Mechapixel Overhaul Progress

[Ved]

Hi, I will post stuff here as it becomes ready for testing, and I'll just keep a general log of things. Feel free to comment (post in this thread) if you wish; feedback is wonderful.

The overhaul will be a long process but hopefully this thread will keep everyone informed. Subscribe to this thread if you are interested in what is happening to the site under the hood.


August 23 2010:

This thread now relates primarily to the non-forum areas of the site. For forum additions and updates, see this thread.

If you find ANY broken links or images elsewhere on Mechapixel, please report them in this thread below.

[Domestic Goddess]

Cool, Ved! thanks for posting!

[JangoFett]

Someone's been busy!

[Ved]

Well as expected, I've been busy with work this week but should have time this weekend to make some more neat things appear. First order of business is getting old users, contests, entries and profiles ("history" pages) back online, it's just taking a good deal of editing every page. Unfortunately this does not mean contests will open up soon, just that the old contests and photoshops will be viewable again. There is just a lot more work to do on the server before we can have new contests, mainly dealing with image uploading and formatting on the fly.

The data and old site have been uploaded to this new server in a testing location (nothing was lost from the backup, as far as I can tell), now I just need to make it work again by figuring out what has changed between this current version of vBulletin and our old version. Soooo look for something this weekend hopefully, maybe.

Also I'm going to post an annoucement today concerning the return of your old user login information so look out for that.

[RepoMan]

Great news! Nice work, Ved. We really appreciate it.

[FulanoDeTal]

absolutely we do! thanks for the hard work. I'm sure it can get tedious at times.

[Ved]

Well I honestly haven't done a damn thing in quite some time on the site but after some much appreciated prodding from Koko and other folks, I'm getting back into it, and getting a lot of ideas of where to take the site from this point. Maybe I just needed a really long break after the stress a few years ago (not just from the site but real life things as well).

Thanks for putting up with a dormant Mechapixel for so long, guys.

[kokopelli]

I believe we've all stuck around because we know that all of the hard work you put into the site at the beginning created a pretty special place. Our community might be small, but there's a closeness there, and that's a direct result of what you created. If I thought I could easliy find a place that I enjoyed as much, maybe I wouldn't have been prodding so much, but I didn't think I could, and I wanted to preserve my favorite haunt on the internet.

[aarkieboy]

Well said, Koko.

[texasaurus]

1. I'm just here for the puddin.

2. Get a room, you three.

3. Profit

4. Who volunteers to go in the basement and poke smoo with a stick to wake him from hibernation?

5. Seriously, nice work Ved. Nice prodding, Koko.

[Ved]

I hope this notice isn't too late, but you guys might want to save your avatar, sig, profile picture, private messages, and biography stuff if you put anything like that in your profile. I don't know if those things will be retained after this weekend, if I complete the old user migration tomorrow or Sunday. If you care about that stuff just save it or throw it in Notepad, but of course if you don't then take no action, your account won't explode or anything.

Same goes for posts really; I'll try to retain them but if things get too jacked up when the old and new forum userdata are merged, then yeah all threads will be gone. If you've been referring to some info or bookmarks in a post in these forums, now is a good time to back them up.

[kokopelli]

Originally Posted by texasaurus

Nice prodding, Koko.

Not the first time I've heard that...

[Ved]

Okay, I'm getting bits and pieces of the old site back online and ready for viewing. I was going to redesign it first but decided it would be better to get content online for you guys to look at, then redesign it once it's all functional again.

The following pages are now browseable:

• Contests Main Page
• Top 30 Entries
• Slag Listings
• Slag Contest (example)
• Slag Entry (example)
• Faceoff Listings
• Faceoff Contest (example)
• Faceoff Entry (example)
• Graffiti Listings
• Graffiti Contest (example)
• History Page, including Stats, Portfolio, Voting, Favorites, Comments tabs
• F.A.Q. (About Mechapixel)

The following pages may be linked from working pages, but are BROKEN right now, and will get you a big nasty 404:

• Volleybattle contests
• Tournament stuff
• Contest Calendar
• Entry Editing or obviously, New Entries (any contest type)
• History Options or Blog updater
• Suggested Contests/Queue
• Basically anything else not in the above list

I do need a favor. I need you guys to look through some random contests, and if you come across any missing entries (the actual images - not webpages), let me know. Please post here if you spot a missing photoshop so I can find it and get it uploaded.

