This site has been up and running for 5 years now. It was being held together by dozens of programs working indepedently of one another. There was one program for polls; one for news; one for the forum; one for contests; one for feedback; one for image of the day; and so on. This was normal 5 years ago, but the trend now is to have the site in a single, complete database. While technically there are still dozens of programs running, they are all connected to one another. The new system I've installed on the site does exactly this. It's called vbPortal and it's a Content Management System. It works in conjunction with the vBulletin software to provide a complete and unified site. There were so many features in the past that I wanted to implement on the site, but never could due to technical issues. For example, I wanted to have a system that would allow people to comment on news postings. It's easy enough to install such a system; the problem comes in with people posting comments. Do I allow anonymous people to post, which would no doubt open up the flood gates for trolls? No, that wouldn't work. The alternative is to require people signup for an account in order to post comments. But who wants to have two accounts on a single site - one for posting on the forum and one for posting news comments? It just doesn't work. This new portal allows for comments on everything - polls, reviews, stories, etc. The only requirement is that you be a member of the forum. No signing up for separate accounts; no having to remember multiple passwords. That's not all the portal brings, however. It frees up a lot of the webmaster responsibilities from myself. You all know my time is limited. With the new portal, reviewers can post their own reviews and site admin can post news and polls. It's easier to backup the site. It's easier to create and maintain new areas of the site. There are some other areas I've been wanting to add to the site; I can now easily do that. Not everyone likes change. I know that. With this new site, we lose a bit of the personality we had. There was definitely some nostalgia value with the old site. It served us well and in a way I'm sad to see it go. I spent a lot of the time on old design and layout. Was is perfect? Not by a long short, but it worked for the time being. Make no mistake about it, though, the old site is gone. The new site is here to stay. What's coming next? I'm still setting up the basic layout of the new site and implementing some of the features of the portal. You'll see small enhancements here and there. Random Image will be coming back! I know many people liked it, as did I. This may take a few weeks as I'm planning on having it just randomly pluck a screen shot from one of the existing reviews, whereas before I had to do a lot of manual work on Random Image and it only covered maybe 50% of the reviews at best. After things have stabalized, I'll finally start putting on some movie-themed skins. That's another big, big advantage to this new portal. The ENTIRE site can be skinned now. Don't like the black background? No problem! With the click of a button you can give the entire site a completely different look. It's pretty cool. This will apply for the skins added in the future as well. For those that don't already have an account in the forum, I encourage you to do so soon. To participate, you need to have an account. The forum has been opened to everyone for viewing, but there are still a few sections that are member-only. If a section shows up as having 0 posts, it means you do not have access to view it! Finally, the site has been moved to a new server and a new host. Our old server and host served us well, but we have outgrown them. We needed more space, more bandwidth, and more speed. Now we have it. The forum is significantly faster now, and so is the rest of the site. The new Horrordvds.com is going to be more community driven. There are a lot of features I'll be adding to the site that I think you will enjoy. Feedback is welcome. Just keep in mind the current layout is still work in progress. But if you have any concerns, problems, or just want to share your thoughts, please do so.
Yeah, I noticed everytime I try to go on to Horrordvds.com, a login message comes up. I logged in like three times and it still won't let me on the site. I can, as you can see, get to the forum fine and dandy.
It will take some getting used to. But my goal is to get it somewhat similar to the old look. Navigation area is similar, and I'll be getting Random Image back soon.
I'm really digging the unified look of the site, really ties everything together. I too miss the old logo, so if there's anyway you can fit it in somewhere, that would be cool. Keep up the good work, I've purchased many DVDs based on the recommendations from this site and haven't been disppointed yet!
I'm not sure I'm keen on the idea, I'm not really fond of portals and the like, but wherever you want to take it go for it.
Maybe I'm missing something here. People are saying they love the new look but the only thing that has changed that I can see is the new logo. :hum:
Dan, Chris, are you guys BLIND?! Compared to the old layout on the main page, it looks TOTALLY different.
the main page of the site or the forum? I have yet to see the main page of the site since all I get is "HTTP 404 Not Found" messages. edit: if I try to access the main page at www.horrordvds.com all I get is the above posted message. I have to launch my compuserve software and use the browser for that in order to get the forum. if I just try to use my normal browser I can't get anything. when I use my compuserve software I get a login message telling me to login that just keeps returning after I login. it just keeps looping.
I like the changes, definitely gives a more organised feel to the site (not that it wasn't before mind you). Are you planning on redoing the multimedia section?
