Post Count (--CHANGED TO MERGE EVRYTHING--)

[TinFoil]

Merrge! (Please...?)

I imagine the post is too small. /including more...

I would like to know when I have 1337 posts total, just for the heck of it.
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EDIT: Gosh darn you... Nero uninstalling thingy! Rebooting... (i'm installing Nero now, and I have to reboot )

[John]

What exactly do you propose?

[TinFoil]

Gar. Context clues.

Well, I'm proposing we merge the post counts from all the forums to have one big one...

[xyzyxx]

I have proposed we just merge everything. Stews seemed to agree with me.
You can let people choose which skin to use while viewing the forum.

[xander]

I have proposed we just merge everything. Stews seemed to agree with me.
You can let people choose which skin to use while viewing the forum.

Hear, hear.

xander

[Me300]

I have proposed we just merge everything. Stews seemed to agree with me.
You can let people choose which skin to use while viewing the forum.

Sounds good to me. xyzyxx proposed a pretty hooah idea.

[NeoThermic]

I have proposed we just merge everything. Stews seemed to agree with me.
You can let people choose which skin to use while viewing the forum.

The major problem with merging everything (bar the fact that it would take a very large amount of time, possibly twice that of merging the users) is that there's not a good way to keep the forums seperate from each other enough. If merged, the whole forum would only have one skin. Sure, people could choose which one that is, but it would apply to the Uplink, Darwinia, Defcon and Introversion forums. We would then also have to do some heavy URL-remapping to try make inter-topic links work fine (i.e make the old links work).

The solution, as I've mentioned here and there would be to wait until 3.0 is released. Then a merger of these forums would be very easy to do, as with subforums you keep each forum seperate, and phpBB 3.0 allows seperate styles to be set per forum, so we could keep roughly the same styles in the new subforums. Plus, our inter-forum links would work better as they are native in 3.0.

Sure, a merger would be great, but not on 2.0.x's codebase; it just wasn't designed to be 4 seperate forums in one.

NeoThermic

[coolsi]

Why do you need to keep the forums seperate? If you have just one 'Introversion' forum with different sections for the various forums it will be far, far less complicated than the complicated mess there is at the moment (sorry, but it is).

[TinFoil]

I think the buttons, as in the and the are universal, and look techy enough.

Blue lines are good... They seem universal, yet the Uplink forums are black-ish...

Defcon, well, erm... IV needs to tell us more about it before we decide on a universal theme.

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I want one big forum too, because I don't want to switch forums, but rather have one large index.

[NeoThermic]

Why do you need to keep the forums seperate? If you have just one 'Introversion' forum with different sections for the various forums it will be far, far less complicated than the complicated mess there is at the moment (sorry, but it is).

Having just one install with all the forums IV has would still be a mess. Lets put it this way. Uplink has 10 forums (excluding the inter-linked forms). Darwinia has 10 as well. Introversion will have two, and Defcon will probibally have 6 at minimum. That makes 28 forums. 28 forums on one page would be a huge mess. On top of that, how would you order them? Does Darwinia go first? Defcon? Introversion, Uplink? Everyone will have their own idea as to who should go where.

For the time being, having each seperate is less mess than merging them all together. I'll chuck together an example of what I mean when I talk about 3.0 and link it here later.

NeoThermic

[coolsi]

OK, this is my idea: http://www.crazie.co.uk/iv/

This just makes the most sense to me. IV is one company and to me it doesn't seem right that it should have it's forums split up - especially as you can only access certain parts of forums from one place and not the other (eg. the current Introversion forums).

You're right, there are a lot of forums but there's so much overlap I think they could easily be combined.

Darwinia: At least the 4 "X Issues" could be combined into one Bug Reports forum, I doubt there will be much more happenning patch-wise for Darwinia anymore.

Uplink: It's pretty common knowledge that certain parts of the Uplink forums are rarely used these days. I would combine Uplink in Moderation with The Full Game and axe The Latest Patch and The Bonus Disk, possibly Mac Uplink too.

Style-wise, users would be able to choose from the current styles available (eg. Uplink, Darwinia and Defcon if that gets it's own style). I'd say default to the Uplink style as in my opinion that is the best one.

The website for each game would link to the section of forums rather than the whole forums themselves, for example the Uplink website would link to http://www.crazie.co.uk/iv/index.php?c=2.

And regarding to the order, it should be in reverse cronological order as in the coming months most of the traffic which will be coming to the forums will (hopefully) because of Defcon.

I see what you're saying about a mess NeoThermic, but at the moment they're not seperate and they're not fully merged together, it just seems to be confused as to what it should be.

Incidentally, when will phpBB 3.0 be released? All the website says is "when it's done".

[NeoThermic]

Thats not too bad, but notice how you've had to think about ordering them, etc.

Here's my example using 3.0:
http://www.neothermic.com/phpBB3/index.php
I don't have to worry about their order (I did them in the order they came out) because the index is clean. Plus, I can add any number of forums under each game type without cluttering the index. <The Next Game> would easlly be added to the index, rather than having to create another 6 forums on the index with your idea.

As for the style, you can set seperate styles for each forum in the admin pannel. If you, as a user, wish, you can change your style and have it override the style set in each forum, but I suspect most people wouldn't change them

The current system works, and no one has complained until we semi-merged them. If we can all wait for 3.0 then we can have the forums look like that.

As for 3.0's release date? What you see there is a three week old CVS copy. Thats how close to beta we are. After beta, it depends on how quick everyone finds bugs, a security audit, and then an RC stage or two (depending on what needs chaning, if anything), and then release. I hedge my bets that we will have 3.0 by June. Don't hold me to that though

NeoThermic

[coolsi]

Yes, that is the ideal way to do it but it can't be done now...it all depends when Defcon starts to gain more interest.

Incidentally, phpBB 3 looks very nice.

[NeoThermic]

Yes, that is the ideal way to do it but it can't be done now...it all depends when Defcon starts to gain more interest.

Incidentally, phpBB 3 looks very nice.

Well, we *could* do it now, but we would have to keep ontop of every checkin to the 3.0.x line, and deal with schema changes, broken features, etc. Possible, but not practical

There will be an upgrade path from RC of 3.0 to Gold of 3.0, so when 3.0 hits RC, I'll try convince IV to let me loose on the forums again

As for looking nice, if you think that looks good, you wait until you see 3.0's new style

NeoThermic

[coolsi]

I think we both know what happened last time IV used a beta version of a forum, so it might be best to wait until it's released :p