SkiBuilders.com site migration and updates

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bigKam
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SkiBuilders.com site migration and updates

Post by bigKam »

Dear all,

There will be some changes over the next few months:

Due to the issues that we've all experienced with the existing host, we will be migrating the entire SkiBuilders.com site (including the forum) to a new host. Also, the main website will be updated with a new look. I'm hoping that the migration/updates will be completed by early September, and with minimal issues and disruptions.

The three of us are committed to supporting the community by offering this free service of keeping SkiBuilders.com live. We originally created SkiBuilders.com to address the lack of information and documentation on the design, engineering, and art of ski/snowboard building. It is our hope that this information helps to advance the state-of-the-art. We are very passionate about skiing and building skis is our hobby. Our mission is to provide, archive, and promote ski/snowboard building through SkiBuilders.com.

SkiBuilders.com is now a non-profit LLC, owned and operated by the three of us, and managed by bigKam. SkiBuilders.com will be funded by our own personal contributions and where appropriate, the profit from the sales of SkiBuilders.com related promotional goods.

The SkiBuilders store will no longer be affiliated with SkiBuilders.com. However, a new business will be created to continue to sell materials and supplies (business name to be announced at a later time) and owned and operated by Kelvin Wu. To support the community in terms of where to acquire materials and supplies, we will also provide a detailed list of other sources and vendors.

Thank you again for your support and patience. Please provide any input, comments, etc. to this thread.

Sincerely,
SkiBuilders.com
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Brazen
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Post by Brazen »

Wow. Why is it the first thing that popped into my head was "tool".I agree, it's pretty tough making the 14.95 payment a month to "keep the site aiive" so you can sell items to us for 300% over cost. Awesome!
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bigKam
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Post by bigKam »

Brazen wrote:Wow. Why is it the first thing that popped into my head was "tool".I agree, it's pretty tough making the 14.95 payment a month to "keep the site aiive" so you can sell items to us for 300% over cost. Awesome!
Brazen -- like I said, the forum and the store will be separated. In other words, the money from the new business will not support SkiBuilders.com.

We created SB.com to inform people and to get them excited about making skis. We then created the store to help provide relatively easy access to materials. Yes, there is a markup: to cover costs, such as place to store inventory, accounting fees, covering someone's time, online store fees, banking fees, etc.

There are many places to get materials (search our forum, for example). The cost usually depends on volume. And, you are free to get materials/supplies from where ever you please.

Our forum is free and there is no requirement that you purchase anything. Users are free to share information. There are many startups that have benefited from the information offered by SkiBuilders.com. We do not ask for anything in return.

Anyway, SkiBuilders.com is now a non-profit LLC and the store will be separated. We are doing this because the three of us feel that it's the best thing. Also, because it's a non-profit, we'll have to figure out a mechanism to support the basic features of the site, including monthly service fees, etc.
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Post by MontuckyMadman »

You should have an easy way to donate or provide monies to your nonprofit to keep everything alive.
sammer wrote: I'm still a tang on top guy.
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tufty
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Post by tufty »

Rather than asking for / requiring funding from the users to cover professional hosting costs (this rarely goes down well and usually ends up with a lot of users quitting the site, especially if it becomes "2-tier" with regards to those who have donated and thosewho haven't), it's probably worth checking out what hosting is available free for nonprofits. grassroots.org have pretty good rep, for starters, but there's lots of other free hosts for nonprofits out there. This differs from "free webhosting", which is usually total crap, in that you usually get a more-or-less full "professional" package for nowt. If you can cover your hosting costs that way, the rest is probably do-able using something like Google's adwords.
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bigKam
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Post by bigKam »

Thanks for the comments regarding the donations, etc., and we'll consider these options.

On another note: I've been testing Word Press for the new site, and also the phpBB forum system. I like the phpBB forum system because of how flexible and portable it is. As you can see, we're currently using an older version of phpBB forum. But integrating phpBB with Word Press seems to be a challenge. I've tried wp-united, but can't seem to get it to work. The integration (uniform themes between the two) isn't necessary, but it would be nice to have the new site and the forum have the same look.

Any thoughts on this for those who have some experience?

I guess I could dig into the phpBB code and customize the theme to match our new site as much as possible, but it would be nice to use a nice plugin in WP.

