WordPress to your mother Quickies Posted by Jonathan Capps on 8th September 2012, 00:09 G&T gone dun a re-launch! Rather than boring you all half to sleep with the finer details, I’ll keep this brief and to the point. This re-launch has been what can only be described as “a long time coming”. The old system has served us well, but we were well overdue a CMS upgrade. Here are the main points of interest: We’re now running on WordPress. In the main this won’t affect you, but I’m quite pleased and that’s all that matters. The design has had a big ol’ refresh. It’s still G&T, but NEW. To offset the fact there’s now less information on the screen at any one time, we’ve categorised posts a little more and stuck in a second layer of navigation at the top of the home page. Unfortunately, this does bring into sharp relief how long it’s been since we posted a proper Review, but never mind. The new CMS will give you a little more control over your account, too. You can login and access your account page from the main navigation and, if you so wish, fill out a bit more detail about yourself and change up your display name. You’ll notice that your avatar has not been carried over from the old site, but if you have a Gravatar that’ll be used by default unless you upload a new one. If you want to continue using your old avatar, you’ll find it on your account page ready to grab and re-upload. New forum! It’s fairly similar to how it was on the old site, and there’s a thread in there for you to direct any forum specific queries or problems. We hope you like what we’ve done to the place, but do bear in mind that the process of refining the design and functionality of the site is ongoing, so you’ll be seeing little improvements crop up here and there over the coming weeks and months. Hmm, that wasn’t so brief after all, was it?
By the way, I’m currently having to approve everyone’s first comment, so apologies if you have to wait a while for them to show up.
I’m missing “Who’s online,” but I guess I can live without it. Although, it was kind of cool on that one BtE DwarfCast The look is superb. Is everyone greeted with “Howdy”?
I’m missing “Who’s online,” but I guess I can live without it. Yeah, I miss it too. Still trying to find a decent plugin. Is everyone greeted with “Howdy”? Where does it say that? Bloody WordPress and its chummy system messages…
Is there a way to change timezones on this thing? I’m ever so slightly in the future and I’d like to get back to my own time.
First seeing Ian getting a pie in his fucking face, then a G&T WordPress update. Top that for an evening of euphoria!
Ah, so you’re seeing the UK time on comments? That… shouldn’t happen. I think I’ll blame WordPress and look for a solution on the morrow.
Actually on second thought, I blame WordPress. I don’t understand it, it doesn’t understand me, etc. Out of interest, did the old site display UK times or did it convert to your timezone?
> Unfortunately, this does bring into sharp relief how long it’s been since we posted a proper Review, but never mind. As long as we get a 4 page ‘Trojan’ write-up from each G&T member by 11pm on 4th October I’m sure we can let that slide…;)
Sorry to use you as a guinea pig, Brayds, but I’m just trying to figure out if this is a WordPress thing or a problem with my migration. What time do you see for the comment in this post?: http://www.unlimitedricepudding.co.uk/2012/09/asylum-of-the-daleks/#comments
Logged in and remembered I have an account with WordPress from last semester’s computer class, but cannot remember my info. As if I’ll ever use the thing again. As if as I student I ever have time for that anymore. But I do make time to come here. :)
Will take a bit of getting used to. One thing I think is lacking is that the default tab is “News”. Think this should be “updates” as articles (at least, the old ones) are hidden unless you hit that tab. For example, by the looks of it, the RDX reports wouldn’t have made the “front” page and are essentially hidden unless you hit the “Articles” tab.
And “awaiting moderation”? Gah! Also, it’s a bit red. I know this is a Red Dwarf site, but maybe nice to use different colours to represent different areas of the site/ different types of updates. Just a thought.
Will take a bit of getting used to. One thing I think is lacking is that the default tab is “News”. Think this should be “updates” as articles (at least, the old ones) are hidden unless you hit that tab. For example, by the looks of it, the RDX reports wouldn’t have made the “front” page and are essentially hidden unless you hit the “Articles” tab. Ah, no, this isn’t the case, it’s just that all of our recent posts have been news. Any new articles or DwarfCasts or anything else will appear right at the top of the home page, just the same as news. Also, it’s a bit red. I know this is a Red Dwarf site, but maybe nice to use different colours to represent different areas of the site/ different types of updates. Just a thought. Do you mean the category navigation at the top? We tried colour coding that and it looked way too fussy (although that whole navigation is temporary until we develop something much more dynamic and exciting). We also tried colour coding titles, and it looked like shit so decided against it.
