My friends and I were discussing on another forum how this place has really bad system administration.
Acording to my friends, they sys-admin refuses to move to another message forum software. Basically this place was hand-coded in Drupal. The main problem with that is users of firefox (a major browser.) can no longer post messages on the forum. It is really bad, and makes the forum look really bad. Someone wanted to post the the FLARE forum and asked basic things like "Why can't I use firefox to post to the FLARE forum? "
I noticed it myself, and once I was informed of the problem, I decided to post using Chromium for right now. I fear if something is not done, such issues will continue to get worse
until this forum is completly unusable, a disaster for the opengameart.org community.
There was already a topic about this.
Fortunately, there is a solution if you want to keep using Firefox for posting here.
Just click on "Disable rich-text", and it will work.
?? I haven't tested every version of firefox, but I believe botanic has fixed this already.
I don't disagree about that being a bad situation that should be fixed ASAP, but saying the sys admin refuses to move to another forum framework is a bit like saying poor people are only starving because they refuse to buy food.
It isn't a refusal to move to another system, it's a lack of resources to accomplish the necessary changes in a timely manner. There are plenty of improved forum modules available, but they require some underlying systems to be upgraded first. I'd love to upgrade those systems myself, but...
Botanic has requested any volunteers to give feedback or coding help to resolve some of these issues, but so far the help has been limited. OGA is ad-free and staffed entirely by volunteers. The sys admins are good, but they also have full-time jobs and families. The site recieves donations, but not enough to cover much more than hosting costs; this is a high-traffic site with dense data.
The site's source is open and ready for improvements: https://github.com/OpenGameArt Any assistance in moving this forward is appreciated.
I think DaftFreak even has a code solution to this problem. Please, any volunteer should jump on github, find the place that needs fixing, change it, test it, and push it. The sysadmins still need to process the pull request and get the code change into the site, but at least it gets something started. I'd do it myself, but again, I lack the skill for accomplishing that.
--Medicine Storm
testing on firefox
edit: sorry I was just wondering if I really couldn't post on firefox with default rich-text (maybe it only covers the flare subforum? editedit: ok it turns out my ff version is a little behind not to be able to use the rich-text field)
Also real people have real jobs, things may progress slower than one would expect.
Unfortunately, this wasn't something I could submit a PR for, as the issue was outside the OGA plugins... BTW, working on the code is a little hard as installing the plugins doesn't get you a working site (seems to mostly be config issues). Then you have no data to test with.
(Those aren't complaints, just pointing out its a little hard for any new contributors.)
:P
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The point was not to upgrade/switch the Drupal build in system (which is difficult, I know), but rather to disable it and instead run a separate modern forum like Discourse or Flarum. Really not that hard to set up, and a user bridge to the old Drupal database should also be possible. Ultimately the problem lies with the outdated and monolithic Drupal code-base. No one will ever be able to find the time to fix that monster ;) Better start chopping off parts ASAP and replace them with more maintainable micro-services. Edit: I would be happy to help, but not with Drupal :p
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http://freegamedev.net
LOL! yes, understandable. I feel like migrating the entire site to a new (non-drupal?) platform is the best option, but what platform(s) would that be?
--Medicine Storm
Alright, yes, it is fixxed now.
The site seems a little slow for some reason, but that is a seperate issue (and that was going on before the fix so is probably not related) .
Confirming this is fixed for me also. Windows 10, Firefox 64 bit v69.0
Thanks for fixing this, had to live life on the Edge for a while there. ;)
I should point out that I'm running my copy of the site on PHP 7.2 and nothing has exploded yet. Might be an easy-ish way to improve performance a bit?
IMHO any monolithic platform will sooner or later face the same problem.
Better to see what dedicated software could be used and find a way to link them together though an easy to swap bridge (some sort of standartized SSO, Oauth2 or OpenLdap etc.).
Maybe even make it a somewhat federated to spread out the hosting costs, although for OGA this might be a double edged sword.
This Drupal page can still stay as the place to register accounts and welcome new users. A massively cut down version would probablt also be possible to upgrade to the latest version of Drupal at some point.
If I recall correctly Drupal has some pretty good SSO options that might be still compatible with this version.
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http://freegamedev.net