Hooligans Gaming

First and foremost, my apologizes, I promised a new site design in the very near future. While I have not abandoned that promise just yet, it will be a little further away then it was intended to be and may run over the title’s launch.

Reason being, I’m my own worst critic and I just wasn’t satisfied with the design I was working on.

Was it a good design? Yes, both graphical and behind-the-scenes (coding) it was a solid design. However, every time I looked at it I just wasn’t “sold.”

It wasn’t the header or anything really in particular, I just wasn’t enjoying the general flow and theory behind the design itself. I was taught a very long time ago: “…you should never release a design or a piece of art that your not proud of.”

Simply put, I wasn’t proud of that design and needed to change it before it was too late. Our past design was not my best either and I lived with it since June of last year. That resulted in the current redesign less than a year after. Needless to say, I do not want to repeat that effort and I want to not rush through the design and really knock it out of the park for the community and not just myself. After all, the Hooligans deserve a site that is on par with the quality of members we have!

So, the new design is well underway and a new complete logo for the community has been designed! I am currently in the process of taking it from the concept sketches to the computer screen but when I do, the rest will fall into place easily.

Until then, I have searched through some Wordpress themes and have loaded the current theme as a temporary stand-by. While it is not our own custom design, it is functional and I will add the site’s content so that during the interim, we actually have a functioning site.

If you want to voice your opinion of the redesign, please register to this Wordpress (you’ll need to eventually anyway) and comment! Also, remember that the old forums are still active until the site’s full launch and can be accessed by using the proper link at the top of the page.

Adios!

Over the coming weeks leading up to the launch of Global Agenda and my own personal move from apartment-to-apartment, I will be loading a new site design with improved functionality for Hooligans and the visitors of the site. With this, I have to decide on various topics to both design the new site and prepare for the transition from one to another.

For the new site, I will continue to use the normal WordPress and have decided to not integrate WordPress MU. WPMU is a great piece of software but it seems that it would offer too much functionality for our needs. For those that are unaware, the major difference is the fact you can run multiple blogs on one install instead of the standard 1 blog per installation of WordPress.

Are blogs worth it? Of course they are! However, at this time, they met a butcher knife at the design’s cutting block and I just fathom a world in which they would be used by the majority of the group. Therefore, I will stick with what I know works for us and improve on it from this design to the next.

As for the forums, they will be changing software. Currently, we operate on phpBB which is a separately maintained software from WordPress. Technically, we currently have two sites under our one domain. The WordPress side of things is everything but the forums. While the forums are phpBB. The differences between the two are prominent and leave me zero chance to integrate the two halves into one seamless website.

Therefore, we will make the jump over to bbPress! bbPress is from the makers of Wordpress and offers complete integration of the two sides. This means one user database, one search engine and countless other enhancements. bbPress is quiet different from other forums software, however, as it comes “barebones” and you then add what you’d like on top of it. Think of it like two pieces of bread and the filler are the features we’ve grown accustom to when it comes to forums: private messaging, avatars, signatures, post count, etc. It’s light weight and will run faster as well.

However, here is the important part:

In order to have the site completely bug free and seamless, I will be destroying the old data from this site. This means the phpBB forums will remain until the new site’s complete launch and THEN be deleted. In turn, the current Wordpress data will also be deleted and replaced with a clean install.

Why the sudden deletions when you could always import the existing databases? Well, for one, the likelihood of a seamless and working import of phpBB’s data to bbPress is highly unlikely. Also, the Wordpress data is only about half a year old currently and is not THAT important. The majority of it is actually this site’s progression and/or previews for upcoming games. It would save time to just start clean and it would also save headaches for me. A win, win.

That is it for now. Please stay tuned for more information and just encase anyone misses this post, I will be recreating it on the new Wordpress so do not worry.

Adios!