Another thing I forgot to mention is that we’ve finally moved over all the REALLY old news posts from 2002 / 2003. The ‘Archives’ dropdown on the right is your friend.
>Ah, no, this isn’t the case, it’s just that all of our recent posts have been news. Any new articles or DwarfCasts or anything else will appear right at the top of the home page, just the same as news. Ah, OK. I was just using older articles as an example (if you hit “older posts” under News and scroll back to January, the RDX reports aren’t there) but if this is working for new stuff going forward, that’s fine. As for colour coding, furry muff. Generally,I rather like it. It’s still recognisably the same site.
Ah, OK. I was just using older articles as an example (if you hit “older posts” under News and scroll back to January, the RDX reports aren’t there) but if this is working for new stuff going forward, that’s fine. Not under “News”, no. But “News” is not the front page. If you’re on the front page, and you go back to Older posts, you’ll eventually hit the set reports. It’s just that they’re way back in January. If you’re in the “News” category, then no, you’ll only see News, no matter how far back you go. maybe nice to use different colours to represent different areas of the site/ different types of updates It does do that! At least as far as I can see – all the different category “tags” have a different colour.
>But “News” is not the front page Ah, my apologies. I assumed it was, and now I see a different colour for a different feature! It works how I wanted it to. Ergo I am a ninny. (Some, er, new articles wouldn’t go amiss though :-)) And “_ new comments” ? Is that coming back?
(Some, er, new articles wouldn’t go amiss though :-)) Yeah, the new structure means we can’t get away with filling up the ‘In Depth’ column with DwarfCasts! And “_ new comments” ? Is that coming back? I’m working on that now. As I mentioned in the forum, WordPress doesn’t have the necessary framework to tell what’s new since you last viewed a post so I’m looking at options to get as close to the old ‘New Comments’ feature as possible without making any changes that are too drastic (I’m trying to keep the WordPress install as clean and generic as possible, to avoid future problems).
And have we lost “Edit Post” forever? Starting to feel my way around and quite like it. The site is good too.
Hmm, I expected people to be able to edit their comments. I’m now trying to decide whether this is a good or a bad thing. It might crop up again as an option at some point.
Well, some sort of time limit would be peachy if WordPress allows.. Maybe ten minutes and the option disappears.
>Is everyone greeted with “Howdy”? Howdy doodley doo username… >Where does it say that? Bloody WordPress and its chummy system messages >Oh, I see it now. I’ll be fucking that off, sharpish Arrrgghhhh first degree word pressuicide!!!! He’s killed the welcome message!
Right, everyone can stop moaning about not being able to edit their comments, now. The time limit is 15 minutes and you should already be able to edit posts in the Forum.
While your on the subject of the forum the breadcrumbs are behaving a little weird it cant seem to make there mind up between http://www.ganymede.tv/forums/ & http://www.ganymede.tv/forum/ (occasionaly you even get both at once!) – the former url also benefits from a rather fun bug with the “float: left;” on line 253 of the forum’s style.css that makes everything look squished to the left.
Yeah /forums/ is the true root of the forum system (and then /forums/forum/main the true URL of the forum index) but I’ve wrapped it up on its own page (/forum/) to match the old site, but the breadcrumb only uses the true URLs. Flobadob blib blob bleep.
I’d possibly suggest setting up a rewrite rule to steer people/spiders away from anything that’s a little odd? Let me know if you need a hand. Other than that wouldn’t mind a “jump to top” in the footer as some of these pages can get a little lengthy!
Haha. It doesn’t now. Beautifully done, Team G&T. And, as soon as I saw this, I knew what it was going to say now. [I wouldn't say you're predictable. Aloud!]
Really liking the update. I particularly like that we don’t have to re-size our avatars and can just crop them. I always had some difficulty with that.
I’m totally loving this, but I’m wondering if there is any way to automatically jump down to the newest posts we haven’t viewed yet. That function was very handy before, but knowing not all functions can always transfer…well, I will adapt if I must…
Right, I’m redirecting all relaunch stuff to this forum post: http://www.ganymede.tv/forums/topic/new-site-discussion/ Feel free to restate any suggestions you’ve made in here.
