Short update on TRF5.

First and foremost, what you see here at therebelfaction.com will stay the way it is. I don't think we should be deleting anything, at the most I'll deactivate the ability to post in forums as they move. The ability to read and browse will remain. TRF5 however is going to be at rebelfaction.org. You can head over there if you want and poke around. Registration/account reclaiming is working but the user accounts may get re-migrated at any time. Don't make any new content over there unless you're OK with it vanishing. That's because I'm working on my database import scripts. I've got a few done. User Account migration is pretty much done. I've got forum stats done, thread migration, and post migration (mostly) done. Post migration is giving me a few fits.


The Plan Right Now
I'm working on wrapping up the DB migration scripts and smoothing out some rough edges of the theme.

I've got the raw data from the Wiki, and I'm trying to figure out how to grab the most recent version of each page, and create a new page on TRF 5 for it. Those items will have to go into a queue, because the new board doesn't support wiki markup, so they'll need editing and hand sorting into their new database categories. Speaking of database, check out http://rebelfaction.org/universe/, the new site has a wiki-like area that's a little more rigidly structured, but essentially it works the same as the old wiki. I know Kraken and others put a lot of work into the wiki, so I'm glad we'll be able to save it.

I've also got to write a script to move forum threads and transform them into Pages with Comments. Could be a bit tricky, I haven't jumped into it yet.


Forums to Migrate
There are two main points here. Firstly, I'm not planning on migrating the Groups over initially. More on this later.

Secondly, without Groups, this leaves us with the core TRF forums. I'm looking to migrate everything relevant, and consolidate where possible. I'm proposing this, please let me know if I'm missing, excluding, or otherwise butchering anything.

• Cafe Titus, Arts & Entertainment become Rebel Cafe
  
• News & Announcements stays behind
(functionality is replaced on new site)

• Communications moves as is
  
• The Battlegrounds, Astral Astoria become The Battlegrounds
  
• Floor 300-sh stays behind
  
• IC News & Propaganda moves as is
  
• OOC Forum moves as is
  
• The TRF History Project moves into the Universe DB with replies as comments.
  
• Research & Development will be moving into the Universe DB with replies as comments.
  
• Biographies and History - Biographies can now go on the user account, but I'm not sure if I can migrate it automatically.
  
• Staff Room - These will migrate as-is, but without The Landfill
  

This proposed migration leaves us with:

• Rebel Cafe
  
• Communications
  
• The Battlegrounds
  
• IC News & Propaganda
  
• OOC Forum
  
• Staff Room
  

Back to Groups..
I want to keep Groups on therebelfaction.com for the time being. The reason is the new software isn't as robust as vBulletin is for group management, making it impractical to replicate the 47 user groups and 142 forums and their permissions combo. I also feel like Groups can be done better than with a bunch of forums. I'd like to set up a system where a Group is something any member can create, and administrate. Group management should be done by the group themselves, and the software should encourage it. So I want to leave the Groups where they are at for the time being to give me some time to come up with a solution.

Another possibility is to set up separate sites for each group. I've already tested the new software with running multiple sites off of one install, it works really well and will let us share users, so that is a possibility. The upside is each group will get a lot of functionality, but the downside is that setup is a lot slower, so we'd probably be looking at just the most active groups getting moved into this.



Migration
Once I've got scripts up for all the content we want to hit, and we've settled on a forum migration plan, it's pretty much just up to me to pick a night, turn off some forums, run a script, and open it up for business.


The Future
I'll wrap this (surprisingly long post) up with a few of the features I'm planning on adding to the site over this next winter.

• Account Linking. Attach all of your character accounts to one master account. Switch accounts on the fly, and switch posting users on the fly as well.
  
• Draft Posts manager. I want to set up an area in your profile where you can save drafts. A nice editor, the ability to take notes, to reference other posts in the thread for notes, view revisions, auto-save, etc.
  
• Create post drafts via email. Email yourself @rebelfaction.org and it's saved as a post draft.
  
• Dynamically link Planets, Posts, Groups, into one super awesome Galaxy Map.
  
• Better subscription to items of interest.
  

I'll probably reread this several times over the next few days, but for right now I have no qualms with your migration strategy. I'll await the input of our compatriots.

I like it. It sounds awesome.

I don't know if you're taking votes or anything, but the first option for managing groups sounds pretty great to me.

Also, as a non-technical question, are we planning any kind of rules update or anything? Don't get me wrong: the rules as-is seem to be working pretty well and I mostly like them just fine, but in particular I was thinking about groups. We've got IC-only groups now, and several inactive groups, as well as rather huge groups that are down to only one active user, plus my future plans for the Alliance might see it turning into something that behaves differently than what we usually think of when we think of a "group". So I was wondering if we wanted or needed to address any of that in any way.

I don't actually have any specific ideas or concerns at present, I just thought I'd bring it up while it was on my mind.

That's obviously something we're going to have to discuss in the early days of TRF 5. We'll have to ask, as a board, do we really need a rules update? I don't know if that will end up being the case, but if it is I will be prepared with potential alternatives.

TRF still has rules...?

Irtar Milagro

TRF still has rules...?

Apparently, which is why I'm going to propose a couple new ones specifically just for you to have some rules.

#1 Whenever Irtar posts OOC, he also has to make 1 IC post...

#2 Whenever Irtar completes an OOC thought, he has to complete an IC thread

Unfortunately, I'm sure some perfectly reasonable will object to this and veto these almost perfectly unreasonably reasonable ideas....

. . . Says the guy who just made his first post, IC or OOC, in over three years.

Hi, Corise. Glad to see you got your posting powers back.

So I've got a friend who I talked into giving TRF a try, but the "register an account" link returns a 404 error. I know account approval has been shut down for a while, but is registration completely gone until 5.0? Or did he (and I) just do it wrong?

The registration system we have in place is, at current, kaput. Given enough time and energy, Titus could probably triage it, but we're so close to 5.0 we figured we could just wait a few weeks.

If your friend needs an account, get the account name they want and a current e-mail address, and we can set something up and e-mail them a temp password. PM or IM the information to a TRF 4 admin, which is not me. So any other real live admin basically.

Send deets to Ahnk.