Quote:
Originally Posted by mayk  After reading this a few weeks ago on the Official ALMS Forum:
" A new forum software will be live before the end of November, which unfortunately will require reregistration. We apologize for that inconvenience, and even more so for the issues that this package has caused. "
I was hoping to go on and re-register and see how it works compared to what they had....as 2008 looks to be a great year for the Series and although minor in impact for the Series, the software for the forum (and website in general) is not really 'World Class'.
Although the calendar states 12/3, same old software so maybe there was an issue changing over?
JT: You know more about this stuff than anyone else...is this a quick fix or was the Moderator who posted the message being a little too agressive with the fix? 
KM |
To be fair, I don't know their hardware configuration, hosting scenario... or, quite frankly, their budget. I can only guess based on the issues that have arisen over the past year.
Recognizing they've had issues since the launch, I suspect both of my first two assumptions might be triggered by the third. The company developing the site (based on their portfolio) appears to be quite capable. But, if they are trying to deliver champaign on a beer budget, that's kind of tough.
Other than bandwidth though, I don't see any major costs involved. But, traffic can kick your ass if you don't have the horsepower to support it. If the traffic is sucking up processes and hammering the pipe using up a ton of bandwidth, the day-to-day cost can quickly become a "real" line item in your budget.
I don't know why they chose the original software they chose. It's not very stable and doesn't appear to well sorted. I've been told that the "new" forum will use PHPBB. PHPBB comes in a couple of different flavors... but it is open source freeware. However, it is the most widely supported open source forum platform out there.
I use PHPBB on Trackbytes... and have for a few years.
This site was originally slated to be a PHPNuke site and was actually built to near 90% completion. The look was there.. the functionality was there.. but so were some bugs and it quickly became apparent that the support was going to require a band of geeks to monitor. We also did a partial build with PHPBB... but it really didn't provide all the whistles and bells I wanted for the gallery and front end of the site.
I opted to use vBulletin.. a widely used platform that is both paid and supported. Furthermore, it has a huge community of developers building add-ons and mods. This site consists of three programs integrated to run from one database. vBPortal, PhotoPost, vBulletin and Vblog. All were purchased at the additional expense of non-branded licenses.
I run vBulletin on two other projects...
News - Automotive Photography Resource | Automotive Photographers Network and
Divorce Online | Divorce Resources | Legal, Financial & Counseling - Divorce Articles - it's incredibly stable.
We have our own hardware colocated in California... we run daily backups and the equipment is managed 24/7 - Since 1995 I've enjoyed nearly 99.9% up time. We also host an additional 15 or so sites in New York. The California hardware and bandwidth is pretty much reserved for my personal projects.
So.. does it take long to set up... not really. About two hours. However, they need to integrate the look and feel of the ALMS brand and existing site... so that can be a pisser. I got the impression Paul and Brent are actually doing the set-up and integration, so I'm sure they're not at it full time. But, they know what they're doing... so I'm sure they'll have it up and running in due time.
JT
ALMS Forum Software Upgrade 
