I’m pleased to announce that stage 2 of Dream Girls forum upgrades are now completed and I just brought forum online after giving all prime members access to the paid sections of the forum. You can check it out here https://dreamgirlsgt.com/forums/
Now the forum is still under development which means will be adding new features and improving existing code all the time. What we have up and running right now is stable and I have to say it has potential.
This new forum is the first step to making Dream Girls strong!
All Dream Girls users have access to a new profile that built into the forum. After ou login you can see it here, https://dreamgirlsgt.com/my-profile/
Giving you the ability to read your forum topics and editing your profile you can upload a avatar picture and edit your password ,ect
We will be adding new features to the profiles as well giving you more options.
Now, I wasn’t able to convert former profile data from the old system because it was to complex but the important thing is that all the forum topics and posts I was able to carry them over to the new forum setup.
The converting of forum topics and post has been well tested before I did this final take.
As for Messages, it will be replaced with a new Mail system capable with the new forum setup.
But for those of you wanting to retrieve your past Messages from Dream Girls can be done here. http://dreamgirlsbeta.xyz/ I won’t have this up forever but long enough for you guys to retrieve your past mail…
Just login to access your Messages using your existing Dream Girls login info…
Hi,
I thought we discussed change management the last time you did this, that you really need to have a bulletin on the home page a week or so in advance saying “At 6pm PST Wednesday, June 19, I will be taking the forums down to implement a new version. The new version will include features X, Y, and Z. All messages will be retained, but you will lose A, B, and C. Anything posted after 4PM PST that day will not be carried forward.” (Note: This is a very different thing from the political activism home page messages.) Then you post a BANNER on the forums several hours in advance reminding folks that the replacement is coming, and the message cutoff time.
Showing the beta months in advance and saying that change is coming “eventually” is not the same thing. Just killing things one day and saying “Oh, by the way, I’m replacing the forums today. We’ll be back up soon.” is NOT acceptable customer service. It wasn’t the last 3 times you changed the forums. It wasn’t this time, and it won’t be the next time, either. Every time you do it, you have lost significant contributors to the forums.
Yes I know that was short notice and I apologize for any inconvenience but it had to be done. I have however informed everyone about the arrival of the new forum that would soon take place in this update here. https://dreamgirlsgt.com/dream-girls-new-forum-coming-soon/
And a few other updates before that 🙂
I guess yesterday was kind of short notice but I was anxious to get this new system online as soon as possible and after some careful testing on Dream Girls beta site…
I’m going to continue updating and improving this new forum code that’s built on bbPress! bbPress is open source and been use by a number of WordPress sites around the world.
And thanks all look into an advanced Edit option when I improve the editor Posting feature…
What was wrong with the old forum… From the admin side of the code it was junk and at some point deteriorating thanks to the programmers who built it. When I first started using Simple Press forum it was easy to handle back in 2011. But now thanks to a lot of forced updates from SP it became unstable from what I’m trying to do here at Dream Girls.
I want a forum I can build a community site around and SP won’t give us that option. So going with bbPress will be able to edit and improve the code unlike the old forum system.
In the future all try to workout something where I can give an advanced warning before I change something 🙂
Slipstreaming little tweaks and fixes is fine, but for a major overhaul, unless you have a database crash or are under hack/malware attack, better change management is required. At a minimum, you need to put something like “Planned Maintenance: On day X, I will be making change Y” in a banner, with a link to details, at least a week before you make the actual change.
Could the “Recently Updated Topics & Posts” list be ordered with the most recent posts at the top? Be quite a bit easier to keep up with things there. Just a convenience thing for us.
