Major Site Change: 2012 Upgrade

[DarkRider]

Summer 2012 Upgrade

Hail Allies, Ambassadors, VIPs, Patrons, Staff, and Guests!

About a year ago now we made an announcement that we TESA was undergoing a major version upgrade with our software. Around that same time, our skin author at Skinbox left the company and the skin that we used as the base for TESA Advanced was left outdated…until now. Now that the new Skinbix crew has updated those outdated skins we are finally able to upgrade the site only this time we’ll be moving forward two spftware versions forward. We’ll also be updating the blogs, downloads, and galleries that we have currently.

Preparations

To prepare for this upgrade we would like our users to backup their images, files, attachments, avatars, and signatures. We will do our best to upgrade without losing data but things are going to be shifting around quite a bit, some data loss may be expected. So please backup anything you’d like to save before Friday May 25th 12:00p EST.

Upgrade Process

We’ve decided to upgrade the site on a live board. What that means is that we will stay online as much as possible to not disrupt activity on the site. During this time some features may go offline for a short time, themes may be unavailable, you may encounter a number of visual bugs, or note a number of missing links, or things that aren’t functioning.

When the upgrade begins, we will change the page logo to our construction logo

As long as the hardhats are on we will be working on upgrading the site behind the scenes, so you can expect some oddities and instability. During this time we will not be taking any bug reports from users. Once we complete our upgrade we will open a thread for bug reports, questions, comments, etc.

Major Changes

In addition to all the new, this is a list of features that we have currently that will be going away or dramatically changed.

• Cookie System: IPS has mutated the old reputation system our cookie system is based on. We will do what we can to maintain our cookie giving game, but we're going to have to make some changes for the new system.
  
  
• TESA Basic: We will no longer have a TESA Basic Theme. Originally we only had that theme for the users who preferred a traditional list view to our grid view. After the upgrade, TESA Advanced will have a view switcher that will allow you to choose list or grid, whichever is your preference.
  
  
• Permissions & Privileges: We will be refining our ranking system here and more clearly defining the privileges and permissions across the various member groups
  
  
• *More to Come*
  
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Open Discussion

Leading into the upgrade we’d really appreciate some polite but candid feedback from our users, so I’d like to open this thread for an open discussion on these points.

• Are there features currently on TESA that you consider invaluable and must have features?
  
• What features have you been missing that you’d like to see incorporated?
  
• Do you find the forum structure confusing? How could we improve?
  
• Are there any rules or policies that you find confusing? Superflueous? Unfair?
  
• Any other suggestions or feedback you'd like to offer?
  

Upgrade Status

Planned upgrade dates May 21-25 with the major changes to come Friday May 25th 12:00p EST

[AndalayBay]

You're upgrading live? You daredevil! You were involved with testing 3.3.x, right?

[DsoS]

You have already read about one of mine, but I'll post it here for all to see...

Table BBCode ability

That's all that I can think of right now.

---

Would like to see some HTML ability for posts and PM's and signatures, even if it is dumbed down a little for security purposes.

*This way we can use something like the slideshow function that ImageShack and many other image-hosting sites give out. I think this would help save on load times and would allow users to have more images in their signatures in the same amount of space.

Edited May 21, 2012 by DsoS

[DarkRider]

You're upgrading live? You daredevil! You were involved with testing 3.3.x, right?

Yes, and we've been working on a test version of 3.3.x since the start of the year to prepare for this upgrade

[Carah]

Thank-you for the heads-up. Good luck

[AndalayBay]

Ok good. Cause yeah, 3.1 to 3.3 is a big leap.

[DsoS]

What is the difference between 3.1 and 3.3? (Other than the items you custom adding)

[DarkRider]

There are a lot of design changes, most of the change are internal things the way the site processes information, a lot of duplicate features like avatars vs personal photos have been reduced to one feature. The official forums at BGS are running a 3.3 board now I believe for an example most of you will know.

[AndalayBay]

There are a lot of new nifty features too. The post editor is now RTF and will autosave periodically. The font sizes are in points. There are a lot of little things like relabelling the post options. Instead of saying "Add Reply", in 3.3.x it's "Post". A whole bunch of little things like that. You can toggle the editor between RTF and raw format so you can control the BB code. There's a little drop-down that you can select BB code from. Quoting other posts is easier and the multi-quote works much better. That sort of thing. I think it's faster too.

