This evening, I hastily brought forth the Impending Upgrade(tm) and switched the software that runs cvillenews.com. (For the geeks out there, it was running PHP-Nuke, and now it’s running PostNuke.) I’m distinctly unhappy about this, but it had to happen. I’d hoped to be able to upgrade quite smoothly. Instead, we’ve got an ugly beige site with all kinds of weird options remaining to be configured and/or removed, new URLs that don’t even map to the old ones (translation: broken links), and I had to move the site to a new server yet again. The big change that this brings about is the end to anonymous posting. For the full scoop, click the headline, or however the heck you read the attached stories now. Note: If you already have an account, there is no need to create a new one; your old one will work just fine.
The software that I’d really hoped to switch to was Slash, or perhaps PostNuke when it got up to version 1.0. (It’s at v 0.714 right now, meaning it’s not ready for prime time.) But PostNuke is the option at hand right now, so it’s the one that we’re going with. Sucks to be us.
The biggest change in this upgrade is the demise of anonymous posting. I’d hoped that this wouldn’t ever be necessary, but ongoing abuse by a single individual has made this necessary. Consequently, user registration will be required in order to post from now on. The user registration system on PostNuke isn’t a whole heck of a lot better than it was on PHP-Nuke, so my apologies to those that will struggle with the registration process. The idea behind requiring registration is that an e-mail address is tied to each account. An e-mail address creates accountability, and also makes it possible to ban abusive users, more or less. At some point, we may try going back to anonymous posting, but I’m afraid that it just doesn’t seem possible right now.
It appears that, to some degree, collaborative post-rating is possible with PostNuke. This is A Good Thing(tm), because it means that setting those little scores by each post will not just be done by me, but by a bunch of my hand-selected minions that will surely collectively work to carry out my evil deeds.
Finally, I’m concerned that some comments may get lost in this transition. If I see any comments that were posted to the old site during this transition period, I guess I’ll cut and paste them over here or something.
When you see stuff that’s broken, please e-mail me or reply to this story (that is, if you have an account) and I’ll do my best to take care of it.
32 Responses to “cvillenews.com Software Upgraded”