dont even think about using Windows!
BTW using Windows FUD wont work on me as I have
3 PCs all with XP, one I built myself,
and I have installed 32 and 64 bit Linuxes,
Fedora Core and Ubuntu, and built a brand new
tower system with XP SP3 a few weeks ago for
some relatives.
thus if you make any assertions I will test them out
directly, your tricks may work on others
-
Hi Wayne, thanks for the email. I sent a reply, but thought I'd go ahead and post here, too.
It seems the epitome of the entire situation regarding Amiga--whether to move forward or stay with and keep what exists, or existed. :-)
If the true Amigan philosophy is one of innovation and cutting-edge technology, I think the answer is an elegant simplicity: drop everything and start from scratch with the latest, greatest, fastest, and most flexible. And continually update, never getting trapped or stuck again.
It reminds me of something by Hermes (Mercurius Trismegistus):
"That which abides always is unchangeable."
"That which is unchangeable is eternal."
"That which is always made is always corrupted."
"That which is made but once is never corrupted, neither becomes any other thing."
The site has run into the reality that it has to change--it is changeable. The philosophy behind Amiga (and hopefully that of Amigans) is, however, eternal :lol: because it accepts change. A site that is always updated will, of course, always be corrupted or run into errors (not that one which doesn't is immune, but the world around such a non-changing site won't be so accomodating).
Equal the world, and strive to surpass it.
I think it would be invigorating for the site (and to the users) if it was remade with the latest things. The latest PHP, Perl, CGI, scripts, apps, features, and so on.
-
Wayne wrote:
I'm just pondering the bigger picture of how to best move forward to embrace the most people without angering the few zealot diehards in our midst.
"The good of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one".
Do what you need to do, to take care of you (you, being Amiga.org). Everything else (and everyone else), is secondary.
I'm probably going to get slammed here, but who gives a sh!t about the people who are *STILL* using their Amigas for the internet, on antiquated browsers? Fact of the matter is, the internet left the Amiga (sans MorphOS and OS4) behind in the dust and b!tching and whining about it isn't going to solve anything. What browsers are out there for 68K are too slow and undeveloped, so it's not their fault they don't have adequate, browsing software.
In reality, it is. They're using antiquated hardware that just isn't suited for daily web browsing anymore. Sure, there are sites that keep to the old formats, but this is *YOUR* site and *YOU* warrant and updating of it. Yes, the donations come in to support the site. Yes, there's lots of genuine and friendly people on here, but times are changing and the first sign of ignorance is refusal to change.
I can understand how people want to use their Amigas to browse and do daily activities. I wish I had a motherboard formerly known as an "Amiga One" or a Pegasos, but I don't. They're expensive. PCs, are not. The "Zealots", as you called them, can complain all they want about not being able to browse on their Amigas, but that's their own fault. They can't use the excuse of not being able to afford a PC, 'cos netbooks are dirt cheap. They don't want to get one, 'cos they don't want to use Windoze or Linux or MacOS, who are all seen as "the enemy" (one of the reasons I don't visit other Amiga sites). :roll: These people who are willing to shell out 300$ to buy some rare, archaic device for their equally archaic machine, but refuse to spend 200$ for a tiny netbook for the purpose of browsing shouldn't be a part of the equation, sorry to say.
Fact of the matter is, it's your site. You should do with it, as you please.
BTW, how about mobile.amiga.org? ;-) *snort*
-
Itsy bitsy input: I don't browse the web on my Amigas, so it wouldn't bother me at all if a new Amiga.org "broke" Amiga-based browsers, just as it wouldn't bother me if Amiga.org broke Mosaic or early versions of Netscape or Internet Explorer.
-
Wayne wrote:
NoFastMem wrote:
One doesn't honour the dead by mounting the corpse in plain view.
Just had to say, I love that.. May I quote you?
Wayne
Sure!
@pVC
Sorry, I just think you missed the point of my argument, I wasn't comparing the C64's capabilities to the Amiga, just the approaches the relevant communities take.
-
whoosh777 wrote:
the_leander wrote:
whoosh777 wrote:
its not what you have, but what you do with what you
have that matters. PCs today are more powerful than
my uni mainframe, but the performance is worse than
the Amiga 500. eg XP can only have at most 26 partitions
as they label these A, B, C, ... Z AND you can only
have a maximum of 4 bootable partitions per drive, as even
2009 mobos dont support booting from logical partitions.
if you go beyond 26 partitions on Windows eg insert
an extra flash drive then it cannot be used until
you relabel from another labelled partition.
But the earliest Amiga HD's had an UNLIMITED number of
partitions and an UNLIMITED number of boot partitions.
All very interesting and utterly pointless in this discussion. And quite frankly, I'll take 3 or 4 partitions on a one Terabyte drive over 50 on a 4Gb drive or whatever the limitation is now.
None of this changes the fact that the site must move on. :roll:
AHA, FALSE ARGUMENT,
because you can have an unlimited number of boot partitions
with a Terabyte on AmigaOS.
Also SATA allows lots of your terabyte drives, but
4 partitions on 6 SATA drives and you will run out
of volume labels!
(as the optical drive will be another label,
which then leaves just one label left)
The Windows scheme isnt scalable, the Amiga 1000 scheme
IS scalable.
Actually todays mobos allow much more hardware than
Windows can cope with.
but the AmigaOS 3.9 architecture can cope with it,
I can't beliveve I'm weighing in on this, since it's irrelevant, but NTFS supports mounting drives without a drive letter just fine.
-
Methuselas wrote:
I'm probably going to get slammed here, but who gives a sh!t about the people who are *STILL* using their Amigas for the internet, on antiquated browsers?
Amigan or ex-amigan, if anyone, should be able to understand other peoples will to use their own systems and just not looking their own belly. I just wonder these kind of opinions here... I bet you all have been in the situation with Amiga that other platform users have said similarly to you in some point.
Fact of the matter is, the internet left the Amiga (sans MorphOS and OS4) behind in the dust and b!tching and whining about it isn't going to solve anything. What browsers are out there for 68K are too slow and undeveloped, so it's not their fault they don't have adequate, browsing software.
68k browsers might have a lots of flaws, but I can't accept when they're called slow. I use them still, because they're so darn fast compared to more modern browsers in use.
IBrowse just flies on my Pegasos (G3/600) compared to OWB on same hardware, or compared to Firefox or Opera on my Mac Mini or PC. That's why I still use it. I don't like the overhead on modern browsers even with costs in compatibility.
In reality, it is. They're using antiquated hardware that just isn't suited for daily web browsing anymore. Sure, there are sites that keep to the old formats, but this is *YOUR* site and *YOU* warrant and updating of it. Yes, the donations come in to support the site. Yes, there's lots of genuine and friendly people on here, but times are changing and the first sign of ignorance is refusal to change.
:) I've been hearing this since 1993 ;) Where to draw the line then, seems like to be very personal question, which most of people decide themselves.
I can understand how people want to use their Amigas to browse and do daily activities. I wish I had a motherboard formerly known as an "Amiga One" or a Pegasos, but I don't.
Sounds you gave one answer to yourself why you can't understand ;)
They're expensive. PCs, are not.
Well.. Pegasos was never that expensive. I got my complete setup for 300e 5 years ago and new complete Pegasos2 systems were sold at 600e.
Generally talking that isn't that expensive in my opinion. Macs cost more, original Amigas cost way more, brand PCs cost more...
But of course there's nowadays powerful enough PCs for free too. I've got couple of 2.8GHz complete PC setups for free. But that's just because of insane upgrading cycles nowadays and shows how the PC keeps its price ;)
The "Zealots", as you called them, can complain all they want about not being able to browse on their Amigas, but that's their own fault. They can't use the excuse of not being able to afford a PC, 'cos netbooks are dirt cheap. They don't want to get one, 'cos they don't want to use Windoze or Linux or MacOS, who are all seen as "the enemy" (one of the reasons I don't visit other Amiga sites). :roll: These people who are willing to shell out 300$ to buy some rare, archaic device for their equally archaic machine, but refuse to spend 200$ for a tiny netbook for the purpose of browsing shouldn't be a part of the equation, sorry to say.
I don't think that's the reason for anyone today. As said, computers can be dirt cheap nowadays (even though some people seem to be willing pay for them still for all kind of incredible reasons! (on PC side too, I mean))
It's just freedom of the choise. I have other computers than Amigas too. Mac Mini with OSX (currently), couple of PCs with W2k, XP and Linuxes. But only Pegasos and A1200 are in daily use. OSX is deadly slow for everyday use, PCs other issues. I just love the speed and usability on Pegasos for example. In theory I could use sites which won't work its browsers, but practise has shown, that I won't. Jumping around on different computers for different tasks isn't that comfortable.
Anyway, I'm not forcing my opinions to anyone. I never would have guessed myself that even more than every 10th visitor here uses still Amiga's browsers. That is surprisingly big number and I'd like people would respect that. If technical reasons make it impossible to support them, so be it, but if there's any options, I'd like them to be considered and not overlooked by own habits.
-
Hi :-)
there are modern browsers that comes to the Amiga with css and all.
that's OWB, the upcomming v3 IBrowse, and others I've forgotten the name.
at that moment owb is pretty cool and usable both on AOS4 and AOS3 see : OWB (http://strohmayer.org/owb/)
now considering Drupal, I'm using a website that's based on and I see it as heavily bugged ! with very stressing issues for the users :-(
-
NoFastMem wrote:
Wayne wrote:
NoFastMem wrote:
One doesn't honour the dead by mounting the corpse in plain view.
Just had to say, I love that.. May I quote you?
Wayne
Sure!
Some cultures actually do honour their dead by mounting the corpse in plain view :-D
But I do agree with the sentiment in this case ;-)
@pVC
Sorry, I just think you missed the point of my argument, I wasn't comparing the C64's capabilities to the Amiga, just the approaches the relevant communities take.
I'm trying to think of a suitable metaphor, but suffice to say, the internet we use today is NOT the same internet that we used back in 1997... Trying to use the Amiga for modern web browsing is akin to trying to get my dad's old Hi-Fi record player to play CDs... I can make it do it, sure, but i need to hook up a CD module to it, and then get that to output to the AUX input of the old amp... the resulting sound is muddy, dull and unacceptable to me...
I think Amigas now need to be used for what they were originally designed. No point trying to push them to do badly, what a modern machine can do well.
-
@Woosh777
Use a Mac then. I can type non-english characters with ease in my case Alt-u followed by either a, o or u to get the German umlaut... Plus OSX has no MBR partition or DOS volume name legacy as found on window.
End of discussion.
-
@ Wayne
Just for curiosity...
You're saying abandoning historical data is an option.