[donnato]

Umm probably a dumb question but last time I saved my galleries they ended up as little bitty thumbnails.....what did I do wrong..?

[DarkRider]

There are a lot of new nifty features too. The post editor is now RTF and will autosave periodically. The font sizes are in points. There are a lot of little things like relabelling the post options. Instead of saying "Add Reply", in 3.3.x it's "Post". A whole bunch of little things like that. You can toggle the editor between RTF and raw format so you can control the BB code. There's a little drop-down that you can select BB code from. Quoting other posts is easier and the multi-quote works much better. That sort of thing. I think it's faster too.

Uh yes, some of that. We changed some things back to what our users know, and we have some features turned off remember; because of our traffic we can't leave everything turned on, you'll learn that as DC grows

Umm probably a dumb question but last time I saved my galleries they ended up as little bitty thumbnails.....what did I do wrong..?

You need to open the image all the way and then save it. An alternative is to mark all your screens as Favorites and then in your profile zip and download favorites as one download.

[AndalayBay]

Uh yes, some of that. We changed some things back to what our users know, and we have some features turned off remember; because of our traffic we can't leave everything turned on, you'll learn that as DC grows

I bet! That's probably why we're running out of memory already. I tried to stick to the basic stuff.

[DarkRider]

Yep it gets used up quick

[donnato]

mark all my...oh my...well ok...

[Tamira]

Maybe there is something wrong on my side, but: I am subscribed as senior ally at the moment. When I click on the "Subscriptions" button I only can see my own current subscription but not the options of other subscriptions. This is why I was kind of lost when my subscription expired some time ago. I only could see the option to refresh the existing one.

[DarkRider]

Yeah the subscriptions can only be purchased once the old one runs out. Then there's a 7 day window to renew, if you don't renew it closes and you can purchase a new package. Our current subscription module is getting upgraded though so that is going to change

[DsoS]

I bet! That's probably why we're running out of memory already. I tried to stick to the basic stuff.

Yep it gets used up quick

Too bad that I don't have the greatest upload/download on my internet connection. I would help with the space, we all know that I have enough now

[AndalayBay]

Too bad that I don't have the greatest upload/download on my internet connection. I would help with the space, we all know that I have enough now

Heh, we've got lots of space, it's RAM the hosting providers are stingy with.

[Khettienna]

Existing invaluable & must-have features:

• Pretty much everything, to be honest. There are some features I think could use tweaking, but I wouldn't want to part with any of the existing ones. This site, more than any other I've tried, makes it easy to socialize and get to know people, and that's what makes it a "home" beyond just a forum.

Missing features:

• A way to track file feedback without starting a wipz/relz thread. The comment system on files is fine, but we have to check each upload individually.
  
• Perhaps having a "Relz" thread auto-generated at upload time into a separate forum that pulls the data already entered into the fields of the upload form would be easy enough to do, as an extension of/alternative to the previous idea.
  
• Being able to order and caption file screenshots would go a long way towards showing a user what they are really getting, too.
  
• A "Wipz" upload section would be awesome. Some way to start a thread on a work-in-progress, and have current versions or contributions from other users uploaded directly to the site and linked in the posts without having to link to 4shared or juggle files in PMs would be awesome. These uploads could expire after 30 days or somesuch to prevent server clog, as they are likely only meant to be temporary anyway.
  
• No color-coded syntax highlighting in codeboxes, or at least the option for it, or an alternate tag for it, or something. Even when used for actual code, it's near-impossible to read against TESA's dark background, and it performs unpredictably (at least with Oblivion scripts).

Forum structure:

• The tutorials and blogs feel detached from the rest of the forums. It would be great if "Recent Topics Added" included new blog entries and tuts, and if blogs & tuts were listed with the other forum categories maybe.
  
• The tutorials could also use a table of contents of some kind to make it easier to find help.
  
