Atlaua
March 20th, 2009, 11:15 AM
As part of the make maintenance easier plan I will soon be making some changes to TSS and MWD.
The biggest change will be to combine the two boards into one. Separately they do not get enough traffic to justify the time it takes to maintain both boards (you may have noticed I haven't done an upgrade in a while.). In the combined system, everything from MWD will be moved to TSS. Things that are specifically regional will be in a separate Midwest section. The Midwest section will be opt-in, but everyone with an account here will automatically be opted in. Things that are not specific will be placed in the appropriate section of the combined boards. The www.midwestdive.com url will continue to function and will go to the combined site.
Other changes will be:
1. Remove advertisement. We get next to nothing out of the ads so there is no reason to make people look at them. Plus it will allow us to compete with other boards on the basis that we are not externally funded and therefore remain impartial.
2. Remove unused sections. The news section, for example. I don't have the time to keep it up to date and have never gotten any volunteers to do so so it will likely be replaced.
3. Enhance other sections. I have a number of bug fixes for the dive sites I need to implement and want to make some improvements to the instructor database.
4. Remove old skins. Maintaining mutltiple skins is time consuming and many of you have noticed issues with the older skins. These will be going away so the few of you who have been hanging on to the old, buggy, skin will have to cope.
5. Subscriptions. The subscription program will be made more prevelant as a replacement for advertisement. Specifically, more features/abilities will be granted to subscribed users.
6. Upgrades. We are currently 2 point releases behind on the forum software. The boards will be upgraded to include a number of new features.
The biggest change will be to combine the two boards into one. Separately they do not get enough traffic to justify the time it takes to maintain both boards (you may have noticed I haven't done an upgrade in a while.). In the combined system, everything from MWD will be moved to TSS. Things that are specifically regional will be in a separate Midwest section. The Midwest section will be opt-in, but everyone with an account here will automatically be opted in. Things that are not specific will be placed in the appropriate section of the combined boards. The www.midwestdive.com url will continue to function and will go to the combined site.
Other changes will be:
1. Remove advertisement. We get next to nothing out of the ads so there is no reason to make people look at them. Plus it will allow us to compete with other boards on the basis that we are not externally funded and therefore remain impartial.
2. Remove unused sections. The news section, for example. I don't have the time to keep it up to date and have never gotten any volunteers to do so so it will likely be replaced.
3. Enhance other sections. I have a number of bug fixes for the dive sites I need to implement and want to make some improvements to the instructor database.
4. Remove old skins. Maintaining mutltiple skins is time consuming and many of you have noticed issues with the older skins. These will be going away so the few of you who have been hanging on to the old, buggy, skin will have to cope.
5. Subscriptions. The subscription program will be made more prevelant as a replacement for advertisement. Specifically, more features/abilities will be granted to subscribed users.
6. Upgrades. We are currently 2 point releases behind on the forum software. The boards will be upgraded to include a number of new features.