Christian Photographers Community

Introduce Yourself => Tips & Announcements => Topic started by: Oldiesmann on May 19, 2019, 02:06:51 PM

Title: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on May 19, 2019, 02:06:51 PM
In light of the recent news I wanted to take a brief moment to post about what's happening to the site. As I already said in the Thoughts for the Month topic, this site isn't going anywhere - I will continue to maintain and run it as I have for several years now. However, there are a couple of changes happening...

First, I'm in the process of transferring the domains to the company I use. This doesn't really mean anything for you guys - it just makes it easier for me to manage things. I've already updated all the contact info as well so I'm now listed as the registered owner rather than Pat.

Second, I'll be transferring this site to my server in about a week or so (after the domain transfer is done). The transfer itself won't take too long, but it could be a day or two before you see the site on the new server depending on how long it takes for your internet company to see the changes.


Finally, further down the road, I plan to integrate the regular website and the forum so they're not two separate things like they are currently. This will be done similar to how S&F has done, though I haven't decided entirely how I want to do that yet (more will be posted on that as I have time to play with things and work out how it's going to be done).

As always, if you have any questions, concerns, etc., feel free to contact me :)
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Jacqueline on May 20, 2019, 02:59:58 PM
Sounds all complicated stuff (to me,) but I-we will leave this in your capable hands as I know if anyone can do it, it is you Oldiesmann......
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on May 23, 2019, 12:08:34 AM
Slight update on this... The domain transfer will be finished on Friday afternoon, so I'll be moving the site over late Friday night (early Saturday UK time). I'll post a reminder when I do the move.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on May 25, 2019, 12:05:15 AM
One further update on this... I'm still waiting for the domain transfer to complete (it should be done before too long as S&F has finished and I submitted them all at the same time). It should be done sometime in the next 24 hours. If it's not done before I go to bed in a few hours I'll do the site transfer tomorrow night instead.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on May 25, 2019, 01:13:14 AM
Final update. The domain transfer has finished now, so I'm going to go ahead with the site transfer, starting in about 15 minutes.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on June 08, 2019, 01:22:35 AM
As mentioned previously, I want to update the site to integrate the main website and the forum together...

Here's a preview of what I want to do (layout and such still subject to change):

Main page: https://test.christianphotographers.com
Website page: https://test.christianphotographers.com/index.php?page=purpose (compare to https://www.christianphotographers.com/files/purpose.html)

Due to the large number of pages (mainly the devotionals), I won't be replicating the entire site on the test site, but will be doing a few pages here and there to give everyone a chance to see what the new site layout will look like and such. Let me know what you think!
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on June 12, 2019, 10:15:52 AM
Quick update on this... I got a few more articles set up on the test site and a general idea of how I'm going to do things.

At this point this is my plan:
Install the new portal here, replacing what we already have
Set up all the articles and such in advance (it'll be set up so that nobody will be able to see those at first)
Once done, move the entire thing to the main level (old links will still redirect to the new location as well)

I'll get started with the new portal later tonight. It shouldn't take long to switch things out but I prefer to do things when it's slower :)
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on June 12, 2019, 06:51:09 PM
New portal has been installed. The Random Image feature is temporarily gone until I get it working. The other system had a built-in feature for that while this one doesn't, and the code that someone posted to do it with this system doesn't work, so I'll have to go through and fix it myself or wait for someone else to fix it. More to come :)
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Tisie on June 13, 2019, 05:23:11 PM
I came to see if there was anything I could understand (thanks to Larry's tip). Way out of my league or payscale so 'tis up to you, Michael, to keep us rolling, I'm not even able to offer to help.

Thank you very much for your smarts!  Tisie or Shirley.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on June 13, 2019, 10:49:40 PM
Random image block is back :)
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on June 15, 2019, 01:30:21 AM
A couple of minor site-related updates...

1. I fixed the "Random Image" block. The code was set to show the most recent image rather than a random one, so it was showing the same image all the time.

2. I decided to enable the shoutbox feature. I know several folks at S&F enjoy it so I figured you guys would enjoy it here as well. I think we did have one here at one time in the past but I don't remember why we got rid of it.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on June 23, 2019, 05:46:10 PM
Making good progress on importing the old site pages into articles here. I've copied over 30 of the 55 "Songs of Worship" devotionals and will probably be able to finish those this evening. Depending on what time I get done with those I may work on some of the other pages tonight as well.