Say knowing that are you being backuping the current e.g. posting data anyhow into some future-accessible version? :-) Like this one particularly?
No irony here, just an idea...
-
@Wayne:
I haven't been on here in a long time, but after getting the email I thought I would stop by. And I have a simple solution... Just fire up CNET or Zeus and pipe in FIDO via the internet! :-D
Ok, seriously...I think it's time to move forward. I'm not to sure about Drupal though. I never had much luck with it. Have you looked at Drake CMS (now called Lanius CMS I think)?
I haven't owned an Amiga for some time...still miss my A3000 tower! I would love to get back into it with OS 4.x, but I can't see paying a high price for a low end system. Not to use the "M" word (and I don't mean mobile!), but maybe at this point Amiga should focus on software and get OS 4.x to run on standard PCs like Microsoft did.
-
Well I think the question is all academic
as www.amiga.org CRASHES IBrowse on WinUAE here
ALREADY! :griping: :destroy:
the only way to visit this thread for me is using either Firefox or IE on XP, or Firefox on Linux.
I think today anyone interested in 68k-AmigaOS should
use it via either WinUAE or Amiga Forever on
Windows.
as its quite a good way to control a PC
IN STARK CONTRAST the PC forum I mentioned can
be accessed just fine from IBrowse here,
http://board.flatassembler.net/index.php
maybe you should have some of what they are having?
:pint: :crazy:
-
I can't beliveve I'm weighing in on this, since it's irrelevant, but NTFS supports mounting drives without a drive letter just fine.
unfortunately the drive then vanishes from the list
of drives, eg when you click Start My-computer
and it is inaccessible from WinUAE
Now you could mount it as a folder in a different drive
with a letter, but I have 3 PCs and 3 USB2 drives,
which I move between machines, as well as 4 internal
HDs
if I start mounting drives as folders the drives will
vanish.
thus it is STILL deficient compared to a 68k-Amiga
where ALL drives APPEAR on the Workbench and there
is no nonsense of drive letters and the
RIDICULOUS idea of mounting an unlettered drive as a folder
of a lettered drive.
the way the Amiga does this is PERFECT, just right
and CANNOT be bettered
the way Windows does it is just idiotic
-
@whoosh777
How is C: (as a Windows drive letter) any different from DF0:, Workbench:, SYS:, or any other label? There are pros and cons to both ways of doing things, e.g. in Windows, I don't have to create mountlists for new devices--they just work. (You shouldn't have to under AmigaOS, either, as long as the host adapter does it for you during autoconf, but that's not always the case.)
Anyhow, I think they can both be "bettered." The notion of devices, volumes, and hierarchical file systems is so 20th century. Storage should be seamless and transparent and make data available in a way that's intuitive to users. (Or at least, the operating environment should.)
@all
Keep Amiga.org simple, regardless of the direction it takes.
-
c'mon guys, please. Let's stay on topic?
I'm really getting torn here between investing dozens of hours to learn Drupal, or the exciting prospect of "rolling our own" by way of simply writing a new site up around the existing data.
The problem is, drupal is far advanced and could be ready to go in a couple of weeks. Writing one specifically for Amiga.org sounds exciting but could potentially take months, if not years to get to where the current system is now.
Wayne
-
I'm ok with you going with drupal, and I hope you have a way to keep the old info as an archive some how.
Plaz
-
I use Linux now at home, and Mac on the road. Even though I rarely ever log in and post, I still read to keep up with current events in the community - and I miss the days of using my A3000 and A4000 to stream shoutcasts of Amiwest...but life goes on.
Amiga should have Mozilla or some similar browser by now. It doesn't - for a plethora of reasons already discussed. Personally I don't care what you switch to - I can use it. It is a shame classics won't be able to. It isn't your fault, nor is it the users fault - or even the hardware as most upgraded Amigas could run a more modern browser.
Good luck and I look forward to seeing the new site.
-
@Wayne
You could always do server-side rendering of the complex bits and return downlevel HTML to all clients.
-
One thing amiga.org does show is how little all the gumph of "web 2.0" has actually provided us with.
-
The problem is, drupal is far advanced and could be ready to go in a couple of weeks. Writing one specifically for Amiga.org sounds exciting but could potentially take months, if not years to get to where the current system is now.
I'd I were you, I'd go with Drupal since a couple of weeks is reasonable to spend on AO. Spending months/years and you just wind up annoyed, burned out, and fed up with the entire situation while Drupal will probably matured even more during that time period.
Dammy
-
Wayne wrote:
c'mon guys, please. Let's stay on topic?
I'm really getting torn here between investing dozens of hours to learn Drupal, or the exciting prospect of "rolling our own" by way of simply writing a new site up around the existing data.
The problem is, drupal is far advanced and could be ready to go in a couple of weeks. Writing one specifically for Amiga.org sounds exciting but could potentially take months, if not years to get to where the current system is now.
Wayne
well the answer is probably to go both ways,
learn an existing product right now and then when
that is up and running attempt to write your own forum
code as a background project.
as you point out the thing is to achieve data compatiblity,
a bit like using a different email client:
same emails, different email interpreter
learning ANY existing system will be guaranteed to
succeed whereas writing your own system will usually
take longer than you anticipate.
and as you point out, learning an existing product
is "dozens" of hours, whereas rolling your own forum
will be months.
but creating your own code in the long term is always
preferable and if done correctly evades
gratuitous dependency problems.
eg you could try writing your own forum
with php in a php-portable way: where you can port the
php code to future forms of php.
php is syntactically IDENTICAL to C, so portable php
code is an IDENTICAL problem to writing portable C code.
with php things like text boxes are achieved AUTOMAGICALLY by simply delegating the problem to HTML.
if you visit my website, the email box at the top
and the picture display options at the top are all
done in php. You can try sending me an email from
the email box to see php in action. or try selecting
different picture display options.
the URL is:
www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
php is server side so AmigaOS doesnt need any compatibility,
just ensure that the output html is compatible with
the AmigaOS browsers.
the server simply interprets the php and outputs
ascii which is the webpage the visiting browser
sees.
when I reply here, the webpage is
....../reply.php?forum=22&post_id=580111&...
the php script is reply.php
and the args are forum post_id ....
arg "forum" has value "22"
arg "post_id" has value "580111"
etc
the arg values are separated by &'s
because text input is usually large, they use
a more efficient way to send the args
after replying the URL is:
..../viewtopic.php?topic_id=50302&post_id=580225&order=0&viewmode=flat&pid=0&forum=22#forumpost580225
that is also a php script viewtopic.php
and the args are topic_id post_id order viewmode pid
forum
eg arg "viewmode" has value "flat"
and arg "order" has value 0
php is truly cool, and the only scripting language
to consider IMHO, eg this forum is ultimately php
the visitor CANNOT view the php script which is
reply.php or viewtopic.php
all they see is the html output when the server
executes reply.php
one other thing, dont trust anyone who says
one or another system has bugs as that is likely
to be FUD.
ask them to give the URL for the alleged bugs
before you believe such.
I can show you php I have done which is the
above URL.
the brilliant thing about php is you can synthesize
web content on the fly, whether it be an html page
or a jpeg or anything.
that is why most forums and intelligent web pages
are done with php
-
Wayne, I may be speaking of something still in its infancy, premature, or 'not there yet', BUT...Have you investigated using Carl Sassenrath's REBOL as a basis for all of the forums and its features?
Over on Carl's blog, not too long ago, they were talking about REBOL-based forums (I think the particular one was in France). Someone had written it all in REBOL.
If it's just not there yet, then it might be far more trouble than it's worth--what with the necessity of graphics creations and other unseen-by-user mechanics. But if not, it might be interesting.
I think this is the post I saw:
http://www.rebol.com/article/0384.html (http://www.rebol.com/article/0384.html)
:shrug: :-D
-
@eyeam,
I thought about REBOL long ago, and even picked it up to try, but frankly it's like the difference between Mac and a PC. I find a Mac wildly intuitive. Others don't.
In regards to REBOL, it's one of those "I don't" moments. PHP on the other hand, comes natural to me and it's something I've never had to think about much after the few starting baby steps.
Is PHP perfect? Absolutely not, but it does strike the best possible language for something that can't move forward like the Amiga and is still rabidly possible.
Just wish I could win the lottery to hire someone to do all this for me really. With realjob[tm] and time for little else, I'm just at a loss as to whether I'll even have time to do a Drupal thing or not.
Wayne
-
EyeAm wrote:
Wayne, I may be speaking of something still in its infancy, premature, or 'not there yet', BUT...Have you investigated using Carl Sassenrath's REBOL as a basis for all of the forums and its features?
Over on Carl's blog, not too long ago, they were talking about REBOL-based forums (I think the particular one was in France). Someone had written it all in REBOL.
If it's just not there yet, then it might be far more trouble than it's worth--what with the necessity of graphics creations and other unseen-by-user mechanics. But if not, it might be interesting.
I think this is the post I saw:
http://www.rebol.com/article/0384.html (http://www.rebol.com/article/0384.html)
:shrug: :-D
Sassenrath created the basis of AmigaOS,
namely exec. brilliant at OS's, yes,
he is one of my main influences, but just
on OS's not on languages.
but looking at that forum you could create something
vastly better with even just a few lines of php
the guys who wrote that forum havent heard of
recursive rectangles, they also dont seem to
know about the concept of borders. Their
text is right up against the margin.
the reason php is so good is that it is syntactically
NOT a script language but is C. it has the
syntactic power of C, FURTHERMORE
THERE IS NO LEARNING CURVE
if you know C you AUTOMAGICALLY know php
with REBOL you will have to learn
an entirely new language which is a risk.
whereas REBOL looks like a script language,
and the proof of the pudding is to look at this
forum and look at that forum.
C so far is the only proven language for creating
really complicated things. IMHO it would be
an ujustified risk to go for REBOL
(I am developing my own language to challenge C on this,
and so far am succeeding,
but right now C is THE ONLY proven language,
even C++ isnt proven)
Wayne would be better off writing his own php forum code
from scratch.
to be brutally frank you could do something a lot
better with a SMALLER php script instead
of depending on rebol
cut to the chase
-
@Wayne
So you'll be going with the latest PHP, I guess.
@whoosh777:
I knew most of that. I wasn't necessarily advocating REBOL outside of the fact Carl created Amiga OS and, only then, "IF" REBOL would be sufficient. I think I put enough "IFs" in my post about it. :-)
@both: I tried REBOL once, myself, and did not find it intuitive; and wondered where the genius being the Amiga OS was (I know, probably blasphemy--but still the truth). I still somewhat anticipate REBOL 3, to see if things change--and to see what it really is (scripting language, messaging language, CGI-like, Java-like, etc.), because I'm not convinced the creators of it really even know what it is or can adequately describe it.
