IT.com website updates !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[imported_Webmaster]

Well afters years (literally) of leaving you guys out on the ice by yourselves (you did fine by the way) it's time to update the website.

Over the next few months you'll see some improvements such as:
- New image gallery (you'll add your own!)
- Team/Driver's info database (names, cars, personal pages, etc)
- IT.com merchant area where retailers will be selling products of interest to IT racers for discounts!
- IT.com goodies! Shirts and Stickers will be back!

Have patience and if you are a PHP, Cold Fusion, MySQL, MS SQL, HTML/CSS kinda person (any, not all) and you want to help accelerate the changes...shoot me an email.

[email protected]


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Webmaster - www.ImprovedTouring.com

[lateapex911]

Whoo Hoo!
Whoo Hoo!
Whoo Hoo!!!

Will we get things like user control panels, private messaging, our emails actually displaying in our profiles and those cool pictures under our name?

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Jake Gulick
CarriageHouse Motorsports
ITA 57 RX-7
New England Region
[email protected]

[This message has been edited by lateapex911 (edited August 20, 2004).]

[Bill Miller]

Bill,

Have you given any thought to porting/switching to a PHPBB? They're pretty much free, and offer a lot more than UBB. I think UBB was good, for it's time, but I think there are better products out there now. I have a friend that I believe has experience porting a UBB board to a PHPBB board. And, the offer is still open.

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MARRS #25 ITB Rabbit GTI (sold) | MARRS #25 HProd Rabbit
SCCA 279608

[planet6racing]

If we do switch to the PHPBB, can we put limits in place on signatures to prevent the 4-page long signatures with special funky graphics from appearing on the site? I stop reading a lot of boards for that reason and, since we don't have them here, I like coming here!

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Bill
Planet 6 Racing
bill (at) planet6racing (dot) com

[imported_Webmaster]

Bill & Bill. Yes and Yes.
You'll be notified when the "beta" site goes up.
phpBB is the current plan and I'm still debating which "portal" mod to implement to tie the whole site together.

If anyone has any advice / experience with the nuimerous hacks available, let me know their opinions / experiences.
http://www.phpbbhacks.com/



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Webmaster - www.ImprovedTouring.com

[Bill Miller]

LOL, ok, this is too funny, three Bills in the same conversation!

Bill S, I'll talk to my friend re: PHPBB hacks and get his feedback.

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MARRS #25 ITB Rabbit GTI (sold) | MARRS #25 HProd Rabbit
SCCA 279608

[Bill Miller]

Bill,

As far as the portal/mgmt piece, take a look at www.mamboserver.com It's open source, and seems to work well w/ PHP

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MARRS #25 ITB Rabbit GTI (sold) | MARRS #25 HProd Rabbit
SCCA 279608

[imported_Webmaster]

yes there has been progress...

I've been working with a few BB systems and a few Portal systems on a private server for the past few weeks. Haven't landed on a sure bet yet as I keep discovering good and bad things about each combination.

As always, if you have insight, experience, time to spare, etc and want to lend a hand...contact me.

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Webmaster - www.ImprovedTouring.com

[Knestis]

I've used phpbb and the phpNuke portal but be forewarned - you are obligating yourself to staying on top of the updates and vulnerability patches.

The downside of open source stuff is that when a glitch is located, news spreads like brown mustard on a Road America brat.

You'll get a 13-year-old Czech kid posting under some goofy-ass name like dAR<LoRd telling you that he's "not a hacker," and only wants to protect you by making sure that you upgrade to v.5.0.2 by midnight tomorrow - or he'll do you a favor and deface the site.

Thanks, dude.

K

[imported_Webmaster]

Update:

Progress is slow but steady.
I have installed a new forum and a customizable portal on a development server.

The biggest obsticle is migrating the threads from our very old version of UBB to the new PHPBB 2 forums. There are converters for UBB 6.x but none for 5.47 that I've found. It may not be possible.
If there are any Perl/Unix/MySQL geeks out there who would like to help with this task please let me know.

So aside from that obsticle it appears that soon we should have a new community site with more robust forums, more user features, photo gallery (that's managable) secured classifieds to prevent spammers from getting our email addresses, private messenging, calendars for race dates, etc, etc, etc.

I expect to have a basic (not pretty) version up and running within the next few weeks.

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Webmaster - www.ImprovedTouring.com

[Greg Amy]

How about an interim uprade from 5.47 to 6.xx, then an upgrade to the latest? Must have been a way to upgrade to 6.xx from 5.47, no?

[P Sherm]

Ummm... maybe this subject has been brought up in the past, or maybe it's just a dumb question (or maybe it's being avoided like the plague??), but do you need any type of donation for this upgrade?

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#59 SSC Neon
Wichita Region
Yes, I know it's not an IT car... yet...

[imported_Webmaster]

Greg - Searched high and low, found none.

P Shrm - No money needed. IT racing purses have made me weathy beyond my wildest dreams.
Actually we'll probably start taking donations on avoluntary bassis after the new site goes up as the benevelent host has grumbled a few times about the "server load" and the "deal" I'm getting.


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Webmaster - www.ImprovedTouring.com

[planet6racing]

I know some about PHP/mySQL/Linux (don't expect a lot, but I can get around it OK and have some really good reference books) and would be willing to help out where I could. Just shoot an e-mail to the address below if needed.

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Bill
Planet 6 Racing
bill (at) planet6racing (dot) com

[gsbaker]

Take Bill up on his offer. He's being modest. I'd offer to help, but the last time I did any real programming the computers were all analog. (Just kidding.)

On the $ side of things, you might give some consideration to more targeted advertising. A good example would be the Tow Vehicles and Trailers forum, where you might get a premium from the towing suppliers--especially if you could offer an exclusive.

In the same vein, you might want to look at a safety forum. Personally, I never thought this would fly, but in the past two months we've noticed at least two forums add this specialty section and both have been active.

I'm just guessing, but I'll bet if you looked really, really hard you could find a safety products manufacturer who would be willing to act as a beta advertiser.

Gregg (affiliated with a safety products manufacturer) Baker
Isaac, LLC

[lateapex911]

Subtle.....



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Jake Gulick
CarriageHouse Motorsports
ITA 57 RX-7
New England Region
[email protected]

[imported_Webmaster]

>> give some consideration to more targeted advertising.

It' part of the plan for the new site!

[gsbaker]

Originally posted by lateapex911:
Subtle.....

Shameless, too!

[imported_Webmaster]

FYI, see post titled: IT Member List?
for an update.



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Webmaster - www.ImprovedTouring.com