Meta: Site Redesign?

Submitted by StephenRKass on

Back in summer months, there were several front page articles and posts about site redesign. A local firm, whose name I forget, was actually going to do things the right way. (I tried the site search, to see if my questions were actually answered, but get back a 404 error message.) Then, apparently soon before the season actually began, we were told that it was going to be harder and take longer than expected. And that we shouldn't expect anything until after the season was over. Well, the season is over, so I'm curious what's going to happen.

I am not posting to complain:

  • Mgoblog is free, so why complain
  • Complaints and whining causes downvotes and sometimes outright bans
  • And complaining doesn't really seem to work at changing anything.

Still, I'd like to know what's happening. I assume some changes have happened.

  • I haven't seen the whole system crash this Fall, so either the server is better, or the software, or I just haven't been around to witness the crashes
  • I see you can page down the forum, at least today. Which should make it easier to avoid starting new posts when the same topic was posted yesterday

Here are several questions and suggestions:

  • Explain what is happening with the server or servers or handling of traffic
  • Explain the software changes
  • Lay out the current projected timeline for things to happen (now? Feb. 29? Never?)
  • Show us what features and capability will be added
  • Tell us what in the current site will be abandoned / killed
  • Tell us about general site design, navigation.

I still am addicted to mgoblog. I'm thankful, as this is my personal retreat from reality. While I'd like to see things "new and improved," I continue to (mostly) be happy with the site.

MGoBoard
Football
site redesign

RedGreene

December 11th, 2017 at 11:54 AM ^

Maybe the mgoblog community should pay a fee every month to help Brian with the redesign. (And future upgrades). We have all taken advantage of his generosity for years so I believe it’s the least we can do.

Joined: 07/02/2009

MGoPoints: -109

1VaBlue1

December 11th, 2017 at 12:04 PM ^

The site was migrated onto a different platform host shortly before the season started, which is why it's been more stable.  I also remember Seth saying that moving comments/history/data/whatever to the new format was less friendly than anyone had expected.  But he also said they were in the last stages of testing prior to beta (or maybe did have some beta testers), but that the football season got in the way.

Joined: 01/31/2016

MGoPoints: 127223

StephenRKass

December 11th, 2017 at 4:11 PM ^

Plus one to you . . . I have posted a couple times on this topic. Here's the thing. In my personal life, there are things I say I'll do, and then I forget about them. So sometimes, I need to be reminded. Also, sometimes, there are things I want to do, or mean to do, but stuff happens, which pushes things back. Often enough, it is beyond my control.

So the point of my post is just to ask, what's happening with this? Soon? in a half year? In 2019? Just give us a status report. Status reports and updates aren't bad things. So yeah, I've asked about it, and yeah, I'll continue reading at Mgoblog regardless. Still, I'd like to know what's going on, and what we can expect.

Joined: 07/15/2008

MGoPoints: 23001

Nofx1728

December 11th, 2017 at 12:23 PM ^

If they’re paying anything to that company they’ve been robbed. Never heard of a web design firm needing a year to create a new site. Even during the season they could of copied the site to a sub domain to finish the build/test.

Joined: 09/06/2014

MGoPoints: 10851

FrankMurphy

December 11th, 2017 at 12:27 PM ^

If I understood the scope of the project correctly from Brian's posts about it over the summer, they set out to rebuild the entire site from scratch on a completely custom platform and then port over all of the old content. I remember thinking that this was an unnecessarily ambitious undertaking and that it would have been easier to build the new site on WordPress or something (come to think of it, I don't understand why Brian went with Drupal over WordPress when he migrated from Blogspot back in 2008). My guess is that HUEL has hit some serious snags in porting over the old content and they're still figuring out how to proceed. 

Having said that, I have no inside info. I'm just speculating. 

Joined: 08/19/2008

MGoPoints: 32048

Seth

December 11th, 2017 at 4:03 PM ^

Meant to have an update last week and we will have one soon. We have a secure version of the site mostly ready to go and the site has been ported over to a new server for some time. The beta version of the new site with the new design will be available to a few users we are inviting to play around with it. We had the lightning session with me and Brian last week to go over all the little things that we found that we wanted to change before the beta and all of those fixes should be done this Wednesday. The banner is taking a lot of time because we want to get it right.

Joined: 10/14/2008

MGoPoints: 149419