posted
In three weeks, we will be switching our board software from UBB to Invision Power Board. This is a long overdue upgrade that will bring us up to date with features and technology of current boards. Right now, the plan is to do the conversion on Saturday, April 15th, at which point nightly will go offline. We expect to remain down for 2-3 days while we set up the new board and convert our data over. Assuming all goes well, we should be back up by April 18th and hopefully even sooner.
Most of our data will be converted, however there are some things that will not:
All Private Messages will be lost. They cannot be transferred so if there are any PMs you wish to save, you MUST save them on your own by April 15th or they will be gone forever.
All Polls will be lost. Like PMs, they are incompatible with the new software. If you happen to be attached to any particular poll, you will need to save it before we move.
All other threads besides polls will be converted to the new board.
All member records, including registration dates and post counts, will be converted over. Most profile information will also be saved but there are some exceptions. Custom titles, your profile picture and avatars will have to be reset on the new board. For pictures and offsite avatars, you may want to make a note of the URL so you can easily reset them. For onsite avatars, we will make them available as soon as possible on the new board.
We know some of this may be inconvenient but we're excited to be able to make a significant upgrade to nightly and we hope that everyone will bear with us through the transition. If you want to know more or have questions, please continue reading on below.
-------------------- Ummm....I don't know what this means....but a giant iceberg just winked at me. Posts: 20122 | From: Terminal Dogma | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Why are we making this move? Our current board, UBB.classic, is very outdated. You may have noticed that we have not had any feature upgrades for a couple years. Since it's no longer being developed, this isn't going to change. A switch was inevitable and was actually talked about over a year ago. We decided to wait and see on the next-gen UBB product, but it doesn't look like it will be coming anytime soon so we felt the time was right to go ahead and make a switch.
The product we are moving to is Invision Power Board. You can check out their website if you like, which includes lots of information about features and technical details: http://www.invisionboard.com
For those interested in the technical side, we will finally be moving from the old flat-file PERL-based system to a database-driven back-end through MySQL and PHP. The board should load faster and with the database, there will no longer be increased loads on large forums or large threads.
On the user end, IPB will have every feature of the UBB and many new ones. Among them are attachments, additional BBCodes, sub-forums, advanced search, ignore user, calendar, and many others. Basically, all the stuff you'd see on any current-generation message board.
On the mod/admin side, it also has advanced moderating tools such as moving individual posts, merging threads and global moderators as well as advanced IP tracking/matching capabilities.
In addition, there are two add-ons we're planning on getting, Gallery and Blog. We don't have details on these yet but basically, you'll be able to create your own blog here (or just link to your existing one) and you'll also be able to upload and host your own images here in your own personal gallery. There will be space limits, of course, but we'll have further details on that once we get up and running.
If you are interested in exactly what profile information will be saved, here's what we've been told by IPB will be kept:
- Login Name/Display Name (If a user has a Display Name entered, this will be their IPB username, otherwise it will be their Login Name) - Password - Homepage - E-Mail Address - Post Count - ICQ / AIM - Registration Date - Location, Interests - Signature
These then are the fields that will NOT be transferred:
- Occupation - Birthday - MSN ID - Yahoo ID and as already mentioned above: - Custom Title - Avatar - Profile Picture
While we do not expect there to be any problems with the conversion, you never know what could happen. If there is some thread that you absolutely Cannot Live Without, it wouldn't kill you to make your own back-up in case of a disaster.
To save your PMs or a thread, you can either copy and paste the text to Word/Notepad/whatever and save it there or you can save it through your browser as a full html file.
Once the conversion has been done, it may take some time for us to rebuild the forum templates/color schemes so it's possible that when we first re-open, the boards will still be on a default scheme. We don't know exactly how things will work on IPB but we will try our best to make things look and feel as "nightly" as possible. Please bear with us if it takes some time to get the individual forums back on a template. Some graphics may need to be redone. If so, we would also appreciate any help that people could give us in that area.
That's all I can think of at the moment. There will be more details to come, especially after we've done the conversion. And if you've read everything up to here, now you can ask questions.