In my original post in this thread, I did suggest and advocate a path--the best of the latest which is most plentiful. Probably the route taken, I'd guess, from Wayne's latest comment about PHP.
(False flame mode)
Those who can't handle risk should probably stick with the safest routes, huh? :-D
(/False flame mode)
Seriously, it's probably better to go with the latest--and that with which most of the visitors to Amiga.org would have the least trouble.
-
Here's a different one--more or less out of the box, free, open source...
http://www.eblah.com/ (http://www.eblah.com/)
-
@eyeam,
Thinking of "just forum based", the best and easiest thing for me to do by far is to just spend $180 to buy VBulletin (the BEST forum software out there, bar none) which imports Xoops by default, then put up a redirect to the new forums as I've done with both salemspectator and whyzzat.
This is a great idea (save for the cost) because all the usernames/passwords, posts, forums, etc would be instantly saved and usable. It's also more than likely 99% Amiga compatible output (very little flashy stuff).
VBulletin also has a mod which would allow me to write news, image gallery, and other pages separately as time allowed. Since we would never "mod" VBulletin itself, upgrades would constantly be made available (90% chance we would never be stranded again) and still be able to make Amiga.org in whatever direction we needed it to go.
The only downside is that it would literally be "forums only" until I (or maybe we -- given volunteers) could get the rest written.
Converting to VBulletin, writing a theme, and getting it back online really only takes about a day or two at the most. I can peacefully say that if we suddenly wake up one morning and find ourselves broken, that's the way I'd go.
At least once converted to VBulletin, converting to anything else should be a breeze should we decide to later.
Wayne
-
whoosh777 wrote:
I dont remember as I wasnt there!
maybe you are inventing the event!
The great reboot was the moment that Amiga.org went from PHPNuke to Xoops. It was done after multiple hack attacks, indeed, it was thanks to those hacks that I first learned of Goatse!
whoosh777 wrote:
Your argument then is not about compatibility but
about security?
It is both, one cannot maintain backwards compatability indefinately. At some point you have to move with the times.
whoosh777 wrote:
the only alternative options to what has been said
then are eg to port Firefox to 68k-AmigaOS
Or, you know, use a computer that's standards compliant online and keep the Amiga for things it was actually good at.
or I dont know if CSS can be done via an IBrowse plugin
which would then need to be coded or ported.
whoosh777 wrote:
yes:
typical x86 forum thread:
http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=10108
which has more impressive graphics?
this thread or that thread,
and you can select out any other thread from
that forum
Good lord. That is the sum total of your argument?
I won't even dignify that.
whoosh777 wrote:
I think Amiga users often are fighting an imaginary
enemy, they imagine that Windows users are
in some sort of computer paradise.
in fact they are in a computer hell!
And they imagine that Microsoft are out to
get all competitor systems,
whoosh777 wrote:
AHA, FALSE ARGUMENT,
because you can have an unlimited number of boot partitions
with a Terabyte on AmigaOS.
And yours is any less false? Seriously, if the sum total of your basis for keeping this site in some form of backwater is "unlimited boot partitions" then I'm sorry but you fail.
NOPE, disinformation,
I tried just now on XP with Firefox, Internet Explorer AND Qedit,
and in all 3 cases Alt-Gr E causes the Edit menu to open,
doesnt cause any char to appear!
Tried on Vista, Xandros, Elive and Zeta 1.2. (with the default en-uk keymap out of win2k pro) ALL OF THEM produce é.
Come back when you get a clue, or an unstuffed computer.
whoosh777 wrote:
well as you know all the answers maybe you should
run the site!
No interest. As I stated, most people would have walked away from this sometimes psychotic little userbase for the crap that has been thrown his way.
whoosh777 wrote:
You say its expensive but I bet you dont know!
Oooh, you want to play do you?
Ok... Run your own server. Initial outlay for a decent server... Lets say a nice little 2 way x86 system, and to save costs a linux distro. You're still looking at around £1000 including spares, ups etc.
Then the line... Even for 2Mbit SDSL you're looking at £100 a month (Eclipse business broadband) and I seriously doubt that would be even close to the needs of this site during peek hours.
Oh and of course, this assumes you live in an area where you could get a decent line in.
If you go with your own server plugged into a datacentre you are then stuck where you are now - at the mercy of the inevitable march of the upgrades.
whoosh777 wrote:
you could only know for sure if you have set up your
own server, please tell what the URL is for your
own server!
Wrong. I could only know if I actually researched it myself. I don't have to BUY it to know the costs involved!
whoosh777 wrote:
BTW using Windows FUD wont work on me as I have
3 PCs all with XP, one I built myself,
and I have installed 32 and 64 bit Linuxes,
Fedora Core and Ubuntu, and built a brand new
tower system with XP SP3 a few weeks ago for
some relatives.
I used to build PCs for a living, most recently I helped setup a winXP system with SP3 for Gadgetmaster by way of a thankyou for a nice meal, but building them on my own I was still installing XP mostly (a few win2k boxen as well). My knowledge includes Windows (1.0 - Vista), Solaris (on sparc), linux (32 and 64bit) Freebsd, openbsd, netbsd, BeOS, Zeta.
And by knowledge, I mean at least 2 years day to day usage of all of those OS's in either a desktop or server environment (with the exception of Vista, which I've had access to only for the last 12 months).
Currently I run Xandros, Elive, Zeta and Vista.
whoosh777 wrote:
thus if you make any assertions I will test them out
directly, your tricks may work on others
I tend to take the view that people generally judge others on the basis of how they themselves behave.
-
@Wayne
the best and easiest thing for me to do by far is to just spend $180 to buy VBulletin
I'm pretty sure I see a surplus on the Donat-o-Meter Stats each month....
-
That seems like a good idea, Wayne. :eureka:
I think my oldest brother once ran VBulletin, and liked it a lot. I didn't realize it was that inexpensive. Not a bad price. Kitty needs food! :lol:
-
Drupal would do the job as would some other CMS/portal systems. I would move with the times and go for modern standards compliant xhtml/css.
I'm not sure you "need" to pay for a forum. There are plenty of decent enough free ones. However if you prefer then it is your choice.
I would think the easiest option would be to move to a newer xoops though surely ?
-
buzz wrote:
Drupal would do the job as would some other CMS/portal systems. I would move with the times and go for modern standards compliant xhtml/css.
I'm not sure you "need" to pay for a forum. There are plenty of decent enough free ones. However if you prefer then it is your choice.
I would think the easiest option would be to move to a newer xoops though surely ?
I think (and Wayne, feel free to correct me on this) that xoops in terms of maintainance and configuration is, at least as Wayne has described it to me, to be a royal pain to operate. It was on that basis that I avoided it when I began my (abortive) work on DTN. I went with e107 instead and found it to be an impressive performer that was very easy to work with, the built in forum was especially good. I looked at Drupal and others but tbh I didn't much like them for various reasons.
-
e107 ? well. if xoops is worse than that i can't even imagine.
e107 is probably the worst collection of php code I have ever seen. "shortcode", mixed indentation and styles in files, almost no api documentation, poor attempts at class implementation (it is a real mix of part classes part repeated copy and paste code, for example each php handles outputting the header etc), bad database design (missing indexes, storing usernames and IDs in single field as comma separated data and using FLOOR in sql joins!) aah well i could go on. e107. AVOID.
(drupal is in a completely different league - don't go from initial visual "appearance").
-
buzz wrote:
(drupal is in a completely different league - don't go from initial visual "appearance").
At the time I needed something that offered a decent forum base with the minimum amount of setup time. Drupal might have offered something more, but the amount of work I would have had to put in to get there was far more then I was willing or able to spend.
I remember one of Waynes key critisms was that configuration was, rather then a single file, a huge collection of files dotted randomly about the place, making building a custom site a swine.
-
Tough decision. In the related Poll, I would say migrate and protect what data currently exists even if that means implementing technology that the current AmigaOS software cannot correctly handle.
The forums are most popular, I presume, so choose a new CMS platform that would be easiest in data migration from Xoops to it.
It is unfortunate that the site and AmigaOS software will not be compatible, but it seems that either the site dies or an upgrade is needed. If the Site cannot be ported to another Hosting provider with the currently utilized PHP version, then make the upgrade.
Good luck whatever you decide.
-
I know I'm too new to make any real suggestions but...
I would like to see the huge collection of knowledge here saved. Even if you need to upgrade the site please find a way to keep all of the collected information on how things got done available. Many things would have never happened for me if this site didn't exist and I'm very thankful for all that it has done. I only hope that it will be available to help more Amigians.
-
Sorry, I haven't read the complete thread, and don't know if it was suggested before, but have you considered moving to a dedicated server?
This way, you can keep whatever versions of software you'd like (assuming there are no security issues with older stuff), and have total control of upgrades, etc.
-
Another possibility (lots of work, but doable) is to use a newer Xoops version and rewrite it's parts to not use CSS. An example is our Greek community site: http://www.amigahellas.gr
The site runs on Xoops 2.x, but is pretty usable from IBrowse.
-
Ok,
Everyone who is just now joining us and skipping ahead several chapters, please go back and re-read the thread as it's already explained most of what's being suggested now by the newcomers.
I'm trying to keep the thread moving forward and productive, which is a bit difficult if we're busy covering ground already covered.
Simply "using a new Xoops" is not possible as newer versions are not Amiga compatible, AND we waited so long to upgrade that no upgrade path still exists from 2.0.7 to the newest version.
e107, or another CMS isn't desirable.
So far, the front runner ideas are to spend a hundred or so hours learning the basics of Drupal, which isn't guaranteed to be able to import everything.
(Important note, we haven't the space available on the current server to attempt it as a test)
or... a very strong and sensible second is to move to VBulletin, which would be fast, and expedient as well as almost guaranteed to be able to import everything. It would also most assuredly be about 99% classic Amiga compatible.
Of the two, Drupal shows the most promise but also the most headaches and work. VBulletin is the easy way out but would require lots of work by way of the "blank pages mod" to create the missing parts such as the unique pages we have here on the site as well as to build a new module for news posts, etc.
As a web developer, I'm strictly torn, but due to the time constraints I face on a personal level (and the fact that I CANNOT let AO interfere with realjob[tm]) I'm leaning towards vBulletin.
Wayne
-
Simply "using a new Xoops" is not possible as newer versions are not Amiga compatible, AND we waited so long to upgrade that no upgrade path still exists from 2.0.7 to the newest version.
I thought you were undecided on whether to make a html3.0 site and that is why you had a poll etc. Note that drupal isn't "amiga compatible" either. Neither is vbulletin. All would need retemplating as would a new xoops.
as for an upgrade path, you are going to need to rejig the data no matter what. You should be able to export/import most stuff easily enough with a bit of scripting.