• Clicking "View New Content" would work a lot better for me if it showed anything I hadn't read/marked as read, rather than just what was new since the last visit. Sometimes I don't have time to read it all on every visit, but don't want to miss it next time.
  
• When I click on "Gallery" from the forum index, the next page isn't useful to me at all, it's just the gallery index. The "Latest Images" page is what I'm really after, and I suspect the same is true for a lot of people. Maybe making the Latest Images be what the Gallery button links to would be more efficient?
  
• I would like to see some Last Post Info on the forum index page for the Hosted Forums category, because I have permissions to see some of those forums, and I know there are posts in there.
  
• Clicking "Show comments" under a status update only shows the last 3 comments, and then I have to click again to see them all. Upping that number to 10 or so would save a click in many cases.
  
• Trying to find a user's content via their profile is inconsistent and clunky. If I go to your profile and choose Gallery, I get a handful of your latest images (this part is fine). Clicking View All from there doesn't take me to your gallery index as expected, but to basically a search result of all images you've posted. Clicking on Downloads in your profile shows a handful of files, but here there is nothing to click on to expand that to include all your files, so I have to go other routes for the full listing. Likewise for topics and posts. Topic, post and tutorial previews are exceedingly long, also; perhaps truncating to a few lines & omitting images, or just listing thread titles, would be more useful.

Rules/policies:

• I feel like we could lighten up a little on the English-only rule. I agree that posts & chat should be in English, but a mere greeting or well-wish or something in someone's native language can help them feel welcome and more comfortable participating.

Other/Misc:

• It would be nice if uploading .jpg images didn't nuke their quality. I've been uploading as .png to prevent this from happening, but a full-quality .jpg is only about half the file size. Also when other users upload as .jpg, their beautiful images look not as beautiful as my desktop wallpaper because they were chewed by pixel-eating puppies during upload.
  
• Likewise, a lot of us have screens bigger than 1600x1000, so the auto-shrinking of screenshots is not awesome. Perhaps when you go to save/download an image from the gallery, you could be presented with the original actual image file that was uploaded instead of the degraded & downsized version.
  
• The 5-image strip of new images on the front page could, instead of showing the 5 newest gallery images, show the latest image from each of the last 5 users to upload images. This would prevent folks from getting completely wiped off the front page so quickly, as a lot of us tend to upload multiple images at once.
  
• The forced square thumbnails on file screenshots are pretty on the index and file pages, but add one more thing for the uploader to have to work around to present their file how they like.
  
• A "Preview" option when submitting or updating a file listing would be a godsend.

This list got pretty long, but it's just a brainstorm/wish-list. I realize you can't do everything and these are maybe not all great ideas for everyone and you'll have good reasons for whatever you choose.

[donnato]

Oki Rider ... you mentioned that I could mark my images as "Favorite" and then zip them into a download file. please tell me..when i mark an image as a favorite where can I find it...and then...having found them...how to package them..?

EDIT: ... ...never mind...I just found it...thanks.

Edited May 22, 2012 by donnato

[DarkRider]

Update: Okay construction dragons are up, from now until they come down you may experience oddities on site. This is going to remain mostly behind the scenes yet, we won't be upgrading the actual software modules until Friday, tentatively, we need to knock out some small things on the test board yet. That's when things will get VERY noticeable.

We appreciate all the feedback here, keep it coming it helps us make TESA all she can be. I think you folks are going to enjoy this upgrade.

[vometia]

A couple of things to watch out for: first is that when I updated to 3.2, it trashed all of my topic sub-headings which was quite annoying. Seems they've been replaced by tags, but it would've been nice if they'd preserved the sub-headings as one of them...

The other thing is I have Facebook Connect enabled and I discovered that the Facebook bot was rather taking advantage of its membership of the regular "members" group to rummage around forums that aren't open to the public. It's claimed it needs this membership to validate topics that are "liked" or shared, but in this case it was just being opportunistic and nosy. I quickly booted it into the "guests" group.

[Meo]

I will be succinct... i want my calendar back. For the rest, i will adapt.

[Khettienna]

I will be succinct... i want my calendar back. For the rest, i will adapt.

Oh thanks, now I feel bad.

[DarkRider]

Meo I don't know where your calendar went but I'll do my best to find it