-------------------- Ummm....I don't know what this means....but a giant iceberg just winked at me. Posts: 20122 | From: Terminal Dogma | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
In terms of community supporter stuff. Would the amounts be the same cost as they are now? Is IBP significantly cheaper or more expensive than UBB or is it relatively close?
Also I assume member numbers will be lost also? Not that it matters, I suppose.
posted
I assumed member numbers would be kept, but I'm not sure. I guess it's possible they'd compress the list to remove the gaps of pruned members. We'd have to check on that.
We can afford the move so supporter plans will not change in price. In fact, the plans should only get better as we would be able to add more features. They will also be much more easily handled since IPB comes with a built-in subscription manager and user groups. Any changes we make to the supporter program would be done after the conversion.
-------------------- Ummm....I don't know what this means....but a giant iceberg just winked at me. Posts: 20122 | From: Terminal Dogma | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Sounds good! Just one question: will the URL be the same for the board (www.nightly.net) and for individual forums?
-------------------- "I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death." - George Carlin Posts: 3402 | From: New Jersey | Registered: May 2002
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Trila Trtat
Something to do with Sigh Snootles
Member # 21317
posted
Are we keeping the same color scheme/ background for each forum, or will there be changes?
posted
More than likely we will be keeping the same color scheme, at least on the front page. The plan is to try to get the new girl to look as close to the old Nightly as possible. It certainly won't look exactly the same, but as far as templates we'll try to get it to match. But like Mandard said, for a while we may have the default scheme when it first opens.
Also, I looked over everything twice and don't think I saw this mentioned before, but I'm sorry Mandard if I just missed it, but the plan as of right now is to leave this place intact even after the conversion, just close everything up and leave the whole place as read-only, at least for a little while.
-------------------- "There's no such thing as self-help. If you did it yourself, you didn't need help. You did it yourself. Try to pay attention to the language we've all agreed on." - George Carlin
quote:Originally posted by Obi-Wan Cannoli: Sounds good! Just one question: will the URL be the same for the board (www.nightly.net) and for individual forums?
www.nightly.net will still lead to the main page and any shortcuts to forum pages will be updated to work, but all the the rest of the current URLs will not link to the new board. Initially, they'll still link here since we won't be deleting the UBB right away. Later on, maybe we can work out a re-direct for all the old URLS to forward to the new main page. I don't really know if we can do that, but it would be nice if we could.
-------------------- Ummm....I don't know what this means....but a giant iceberg just winked at me. Posts: 20122 | From: Terminal Dogma | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Afterthought, reposted: May I make one suggestion regarding the site? Since we off on such a wonderful new begining, would it be possible to officially upscale the site rating to something along the lines of PG13 and not be contained to PG? We're basically a PG13 site anyway, but still insist we're PG.
Sidethought: Will the new software enable users to choose to leave a "edited" tag? Some software I have used has this option. About editing by users, will the new software have a time limit as to when you can edit? Most new software boards I've visited have a "can edit within an hour" only limit.
quote:Afterthought, reposted: May I make one suggestion regarding the site? Since we off on such a wonderful new begining, would it be possible to officially upscale the site rating to something along the lines of PG13 and not be contained to PG? We're basically a PG13 site anyway, but still insist we're PG.
Dirty little secret: I don't insist that we're PG and I'm pretty sure I've never invoked the PG rule myself. Granted, I haven't explicitly stated otherwise nor have I stopped others from doing so...but I'm just saying. I don't consider it very important anyways. Really, what do PG and PG-13 actually mean? It's not like the MPAA has figured everything out. They're just general guidelines. I think everyone can be okay with the idea that we're somewhere in the PG/PG-13 vicinity and understand what that means.
quote:Sidethought: Will the new software enable users to choose to leave a "edited" tag? Some software I have used has this option. About editing by users, will the new software have a time limit as to when you can edit? Most new software boards I've visited have a "can edit within an hour" only limit.
These options are already available to us. I think the way we have it now works great so I don't expect we'll change anything.