-
@buzz,
While I appreciate the attempts to point out the obvious, please make sure you understand the whole thread before you jump in.
What I'm trying to do is to give us the best way forward while maintaining both the existing data (which imports readily into VBulletin) and the ability to use the site from the classic Amiga.
I'm fairly certain that after the first 15 years, I've earned a gimme at knowing a little bit about it, even if I can't seem to get everyone to understand the complexities involved.
The only thing I can't really put into words is my feelings of "why bother?" because -- with 15 years under my belt -- I understand that no matter what I do, or how it's done, people are going to scream, cry, and complain until they get used to the new site and its expanded features.
Change is difficult. THAT much I get.
Trust me, if I had my way, I'd not bother upgrading anything, but the web host is upgrading, and it's actually just as hard to take almost a gigabyte worth of files and data and put it on another host.
We can't afford dedicated hosting, and frankly the guys we use have been outstanding in their support and leniency towards Amiga.org (when we go over quotas). The one resolute is that I don't want to lose their support.
Wayne
-
I have read the whole thread. I was just trying to give some advice/opinions that I thought might help. This is also my field.
If you don't want to upgrade, I would take the route of either hosting and running php4 yourself.
I can't understand why it would be so hard to move. A gigabyte of data is relatively small with today's speeds. What about user mode linux or other virtual server solution? They can work out more cheaply whilst giving you total flexibility/control. I've seen some going from $20 a month ish.
for the importing business, vbulletin will import the forums but probably won't import all the extras. Having said that I am pretty sure the schema for the forums is relatively simple, and I don't think you should lock yourself into a solution based only on that. It would also be possible to upgrade to a new xoops whether or not there is an official upgrade route.
Anyway.. Just my opinion. Seems that every "avenue" is not possible for some reason or another, so I leave it to you to just make a decision. Hope it goes well.
-
I'm not a fan of vB, but I have used vB in IBrowse (on an amiga site whose owner seems to like making it as amiga-incompatible as possible) and if memory serves, it did work fine, it just didn't look pretty.
I expect it could be made to look nice if you wanted it to be.
-
@leander:
you should follow the thread and to keep on topic
You took some days to reply which suggests you went
to research the questions AFTER my post!
whoosh777 wrote:
the only alternative options to what has been said
then are eg to port Firefox to 68k-AmigaOS
Or, you know, use a computer that's standards compliant online and keep the Amiga for things it was actually good at.
that is certainly true, at the same time in order to
do that the main way is via the internet,
thus one may have to keep the Amiga up to date for
the internet at least.
whoosh777 wrote:
yes:
typical x86 forum thread:
http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=10108
which has more impressive graphics?
this thread or that thread,
and you can select out any other thread from
that forum
Good lord. That is the sum total of your argument?
I won't even dignify that.
the claim was that the forum was out of date,
well we need some examples to PROVE that,
its all very well if there are newer versions
of everything, but if the end result is less
effective SO WHAT if the underlying software is
out of date?
NOPE, disinformation,
I tried just now on XP with Firefox, Internet Explorer AND Qedit,
and in all 3 cases Alt-Gr E causes the Edit menu to open,
doesnt cause any char to appear!
Tried on Vista, Xandros, Elive and Zeta 1.2. (with the default en-uk keymap out of win2k pro) ALL OF THEM produce é.
Come back when you get a clue, or an unstuffed computer.
this is off topic, but it is you who are
INCOMPATIBLE using a UK keyboard.
THE STANDARD is the US keyboard, and unfortunately for you
what I said is TRUE for THE STANDARD, THE US KEYBOARD.
You dont seriously expect the 5.4 billion people who
dont live in the UK to use a UK keyboard???
from someone arguing about compatibility I find that
astonishing!
apologies Wayne for going off topic here,
but this guy isnt paying attention and I reference
this point in an on-topic way later, namely
that he is just researching the UK scene which
isnt the mainstream.
whoosh777 wrote:
You say its expensive but I bet you dont know!
Oooh, you want to play do you?
you took a really long time to reply,
been desperately researching the question? :lol:
Ok... Run your own server. Initial outlay for a decent server... Lets say a nice little 2 way x86 system, and to save costs a linux distro. You're still looking at around £1000 including spares, ups etc.
if the server is JUST for hosting amiga.org then
you can use a standard PC, I'm not asking to run
an entire ISP, just to run ONE website.
Then the line... Even for 2Mbit SDSL you're looking at £100 a month (Eclipse business broadband) and I seriously doubt that would be even close to the needs of this site during peek hours.
Oh and of course, this assumes you live in an area where you could get a decent line in.
If you go with your own server plugged into a datacentre you are then stuck where you are now - at the mercy of the inevitable march of the upgrades.
all that proves is there are expensive ways to do it,
and it appears you live in the UK otherwise why use
a uk-keyboard? but Wayne probably
is in the US where it is likely to be a lot cheaper,
eg all the cheap hosting tends to be in the US.
you see if you found a cheap way to do it you wouldnt
tell us as you are a no-can-do person!
whoosh777 wrote:
you could only know for sure if you have set up your
own server, please tell what the URL is for your
own server!
Wrong. I could only know if I actually researched it myself. I don't have to BUY it to know the costs involved!
not necessarily, as your research may be deficient!
these things are COMPLETELY different for each country,
I doubt you have researched the entire planet,
whoosh777 wrote:
BTW using Windows FUD wont work on me as I have
3 PCs all with XP, one I built myself,
and I have installed 32 and 64 bit Linuxes,
Fedora Core and Ubuntu, and built a brand new
tower system with XP SP3 a few weeks ago for
some relatives.
I used to build PCs for a living, most recently I helped setup a winXP system with SP3 for Gadgetmaster by way of a thankyou for a nice meal, but building them on my own I was still installing XP mostly (a few win2k boxen as well). My knowledge includes Windows (1.0 - Vista), Solaris (on sparc), linux (32 and 64bit) Freebsd, openbsd, netbsd, BeOS, Zeta.
And by knowledge, I mean at least 2 years day to day usage of all of those OS's in either a desktop or server environment (with the exception of Vista, which I've had access to only for the last 12 months).
Currently I run Xandros, Elive, Zeta and Vista.
you have installed quite a lot of junk as well! :lol:
also this is the internet and you can say anything at all!
:-D
you could have googled for "installed a lot of PCs"
and just cut and paste what someone else said!
the main rule I follow is NEVER believe a naysayer!
and you, my friend are a naysayer
as far as compatibility goes I would say the only
systems that count are XP, Vista and Ubuntu
the other stuff you mentioned may be very interesting
but its all niche stuff as far as users go.
whoosh777 wrote:
thus if you make any assertions I will test them out
directly, your tricks may work on others
I tend to take the view that people generally judge others on the basis of how they themselves behave. :lol:
no idea what that is supposed to mean.
-
Wayne wrote:
So far, the front runner ideas are to spend a hundred or so hours learning the basics of Drupal, which isn't guaranteed to be able to import everything.
(Important note, we haven't the space available on the current server to attempt it as a test)
or... a very strong and sensible second is to move to VBulletin, which would be fast, and expedient as well as almost guaranteed to be able to import everything. It would also most assuredly be about 99% classic Amiga compatible.
Of the two, Drupal shows the most promise but also the most headaches and work. VBulletin is the easy way out but would require lots of work by way of the "blank pages mod" to create the missing parts such as the unique pages we have here on the site as well as to build a new module for news posts, etc.
As a web developer, I'm strictly torn, but due to the time constraints I face on a personal level (and the fact that I CANNOT let AO interfere with realjob[tm]) I'm leaning towards vBulletin.
Wayne
well you could get a rudimentary forum up and running
directly in php in not too much time.
I would say that is a good option
php outputting html
and then gradually implement the further features.
eg to begin with just get a text only version,
PROBABLY to do the graphics you just need to reprocess
the text by replacing eg : lol : by the appropriate
html pointing to the animation.
you write some php to scan for : and then to see
if its one of the standard emoticon codes,
if it is you then substitute that with the html
otherwise you leave the : unchanged,
and you can study the Xoops source for tricks eg
study
modules/newbb/reply.php
on your server.
out of interest:
HOW MUCH CODE IS reply.php
?
I bet its not a huge amount as the donkey work
is done by the browser,
-
Right now my Amiga is dead but I would hate for the site to go. I think running an Amiga on the web is cool but the technology is just not there to keep up with the changes. I think going with the new software would be best. At one time I wanted to do a lot on my Amiga but time and money just seemed to have kept me from it. Now with my system dead I don't get on the threads much but there is so much info on here I think all the people on here would like to keep it alive. When I do get my system back up and running it will most likely be here that I look for any help on getting things set up right.
-
Whoosh. What I think Wayne doesn't need is a tutorial on how to code. Although I'm sure both he and everyone else here appeciate your endless wisdom in these matters! Cheers!
PROBABLY to do the graphics you just need to reprocess
the text by replacing eg : lol : by the appropriate
html pointing to the animation.
Masterful!
-
EyeAm wrote:
@whoosh777:
I knew most of that. I wasn't necessarily advocating REBOL outside of the fact Carl created Amiga OS and, only then, "IF" REBOL would be sufficient. I think I put enough "IFs" in my post about it. :-)
my criticism is more of the example usage of REBOL.
we need new ideas, but to evaluate an idea one needs to be shown an impressive example achieved with the idea.
eg Unix and its software were completely created in C which PROVES that C is impressive.
and because php is a rewiring of C, php automagically is impressive.
@both: I tried REBOL once, myself, and did not find it intuitive; and wondered where the genius being the Amiga OS was (I know, probably blasphemy--but still the truth).
its the same reason that a top tennis player may be no good at say badminton.
I specialised in OS's AND languages at uni, and can tell you that Sassenrath's OS work is ahead of the mainstream. (except for things like security and safety)
languages are a COMPLETELY different form of subject, and in fact languages are MORE DIFFICULT than OS's
expertise and insights in the one DONT transfer to the other!
eg if you are fluent at english you wont necessarily be fluent at french!
it is like comparing poetry to political speeches.
the former is about aesthetics, the latter about persuasion.
aesthetics can be combined with persuasion, but you need to be proficient at each to be proficient at combining.
also there are much more (in quantity) competent people in languages than in OS's. which means you can only innovate in languages with a lot of major new ideas. As there is a whole crowd of people with the same intention.
most people within languages will be implementing C, but they will be as competent as can be at that.
but there have been a lot of people over the decades working on the theoretical basis of languages, and a lot of the ideas cannot be improved on as they are theoretically perfect.
furthermore server script languages is not the way to make your mark, as scripting is always a relatively superficial phenomenon.
the really difficult stuff is application programming languages, the most successful of which is C.
eg most languages, scripting or otherwise will be written in C.
usually Modula, BASIC etc are all written in C. HiSoft BASIC for instance AFAIK is written in C!
script languages tend to be dealing with text and files, whereas app programming languages deal with memory and text + files are represented as memory entities.
script languages delegate the more difficult things to app programming binaries, eg php delegates the graphics to the browser as html.
script languages are basically special purpose languages, whereas app programming languages are general purpose and deal with the hardware directly.
you can do anything at all with C, but it isnt feasible to say create an OS with a script language. Maybe it can be done but its a bit futile!
this is why php is such a winner, as it uses an app programming syntax but rewired as a script language.
ie it is a rewiring of much more powerful and proven technology.
this forum is an example of what you can do with php
also no matter how good REBOL is, it is unlikely to outdo php by more than a narrow margin.
