1. SPS Accounts:
    Do you find yourself coming back time after time? Do you appreciate the ongoing hard work to keep this community focused and successful in its mission? Please consider supporting us by upgrading to an SPS Account. Besides the warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from supporting a good cause, you'll also get a significant number of ever-expanding perks and benefits on the site and the forums. Click here to find out more.
    Dismiss Notice
Dismiss Notice
You are currently viewing Boards o' Magick as a guest, but you can register an account here. Registration is fast, easy and free. Once registered you will have access to search the forums, create and respond to threads, PM other members, upload screenshots and access many other features unavailable to guests.

BoM cultivates a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. We have been aiming for quality over quantity with our forums from their inception, and believe that this distinction is truly tangible and valued by our members. We'd love to have you join us today!

(If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you've forgotten your username or password, click here.)

Sorcerer's Place Happenings #199

Discussion in 'BoM Blogs' started by Taluntain, Jun 15, 2016.

Tags:
  1. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2000
    Messages:
    23,653
    Media:
    494
    Likes Received:
    570
    Gender:
    Male
    Remove all ads!
    [​IMG]In the last SPH before this one, a long, long time ago, I wrote that I'll be making some of the changes and improvements that have been in the works for too long before making any more promises or announcements. We've come quite a long way since then, so getting the SPH started again is pretty much a necessity. Much of what I'm about to list here has already been detailed in our news and Sorcerous Sundries forums over time, but it bears briefly repeating for anyone late to the party.

    Definitely the biggest project was the migration of our forums to new software (XenForo). I knew that this would involve a huge amount of work due to the many differences between the old and the new software, but I still underestimated just how much custom coding and post-migration adjustments would be required to get the forums back to what felt like "home" again.

    Of course, the fact that I took the migration opportunity to piggyback a couple of smaller site projects that have been nearly forgotten over the years onto the main one didn't help to speed matters up. I'm definitely happy with the end result, however.

    Boards o' Magick are now a complete solution for most of our content and interaction needs. Besides the forums themselves, we've got a full-featured media gallery with both image and video embedding support, a resources/downloads vault for content submissions and a chatroom that feels much like our old IRC hangout #sorcerers (may it RIP), but with numerous improvements. Since we're now well past the pre/early-FB era when most people still actually used IRC to chat, I feel that chat integrated with the forums is the only way to go.

    To accompany our new chat, I've updated the chatroom documentation on the site as well.

    I've retired the old Site News page as it hasn't reflected any of the site changes in a long time and replaced it with a Latest Resources & Downloads page, accessible from the front page and other main pages of the site. This page is picking up the new content feed from the Resources/Downloads Discussions forum, so you can now check for new content on both the site and the forums.

    To date we've migrated all of the old forum submissions into this new downloads vault and completely revamped the Circle of Eight subsection for The Temple of Elemental Evil (thanks, @Gaear !). The Co8 content is now split into two categories in the vault, Co8 Mods and Co8 Tools. The plan is to eventually migrate all of the existing site downloads to the new vault, though it's likely that the process will be gradual, with updates of the existing content appearing in the vault first.

    All of the newly added content will be added directly to the vault, so the submission instructions have been updated accordingly. Anyone can submit new content quickly and easily now, since we only need to approve it before it becomes publicly available for viewing/download. Using the same system, I'll be adding new game content over the next few weeks and months myself as well.

    Some of the other more extensive content additions since the previous SPH have been:
    And yes, Beren's walkthrough for Pillars of Eternity will be coming, hopefully soon-ish!

    Other changes/improvements worth pointing out are the various forum merges and rearrangements, visible on the forum listing and the unification of the general game/SP news archives in a single forum (going back right to the beginning of SP).
     
    Last edited: Jun 15, 2016
    Taluntain, Jun 15, 2016
    #1
Sorcerer's Place is a project run entirely by fans and for fans. Maintaining Sorcerer's Place and a stable environment for all our hosted sites requires a substantial amount of our time and funds on a regular basis, so please consider supporting us to keep the site up & running smoothly. Thank you!

Sorcerers.net is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to products on amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.