Edit: If you mean that each member can choose for themselves whether to leave an "edited by" tag, then no, we don't have that feature and if it's on the new board, we wouldn't use it. I think it's good that after the 5 minute grace period for typos, an edit always gets tagged.
-------------------- Ummm....I don't know what this means....but a giant iceberg just winked at me. Posts: 20122 | From: Terminal Dogma | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Will we be doing a member prune while this happens as well?
-------------------- "Do or do not, there is no try." -Yoda
I love Karma because I can do bad things to people all day and assume they had it coming. Posts: 5636 | From: Victoria, Texas | Registered: May 2003
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posted
I don't think so. Not unless IPB tells us we need to.
-------------------- Ummm....I don't know what this means....but a giant iceberg just winked at me. Posts: 20122 | From: Terminal Dogma | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Mandard: Really, what do PG and PG-13 actually mean?
quote:Originally posted by Mandard: I think everyone can be okay with the idea that we're somewhere in the PG/PG-13 vicinity and understand what that means.
Sorry, I had to point that out. You're funny, Mandard.
-------------------- Wut's that name again? WUTBAA! Posts: 2422 | From: second star to the right | Registered: Aug 2000
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D-Ray Kenobi
et unuhuinë elessar aran utúlien
Member # 5186
posted
Does the new software include post rating features? This is where users can give a plus or minus rating to individual posts. The rating of total positive or negative ratings are displayed near the post, and if there are over a set number of negative ratings, the post is "buried" and has to be clicked on to be viewed.
I think most modern board softwares provide for this, and is a very handy feature in the places I've seen it. However, regarding Nightly itself, I think it's something that should be seperately considered before placement.
posted
As much disdain as I have for change, this sounds exciting and new ... especially considering we're trying to keep the 'Nightly' feel but just upgrading for all intent and purposes.
quote:Originally posted by Mandard: We expect to remain down for 2-3 days
quote:Originally posted by Mandard: All post counts, will be converted over
Also, will we still have those ads atop each page??
And does this transfer date have anything to with tax day??
-------------------- I never think about the future. It comes soon enough.
posted
Two days without Nightly, yep, I can see it coming Conversion to something new. Yep. Depression.
Posts: 4846 | From: Dallas TX | Registered: May 2005
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Where will I spend my life for that many days? Even when I was temp-banned, I lurked.
-------------------- "I can gay up any and all threads known to exist in Nightly." - Primbud
"Well if you want a place in my 10,000th post you'll put a quote by me in your sig and leave it there until I come back" - BBoC Posts: 6613 | From: Essex, England | Registered: May 2005
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Trila Trtat
Something to do with Sigh Snootles
Member # 21317
posted
I think we should have a temporary exodus to daily
quote:Originally posted by Mandard: All post counts, will be converted over
Oh, Mandard forgot to mention that IPB does have one conversion flaw. When converting post counts, anyone's post count that is > 46,130 will automatically be reset to zero with no possibility of manually changing it. Luckily, there's not many members that will be affected by this problem, so we're not too concerned.
-------------------- I come to you now at the turn of the tide. Posts: 20523 | From: Jax, FL U.S.A. | Registered: Aug 2000
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Trila Trtat
Something to do with Sigh Snootles
Member # 21317
quote:Originally posted by Mandard: We expect to remain down for 2-3 days
*Starts getting food together to prepare for the Great Blackout of 2006*
-------------------- "I've always wanted to uppercut a punkass, and send him flying onto a table, preferably with a cake or a bowl of punch on it. And that would break. And this would take place at a party, dance, gala event."
posted
Oooo, this sounds exciting! I hope somebody is backing up all the SW Cel. III threads, just in case. I saved some of the pics to my hard drive, but not the actual threads.
Btw, is there going to be some kind of placeholder page for the 2-3 days Nightly is down? Something along the lines of, "We're UPGRADING, for cryin' in the sink! Keep your pants on, will you??"
posted
I have to say that IPB is a really good board to work with. I am very impressed with them. As I deal with them on different levels as it stands now. It'll be nice to see the board o
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