OS's are about asynchronicity, parallel efficiency, etc, that is where Sassenrath has very deep insights which Windows is completely ignorant of.
the AmigaOS kernel is designed around very deep insights. Windows has no insights at all and is merely work at quite a superficial level.
Windows does contain innovations but they are all on the surface eg it has good cut and paste, but that is just Desktop structure.
the Desktop is very interesting to the user but has nothing to do with the kernel!
you could implement the Windows desktop above AmigaOS if you chose to.
someone created an interesting alternative desktop for AmigaOS called Scalos supplied with AIAB.
Basically someone has created a fairly banale but standard kernel for Microsoft and MS are just dabbling above something they dont understand.
their kernel has the standard features but is HUGELY inefficient.
Windows NT, XP, Vista are all derived from the same underlying work.
Apparently Bill Gates hired the guy in charge of creating VMS and said: do the same for me, and that lead to Windows NT. And all the other Windows versions are just different
customisations of the same albatros.
Just as all versions of AmigaOS are all derived from Sassenrath's work.
and all versions of Linux are just rearranging the same 1978 Unix architecture, invented at a time when they still used punched cards!
Linux is a bit like 68k-AmigaOS 3.9, a very refined enhancement of something from long ago.
but all the versions of Windows I think are derived from the same source, whereas Linux, AROS and Morphos are reimplementations.
all the different versions of Linux are just tampering on the surface of a UFO.
they repainted the UFO, and gave it a snazzy name, and they put a good doormat.
languages couldnt be more different and are a completely serial problem, and speed is irrelevant AFA the compiler goes. (unless you use an interpreter but its difficult to achieve semantic power and speed with an interpreter except by partial compilation) Any asynchronicity and parallelism is above the language. eg double buffering is parallelism which you can do with C, but it has nothing to do with C.
and asm is a serial language, but say the CPU gets an interrupt, that is asynchronous but is ABOVE the asm.
"language" is just one level of abstraction, and a typical php script is a language pastiche of html and C.
the fragments are "language" but the totality is above the languages.
you want fast binaries, but the compiler itself could take some minutes to compile a file.
to do anything interesting with languages requires a lot of very abstract subsystems which process the semantics.
I still somewhat anticipate REBOL 3, to see if things change--and to see what it really is (scripting language, messaging language, CGI-like, Java-like, etc.), because I'm not convinced the creators of it really even know what it is or can adequately describe it.
if he has any true innovations they should be in the first version,
just as his true OS innovations were in the Amiga1000 and are innovative till today.
later versions of anything are just fine tuning and tidying up or god forbid they are globbing other peoples ideas.
eg all versions of PHP are the brilliant innovation of just reusing the C syntax.
the changes are going to be with the library calls and maybe the implementation.
I havent done any php coding for months, but IIRC later versions of php have a unified way of processing args
eg args can be sent in the URL but things like text are sent by a different arg mechanism,
with later versions of php you can deal with both arg mechanisms by the same code.
truly groundbreaking innovations would require a brand new product,
-
Thanks everyone.
Part of the problem on my part is mounting frustration over too many directions to go in, the necessity to do SOMETHING, and the lack of time on my end to make a decision and make it happen.
Even if we could go with a new version of Xoops -- which we can't without modifying the core code, which would strand us again -- I'm just not convinced that's the way to go.
This site, just like others, has become stale (it's 7 years old for pete's sake) and while some of you are fine by that, stale sites get moldy and die just like yesterday's bread.
Anyone had any experience with VBDrupal.org? Seems to be vBulletin inside a Drupal wrapper running the rest of the site, but it's Drupal 5.x though, which is a concern.
Who knows. At this point I'm just distracting myself from all of this by building up a HTML 3.0 "ish" theme for whatever comes next. The rest is just a matter of time available versus frustration level.
If I can get the mockup HTML ready, I'll post it so you guys can test it out on your Amigas.
Wayne
-
Wayne wrote:
@eyeam,
Thinking of "just forum based", the best and easiest thing for me to do by far is to just spend $180 to buy VBulletin (the BEST forum software out there, bar none) which imports Xoops by default, then put up a redirect to the new forums as I've done with both salemspectator and whyzzat.
This is a great idea (save for the cost) because all the usernames/passwords, posts, forums, etc would be instantly saved and usable. It's also more than likely 99% Amiga compatible output (very little flashy stuff).
VBulletin also has a mod which would allow me to write news, image gallery, and other pages separately as time allowed. Since we would never "mod" VBulletin itself, upgrades would constantly be made available (90% chance we would never be stranded again) and still be able to make Amiga.org in whatever direction we needed it to go.
The only downside is that it would literally be "forums only" until I (or maybe we -- given volunteers) could get the rest written.
Converting to VBulletin, writing a theme, and getting it back online really only takes about a day or two at the most. I can peacefully say that if we suddenly wake up one morning and find ourselves broken, that's the way I'd go.
At least once converted to VBulletin, converting to anything else should be a breeze should we decide to later.
Wayne
Other than having to pay for it, I can't see any problems with this route. The fact that it can already import XOOPS seems like a godsend.
-
@wayne:
At this point you probably no longer want to go with drupal 5.
Right now, for a production site, I would recommend 6.
(I'm also currently developing a site in drupal 6)
In terms of integration if you got the drupal route, you might be better off using the drupal forums, just for the level of integration you would get. There are tips on migrating stuff from xoops here
http://drupal.org/node/63796
searching around shows scripts other people have made too.
http://drupal.org/search/apachesolr_search/xoops
might be an idea to install a base drupal and test it out. I would also test vbulletin too, and decide which works best for you.
Note that if I was going to integrate vbulletin with drupal I would probably use
http://drupal.org/project/drupalvb
(integrate vbulletin into drupal and not the other way around).
however such single sign in solutions are not as pretty as using the integrated forum, and if you can get your data to drupal, then surely that would be the best option (as you do seem keen to have the flexibility of a cms like drupal)
-
@buzz,
The problem is, the forums built into drupal appear to pretty much be a joke compared to even these 7 year old forums.
see http://www.whyzzat.com/drupal for an example.
Wayne
-
Like most things with drupal, you have to build things up to how you want (although I do agree the default forums could be rather more impressive out of the box). There is an "advanced forum" module also that has a more familiar feature set out of the box (it uses the core forum and other contrib modules).
anyway, if you don't want that you can use some other forum integration module (there are a fair few available for various forum systems).
-
I just did a quick check and it seems some of the other boards I visit mainly for info and chat are also VBulletin based. Simple but effective.
http://www.badcaps.net/forum/
http://eab.abime.net/
Yabb is another package. I don't recall seeing that one mentioned, but perhaps it's too simple.
Plaz
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whoosh777 wrote:
@leander:
you should follow the thread and to keep on topic
You took some days to reply which suggests you went
to research the questions AFTER my post!
Orrr, it could be that I only visit the site once every few days... Some people, like myself have a life outside of the internet. You should try it some time.
whoosh777 wrote:
its all very well if there are newer versions
of everything, but if the end result is less
effective SO WHAT if the underlying software is
out of date?
For some things it doesn't matter, for other things, such as running a website, it does. I for one, do not wish to see this site hacked in the way its PHPNuke predecessor was.
whoosh777 wrote:
this is off topic, but it is you who are
INCOMPATIBLE using a UK keyboard.
THE STANDARD is the US keyboard,
Citation please.
whoosh777 wrote:
and unfortunately for you
what I said is TRUE for THE STANDARD, THE US KEYBOARD.
I'm sorry, but UK English is the standard I use. ALT-GR E produces é. And until you can prove that the US keyboard is "The standard" as opposed to an ISO, for instance. Then the point stands. Can't help it if America bludgeoned the English language am afraid.
whoosh777 wrote:
You dont seriously expect the 5.4 billion people who
dont live in the UK to use a UK keyboard???
Strawman.
whoosh777 wrote:
from someone arguing about compatibility I find that
astonishing!
LULWUT?
This thread was about moving off of Xoops due to compatability issues with php5, not some retarded point about international keymaps!
whoosh777 wrote:
you took a really long time to reply,
been desperately researching the question? :lol:
Hardly. I don't visit the site daily. The information was pooled together about 18 months ago when I looked into options when I first came up with the idea for a website. Things changed dramatically in the mean time. I have a life away from the internet.
You aren't nearly important enough to spend days and days looking into solutions that have no impact on me one way or another. Now if Wayne said "Hook me up with a great idea" I would do my best to honour the request.
whoosh777 wrote:
all that proves is there are expensive ways to do it,
and it appears you live in the UK otherwise why use
a uk-keyboard? but Wayne probably
is in the US where it is likely to be a lot cheaper,
eg all the cheap hosting tends to be in the US.
Appears, probably... That's you all over, isn't it chum?
whoosh777 wrote:
you see if you found a cheap way to do it you wouldnt
tell us as you are a no-can-do person!
There are cheeper options, but none of them offer anything over what Wayne has now for hosting. You suggested running it as a standalone from home. I pointed out the costs involved in that for a site this popular. This isn't some little text only pet project.
As it stands this site is close to being orphaned, your suggestions to mitigate this were and are bunk. Its underlying framework replaced with something incompatible with the currently used XOOPS and Wayne's suggestion of vBulitin is quite a nifty solution for transfering, that also has the option of being very easy to then transfer over to a different more powerful CMS in the future.
whoosh777 wrote:
not necessarily, as your research may be deficient!
these things are COMPLETELY different for each country,
I doubt you have researched the entire planet,
Don't be absurd. I don't live in each country on the entire planet. My research into possible options was based on a project I undertook for myself. I used that experience as the basis for my rebuttal. You in turn have used ad hominim attacks and strawman arguments from the moment I pointed out some faults in your plans whilst completely ignoring the points made to your original suggestions.
