Forum issues after migration

[Domarius]

I'm clicking the smileys on the panel on the left and nothing is happening Just manually typed one then.

I wanted the confused face in the other thread but :/ wasn't interpreted.

[megamarc]

Hi,

There are some issues reported in the forums: BB editor is missing, clickable smileys don't work... As you know, some days ago I migrated all the web and forums to a new hosting plan. I had to manually backup everything, export the database, and then make it work again in the new web space. Seems that something has been lost on the way.

These forums are running on MyBB 1.8.15, but latest version is 1.8.16. I'll try to update it to the latest version. I think the PHP version on the new plan is also newer (5.5 to 7.0).

I'll keep you informed about these issues.

[Domarius]

Oh, so Hostinger didn't work out? What happened?
Who's your new host?

[megamarc]

No, it's still Hostinger, but the old plan was a Premium account upgraded fom a Free one three years ago. Nowadays Free doesn't exist anymore, Premium costs a lot and the new Basic is much cheaper but you can't downgrade from Premium to Basic, you have to order a new plan, make backups from the old one, manually transfer everything to the new, and revoke the older...

[Domarius]

Ohh ok - I still had my eye on them based on your recommendation. Still using Wix.com for my www.domariusgames.com site for now. But I want to try using something like Html5Up or Bootstrap and see what that's like, so I'll need a cheap host for that.

[megamarc]

I choose hostinger back then becase they had a free plan. That plan is in fact a trap, because they we're putting my site offline frequently complaining that "I had exceeded my bandwith quota", but you don't have any kind of statistics about your bandwith consumption. It's just a trick to force you into paid plans. They we're offering great discount for a premium plan so I signed for 3 years. But now was tine to renew and that same plan costs more than double than I paid the first time, and the Basic plan is more limited -but enough for me- and it's much cheaper. They still have a free pran under a different brand, "000webhost" if you want to check it.

The fact is: for what you pay, you have a lot of features. In my case, I can't do with a pure template site like Wix, because I host the online documentation, some additional downloads, these forums that require a web sever, PHP and SQL... Are you planning on expanding your online presence?

[Domarius]

Hmm actually; Wix still comes pretty close to meeting those requirements - maybe not quite, but closer than you think. They've come a long way.

I have to say some things about Wix - not because I'm being paid, just because I'm that impressed; it's not templates, as in "Choose this layout, now you're stuck with it, but you can tweak a few things" it literally is a blank canvas with some very flexible and easy to use interface to just move, shape and layer stuff how you want. When they give you templates to start with, those are just like having a variety of PSD files as a starting point - once you open it, you can do anything you want to it after that - delete everything, cut, copy, paste from other pages etc...

And the features they do have, eg. like online stores, entire forums (yes), blogs with subscriptions, mailing lists, galleries, and so on, while it isn't everything one could ever want, it does seem to cover the major things, and you can be sure it'll be a breeze to set up and customise. And they have an app store so you can add functionality too.

And in recent times, they've just started to add more "codey" things... I haven't got into it (haven't needed to) but it looks like you can jack in some functionality by coding it in place.

On top of that, they've just added a form of "databases"; from what I can see, it looks like a way of generating dynamic pages with the contents from the databases. https://support.wix.com/en/article/about...ollections

Anyway... yeah, naturally it's still quite enclosed and not the same as working with a raw webserver and doing what you want - but in terms of functionality, it's closing the gap pretty impressively, and what it does is super easy to work with!

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</spiel>

Are you planning on expanding your online presence?

Well I just have an interest in learning new things right now, it's that time of my life, mostly why I'm here. It's why I tried Pico 8, Love2D, Godot, Linux Mint, and I really am starting to see the pros and cons of those things to Unity, C++, C#, Windows, etc. etc. As for web stuff, Wix is easy, but it's not everything, and I don't like not knowing about something potentially useful to me. I'm just keen to set up a site using those more traditional methods, there is some benefit, and I may have a candidate, because I'm considering having at least one or maybe more of my products having their own "site".

Also an advantage of the traditional way (over Wix) is you have a complete copy of the website on your HDD, and you can make backups, do version control on it, do some automated changes, eg. something as simple as replace in all files - those kinds of things is where you're screwed if you're with Wix. With Wix, if you want to kind of "back up" something, you can duplicate a page, or an entire site, but it gets awkward real quick, cause the apps and their data (eg. mailing list) are tied to a specific site.

But, pros and cons.

[megamarc]

Thanks for the detailed Wix explanation! I didn't know they have such a great toolset. It may have it's limitations, but considering that it's aimed at designers and not to web developers, it's impressive the freedom you have. I myself being a long-time coder always opt for the code it yourself approach so I learnt Bootstrap and updated my HTML skills to do the Tilengine website, but of course I woldn't recommend this way to a business/product designer that's not already a developer.

In my case, having the traditional model of keeping all the data myself has been of great value when migrating the hosting plan, because I could have moved to another ISP without problem. Developing with a web platform like Wix -as great as it may be- leaves you tied to them.

[megamarc]

Hi,

I think I've fixed the message editor, formating buttons and smiley effect were missing. They show on my profile again, please check that it works for you too.

[Domarius]

Hey cool, looks like I can type some

Code:

Code for people to read

A list of things that work

• Bullet points
  
• Inline image tags
  
• And URLs
  

Looks great!