Tribe of Judah needs a new main web site. Seriously.

[Tek7]

After spending the last two hours identifying, resolving, and apologizing for an issue that caused the main ToJ web site to stop responding (and I'm hoping didn't land our domain on every major e-mail blacklist in the world), I decided to again call for the aid of members with web development experience to help build a new web site for ToJ.

To clarify: I'm talking about the main ToJ web site, which includes our membership application, the roster which our guilds use to verify ToJ membership, and other essential functions. Chapter sites and guild sites would not be affected by building a new main site except to (ideally) offer the opportunity to integrate more information like ToJ roster profile info into chapter and guild sites.

Our current plan is to use a popular content management system (yet to be selected) like WordPress, Joomla, or ModX (though not necessarily any of those 3) as a foundation for the next site, then modify the CMS and develop modules to meet our needs. Since the roster and membership application are at the heart of the site, there isn't any CMS that would do what we're looking for a web site to do without modification.

To clarify: I'm not asking for anyone to build a site using 100% custom code. It worked in the past, but it's clear that strategy is no longer feasible.

I also wanted to point out, as I have many times before, that the fact that we're still able to use the ToJ web site years after SirThom first developed the site is a testament to his programming prowess. SirThom resigned from the Lead Web Developer position a few years ago and the post has been vacant since.

I know there are several very talented web developers in our community, some of whom have contributed bug fixes and new features to our current site. I am seeking additional web developers to contribute their time, skills, and effort toward building a new site.

But my foremost goal is to appoint someone to lead and manage the effort to build the next ToJ web site. I lack the time, experience, and knowledge to properly lead a team of web developers on a project such as this. Even if I could fumble through building a new web site with assistance from other members, I need to start delegating more tasks instead of taking on additional duties.

Put succinctly: Someone else has to do this or it isn't going to get done.

Don't misunderstand me; I think our web site is great. It does what we need it to do and it works. But it looks dated (which is to be expected, seeing as it was developed years ago and hasn't received a visual update since), it lacks new features commonly found in modern web sites, and it's 100% custom code by a programmer who's no longer on staff.

Tribe of Judah needs a new main web site. Seriously. If you're interested in helping or managing the effort to build a new site using an existing CMS as a foundation, please send Elihu, Tribe of Judah's Staff Manager, a private message on the forums and copy me on the PM.

 

[Lygernight]

Apparently vBulletin has a content management suite that incorporates the forums and article based-CMS as well as a blog system. Is that more of what you're looking for? It's called 4.0 vBulletin Publishing Suite.

https://www.vbulletin.com/index.php?do=features#cms-features

I think part of it depends on how you're hosting the site. I'm assuming the current hosting services already cover what you need since these forums are vBulletin already. It should, in theory, be as easy as updating and then all the current members should just be already incorporated. I've never done anything on this scale before so I couldn't tell you for certain. The biggest community I've ever worked with had 20 users, and honestly it was just easier to start it all over with a new site and have everyone re-register. But that was 5 years ago.

 

[Patriot]

The biggest community I've ever worked with had 20 users, and honestly it was just easier to start it all over with a new site and have everyone re-register. But that was 5 years ago.

That has an added benefit of expunging all of the old inactive user accounts.

 

[Tek7]

Apparently vBulletin has a content management suite that incorporates the forums and article based-CMS as well as a blog system. Is that more of what you're looking for? It's called 4.0 vBulletin Publishing Suite.

The CGA is planning on upgrading to vBulletin 4.x and using the CMS starting soon, but the CGA forums (where the ToJ forums are hosted) and the ToJ web site use two different databases. Unless I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's not a security risk, we'll likely keep it that way. Even if it's not a security risk, it may not be our best option.

I was thinking we would use something more along the lines of Joomla or DotNetNuke as a foundation for the next ToJ web site.

 

[Lygernight]

The CGA is planning on upgrading to vBulletin 4.x and using the CMS starting soon, but the CGA forums (where the ToJ forums are hosted) and the ToJ web site use two different databases. Unless I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's not a security risk, we'll likely keep it that way. Even if it's not a security risk, it may not be our best option.

I've got to be honest with you, I'm still new and all, but I'm not at all inclined to go to the toj.cc site since I know the following things about the site:

1) It's mainly new user/ new recruit informative (and I've read it all by now)
2) It's simply a series of links to the forums which we're on now

Lets face it, people discuss and interact here (when not in game) and not so much there. Really there's almost no benefit to the end-user for the separate login. I get where you are with things now, and I'm not saying throw the baby out with the bathwater by any means, but is the main Tribe of Judah website (toj.cc)used by the actual members?