SDSL whilst cheeper in the US, is still a damn sight more expensive then what is offered by Wayne's current setup and introduces a great many extra issues into the bargain.
whoosh777 wrote:
also this is the internet and you can say anything at all!
:-D
I can. I don't have to though. Also, Ad hom.
whoosh777 wrote:
you could have googled for "installed a lot of PCs"
and just cut and paste what someone else said!
Then that shouldn't be too difficult to prove, should it?
Oh, and another Adhominim.
whoosh777 wrote:
the main rule I follow is NEVER believe a naysayer!
and you, my friend are a naysayer
Adhominim.
whoosh777 wrote:
as far as compatibility goes I would say the only
systems that count are XP, Vista and Ubuntu
Elive is debian based, in fact it's litterally just debian using the E17 desktop. In terms of compatability, it's closer to the original debian sources then Ubuntu is. Xandros is manky. Zeta (using the win2k pro keymap file, litterally copied out of the win2k install media) is perfectly valid as a comparason in this instance, unless you consider win2k, which many many businesses still use to be invalid, of course...
the_leander wrote:
whoosh777 wrote:
thus if you make any assertions I will test them out
directly, your tricks may work on others
I tend to take the view that people generally judge others on the basis of how they themselves behave. :lol:
no idea what that is supposed to mean.
That much has been obvious from the beginning.
-
buzz wrote:
There is an "advanced forum" module also that has a more familiar feature set out of the box (it uses the core forum and other contrib modules).
This is relevant to my interests.
Would you be able to point me to a site using the advanced forum to check out?
-
whoosh777 wrote:
you could have googled for "installed a lot of PC
I don't know how old you are but I'm pretty sure your juvenile and petty goading is as unwelcome and annoying to everyone else on this thread as it is to me.
I can vouch for Leander on many points especially the fact that he has built and configured PC's and networks for a living. Not that I see why this has to be justified to a wind-up merchant.
Now instead of being unhelpful and arrogant either contribute something useful or keep yourself dignified with silence on this thread.
-
Oh, and another Adhominim.
.....
Adhominim.
...
can you please stick to english!
I went and looked up what adhominim is,
if you are going to use Latin try and spell it correctly :pissed:
it is:
ad hominem
from your error I know you either didnt do Latin or you flunked it!
you can tell a lot about a person from their errors!
and apparently it means:
dealing with an opponent by attacking his character instead of answering his argument
I should point out to you that the romans have no reputation for philosophy, just for governance.
well I am not attacking your character as such but am expressing valid DOUBTS about what your motives and reliability COULD be. Not what your character IS but what it COULD be.
I guess there arent latin idioms for that level of subtlety, you need real time english!
those DOUBTS are fully valid for a forum thread as there is so much FUD.
and that guy vouching for you, could just be one of your aliases!
such doubts are necessary eg to avoid being SCAMMED.
you see if you give me an example for how to create your own server for 100/month then that PROVES it can be done for at LEAST 100/month, which I dont dispute!
but logically it DOESNT prove that there arent cheaper options.
this is just a TRUTH PRINCIPLE, and has nothing to do with attacking your character but is merely a pragmatic way of filtering out misinformation.
there are various scamsters on the internet who try to sell $40 web hosting as some kind of bargain, when in fact you can host a website for $4/month.
and they have an armful of achievements just like you. That isnt an ATTACK on what you are but a DEFENCE against what you could be.
it is off topic but if you can tell me a good way to do accent symbols on a US keyboard then I will accept. But with Google there is even a US french teacher who says it is via alt-number_code
http://ms.loganhocking.k12.oh.us/~madame/french/accents.htm
I think a US french teacher may be qualified to speak on the matter!
and US keyboard IS the default because that is the default when you install XP.
on topic:
There are cheeper options, but none of them offer anything over what Wayne has now for hosting. You suggested running it as a standalone from home. I pointed out the costs involved in that for a site this popular.
so you keep telling us, but WHY should anyone believe you?
that is a VALID DOUBT, your report may be completely truthful and integral, but as I say to every scamster:
YOU KNOW YOUR PRODUCT IS GOOD, BUT HOW DO I KNOW THAT?
all you can prove is there IS an expensive way or there IS a cheap way
it is very difficult to prove there ISNT an expensive way or there ISNT a cheap way.
that is a subtlety of TRUTH, and is the basis of a lot of scams.
and that subtlety is AT THE HEART of internet discussions because agenda laden people try to sabotage good decisions by asserting that an idea wont work. when all you can prove is that an idea CAN work by doing it.
Many people thought emulating or reimplementing AmigaOS was impossible, but UAE and AROS PROVED it was possible by doing it.
This isn't some little text only pet project.
but all the fancy graphics can be done with a
text only server!
the graphics is done by your browser not the server
the server doesnt need any graphics at all for
a forum to have really fantastic graphics
all a server does essentially IS text and files.
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buzz wrote:
Whoosh. What I think Wayne doesn't need is a tutorial on how to code. Although I'm sure both he and everyone else here appeciate your endless wisdom in these matters! Cheers!
and there is no wisdom in your posts?
interesting confession :lol:
what use is wisdom if you say nothing?
(answer: no use to anyone else, but could give you a competitive advantage!)
PROBABLY to do the graphics you just need to reprocess
the text by replacing eg : lol : by the appropriate
html pointing to the animation.
Masterful!
yes it is masterful, as it is the essence of implementing forum graphics!
forum graphics = { a href="graphics_file"}{/a}
(substitute {} for angle brackets)
ie just translate the question into html, dont answer the question! progress by delegating.
I said "probably" to sound less arrogant!
and my much earlier post said "this could be ignorant" that was just an insurance policy in case there was a good argument against it! I was just presenting an idea as the question was highly unclear.
some words arent meant but are there to counteract,
they are time release words.
I hope you didnt think I actually meant "probably" ??
remove the word "probably" for what I really meant,
to be quite honest it doesnt really matter which solution is used, I visit a forum for the text info. the graphical look is just icing on the cake, you shouldnt get too obsessed with it. Also archiving everything isnt necessarily a good idea as conditions change and the old answers usually arent eternal.
I often progress with coding when I recode something IGNORING the earlier code. That is also why reimplementation tends to outdo the original.
people who only use 68k can always go to an internet cafe and view the forums there! I got some Amiga info before I got an internet account from internet cafes.
I would say anyway that today 68k is all emulated-68k, real 68k is quite obsolete. If anything, making the website 68k-incompatible will FORCE people to get WinUAE or Amiga Forever which will reinvigorate their interests!
Also forums arent the only way to do things, you could also have mailing lists. eg when I need info on Ubuntu I temporarily join their mailing list, the advantage of mailing lists is you get a transect of viewers. with a forum, most people dont view most things, with a mailing list everyone views everything and you skip the emails not relevant.
the Ubuntu mailing list is an extremely efficient way to get info on any Ubuntu problem. The Amiga Community as it dwindles perhaps could be served by a mailing list.
mailing lists are more of the moment, you have to respond promptly if you have anything to say. You cannot wait 5 days and then respond. And you arent burdened by
what was said last week. Some questions will keep recurring but there is always someone who enjoys answering the same question again and again and again.
also the recurring answers to the recurring questions start to evolve.
both paradigms have advantages and disadvantages.
experts point out that some product has to be configured to be a forum, seeing that as a problem. not realising that the product is going beyond the forum concept to the concept of community, where "forum" is just one paradigm.
perhaps you should look at widening the scope beyond "forum" and study the non forum options of some of the products.
instead of trying to shoehorn some product into the current Xoops paradigm, try widening your horizons beyond the forum paradigm. Perhaps we could discuss in this thread what the other paradigms are. eg mailing list is clearly one, blog is another, tutorials another, FAQs etc.
ie it is not the product which needs shoehorning but it is YOU who need shoehorning to the product.
sometimes the problem is with the question,
the answers are problematic because you are asking the wrong questions!
-
@Wayne
Whatever you decide to do with the site is just fine with me! If the current message base can be incorporated then so much the better.
If thats not an option then maybe a searchable database of A.org messages past could be considered either as the new site emerges or as an additional feature some time in the future.
-
Whoosh.. You are a genius. Thanks. Your operating system and compiler is also pretty impressive. I printed out your website (all 50000 lines), but then my dog ate it. Can you provide it in a hardback version?
@someone else about advanced forums:
there is a demo http://socnet.shellmultimedia.com/forum
but im sure it coul dbe made prettier. but I guess it gives an idea of some of the functionality. Cheers
-
whoosh777 wrote:
Lots of justifying of his attitude complete without actually addressing the point being made
Having run a number of small and medium websites, even operating my own mp3 streaming server (with http front end) for 7 years, I am well aware of "what a server does".
Perhaps instead of implying people are lying to you when your ideas are shown up as sub optimal, you should look into why. Afterall, verifying one way or the other would take scant moments in this digital age. Stop trying to get others to do your work for you.
TL;DR
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.............\`~.*-,.....................................|,./.....\,__
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.....................................`=-,...................,%`>--==``
........................................_\..........._,-%.......`\
...................................,<`.._|_,-&``................`\
Facepalm
Because expressing how dumb that was in words just doesn't work
-
buzz wrote:
@someone else about advanced forums:
there is a demo http://socnet.shellmultimedia.com/forum
but im sure it coul dbe made prettier. but I guess it gives an idea of some of the functionality. Cheers
That was me, cheers!
I guess I'll have to re-evaluate Drupal.
-
the_leander wrote:
I guess I'll have to re-evaluate Drupal.
Hmm, that's the best forum I've seen on a Drupal site.
-
Wayne wrote:
...
There are core changes within PHP that would require us to minimally upgrade to a later version of Xoops which isn't HTML 3.x compatible (which is pretty much all the classic Amiga will handle).
...
Hmmmm - when I set up my website, I used HTML v4.0 - and it gets displayed properly with IBrowse 2.4 and AWeb II v3.4 on my A4000PPC with OS 3.9/WarpOS 16.1, as you can see at the bottom of my
Impressum (http://www.dandys-deep-impacts.homepage.t-online.de/Impressum_EN.html).
EDIT:
Fixed quoting...
-
Putting a html4 DOCTYPE in (and displaying a html4 button) doesn't mean your page is valid html4.
w3 check (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dandys-deep-impacts.homepage.t-online.de%2FImpressum_EN.html&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0)
The various styling attributes are from html3, and are deprecated for html4. Wayne is referring to HTML4+CSS
-
The fact that the latest user and post was from a spammer on that Drupal site tells me everything I need to know. I spend more time these days trying to kill spammers off of all my sites than using the site itself, and vBulletin has -- so far -- been the best at stopping them.
Wayne
-
That forum is a "test" forum to show the module functions.