Thanks for your input.
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Post by doughboyshredder »

I could care less about the theme or style.

All I care about is that the massive amount of info on here doesn't get screwed up.
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bigKam
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Post by bigKam »

doughboy -- I'm confused by your comment. I understand you care about the information and data here. We all do too, so you're not alone. But with all this information, it would be nice to have it organized with some form of uniform 'style'. So in an effort to better organize, present, and deliver the content, I'm looking at options to better integrate the both the main site and the forum. Anyway, let me know if you have any constructive input.
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tufty
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Post by tufty »

Kam

I've tried integrating phpBB with other software (a few years back, mind), there's 2 major issues:

One is cross-software logins, which is a bugger to solve. Unlikely to be an issue for you if the "main site" is not publically writeable, and the few people with write access aren't worried about having double logins.

The other one is style, and you will *never* get a complete seamless integration - you're better off leaving phpBB with its default scheme (makes upgrading and security auditing much easier, for starts) and living with the fact it looks different. Otherwise, you write new skins for both sites using shared assets and colour schemes, but that doubles your effort in developing and testing.

In other words, I'm with dbs. Don't bother pishing about reskinning 2 sites in an effort to make them the same. Spend your time doing something more worthwhile, like - ummm - counting your collection of rare misthreaded inserts, or anything else.

Simon
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bigKam
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Post by bigKam »

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the input and pointing out the issues. I'm not a web developer by any stretch of the imagination so I threw out a query to see if any developers out there had some useful info.

In the past when I developed the site and forum, I didn't bother too much with the integration because at that time there wasn't a whole lot of plugins and tools available. I was hoping that there are some nice tools available now, but not really. WP has a few plugins for forums, and I've tested them and they seem descent, but I'd have to convert the exisiting DB over to be compatible with WP. I'm not willing to do this for fear of losing any information. Keeping the data intact is one of my main priorities.

Good integration would involve a lot of time and money. This is pretty much a DIY site and community, so in that spirit we'll try our best with this, but if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks again!
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Post by OAC »

It shouldn't hurt just to upgrade the phpBB software. It says 2005 on this page. No upgrade since?
...and the DB? Upgrade?

I'm personally more towards a wiki solution. Mostly for organizations reasons. There are wikis with discussion features. If it's good, I don't know.

/Jan
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Post by novaskis »

first off i want to thank the Kams and Kevin for sticking with this site and making the move to the new server. if it weren't for you i wouldn't have such an awesome hobbie.

secondly i want to say i would support there being a way to donate to the site to help its up keep. i dont think there should be any advantage to donating just the satisfaction of knowing you are helping a community continue to grow and inspire the next generation of ski builders( and maybe some stickers while your at it :P)

finally i can not wait to see the new site with all the old faces and new skis

think snow
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bigKam
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Post by bigKam »

OAC >> It shouldn't hurt just to upgrade the phpBB software.

Agreed. But sometimes I don't like to make too many upgrades and changes unless we really need it, but I do agree that upgrading, e.g., to the new phpBB3, should be in order. Expect some changes to come!

Regarding Wiki -- I've long debated this. I'm hoping the new (hopefully) WP site will add some similar features.

novaskis -- thanks for your input. we'll consider the donate feature, but again, now that a SkiBuilders is a non-profit LLC, we'll support what we can personally and do what we can to pay the bills. I personally believe the non-profit approach better serves the mission and interest of the community.

Thanks again for all your input and support over the years -- it's exciting to see the interest, new startups, increase in knowledge, etc.
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Post by tufty »

bigKam wrote:But sometimes I don't like to make too many upgrades and changes unless we really need it, but I do agree that upgrading, e.g., to the new phpBB3, should be in order.
It's not just "should be in order", it's "100% necessary". You'll be wanting to upgrade your database at the same time too (although you probably won't get a choice if you're changing hosts anyway).

Before you do anything, back up your database. And make sure you can restore the data in a usable form onto another server. Then burn your backup onto a DVD and give it to somene you trust. And backup again.

If you're changing platform, it might be worth running a "beta" site in parallel with the existing one, and get us to test it for you, before blowing away its contents and dropping the "live" site data onto it.

If you want any help, I can donate some time. Feel free to mail me.

Simon
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Post by OAC »

Ease Simon, he's working on it! :)
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