Site changes

Hi everyone,

Just letting you know there are some more site changes happening (probably today). I am completing a server move and part of that has forced me to rethink various features that are on offer and whether they were worth spending time on to keep them. As a result of this, the following changes will come with the server move.

- Search will become a plain Google search (it was broken anyway). This is expected to be temporary. Although it provides basic functionality, it is terrible for finding members or for searching specific blogs for example.
- The mobile site (m.travellerspoint.com) will no longer exist. Many pages on Travellerspoint are now responsive anyway, so for those pages it will make no real difference. The main place where it does make a difference is blog editing. The goal will be to upgrade the blog management area to become mobile friendly and avoid duplicating all this logic. But in the meanwhile it will unfortunately not be very mobile friendly.
- The old photo uploader will be removed entirely.
- The ability to generate a PDF version of your blog will be removed. I've added a link to IntoRealPages who are able to print out TP blogs as books instead.
- Groups are disappearing (already mentioned elsewhere).

There will be some minor improvements with the move too.

• Photos can be added in forum threads
• Removing "Friend" wording on profiles, etc and replacing it with "Followers"

I expect there to be a few issues when I do the server move as it is a rather big change to the infrastructure. Hopefully nothing too problematic. The speed of the site should improve.

Once all the move issues are sorted, I can start focussing on making improvements to the site again.

Cheers,
Peter

[ Edit: Neglected to mention PDF generation of blogs is also removed ]

A follow up on this.. the site is now moved across.

And there are of course some issues. Currently aware of (in order of urgency)

• Maps not loading
• Uploader not working
• Accommodation area not looking right
• Various broken images around the site.
• Home page broken

Thanks for your patience.

[ Edit: fixed some things ]

I'm getting an error message when I try to go to my 'new' home page - the old control panel one is still working however so that's a temporary work-around.

Great to hear we'll be able to include photos in forum replies

Fixed the home page and some of the other issues

Photos in forum entries should work now. It uses the same way of inserting as blog entries which is kind of funny because it will tell you the photo was inserted into your blog (rather than forum).. Oops.. will need to fix that.

[ Edit: Edited on 30-Nov-2020, 10:14 GMT by Peter ]

Quoting Peter

Fixed the home page and some of the other issues

Yes, that's working again - thank you

Quoting Peter

- The ability to generate a PDF version of your blog will be removed. I've added a link to IntoRealPages who are able to print out TP blogs as books instead.

Really? So the only way to get a copy of our blog is to print a book? No export? No warning?

Quoting Bob Brink

Quoting Peter

- The ability to generate a PDF version of your blog will be removed. I've added a link to IntoRealPages who are able to print out TP blogs as books instead.

Really? So the only way to get a copy of our blog is to print a book? No export? No warning?

I hadn't spotted that - thanks for picking up on it Bob.

Peter, is there any possibility of retaining that function? I use it regularly as a way of backing up my blogs. After what happened to VT I'm even more aware than I was of the need to have a back-up, and although I keep the text in a Word document, the pdf allows me to see the entries as I posted them, complete with photos, and to keep the comments which I really appreciate.

Photo moderator page is not working.

Guide editing give errors, while edits are still processed. But not showing in the recent edit page.

Got more errors in the guide when clicking pages over there.

Cheers

Quoting ToonSarah

Quoting Bob Brink

Quoting Peter

- The ability to generate a PDF version of your blog will be removed. I've added a link to IntoRealPages who are able to print out TP blogs as books instead.

Really? So the only way to get a copy of our blog is to print a book? No export? No warning?

I hadn't spotted that - thanks for picking up on it Bob.

Peter, is there any possibility of retaining that function?.

I can add in some kind of export option. I'm not against that at all and totally understand why people would want it. Or possibly a print function which is more similar to the print function in the Planner. The actual generating of a PDF can be somewhat of a burden on the server - particularly when someone chooses to generate a PDF with several hundred blog entries, all with high quality photos in them. It's not impossible to achieve by any means. I just didn't see the justification for it in the stats. I think that page was accessed only once in the past month!