As the forum is integrated into drupal, there are many ways you could restrict user accounts, such as a variety of captcha modules, as well as filters and so on. It says "nothing" about drupal or the forums ability to manage spammers.
I'm not saying you should use drupal anyway. Just answering questions. I run a few forum/cms/wiki systems, and don't have much in the way of spam problems.
-
.....Drupal is a very nice CMS. It is one of the most versatile, but also one of the hardest to get to grips with. It is also mainly a framework more than offering a complete site structure out of the box, meaning the learning curve is quite high......
I agree, I took a look at Drupal for developing my own website and was overwhelmed by the learning curve. :-o
-
I also moderate on a site that uses vbulletin.
phpWebsite Support Forums
http://phpwsforums.com
It is strictly a forum site and was originally run with phpBB. Due to hackers and spammers, phpBB was dropped for vBulletin. Setting new members to moderated has drasticlly cut down on the spamming and the users see nothing.
Since the current forum topics can be imported into vBulletin, I'd say that is the way to go. Even better if the rest of what the current site offers can be built in around that over time.
I've looked a Drupal. I've seen some rather nice looking and functioning site, also alot of dreadful ones. I attribute that to Drupal being a CMS framework and not a CMS portal package like Xoops. Basically, a new site would have to be built up within the frame work before content could be added. Alot more work but less than coding all the php for a new site.
Have you checked out phpWebsite?
http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu
Gotta pug it, being a moderator for one of the support sites and all! :-D
-
Although I have a 1200/Blizzard'040/PPC, I don't really use it anymore. (I still need to figure a way to cool the '040, since the muffin fan fell off of the processor a few years ago.) I am, however, still very interested in keeping the community going. (I'm fairly silent on most forums, prefering to browse/read them anonymously.)
I agree , in general, with the "do what needs to be done" attitude... but I'm also agreeing with those who wish to keep the "past posts & such" alive/available. (In my case it's because I'll have a lot of catching up to do on the A1200 once it *is* working again! The only way will be through forums & communities like this: at this point I'm not even sure where/what kind(s) of service(s) is/are still available for my 1200 (1000, 2000, 500... :-) !!! ) here in the USA; esp. for the Blizzard/PPC!
My point is, for those of us who are still Amiga oriented/preferrer's (despite the necessity of having to use a PC on a daily basis); esp. those like me who are out of date due to circumstance/etc., communities/forums such as this are a life-saver & fount of info! (Even outdated info can be of great use. Consinder those who must update/upgrade from software that is years out of date: such sites are often the only remaining source of such info!
So my opinion is: do what must be done (esp. if it keeps things enjoyable for you Wayne), but try to keep the past intact/accessable (in some form or another) as well, 'cause you never know just who or how it may help someone!
(Forgive any/all typpoo's & mithspelinngs... I a one-haander wit a shot reach.) :lol:
-
bhoggett wrote:
Erm... I think Wayne's already explained that. The host requires a PHP5 upgrade and the currently used version of Xoops is not PHP5 compatible, nor is there an upgrade path to the up-to-date version of Xoops (which isn't Classic Amiga-friendly anyway).
The option to "don't change the working thing" does not exist unless one was to move to a dedicated server running old software for no other reason than to run Amiga.org. The problem with this would be cost.
Why can't the server run the old software beside the new software?
Multitasking ya know.
-
I guess the host decided it didn't want to support php4 anymore. I mean it is of course quite possible to support multiple php versions. php4 offical support is being dropped (or is already), so that might be one reason.
-
buzz wrote:
php4 offical support is being dropped (or is already), so that might be one reason.
As mentioned on page 1 of this thread, yes. PHP4 was retired about 2 years ago. The support cycle for it just ended (much like Microsoft does for old Windows versions).
This means;
-- no new security patches
-- no web host worth their salt will run 4.x any longer except maybe on dedicated machines which we can't afford.
As for me, after 3 threads and about 200 posts, I'm already getting burnt out just thinking about it.
All I can imagine, and you KNOW this will happen, is that I put about 100 hours into building/converting to something new, then everyone gets pissed off because it's not this old, stale, outdated site that they're used to and run off to other sites...........
Meanwhile, the only reason this site still exists in the first place is the great people who actually donate to keep it going month to month, so when I make the required change, all of the sudden everyone gets pissed, donations die, and so goes the site.
Honestly, I just wish there were one of you (or a group who wanted to get together) who cared enough about it to just buy the site altogether and let me move on to other projects.
I did say I was getting burnt out, so sorry for the "woe is me" speech, but it's where my head's at right now.
-
Buy the site? Why does there have to be money involved?
I also think you probably could afford a dedicated machine or at least a virtual machine. I mean you ask visitors (and they contribute) to pay for the hosting anyway, so what is the problem there?
-
Well crap.
Was doing some more research on vBulletin because they're about to release 4.0 when I ran across this article;
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/blog.php?b=2360
It seems that no matter which direction we go in -- remember, we MUST migrate away from Xoops -- we either get stranded by the Amiga's lack of even basic support for web standards, or we embrace the CSS standards, as entire feature sets will be very difficult to design in and/or reach at all without it.
Drupal is the same way it seems in their 7.x development.
Before someone chimes in with "why don't you just present the data in two different ways" (which sounds easy to say but is impossible to do), almost all CMS engines use standardized templates.
Creating a site which outputs twice doubles the load on a server, and would require core modifications, which -- in essence -- means that we effectively strand ourselves from future updates, just like we're currently stranded with Xoops 2.0.7.
I also have a major problem with programs like PHPBB com which view "modules" as core code changes instead of standalone modules (like xoops does).
I'm beginning to feel like this is a lost cause.
Wayne
-
buzz wrote:
Buy the site? Why does there have to be money involved?
Well, since you're going to ask a silly question, I'll toss out an equally silly yet amazingly simple answer.
I've spent nearly 15 years of my life keeping this site running, through at least three different regime changes. As many of you have pointed out, the data here is invaluable and would be a detriment to the community if it were lost.
I fact, while I fully accept and congratulate other Amiga related sites on their efforts, I would humbly submit that Amiga.org currently represents one of the most valuable assets on the planet to both the Amiga community and -- though we are in no way officially owned by -- the owners of the trademarks.
I also submit that I could take just the domain name itself and put it on the open market for enough to pay off my truck, which is my biggest personal goal in life. I'm sure I could find some real spanish lesbians who want it {joking}
So, while you somewhat naively suggest that it's stupid of me to "have to involve money", I humbly submit to you that -- while I might end up shelving the whole damned thing -- there is massive intrinsic value to this site.
In the way of my 15 years' commitment, in the way of the massive amounts of historical data involved, in the copyrights for things such as the Amiga.org logo as well as the very domain name itself.
You might have the world's most rare Amiga prototype sitting on your shelf, NRFB and in pristine condition, but there is, and only ever will be ONE Amiga.org.
Speaking of which, I believe that what's his name spent far, far more for the Gateway Amiga mockups than I'm even asking for the lock, stock, and barrel that is this site.
I have never been anything but open about my capitalistic nature regarding this subject, but I hope that answers your question adequately.
Wayne
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I understand that the domain name holds a value, but if you were tired of the site, you could still hold onto the name/domain, and yet donate the site to a group of people willing to continue running it.
I guess I have a different attitude to these things than you.
I didn't think my question was silly. I myself have put almost 12 years into the exotica site, and I want no financial reward for that, because it was done for the interest and enjoyment of the subject matter (and the enjoyment the visitors get).
Likewise, I question your comments on affordability of a machine where you could continue to run the site as is. You say not changing it would be the best course, but don't seem to be willing to move the hosting. It almost sounds like your are intentionally obstructing yourself!
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buzz wrote:
It almost sounds like your are intentionally obstructing yourself!
Perhaps, but having gone through -- I forget how many but -- the sheer number of web hosts in our past who've been a detriment to the site, because they wanted to charge for every little thing, or would arbitrarily kill the site when some leecher drained the bandwidth..
Or -- my favorite -- the one that Amiga Inc used to pay for which conveniently kept "getting their lines cut" every month around the time they were to be paid.
In the 5 years we've used planetxoops, we've had a few outages, sure, but they've NEVER just shut off hosting or charged us extra for every little thing. They also have provided amazing support every time something has gone wrong.
The problem is the PHP 4 issue, and as I said, there is no host worth their beans who will eternally run outdated, unsupported software. I wouldn't want to use a web host who does, as it shows a lack of caring on their part.
Wayne
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But if you had your own virtual server/dedicated you would support your own software, so that part isn't relevant. You could run an ancient php4 for ever if you wanted.
Having a good host is great, but I think loyalty only goes so far. I wouldn't let the loyalty make the decision on what route to take when it comes to the site. If you really would prefer not to switch the site software, then don't.
I use dedicated servers. For example for exotica, I run php with fastcgi via NGINX webserver instead of apache+mod_php. Shared hosting is far too restrictive to do this kind of thing.
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buzz wrote:
I understand that the domain name holds a value, but if you were tired of the site, you could still hold onto the name/domain, and yet donate the site to a group of people willing to continue running it.
I guess I have a different attitude to these things than you.
You're right. It's just a different viewpoint.
From mine, I'm not aware of anyone in the community who's willing/able to run the site the way it needs to be, and if there were, it seems to me that they could find a way to invest in their decision to do so.
Indeed however, outside of selling the domain name to lesbians, separating the data/site from the domain name would be like pulling the HEMI out of a 2009 Dodge Challenger and expecting each to be worth more than the sum total of individual parts.
Amiga.org is a package, and would be transferred only as such to an individual with the willingness to invest in the idea as I have done for 15 years now.
Besides, I know some people who spend more per year on Amiga kitsch than I'll take for the site, but no one seems to be willing to make a reasonable offer.
Wayne
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buzz wrote:
I guess the host decided it didn't want to support php4 anymore. I mean it is of course quite possible to support multiple php versions. php4 offical support is being dropped (or is already), so that might be one reason.
PHP 4 is going away. I've been seeing host switching over starting a couple years ago. Only the last hold out are now just upgrading to or dropping PHP4 for PHP 5. Hell, I was reading about PHP6 yesturday.
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Wayne wrote:
buzz wrote:
php4 offical support is being dropped (or is already), so that might be one reason.
As mentioned on page 1 of this thread, yes. PHP4 was retired about 2 years ago. The support cycle for it just ended (much like Microsoft does for old Windows versions).