Thanks, and have fun browsing the contests again.

[RepoMan]

Awesome work! It's great to see the old stuff back up.

[Twiggy]

Ahh!! :D

[NocturnalGuy]

Little glitch... showing comments in portfolio doesn't seem to work.

Loving going through all the old entries!

[kokopelli]

Originally Posted by NocturnalGuy

Loving going through all the old entries!

Yes, there's some wonderful stuff there, and some pretty fun memories. I never had the sheer talent that a lot of folks have, but I've always enjoyed the Dark Art of Photoshopping, and looking at some of the old stuff has reminded me of that.

[Ved]

Originally Posted by NocturnalGuy

Little glitch... showing comments in portfolio doesn't seem to work.

Loving going through all the old entries!

Thanks for this report. There also seems to be a problem with adding favorites in Graffitis as well, and both of those actions use the same javascript, so it should be an easy fix.

[Ved]

Okay right now the plan is to start working towards getting Graffiti contests going again, and creating a suitable homepage. This also means reinstating the suggested contests queue; plugging that back in shouldn't be too difficult, and initially it will be open to everyone to view and vote on submissions, since there is no Mecha+ set up. Slags and Faceoffs will remain browseable but I won't start working on opening them up for a while, since they need major code work since I'm going to redo the Jury system and voting in general. I have no ETA on all of this but hopefully we can get it rolling within a week or two, and then the first contest in almost a year and a half will open up shortly after that.

As for the forums, which is easier for me to meddle with during the day on the rare occasion that I get some downtime: short term goals include resizing the Shoutbox, possibly redesigning it to have the input area as a single row on the top (like it used to be), and adding drag-and-drop to the forum boxes like we had before. These are mostly cosmetic changes. Anime, who did most of the original forums coding and design, will probably be able to help with that again as well.

Other site features will be addressed in the future, but I just thought I'd give a heads up on what I'll be focusing on over the next few weeks.

[B L]

Dude, don't flame out in the first week. Flame out gradually.

[stacyrings]

I think he called you gay.

[Gear Jammer]

for all the hard work Ved!
Looking forward to breaking out the old Wacom pen,
and wacking off a few graffiti's.

[Ved]

You bet, it has felt good to get back into it... all of the things to do have been intimidating me, but I'm over the hump and fully engaged in it again.

[Twiggy]

No images at all for this contest http://mechapixel.com/graffiti.php?gid=488
Also, my portfolio seems to not be working. When I click it, it says "Could not retrieve graffiti entry place stats"

[Ved]

Originally Posted by Twiggy

No images at all for this contest http://mechapixel.com/graffiti.php?gid=488
Also, my portfolio seems to not be working. When I click it, it says "Could not retrieve graffiti entry place stats"

Thanks, fixed the entries (all entries from Graffitis #482-499 were missing).

I'll look into your profile issue.

Edit: Ok fixed your profile and portfolio. It would seem that was broken even on the old site, and only for random people. Yikes.

Anyway you should be good to go now.

[Twiggy]

Ah so nice to have a look through my portfolio. As embarrassing as some of those photoshops are. Thanks for fixing that, Ved.

[Ved]

Need some suggestions:

Here is the old entry watermark:



I want to change it. Here are a couple options so far:

#1:


#2:


#3:


Doesn't necessarily need to match the site logo. Thoughts?

[Dinahmoehum]

I like #1 for the reason it looks more hand done, more organic, more like there are actually people at this website, not just 8bit running things.

[kokopelli]

I am leaning towards #1.

[Peaceboy]

#2 looks similar to the one from the past, #1 goes in a different direction and has more personality. And personality goes a long way. Although #3 does follow the Nuke LaLouche rule of announcing our presence with authority.