Back to Normal? And WOTM April 2012 Results

pokemon-paradijs.comHey everyone. I want to thank you for supporting the site and all its login bugs the past couple weeks. It was really difficult for me to come to terms with the security breach, but after things settled down a little bit, I realized my goal needed to be to come out from the situation even better than before.

I personally have gone through some pretty crappy times in the past, but I’ve always been able to put things behind me and emerge (or maybe I should say evolve into) a better person. I’m taking the same stance with SixPrizes, so my plan has been to make site security my number one concern, which has involved upgrading, eschewing, and installing new software.

Through this process, there have been a lot of headaches trying to get software A to cooperate with software B, and software B to cooperate with software C. Things are still definitely not ideal, as you have to login in up to 3 separate places on the site to access everything, but I’m thankful you at least can access everything now.

Before I go into the specifics of all that though (including our new forum software), let’s take care of the April 2012 Writer of the Month results! Drumroll please…

http://youtu.be/itAOGRiYRLI?t=2s

1st – Roarkiller @ +46
2nd – a hahn @ +41
3rd – Mark Hanson @ +30
4th – pocokemon @ +21
5th – Dane Carlson @ +18
6th – Andrew Wamboldt @ +16
7th – Starmetroid @ +13
8th – Ross Gilbert @ +12
9th – Quarter-Turn @ +10
10th – Grant Manley @ +9
11th – SuperE @ +8
12th – Rahul Reddy @ +7
T-13th – Oscar Morales @ +6
T-13th – Warged @ +6

Roarkiller takes it with a single very well-timed Dark Explorers article, followed closely by a hahn with Mark coming in 3rd. Excellent articles all around everyone! I thought some of the people who finished toward the back of the pack should have gotten some more love, but the low scores might be due to all the login bugs.

Regardless, thanks so much guys for contributing to the site! You’re all awesome. I really appreciate each and every article we receive. If you the reader out there would like to contribute as well, click here for application instructions. We’re always looking for new writers!

Now back to the site developments…

1. New Forum Software!

I am especially stoked to finally move on from our old forum software, vBulletin, to the cutting edge XenForo. vBulletin was the number 1 forum software on the market when we started the forums, so I went with it, but from day 1 I found it kind of clunky and confusing to manage.

I’ve always been somewhat unhappy with the forums, and when we started having login issues last week, I said screw it and decided that we were going to move on. I heard about XenForo somewhere, tried a demo out, learned that big sites like IGN use it and digitalpoint is moving to it, and I was sold.

I spent Sunday doing local testing to make sure the conversion would go through without a hitch, and I spent all day yesterday actually going through with the move. Last night the forums relaunched, and it has been smooth sailing from there.

You can check the improved forums here: https://sixprizes.com/forums/

The reason why this new forum software is so cool is that it’s almost like having a mini 6P Facebook. It lends itself much better to social interaction by displaying instant notifications when people quote you, comment on your threads, post on your page, like something you said, etc..

It just does a much better job then vB at everyone engaged in the conversation, and I’m really excited to watch things grow. I’m actually pretty motivated now to pay more attention to the forums and better develop them. If you’re interested in helping out with this, or have any ideas to make them better, please let me know! Either comment or e-mail me.

I’m still busy trying to get other things on the site in order, but once I have some time I’ll shift my focus to cultivating the forums.

For example, yes, the forum design will eventually be updated and it’ll look more like SixPrizes. My priority at the moment is to make sure it (and the rest of the site) is totally functional. I’d rather things work and look bland than not work and look cool.

2. Login Issues

maximumpc.com

I think for the most part, the logins should be working now. I’m not 100% though, so please let me know if you’re having trouble logging in to either the articles, the forums, or your membership area.

Don’t assume it’s just you that’s having an issue, or someone has already notified me about it! I usually don’t know about the bugs on the site until I’m told.

Last week I got a bunch of e-mails regarding trouble accessing different parts of the site, but those messages have trailed off the past couple days, so I assume those people are good now and the logins are fixed. Please contact me if that’s not the case though.

At any rate, once I’m sure all the logins are working properly, my next step is to create a single login page so you don’t have to login 3 times. That single login page should log you in everywhere. That’s how the site worked before I had to install all the new software, and I’m trying to get it back to that state.

After I get the single login page working, then I’ll work on aesthetics so all the different parts of the site look more similar and its a seamless transition from section to section.

That’s about all I’ve got to say at the moment… be sure to play around with the new forums and let me know what you think! Thanks for reading and have an awesome day.

EDIT: Apparently they may be a bug where the forums are resetting your password. I’ll look into it tomorrow and try to figure out what’s going on. You can try to update your password here if the forums say your password is wrong when you try to login.