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The Road to Xenforo 2.0

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Change is constant, it is inevitable and no matter how much we may dislike it at times necessary. To brunt the impact and give time for you all to resign yourselves to an upcoming change at Stratics, this thread is to start providing you information about what is coming from a technical standpoint to Stratics in the near future. Ask questions, seek understanding, look forward.

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The software underpinning the Stratics Community Forums is currently approaching a major release. Currently Xenforo 2.0 Beta 7 is available to Customers and plugin developers to test and begin preparing to convert their own forums. This will be a total rewrite of the Xenforo code base and as a result all 3rd party plugins and styles are incompatible. We're currently watching as this development cycle progresses, and if the beta/release candidate/release cycle for Xenforo 1.0 is any indication, as no hard date has yet been set, a Xenforo 2.0 Gold release is appearing increasingly likely for the end of this year or early next.

The big question is how does this effect Stratics and chiefly you directly? To start with, we've decided we will not be an immediate adopter of the 2.0 platform. We intend to give plugin developers 2-3 months after the release to publish 2.0 compatible updates to plugins we use, and for us to do behind the scenes test update runs on mirrors of the site in order to work out any kinks, and if necessary be able judge and adjust our timeline accordingly. When we go live it will likely result in a lengthy maintenance down time, and we would like to be able to provide a good estimate of how long it will take.

One of the more problematic issues will be the abandoned/unmaintained legacy plugins which are used on the site. These are plugins we know will not be updated and unless another developer creates a plugin that matches the functionality they will cease operation. Other plugins will be deemed obsolete due to their function or the functions we use being integrated directly into the new Xenforo release, these likely won't be ported over by their developer, and how you will take advantage of this change may be effected.

Visually the look and feel of the site will change, of the available themes for Stratics only 1 is based on Xenforo 1.0's stock theme (UO Classic), which won't port over either. A few years ago we did a poll and found that out of the 9 themes available the majority were not or were little used, UO Classic and the Blue Steel theme had an overwhelming majority users.

The good news! There will be a UO Classic 2.0 available with the update, it won't look exactly the same, but the major elements will be ported over such as the logo, color scheme, etc. to minimize the adjustment. The image below is from my personal development box, and is not the a finished theme, simply an example of what is being worked on.

NiftyPosting.png

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For the other themes we will likely be creating a small number of own in house replacements based on Xenforo 2.0's stock theme as well. We want to do this instead of looking initially to 3rd party theme vendors for the sake of consistency and minimization of potential conflicts with specific plugins, an issue we've seen in the past. As to what you can expect..... Expect a Stratics theme that isn't influenced by any game title, which will act as a foundation for derivative themes to be built on that are game influenced, UO Classic 2.0 being an exception. What this means is most themes will share common styling elements, with the differences being backgrounds, minor logo differences, element and accent colors similar to how the majority of the styles available for Stratics are now, except with a lack of focus, at least initially, on 1 for 1 balance between light and dark themes, and more on the various titles themselves.

Over Time as we approach and once Xenforo 2.0 is released I'll be updating this thread with details on functionality which may be lost, or in the event we have to switch plugin developers, altered as that information becomes more apparent or available.
 
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Nexus

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** Reserved for Updates **
 

Nexus

Site Support
Administrator
Moderator
Professional
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Wiki Moderator
UNLEASHED
** Reserved for Updates **
 
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