Source: edgefourmsShawn has been talking to me and the rest of the admins about a new backend for all network sites and some more features. He posted on the fourms the other day what he is planning to do so i decided to share this information with you. If you have any questions check it out.
Since it's me doing a bulk of the work on this redesign (not to take the spotlight away from the actual staff on the site who work every day on the site!), I just thought I'd make a post on this thread. It will be quite long but hopefully will answer any questions.The Design:--------------I'll be sticking with the edge skeleton still, some people don't like but the staff do and the recent poll suggests people like fixed-width designs, or at least the way the site currently is. So, for simplicity the skeleton design is the same.GTAGaming is one site, it's not like those other sites who devote a domain per game. The staff and myself all agree that is a waste. But we also agree what we have is completely disorganized, my fault really as I'm the programmer/designer. They've done the best they can to make it easy, but in the end this is supposed to be my job.With that said, when you load the San Andreas part of the site it will almost be as if it is it's own site. The theme will obviously be San Andreas, news page will show only San Andreas news, so on so forth. It will take time for ALL of this to be completely finished (ie. showing files ONLY about San Andreas, POTDs ONLY for San Andreas, etc), but the first "version" of it isn't TOO far away.Files:------A HUGE issue I'm aware. EdgeFiles Sucks! EdgeFiles Sucks! Don't use EdgeFiles! I hear it all the time. If it's any consolation the GTAGaming staff don't like it either. EdgeFiles is not a luxury option, it's not something we're doing just to inconvenience you either. EdgeFiles is a necessary evil - bandwidth costs money. EdgeFiles' purpose is to alleviate costs by spreading the usage over several servers. GTAGaming itself - JUST WEB TRAFFIC - does around 10gb/day. Not including it's hosted sites who, btw, get bannerless hosting as long as they don't use TOO much.With that said, although this also won't take effect straight away, our network sites starting with GTAGaming are going to have EdgeFiles built into it. However, we still have to place additional ads to cover costs on the file pages (rest of site will still use standard banner at top of page), but you will not have to be linked to edgefiles to download first.Forums:---------This will take the longest to implement. Say goodbye to edgeforums, I know a lot of you also don't like this setup. Those of you who do, if anything you've just grown comfortable with this site instead of preferring it. The staff are severely limited for customization here, for reasons that are my fault also. I like vBulletin but it costs way too much to have one on every site, hence why edgeforums was created - one vBulletin for all network sites.Well, that's going to change. The new idea is to setup a forum on each network site, using Invision Board or PHPBB (undecided). This will give the staff complete control over it, instead of "Junior Member" you might be a "Thug" to fit in with GTA theme. Not only that, but you'll be able to choose a GTA3/ViceCity/SanAn theme while using the forum.All sites' forums will still tie to edgeid, you will not have to worry about that at all.