Welcome to the new Gang of Five forum!

rhombus · **on:** May 29, 2018, 05:30:52 PM

Welcome everyone to the new forum!

This has truly been a long and treacherous process for us admins as much in this process was not straightforward at all. Thankfully for us a programmer, James Gryphon, who had helped convert the Fiver's Honeycomb forum and the Redwall fan forum was willing to give us a hand. His tireless work are a big reason why the new forum is now available to us all. Though the forum still has a few modifications and fixes to go (most notably with image hosting and quotes) the forum is ready for prime time.

The New Forum

The new forum has all of the data from the old forum, excepting only user signatures, PMs, and avatars, which will need to be manually re-added. The old forum is still online at the moment at this link: http://s7.zetaboards.com/thegangoffive/index/ so feel free to transfer your data as appropriate.

Though we originally wanted to go with phpBB 3.0, that proved to be a bridge too far for us, so eventually we decided to make the forum in SMF 2.0. This is still a versatile and up-to-date code (2017 versus 2008 for Zetaboards) and it allows for security enhancements compared to Zetaboards. New features will most likely be added as we go along and become more acquainted to the underlying code.

The new forum is also now hosted on a paid VPS located in Dallas, Texas. Though this does cost a considerable amount of money it also grants us more freedom with our data. In particular we hope to have image hosting turned on in the next few days, which will free us from having to use image-sharing sites in the future. Additionally this new arrangement will allow us to make weekly backups of the forum in the future, which will secure our data in the event of calamity. With your continued support this arrangement should keep the forum going strong for years to come.

Paying for the New Forum

As we now own our own server this means no more free hosting and no more ads - we are in charge! That being said, as I have said, we are in charge, and now nobody is paying the piper for us, we have to do it. Currently we're looking at $50 per month to keep our forum in the best category when it comes to the hosting that is required. It sounds like a lot but it really isn't.

Look at it this way. $5 a month is very little actually for one person to consider donating. A standard meal at Mickey D's costs more than $5 these days. If you not into fast food, replace it with any other vice you have. I can almost guarantee any vice you have is more than $5, and you're probably enjoying those more than once a month to boot! To keep a nice, friendly, healthy community going, isn't it worth giving up just a little bit per month? If everyone chipped in, we'd be at that $50 without much hassle.

We are funding this through Patreon. rhombus will be the account manager and funds go into a special PayPal business account for the forum which directly funds our hosting fees and the cost of future improvements. Payments can be done through paypal if you choose. Right now we set it at two levels: $3.00 and $10.00 but you can basically give whatever you want. These levels will give you special badges to wear on the forum to show that you a proud contributor in keeping the forum online. Again, everybody working together and contributing will get us our hosting. Even $3.00 helps. Let's do this together. Together we survive. Dividing and unwilling, this time we definitely will fall.

Here is the link to our support page: https://www.patreon.com/user/overview?u=5609318

Going Forward

Though we have double-checked things there still will be some issues with the new forum, just as their was initially after our switch to Zetaboards. With that in mind, if you come across any special issues then please do not hesitate to let us admins know in the Forum Issues section. A special topic is set up there for conversion issues. It may take a few days to get the forum into a polished state, but rest assured that it is now functional. And, unlike the old Zetaboards forum which TapaTalk never fixed, this forum has a search feature that actually works.

Likewise, we will let you know when image hosting becomes possible on the forum. We hope to have that ready in the next few days.

Conclusion

Finally, we would like to thank you all for the patience and support that you all have shown during this difficult time. While numerous Zetaboards forums are now being discontinued due to the TapaTalk conversion, this forum stuck together and took the difficult action of migrating to a new home. Along the way we have received numerous helpful tips from members, and financial support to help us through this process. With such loyalty and dedication to this community, I have no doubts that this forum will look upon this move as the beginning of a new, more liberated future. Thank you all for your support!

~ Gang of Five Admin Team

Petrie · **Reply #1 on:** May 29, 2018, 07:44:23 PM

For everyone that is reading this, a BIG THANK YOU needs to go to James Gryphon of the Redwalll Abbey community for his time and effort to get this working for us in addition to the forum staff here who have worked tirelessly to get this forum moved. Most have no idea how much work Nick, rhombus, and zero-point have put into this over the last week.

Littlefoot505 · **Reply #2 on:** May 29, 2018, 09:46:14 PM

Looks good!!

The only thing I’m noticing is a bunch of question marks where there should be apostrophes.

Flathead770 · **Reply #3 on:** May 30, 2018, 12:58:57 AM

It's great to see that the transfer is successful!

To everyone who worked to get this done, you guys are heroes!

aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato) · **Reply #4 on:** May 30, 2018, 01:23:51 AM

Hi everyone! (I had to change my username, new forum doesn't allow ampersands in the username)

I'm liking this new forum. Is http://108.174.197.131/bb/index.php the permanent URL? Just want to know for bookmarking purposes

rhombus · **Reply #5 on:** May 30, 2018, 01:26:12 AM

Quote from: aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato) on May 30, 2018, 01:23:51 AM
Quote from: aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato) on May 30, 2018, 01:23:51 AM

Hi everyone! (I had to change my username, new forum doesn't allow ampersands in the username)

I'm liking this new forum. Is http://108.174.197.131/bb/index.php the permanent URL? Just want to know for bookmarking purposes

It should be. Though we will talk to landbeforetimelover about possibly getting the gangoffive.net domain to link back here.