Everything should be done and moved by early August. As usual I'll keep everyone updated :)
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on June 24, 2019, 01:08:47 AM
Got the remaining "Songs of Worship" pages moved over. That leaves me with about 25 more pages to do between the "Walking in the Old Path" devotionals and the testimonials. After I get those moved over everything else is technical stuff and testing to make sure the planned redirects work (for the non-tech folks that means I'll set it up so anyone visiting the old links will automatically get sent to the new location instead of being told that the page doesn't exist).
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on July 30, 2019, 12:55:22 AM
Quick update on this. I do still plan to finish up the remaining pages soon, but work and life in general have kept me busy lately (especially with me going on vacation for a week a couple weeks ago) so I haven't gotten a chance to do much with them yet. Still hoping to get this done by late August or early September.

The new setup will also allow us to change the site more easily - it only takes a minute or two to add a new article/page, change a few things, etc. and it can all be done from the portal admin center.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on December 11, 2019, 02:08:34 AM
Further updates on this... I do still plan to finish the changes in the coming months but have been busy with other things so I haven't had a chance to finish copying over the remaining pages.

I'm also not entirely sure if I'll be setting up the redirects as originally planned - it would be nice but I'm not too familiar with the pattern-matching syntax used for the redirection so I'll have to see if I can get someone to help me with that (although it's not terribly important since those pages aren't visited that much anyway).
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on April 17, 2020, 12:22:15 AM
Another quick update on this... I do still plan to go through with the overhaul at some point, but am not sure exactly when. I've been busy the past few months and sort of forgot about this project :)
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on October 08, 2021, 12:09:11 AM
Long time, no update...

Still quite busy and haven't had time to do anything else with regards to moving to an integrated site. At this point it's been so long that I don't even remember what I still need to do as far as getting the rest of the site content copied to the new setup, so I might just move things sooner and figure out the rest later :)
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on February 16, 2022, 11:27:01 PM
One further update on this. I'm planning to move everything around a bit in the coming week or two:

The forum and website will now be one (all accessed through christianphotographers.com - no longer having the forum at "/community" and the website separate). I will make sure to set things up so existing links to topics, etc. still work.

The old site pages will be replaced with internal portal pages (already done - just got to enable it all and set up a menu to access them)

Once everything is set up I can also give moderators access to add/edit/delete pages to help maintain the site better.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on February 18, 2022, 04:23:07 PM
Forum and website have been upgraded to SMF 2.1.1 and TinyPortal 2.2.1. I will work on moving things around later tonight.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Jacqueline on March 26, 2022, 02:24:03 AM
Michael...
...if you pop in, graphics and photos that JennyW is posting on our forum are now not showing for me, similar to what is happening in Seniors & Friend's forum for members...they had been showing previously on Christian Photographers....
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on March 26, 2022, 09:17:00 PM
Yeah, it's the same issue that was affecting S&F. I just forgot to adjust the settings on this site when we figured out what was going on. Should be fixed now.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Jacqueline on March 27, 2022, 02:07:48 AM
Michael ( Oldiesmann ) yes thank you, i can see JennyW's photos now, she too will be pleased they have been fixed...
Until i saw postings in S & F's, that there was a similar issue, i had thought it was my computer that had been playing up...
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: JennyW on March 27, 2022, 07:22:17 AM
Thank you, Michael, for taking working on the website and keeping it functioning. I appreciate it! Also, thank you, Jacqueline, for bringing the image issue up. Hope everyone is well and enjoying spring! We are back to freezing here, but the flowers keep reminding me that warm is almost here!
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on May 01, 2022, 04:30:27 PM
Finally moved the forum to the main directory. Still working on getting links up to the articles that replace the old site pages, and also need to set up a redirect to handle old topic links, but other than that everything should be working fine. If you find anything that's broken, let me know.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on May 01, 2022, 04:40:17 PM
Redirect has been set up so any old links in topics, etc. will still work :)

Just need to add a menu for the site pages and maybe create a new front page of some sort.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: Oldiesmann on May 04, 2022, 11:33:45 PM
Front page and other pages have been enabled. You can access the various devotionals and other site pages from the Site Pages menu in the upper right corner of the page.
Title: Re: Website info
Post by: JennyW on May 05, 2022, 07:55:07 AM
Thank you for taking care of all these things! I appreciate it very much!