As I said before, it's definitely a great starting point for the new recruit to get all the info about who ToJ is and what they stand for, but beyond that it's not going to be used as much as the forums unless you merge the two into one system.

I don't see any major pitfalls in the security with that then there would be with any other forum, blog, or other cms system. If you update to the vBulletin 4.0 CMS system I'd recommend importing the forums user database and if its possible, only importing the content from the toj.cc site without the user database. Otherwise the content from the toj.cc site would be easier to re-generate then the userbase would be.

I guess my confusion comes in because ToJ forums is a hosted subset of forums under the Christian Gamer Alliance? Why not considering breaking off the ToJ forums from the CGA forum site and provide it as a link as some of the other guilds listed there. If ToJ is supposed to stand on it's own, under the helm of the CGA, then by all means give it a way to stand in unity on its own.

Regardless of where things go, I'm here to stay with ya and help anyway I can. Sometimes I think it's helpful to have fresh eyes give a perspective on things.

 

[Tek7]

One of the reasons the ToJ main site does not contain more content than it does is that I haven't been pushing staff members to add content because I know that we'll be moving to a new site. When we get a new site, there'll be much more motivation to write and post new content. Articles previously available only on the forums will likely be moved to the site. The forums will be largely dynamic, featuring user interaction, while the site will be largely static, featuring helpful information. The purposes sometimes overlap, but there's still a clear need for both.

As for moving the ToJ forums away from the CGA Forums: Hosting our own forums would considerably increasing our hosting costs. Right now, we pay $20 a month for web hosting. There's simply no way that forums with our level of activity would be welcome on shared hosting and moving to dedicated hosting is expensive. But the expense is not the real issue; I'm confident that members would donate the money to cover the additional expense if necessary.

The real issue is that ToJ was one of the groups that helped establish the Christian Gamers Alliance and moving our forums elsewhere would likely cause a drop in activity on the CGA shared forums. I understand that as President of ToJ and President of CGA, one could argue that I have a conflict of interest in leading both groups, but I remain dedicated to both organizations and believe the current arrangement benefits both ToJ and CGA. With the current arrangement, ToJ members are more involved with the larger Christian gaming community than they would be if we moved the forums elsewhere.

And if I were to pull the ToJ forums from the CGA server as the ToJ President, one could argue that it seems hypocritical for me to suggest to new CGA affiliates that they should let us host their forums and join us on the CGA shared forums? I understand the notion sounds self or that I'm trying to weight one organization's benefit against the other, but, again, I still believe this is the best arrangement.

Furthermore, there may be other ways of integrating forum data into the web site that don't involve sharing a user database. The Redeemed web site provides a great example of one such method.

Trust me when I say that things are the way they are for good reason. Trust that I don't stick with the way it is just because that's the way it's been.

You asked a fair question (one I'm guessing most ToJ members have wondered about at some point) and I hope my reply was informative.

 

[Lygernight]

I've got a much better picture now of what you're looking at now. In order to get the same login you'd have to have some serious custom coding to share the MySql database. In theory the ToJ site really shouldn't need much as far as a user login then. You could just simply do a Wordpress site and only setup accounts for the content publishing users or admins. Hide the login link on the site and admins would just have to make a bookmark of the login page. You could easily add links to the ToJ sub-forums just like you have now. I'd definitely recommend some form of site that publish RSS feeds for content so users could use an external reader and know when there's new content. Or establish an email subscription campaign that users can subscribe to whenever there's a new post. You could do this through the use of feedburner and it could also publish posts to twitter and Facebook if you have it synced properly. Then one post could goto the site, over email, and published to twitter and FB in one click of the submit key.

 

[Lygernight]

Also note if your concerned about users being able to comment on the Wordpress version of the site you could incorporate the use of a comment structure like disqus which encourages users to user their twitter or Facebook logins and this would in courage again users from site to FB/twitter and back again.

 

[Lygernight]

Here's a site I recently stumbled onto from a friend on twitter. The site uses a combination of Wordpress and phpBB forums. It also has a mobile. Erosion of their site and forums.

Christian Crew Gaming
http://ccgaming.com/