Vinyl Audio is going on it's 6th year and things haven't changed much around here, so I thought I'd start thinking about a major overhaul of the design, layout and logo. The forum software we use has been patched over 100 times and I think it's about time we hit the reset button and start off clean and with the newest versions of the core modifications and incorporate some new ones. My original plan was to wait until version 2.1 of SMF Forum software was released, but it's still in the beta stages, so it looks like we're stuck using v2.0.xx for the foreseeable future.
Here's a few more reasons for the overhaul:
Fix all of the hard coded http calls since we are now able to use secure https connections. Going through all of the patches and changing them by hand would take forever.
Use a single theme that is responsive and works throughout the entire forum.
Upgrade all of the PHP code that's using deprecated calls that are no longer supported in the newer version of PHP that we use. The error log fills up daily with deprecated PHP calls and other error messages from using outdated code.
Cut back and simplify the amount of PHP and CSS changes that took place over the last 5 years for easier debugging.
Fully utilize Bootstrap CSS, Google's Font Awesome and a single set of icons to unify the look and feel of all areas of the forum.
I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to accomplish the transition yet, I may move the current forum to a different folder or sub domain while I work on things in the background. I'll let you know when I'm at the point to go live with the changes, but that will be quite a ways off in the future.
For now, watch for news and updates on my progress, maybe a poll or two asking for your opinion and suggestions on some of the changes along the way.
Thanks!
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