Sneak · **Reply #6 on:** May 30, 2018, 04:16:34 AM

Good morning here!

Congratulations with successful moving! You guys rule!

And as I see, all forum data from last days was moved to, and we don't have to retype old posts! :'D

Sovereign · **Reply #7 on:** May 30, 2018, 05:52:48 AM

Great job with the transfer, guys! It will take a bit of getting used to with the look of the new site but other than that, things are looking very nice!

Ducky123 · **Reply #8 on:** May 30, 2018, 11:54:07 AM

As with the old zetaboards transfer, there will be some getting used to to be done in the next few days but overall I'm really just glad this forum is still here! Words cannot describe how much I appreciate your work, would certainly buy y'all a few beers in a bar if it was possible

LeventeII · **Reply #9 on:** May 30, 2018, 12:58:14 PM

I'm glad it worked out. I like the style, although it takes a little getting used to it. I think it has been great!

landbeforetimelover · **Reply #10 on:** May 30, 2018, 04:19:20 PM

Everything seems to work, but it feels VERY dated. Like a forum from the early 2000's.

Also, text and other elements just aren't large enough on my phone screen.

I would be happy to help with the design of the website so that it looks better both on computers and phones/tablets.

The theme should be clean, modern, and look great on all devices. This just isn't cutting it. If you want an example of what the forums COULD look like, I encourage you to check out the forum on my website:

www.thelandbeforetime.org

My little forum is based on much simpler technology under the hood and probably couldn't handle the traffic that GOF gets, but that doesn't mean that we can't make GOF at least LOOK more clean and modern.

Nick22 · **Reply #11 on:** May 30, 2018, 04:33:12 PM

Well LBTlover, we are working on ways to make the forum look better, and to make the text look bigger. as with any transition, theres going to be kinks worked out , bugs that come up, that sort of things. And We welcome any input on improvements we can make. SO any ideas you have, by all means, share them. Considering this is a 14 year old forum, yeah parts of it arent going to look modern, but imo that comes with the territory.

landbeforetimelover · **Reply #12 on:** May 30, 2018, 05:04:03 PM

Quote from: Nick22 on May 30, 2018, 04:33:12 PM

SO any ideas you have, by all means, share them.

Where to start? There's just so much that needs to be updated. ALL of the icons for example are extremely dated (I'm talking about the BOLD icon for example when you go to make a new post), and the icons for replying to topics, quoting a post, etc. all need to be themed to match LBT. As much as it pains me to say it, I think it's time for a whole new look for GOF. Thankfully SMF includes themes and the ability for individual members to change themes, so member can choose to either keep things the way they are, or apply a new theme.

I would suggest a lighter theme, with text that's easy to read. We could also make a "dark" version of the theme for members that prefer that. But the forums need about a million little changes and it all takes time. I might develop my own SMF theme and show it to you guys so you can have a better idea of what I'm talking about. I took a look at the themes gallery at the SMF website and they're all pretty dated looking and awful, which means that either the ability to modify the theme is severely limited or (most likely), no one has really developed a good looking theme. It takes a lot of skill to totally design a theme from scratch and have everything look good together.

The Chronicler · **Reply #13 on:** May 30, 2018, 07:56:31 PM

I was able to successfully log in, change my password, and bring back my avatar, though the signature is proving to be a little problematic. It'll certainly take some getting used to, but it looks like most things here are turning out just fine.

Midnight · **Reply #14 on:** May 30, 2018, 07:59:53 PM

Excellent work, everyone!

This looks SO good... and feels the part, too

Petrie · **Reply #15 on:** May 30, 2018, 09:12:02 PM

Sounds like a plan to me Austin. Let's see what a good theme looks like. I have no qualms with the current one, no matter how old it may look to some eyes.

Serris · **Reply #16 on:** May 30, 2018, 10:36:16 PM

It's dark but pleasant on the eyes.

Mumbling · **Reply #17 on:** May 31, 2018, 04:56:19 PM

Looking good! Thanks for everyone who put time and effort into the conversion, much appreciated!

I agree that the font seems a little too small. I definitely feel the need to zoom in on my laptop. Haven't yet had the option to check out the forum on a mobile device though. I do however no longer feel that the forum feels super outdated, a feeling i did strongly have with invisionfree/zetaboards. It may not be much, but the whole design already looks sleeker than it did before.

Here's to many more years on our own terms!

Hypno · **Reply #18 on:** June 01, 2018, 04:11:21 PM

I really like the look of it. So glad that the forum is in the hands of the admins now.

My only pet peeve is that one page of posts on the forum only contains 15 posts; the old one had 20. Could this be changed so that it's the way it used to be?

Edit: removed the concern above since I was gonna put it in the right topic for that but added it back since I got a reply

rhombus · **Reply #19 on:** June 01, 2018, 04:16:33 PM

^^ We now have it back to the present from the old forum of 20.