MacIDOL Changes

[chrooke]

We're going to be streamlining MacIDOL, to make it easier to maintain (so we'll actually maintain it), and easier to post fresh content (so we'll have fresh content outside of the forums).

Here's what's in the works:

--one Jamroom theme: Nova, with some customizations for appearance
--reduce the number of forums (No content will be lost, just moved)
--replace the custom pages with a content management system, themed to match Jamroom as much as possible
--replace the phpBB theme with one to match Jamroom as much as possible
--ticketing system for reporting and tracking site issues
--Facebook connect

Not all of these changes will be palatable to everybody, but they are truly necessary to make this site a happening place again.

So, please pardon the dust. All of this will take a little while, since it's a small group of volunteers pulling it together. If you want to make the small group a little larger, let me know.

[chrooke]

So, here's the status so far...

slumbering has almost finished a basic adaptation of Nova theme and skin for MacIDOL.

I have made a lot of progress recreating the custom portions of the site using a CMS. A lot of it is functional, but doesn't look like much yet. cStu is helping out with content transfer.


Remember, the goal of this initial effort is eliminating "broken windows", i.e. features of the site that appear to be present, but are broken. Bad graphics, dead links, missing templates, etc, mismatched look and feel.

For now, functionality will primarily be what is offered out of the box for Jamroom. We don't want to introduce a lot of new features and adaptations until the basic features are all working properly. There are a lot of ideas and requests coming along in various threads. We'll get to some of these, but we won't be getting to them right now.

Oh, and discussion about the upgrades has been moved to a new topic.

[chrooke]

A basic Nova adapted for MacIDOL is ready, and will be rolled out soon. Watch for the community page to change.

Over the next few days, all artist pages will be migrated to Nova except for those on iApple.

For now we're keeping iApple around and will have just the two themes. If that gets to be too hard to support, we'll eliminate iApple as well.

[chrooke]

Ok, the new Nova skin has been rolled out. slumbering has provided more info in the discussion thread, and a few bugs have already been reported there.

The home page Search field is now an ugly link to the Jamroom search page. Since we're replacing this home page with the Drupal rollout, I'm just going to leave that ugly. Won't be the only ugly thing that will be going away.

[chrooke]

In an effort to simplify the forums, I will be collapsing the number we have. This will be the new scheme...

Visible to everybody, must be member to post
---------------------------------------------------------
MacIDOL FAQ (for now, will get replaced with a non-forum component in the future)
News
Music -- Theory/Composition/Songwriting: gets old Tunes, iCritique, GB songwriters, Live and Dangerous, Games and Challenges
Music -- Instruments/Hardware/Software: gets old iPod and iTunes, GB tips, GB general, GB guitar, Pro Audio, iReview

Visible to members only
-----------------------------
Green Room: gets old Access All Areas, iCollaborate, Competition, MI of the Future, Artist Store
Classifieds
MacIDOL Site Bugs and Wish Lists (for now, will get replaced with a non-forum component in the future)

[chrooke]

I've been away for a couple of weeks, but I'm back at it. Here's the status...

I'm continuing to work on the Drupal adaptation of the hand-coded portion of the site. It's slow going, because I'm working a lot of the parts that require heavy coding first. There is definite progress though. Very soon it will be time to make that piece of things LOOK ok (right now I'm just focused on function). Once it looks halfway decent, we'll let folks take a look even if it's not 100% done.

I've also put some enhancements to the way QuickTime is embedded that should improve the playback for a variety of modern browsers, and might help with some of the stats issues.