This means;
-- no new security patches
-- no web host worth their salt will run 4.x any longer except maybe on dedicated machines which we can't afford.
what is the reason that the current Xoops code wont run on say php 5?
php is just C, EXCEPT for maybe the php library
the non library stuff should run on any version of php
or are the problems at Xoops?
whats to stop you reimplementing the current Xoops from
the inside: eg reimplement reply.php to run with the
current Xoops, then reimplement viewtopic.php etc
eventually you will have your own reimplementation of
the current Xoops which will run on any version of php
(if you go about it sensibly)
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Whoosh,
I'm not interested in making changes to the core code of xoops 2.3.x, REGARDLESS of possibilities, because that strands us right back where we are now. Every single update would have to be rewritten, to work, and that's not anything I'm interested in at all, under any circumstances.
I'm not interested in making changes to the current code base because that gets us nothing in the end, except to continue this site as is, which is to say stuck.
Wayne
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buzz wrote:
Your operating system and compiler is also pretty impressive. I printed out your website (all 50000 lines), but then my dog ate it. Can you provide it in a hardback version?
I was trying not to talk about my projects, but considering that I am right at the lattermost stages of the compiler project and virtually every other thing said relates to one or another language it is inevitable that I say things from that frame of reference.
talking about REBOL to me is like throwing a lit match at kerosene!
As both those projects are done completely from scratch you can see my perspective is that of rolling my own stuff.
the moment you use ready made things you get caught up in the dependency trap. Most of the dependency problems are pointless because if people just made everything forwards comatible then your earlier version of Xoops would run with a later version of php etc.
thankfully C and x86 are TOTALLY forwards compatible,
why cant everyone else be?
at least at the recompilation level.
offtopic from here onwards:
Ironically the Ghostscript project page shouldnt be printed out but you should navigate using the links starting at the contents table near the top. Dont even think about trying to read it from start to finish as that isnt the idea!
I continue maintaining that project for two reasons:
first I use the code myself and secondly there is a lot of interest in the project. Also I have created some really useful extensions to the project which arent in the mainstream Ghostscript.
If you are interested in the other 2 projects, email me.
The general idea of those 2 projects is to return to 1986 for the Amiga and 1978 for Unix, and create a brand new system like they did but with the hardware of today and the insights of the last 2 or 3 decades respectively.
ie instead of reimplementing, evolve.
basically return in a space ship and say nah! look and learn!
eg some fundamental changes today are that the hardware is multiprocessor and 64 bit. 64 bit memory, 64 bit registers,
64 bit drives. And that today x86 hardware is standardised and cheap. In the early days hardware was COMPLETELY UNSTANDARDISED, they even had computers which used 9-bit bytes which is why C uses octal escape codes.
when Unix was created, punched cards were cutting edge data storage, and when AmigaOS was created its floppy disks were regarded as fast and 1MB was big for a PC.
in fact Bill Gates famously said nobody would ever need more than 640K (IIRC). My god have times changed.
AmigaOS was designed to some extent around the technology of the time.
both Unix and AmigaOS are astonishing and visionary systems, both are still ahead of their time, and are COMPULSORY for anyone who wants to understand computers. (Unix in the form of Linux) Anyone who hasnt used BOTH is computer illiterate! If you have to choose between the two then choose AmigaOS as its a much richer structuring of a computer. Unix is generally structureless in some sense.
if you use both you will then realise that the Amiga shell is an evolution (towards usability) of the Unix shell.
68k itself was an evolution of x86, learning from the errors of x86. But x86 has won by globbing evolution.
Unix was created by creating a brand new language C, then coding the OS with C.
I am redoing that by creating my own brand new language and creating a brand new OS with that. and my brand new language is an evolution of C, so I am evolving at multiple levels.
my kernel however is entirely written in asm, but I will gradually migrate it to the language.
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I appreciate and admire all your hard work Wayne.
As I see it, we are left with no choice really. We have to accept a change for modern and supported software. If the Amiga can't take it, well, so be it.
All I ask is that no data is lost.
About costs:
Isn't it very cheap to run a site like this? We are not that many members, and I doubt amiga.org uses alot of bandwith (compared to other forums/sites).
I belive that some forums have FREE hosting?
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Viking wrote:
About costs:
Isn't it very cheap to run a site like this? We are not that many members, and I doubt amiga.org uses alot of bandwith (compared to other forums/sites).
I belive that some forums have FREE hosting?
Hosting Amiga.org is not as cheap as you might think. With the image gallery, links, news, and of course, the forums themselves, we can run anywhere between 1.5 and 3 gigabytes of bandwidth per day depending on what's happening in the community. When there used to be Amiga shows, we could easily run 7 to 10 gigabytes per day during the event.
Hosting for the site does, in fact, take up most of the $40/month in the Kitty. Anything above and beyond that which is donated, goes towards supporting other sites like Amigawiki.com, the UGN, and Whyzzat (which is where a lot of the senior Amiga.org crowd hangs out).
While I fully admit there are cheaper web hosts out there than planetxoops, it's my experience that there aren't many better hosts out there. After 5 years or so, I'm on a first name basis with them, and they've never been less than absolutely supportive of the site, whether the problem is caused by them, or something that I've actually done.
Amiga.org as far as I can recall, has had no less than 7 hosts in 15 years. The fact that we've stayed with this host for 5 years (or more actually) speaks volumes about my level of trust in them.
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About the costs; I understand.
Was there a conclusion about the next software? There will probably be complaints by people who does not understand, but they can not be allowed to stop a change when the change is inevitable.
Out of curiousity - how much hard disk space is needed to store this whole site? Are most of it used by the image gallery?
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Between files and data, a bit over a gigabyte.
Wayne
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We are no where near ready to go, but just to give you an idea of where I'm at, you can review the site at http://www.amiga.org/forums
Your user accounts should work, please let me know whether you see any glaring issues.
To be honest, the perfectionist in me doesn't really *like* it so far, so I'm thinking of going ahead and buying a ready-made theme to build a custom "Amiga.org" style on.
Primarily, I'm considering (my current favorite starting points for building a new theme)
1 - http://www.forummonkeys.com/forums/vbulletinskins/index.php?styleid=57
2 - http://www.completevb.com/demo/index.php?styleid=42
or
http://www.forummonkeys.com/forums/vbulletinskins/index.php?styleid=69
or making a very AMIGA version of this;
http://vbskinworks.com/forum/index.php?styleid=339
If any of you graphic artists want to give it a shot at writing a theme or even just a screenshot that we can carve up, please feel free to do so and we'll vote on it.
Otherwise, while vB is up and running, I don't want to go live until we get a theme that draws the fewest complaints.
Wayne
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I like number 2 or 3 myself
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Yeah, I told Wayne about Drupal when I did the poll. I use it to run university web sites, intranets and was at DrupalCon 2009 in D.C.
Really need to think about more than just 'forums' ... Drupal is more like a frame work, you add the features and functionality.
It is the best open CMS / Framework in the PHP MySQL world, easily.
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TheGoose wrote:
It is the best open CMS / Framework in the PHP MySQL world, easily.
No doubt, but the "I told you so" doesn't really work for me :)
Besides, as I've said, the forums in Drupal suck, even when expanded.
vBulletin itself is "just forums" but if you look at sites like soapcentral.com, they use vBulletin then build the rest of the site up around it to include news, events, galleries, etc.
There's also nothing stopping us from building up Drupal AROUND vBulletin, but the optimum thing is that the forums are actually usable.
Wayne
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Wayne,
It looks like you have a good start. For theme, I like the third one you listed. I think that has possibilities. Also, I need more sleep as my first read I thought it said you didn't want to go live til there was a there that got a few complaints.
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Argo wrote: Also, I need more sleep as my first read I thought it said you didn't want to go live til there was a there that got a few complaints.
This is the Amiga community.. I started getting complaints when I mentioned the evil six-letter word "change".
:)
Wayne
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Thanks for the feedback guys. As for myself, I'm still leaning towards the first one, and here's a screenshot as to why...
http://www.amiga.org/forums/images/screen-capture.jpg
It helps to have it in perspective.
Wayne
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That's pretty nice looking.
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Must admit that that first theme is pretty nice looking in context
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Excellent work Wayne! Looks like you've taken it in the right direction.
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lorddef wrote:
Excellent work Wayne! Looks like you've taken it in the right direction.
I agree.
I think you made the right choice in the end. Vbulletin is rock solid as a forum. Everything else can be built around it.
Great work !
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Wayne wrote:
Thanks for the feedback guys. As for myself, I'm still leaning towards the first one, and here's a screenshot as to why...
http://www.amiga.org/forums/images/screen-capture.jpg
It helps to have it in perspective.
Wayne
I like it. I think you have made the right choice. Whatever the outcome, I promise that I will not complain and I will applaud your efforts to move the site forward!
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Wayne wrote:
We are no where near ready to go, but just to give you an idea of where I'm at, you can review the site at http://www.amiga.org/forums
Your user accounts should work, please let me know whether you see any glaring issues.
To be honest, the perfectionist in me doesn't really *like* it so far, so I'm thinking of going ahead and buying a ready-made theme to build a custom "Amiga.org" style on.
Primarily, I'm considering (my current favorite starting points for building a new theme)
1 - http://www.forummonkeys.com/forums/vbulletinskins/index.php?styleid=57
2 - http://www.completevb.com/demo/index.php?styleid=42
or
http://www.forummonkeys.com/forums/vbulletinskins/index.php?styleid=69
or making a very AMIGA version of this;
http://vbskinworks.com/forum/index.php?styleid=339
This is great Wayne!!
As for the colors and look, there's only one of them that I really like, and that's the "MacSkin".
But I can live with any one of them.
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@ Wayne
I already knew which pill you would take before you did. At least you are predictable.
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I already knew which pill you would take before you did. At least you are predictable.
Glad to have been of amusement.
Seriously though, if nothing else, vB will "get us by" until something else comes along. The *huge* thing was making sure we had a platform which would actually migrate as much of that 7-year-old forum data as possible.
Now that the data will be in a modern format, we're really in a good position to do pretty much anything we need to.
Wayne
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A.org's home page appears to be completely empty. Is something happening now? :nervous:
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moto
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Just me screwing up. Was called predictable, had to prove them wrong :)
Wayne
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Thanks for the scare Wayne! Was wondering just WTF was happening... another crash or something :lol:
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While it's by no means "soup" yet, I think we're moving along nicely.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/index.php
Wayne
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Oh, nice! Can we actually use the new version to post? Or should we stick to posting here for now?
Thanks for your hard work Wayne! (et al?)
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moto
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For the time being, post here please. All posts here will be updated there when we go live, overwriting anything you do there.
Wayne
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Wayne wrote:
The *huge* thing was making sure we had a platform which would actually migrate as much of that 7-year-old forum data as possible.
Not everything can be migrated? What will be lost? :nervous:
I don't want anything to get lost. :cry:
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See the new discussion (RFD) Amiga.org 11.0 beta
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=41534